20th Century Hermeneutics - with some reference to Feminism

For some time now, though this has not always been realised, the most important question about the Bible has not been, Is it inerrant? nor, What authority does it have? but, What does it mean?  As a matter of fact, this has always been the most important question, because the evangelical case is that the Bible itself tells us it is the Word of God, and its authority and inerrancy, which is defined by the Bible, arise from this.

Don Carson in his book The Gagging of God[1] describes the present situation in hermeneutics as a ‘Hermeneutical Morass’.  In venturing into this Slough of Despond the best I can hope to do is to set out some stepping stones which might enable us to traverse some of its inhospitable terrain without getting bogged down.  Those who plough their way through the grouphs of the Peak District are known as ‘bogtrotters’.  The following is an exercise in hermeneutical bogtrotting.

THE BACKGROUND TO 20th. CENTURY BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS

1. Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics defined in broad terms today

Traditionally hermeneutics was a matter of principles of interpretation, but the word has come to be used in a far wider sense than that. It does not simply involve understanding a text (the word is not restricted to written texts, but includes e.g. signs, oral speech, dramatic performance), but also appropriation and response. Most biblical texts are not intended simply to provide information, they expect certain responses - worship, repentance, specific actions etc. - and the text is not truly grasped, or perhaps the text has not fully grasped the reader, until these responses have been evoked.  This means also that I would want to include communication in general, and so preaching, under the heading of hermeneutics.  Grant Osborne says, “It is my contention that the final goal of hermeneutics is not systematic theology but the sermon.  The actual purpose of Scripture is not explanation but exposition, not description but proclamation.”[2]

Hermeneutics and the church

God has given the Word to the church, and it is the task of the church, and particularly its ministers, to ‘explain-it-for’ its own members, and the unbelieving world.  Hermeneutics, then, is not just an academic exercise that takes place in colleges and universities; nor is it just the basic biblical study done by pastors with their books - though it should not be thought I am despising such study; hermeneia takes place when a community of hearers/readers receives the Word as it should be received, responding appropriately to its message.  Unless this is recognised the most important dimension of the text, what it is there for - its divine purpose - is in danger of being marginalised. 

This means that there is a corporate dimension to hermeneutics.  Patrick Keifert  writes, “the fundamental form of the Christian interpretation of Scripture is the life, activity, and organization of the Christian community”.[3]  This may be going too far but you can see what he means.  He explores models of the interpreter as maestro, by which he means the conductor of an orchestra, who leads the musicians as they interpret the score together, and as player/coach (less elitist).  It is a powerful picture when the church community is envisaged as understanding and living out the Bible together.  There is a strong emphasis in the New Testament on corporate understanding and this needs to be borne in mind (Eph.1:17ff.; 3:16-19, note “with all saints”, v.18; 4:11-16, “till we all come…to the knowledge of the Son of God”, v.13; Col.1:9-11; 2:2,3).

Hermeneutics and the world

It is also the responsibility of the church to explain the Word to the world.  Nowadays this is usually described as contextualization.  Osborne is right when he says, “Finally, the contextual or theological research completes the task of interpretation, moving us from the textual meaning (what the Bible meant) to the contextual meaning (what the Bible means for us today).”[4]  Much is made today of biblical interpretation within the context of the church, but very little is said about the Bible being interpreted to the world.  While it is true that the Bible should be thought of primarily as a churchly resource, this does not mean just as a resource for the church, but also for its mission towards the world. 

Hermeneutics and clarity

If hermeneutics includes explaining the Bible to ordinary people so that their lives may be changed and shaped by its message, then it follows that the message needs to be presented clearly.  It is ironic indeed that the works of those whose speciality is interpretation often need more interpretation than the texts they are allegedly interpreting.  Osborne says, “Reading some of the reader-response or deconstructionist literature is tantamount to learning a foreign language.  The difference is that a foreign language deals with practical concepts and the literary textbooks with philosophical concepts that one would swear were beyond even the scholars who propounded them!”[5]  However, Catherine Belsey defends and explains the sort of terminology Osborne is referring to in this way, “To challenge familiar assumptions and familiar values in a discourse which, in order to be easily readable, is compelled to reproduce these assumptions and values, is an impossibility.  New concepts, new theories, necessitate new, unfamiliar and therefore initially difficult discourses.”  Such language sets out “to avoid the ‘tyranny of lucidity’, the impression that what is being said is true because it is obvious, clear and familiar.”[6]  In this paper I have tried to avoid unnecessarily technical terms, and to be as clear and straightforward as possible.  I feel strongly that interpreters, above all others, ought to be able to express themselves in ordinary language to people of ordinary intellectual ability.

Hermeneutical techniques

It is my belief that we should always be on the lookout for new insights from whatever source. Thiselton’s method of trying to apply aspects of  a whole variety of hermeneutical approaches positively to biblical hermeneutics (as, for example, in the two final chapters of New Horizons, The Hermeneutics of Pastoral Theology[7]) is at least right in principle.  Of course there are dangers in this.  Nothing must be allowed to compromise the fact that the Bible is a God-given, inerrant text.  But this does not rule out any hermeneutical technique which genuinely enables us to understand a part of the biblical text more clearly.

2. Leading up to 20^th century hermeneutics

The early church

Before we come to the twentieth century it is best to give some sort of overview.  This means generalisation, which inevitably means over-simplification, but it helps to lead up to and locate present day hermeneutical thought.  In the early centuries the main emphasis was to look at the whole Bible and to see it as the Word of God; “As a study of the anti-Nicene (sic), Nicene, and post-Nicene exegesis of the church fathers documents, they studied texts in the context of the whole Bible.”[8] The historical perspective tended to be overlooked and the Old Testament was understood in terms of the New.

Reformation emphasis

With the Reformation the emphasis shifted to a closer study of the text itself, Calvin in particular emphasising the need to discover the meaning of the authors of the books of the Bible in terms of their own time and place in the unfolding of revelation.  This more historical and empirical approach continued, especially within protestantism.  Amongst scholars of liberal persuasion it led to historical criticism, which frequently led to considerable historical scepticism.  Amongst evangelical scholars it led to grammatico-historical exegesis, which has had particular influence among the more scholarly of evangelicals, especially in the period leading up to about the 1970’s.

20^th Century subjectivism

With the twentieth century the emphasis swung decisively to subjectivism, not just in hermeneutics but more generally in intellectual outlook.  The predominating liberal outlook in the earlier part of the century emphasised reason in the sciences, but, following Kant, Schleiermacher and others, placed religion in the realm of feeling and conscience.  This tended to be a ‘once-born’ type of religious sensitivity, and characteristically it tended to look beyond the boundaries of Christianity to see the religious impulse wherever it appeared.  The central section of this century was strongly influenced by Existentialism and religious thought, influenced by Kierkegaard, was dominated by Bultmann and Barth.  Particularly on the part of Barth, this was more a ‘twice-born’ type of Christianity which emphasised the inbreaking of the Word of God into human life and experience. 

Postmodernism

The last twenty years belong to postmodernism with its extreme subjectivism and pragmatism.  This emphasises not just the subjectivity of the individual, but also the subjectivity of the community.  Each ‘community’, whether it be the church community, or community of scholars, or of women, or cultural community, shares its own values which enable it to think, communicate, and live its own life meaningfully.  But this is pure pragmatism; there is no way in which any community can claim to have the ‘truth’ - ‘truth’ itself is a community term, taking its value and meaning from the way the community uses it.  Relativism is all; but if we recognise that, and no community tries to privilege itself as somehow ‘right’ or having ‘the truth’, we should all be able to live together reasonably well.

Perspectivalism

This sketch has suggested that hermeneutics has tended to move from a rationalist (in philosophical terms) position, to an empiricist one, to one that is subjectivist.  A perspectivalist approach to truth and reality takes seriously the whole, detailed study of the parts, and the knowing subject[9]; it seems also important to adopt the same approach to hermeneutics.

3. A literary approach to the Bible

Turning more specifically to hermeneutical thought in the twentieth century perhaps the most notable development has been the influence of literary theory.  This is a comparatively recent development, and it was an inevitable one. In part it arose because of widespread disillusionment with historical criticism.

The Bible as literature 

In the first place the Bible is certainly literature.  It is part of the thesis of Stephen Prickett in Words and The Word that the current crisis in hermeneutics arose because biblical studies and theology became detached from literary criticism.[10]  However true, or otherwise, this may be, in the first place the Bible has to be read as literature.  By giving us a book, God has accommodated himself to the conventions of literature, and those writers like Leland Ryken[11] who have tried to make us aware of the literary qualities of the Bible have put us greatly in their debt.

Biblical hermeneutics and literary theory

Secondly, literary theory has recently had a great impact on the study of biblical hermeneutics and no serious student of hermeneutics can ignore this.  It is interesting in this connection to compare Thiselton’s two major works, The Two Horizons[12] and New Horizons in Hermeneutics.  The first, published in 1980, is concerned with the contribution of philosophy to the hermeneutical debate and centres on those philosophers whose work led to what is known as the New Hermeneutic.  The second book, published in 1992, is far broader and gives considerable attention to theories of textuality, literary theory and reader-response theories.[13]  It is my own opinion that a book like Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory[14] is almost required reading for those who want to understand biblical hermeneutics at the end of the 20^th century.

Literary theory and postmodernism

A third factor is that literary theory is at the heart of postmodernism as an intellectual driving force (as opposed to a cultural phenomenon).  One of the best essays on post-modernism by an evangelical is Stanley Grenz’s, Star Trek and the Next Generation: Postmodernism and the Future of Evangelical Theology.[15]  He writes, “The immediate impulse for the dismantling of the Enlightenment project came from the rise of deconstruction as a literary theory, which influenced a new movement in philosophy.”  “Postmodern philosophers applied the theories of the literary deconstructionists to the world as a whole.  Just as the meaning of a text is dependent on the reader, so also reality can be ‘read’ differently depending on the perspectives of the knowing selves that encounter it.  This means there is no one meaning to the world, no transcendent center to reality as a whole.”

Literary theory as a comprehensive intellectual discipline

This leads inevitably to the view that literary theory is the most basic and comprehensive intellectual discipline; after all, all other disciplines produce literature which is what it analyses.  “It is, one might think, a very curious feature of the current intellectual scene that these questions should receive their most intensive treatment at the hands of literary theorists.  One reason emerges clearly enough from Fish’s repeated line of argument: that interpretation goes ‘all the way down’, in which case other disciplines - philosophy, law, ethics, linguistics, historiography, theory of science, etc. - yield up their erstwhile privileged claims and stand revealed as so many equal partners in the ongoing cultural conversation.”  “For if philosophy, history, and the others all turn out to be so many fictive or rhetorical constructs, then clearly there is a sense in which literary criticism provides the best, least deluded means of address to the problems thrown up by our present ‘postmodern’ condition.” [16]

Feminism and writing

A final point is this.  This paper presents a case study on feminist hermeneutics.  It is necessary to realise the importance of writing for feminism.  “…writing has been crucial to the lives of women all over the world, in the past and now.  Writing is essential to women’s struggle for liberation from second-class status, poverty and enforced silence.”  “This power of writing to give women control over their own lives…”  “Someone famous once said, ‘Words are weapons for liberation’ and if I had to encapsulate all the reasons why I write, then it has to be because I, too, believe that writing is a crucial form of action.”[17]  Feminist writers and thinkers have had an important influence on the current intellectual climate, and it is against this background that we shall have to consider feminist hermeneutics.

4. The influence of Ferdinand de Saussure

His influence widespread

Because of the enormous influence of Saussure on the latter part of the twentieth century it is important to give some outline of his thought.  Catherine Belsey writes, “The full implications of Saussure’s work, both for language and for the other signifying systems of society, are still in the process of being recognized.  The study of literature as a signifying practice is currently being transformed by an increasing realization of Saussure’s importance.”[18]  The wider implications of Saussure’s thought are indicated by John Lechte when he speaks of Saussure becoming “the source of intellectual innovation in the social sciences and humanities”.  “…a new model of language based on Saussure’s structural approach emerged to become the model for theorising social and cultural life.”[19]  Others have built on Saussure - Althusser, Lacan and Derrida - and it is not too much to say that his influence dominates the intellectual outlook of the Humanities and Social Science faculties of most universities.  This outline is based on Catherine Belsey’s Critical Practice.

Language and difference

Saussure, born in Geneva in 1857, was a linguist who owes his reputation primarily to his Course in General Linguistics, published in 1916, and based on his lecture notes.  As Lechte notes, Saussure was as much a catalyst as an innovator in his own right.[20]  Saussure’s basic premise is that language does not name things which already exist, language provides a set of differences which enables us to make the world intelligible to ourselves.  Language is therefore a system of signs, which from one point of view are quite arbitrary, a dog can as easily be called un chien or a woof-woof.  A sign consists of a signifier and a signified.  The signifier is a sound-image (i.e. a word either spoken or written) and the signified is a concept.  It is impossible to separate the two though they are distinct.

The fact that language consists of differences can be seen when languages are compared.  For example, the colours green, blue, grey and brown are covered by only three words in Welsh (gwyrdd, glas, llwyd). The continuum of colour is divided differently in the two languages, the words marking the boundaries, the differences between the shades.  Similarly in English stream and river are distinguished by size; whereas in French a fleuve flows into the sea, but a riviere flows into another riviere or into a fleuve.  It is the ‘non-correspondences’ between languages which point to the fact that languages are signifying systems which mark off the world into entities.  “The world, which without signification would be experienced as a continuum, is divided up by language into entities which then readily come to be experienced as essentially distinct.”[21]

Language a community signifying system

This last point indicates that language is prior to thought. Unless we already have a signifying system in place it is not possible to make any sense of the world around us.  So, far from language being secondary, enabling us to express the thoughts we already have of the world and our experience, it is language which enables us to think.  This leads us to consider that language is also a social fact.  Sounds or marks on paper have no significance in themselves, they gain significance within a social group or community in which they function as signifiers.  A signifying system belongs to a community, and a community cannot exist without a signifying system. As children grow up they are initiated into the signifying system of the community in which they were born.  It is then perfectly natural for them to view the world as their signifying system presents it to them; that’s ‘common-sense’ - but only within that system.

Language and ideology

Because language is conventional it means that meaning is also “public and conventional, the result not of individual intention but of inter-individual intelligibility.”[22]  Language also participates in ideology; that it is to say it presents the way in which a society thinks about itself and the relationships within it.  The most obvious current example of this brings us back to feminism.  It is held that patriarchalism is inherent in the English language (but not just English, in the whole Western tradition); thus ‘man’, ‘men’ can be used for ‘people’, ‘he’, ‘his’ are frequently used to include women as well as men, and ‘Miss’, ‘Mrs’ differentiate women according to marital status.  The idea that if you change the language you will also change the way people perceive things lies behind the changes that political correctness tries to bring about.

Language and masculinity

One of the leaders in psycho-linguistic enquiry in the area of gender in language is Luce Irigaray.  Before we come to consider the question of feminist hermeneutics it would be valuable just to give some quotations which help us begin to understand some of the underlying thinking.  Irigaray says, “The linguistic code, like the modes of exchange, like the system of images, and representation, is made for masculine subjects.”[23]  Or, in other words, “…in order to speak, they [women] must speak like men, in order to know their sexuality at all they must compare it to the male version.”[24]  “The entry of women into the public world, the relations between them and men, necessitate today a number of social changes, and changes in language in particular.”[25]  The link between language and masculinity means that the whole Western tradition has to be revised.  Derrida speaks of “'phallogocentrism’, to refer to one single structure of thought which both gives priority to logos and voice, the phone, and to the masculine position in philosophy.”[26]  In other words logo-centrism and phallo-centrism belong together, they are part of the same structure in Derrida’s thinking.

Language expresses a whole world-view, so Irigaray says, “The God of men requires the maintenance of grammatical rules; the God of women, or their divinities, singular or plural, requires change in the linguistic code.”[27]  John Lechte sums up, “The feminine god would be one to give form to multiplicity, difference, becoming, flows, rhythms, and to ‘the splendor of the body’ - in other words, to those things which cannot receive a viable image within a patriarchal religious experience.”[28]

Further implications

A number of different positions arise out of or have been built on Saussure’s work.  Epistemology appears to become redundant because it presupposes a world outside of language to which language refers.  The furthest Belsey is prepared to go is to say, “By bringing together existing discourses which claim to be scientific, and foregrounding the incompatibilities and collisions between them, we can produce new, more coherent discourses which, until their own contradictions are exposed, can lay claim to the status of knowledge.  Such knowledge… is never final, always hypothetical, always ready to recognise the possibility of its own incoherence… never fixed but always in process.”[29]  Another casualty is subjectivity, at least as it is usually conceived.  Subjectivity is a creation of language because it arises when a person can say ‘I’ over against ‘you’ or ‘it’.  Descartes, “I think therefore I am” not only becomes changed to “I speak therefore I think”, but “I speak therefore there is an I.”  But this ‘I’ is only one constituted by speech.  Its expression and thought is limited by the differences of the language system.  But behind the ‘I’ is the Unconscious which could come to subjectivity in different ways if the differences were different.  We are back here, of course, to women, and also to various classes in the social structure.

5.  The debate over meaning

E.D. Hirsch

What does all this mean for hermeneutics and for us in particular?  Eagleton says, “The hallmark of the ‘linguistic revolution’ of the twentieth century, from Saussure and Wittgenstein to contemporary literary theory, is the recognition that meaning is not something ‘expressed’ or ‘reflected’ in language: it is actually produced by it.”[30] Against this evangelicals usually rely on the work of E.D. Hirsch in Validity in Interpretation: “Meaning is that which is represented by a text; it is what the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence; it is what the signs represent.”[31] Meaning is determined by authorial intention.  Hirsch’s view is based on Husserl’s phenomenology: “For Husserl, consciousness is intentional in that it is inherently directed toward an intentionally constituted world, and it arises only as it acts as intentionality.”[32]  One of the recurring arguments which is used is that those who argue so strongly against authorial intention none the less expect their own books to be read as expressing the meaning they intend!  This is a valid argument in general terms, but it may be that what is true for academic discourse is not quite the case for poetry or narrative.  Perhaps those genres invite reader response (intentionally?!).

Authorial intention

In fact authorial intention is by no means a simple matter.  Most of us would judge that authors use language to express what they intend but the application to biblical hermeneutics is not an easy one.  For a start there are two authors of any biblical text, a human author, but also the divine author.  May not God intend more in a given place than the human author was aware of?  Then there may be more than one ‘author’ in other contexts too.  In the Gospels we may have a pericope in which Christ speaks.  There is then his intended meaning, but also the intended meaning of the evangelist who placed it in a particular context for a particular purpose.  Again, hermeneutics is especially important where it is by no means obvious what the author intended.  Moreover we only know what the author intended by interrogating the text; is it not therefore much better to talk in terms of the meaning of the text rather than the intentions of the author?  Emphasising authorial intention leads interpreters to attribute their own (mis?)interpretations to the original author.  Further we are all aware of circumstances where people say or write ‘better than they knew’.  “'This morning,’ Amma (Amy Carmichael) wrote to Godfrey in 1947, ‘I was reading His Thoughts Said.  Constantly I find that the things His Father said open out, and I see what I did not see before in those words.’”[33]  Yet she herself had written the book only six years before!

Meaning and significance

Hirsch also has a particular view of ‘meaning’.  Not only is it what the author intended, it is also to be sharply distinguished from ‘significance’.  To express his schema linearly we have: authorial intention > text > meaning > significance.  ‘Meaning’ is single, but there may be a number of significances for different people in different circumstances.  It is generally held that ‘meaning’ must be determined first, then it is possible to proceed to significance(s). Grant Osborne deploys the meaning/significance distinction to good effect in his book, especially chapter 15, Homiletics I: Contextualization.  In his usage ‘meaning’ belongs to the horizon of the author, while ‘significance’ belongs to the horizon of the reader.

The meaning of meaning

The question of meaning, however, is also very complex: what do we mean by meaning?  John Frame argues that we know the meaning of a passage of Scripture when we know how to apply it[34].  Thiselton maintains, “No single theory of meaning is valid for every kind of question”,[35] and that seems easier to sustain.  Does Scripture itself help us with this question?  Is the meaning/significance difference one that Scripture sustains?  Dan Macartney, in discussing the way in which the Qumran literature (Manual of Discipline [1QS]8:4-8) and 1 Peter 2:6-8 use Isaiah 28:16, says, “Neither does violence to what we would call the grammatical-historical meaning, but neither distinguishes between an ‘original meaning’ and ‘application of’ the text.  Apparently both regarded their applications as the first-order meaning of the text.”[36] Although the insistence of a single meaning seems to fit with the Reformation principle of the literal sense being the basic sense, Scripture itself indicates a more complex situation.  John 9, for example, surely has two meanings.  There is the literal meaning, a blind man was healed by Jesus; but there is also the spiritual meaning, Jesus is the Light of the world who gives spiritual sight.  Verse 5 signals that both Jesus and John intend us to view the miracle in this way.  If we had to opt for a single meaning we would have to identify it as the spiritual meaning, as that is clearly the primary emphasis of the narrative.

“Texts release meanings”

Catherine Belsey expresses the view, widely held today, that texts provide multiple meanings: “It is language which provides the possibility of meaning, but because language is not static but perpetually in process, what is inherent in the text is a range of possibilities of meaning.  Texts, in other words, are plural, open to a number of interpretations.  Meanings are not fixed or given, but are released in the process of reading, and criticism is concerned with the range of possible meanings.”[37] This, of course, is based on her understanding of the development of Saussure’s work.  Nevertheless there are some interesting points here.  We notice that she privileges the text rather than readers.  Also there is a range of possible meanings; not any or every meaning is possible.  Moreover criticism is concerned with the range of possible meanings.

The experience of Bible readers

The main thrust of what she says is this, “Meanings… are released in the process of reading.”  This seems to describe rather accurately the experience of most readers of the Bible.  They expect God to speak to them through the text, and they find meanings released to them which often seem to be particularly suited to their needs at the time.  We could call them ‘significances’ but I don’t think most people would.  Moreover they don’t come as conscious applications or deductions from a ‘meaning’ which has first been determined from grammatical and historical considerations.  When Augustine picked up the Bible when the child’s voice said, “Tolle, lege”, Romans 13:14 spoke directly to him; it was what Macartney calls “the first-order meaning of the text”.  Whatever we say, that is how most Bible readers read the Bible, and in spite of all our hermeneutical theory it is probably how most of us read it personally.  Moreover the Holy Spirit uses such reading to convert and to nourish and guide believers. For a comprehensive understanding of a text we have to consider it from every point of view, but perhaps there is a level of meaning, or meanings, which is open to ordinary readers simply because of the literary qualities of the text.  Perhaps responsible hermeneutics is concerned with the range of possible meanings.

6.   20^th century shifts

From authors to readers

The previous discussion has focused on ‘readers’.  This is one of the ‘shifts’ which has taken place of the second half of this century.  The term ‘paradigm shift’ was used by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he argued that science does not progress in a steady manner, but new views come to challenge old views, there is a struggle, out of which comes a revolution, a whole new way of looking at things - a paradigm shift.  In literary criticism there has been a shift from author to readers.  This has had its effect on biblical hermeneutics.  But there has also been another shift.  In the past the unspoken idea was that the Bible released its meaning to students.  At the church level this was why churches had Bible Studies midweek, and why books could be published with titles like Every Man a Bible Student.  But now we all talk about ‘readers’.  So Thiselton begins explaining the title of New Horizons like this: “First, texts may enlarge the horizons of readers.  When this occurs, horizons move and become new horizons.  Reading may also produce transforming effects.  In this sense, reading biblical texts can become eventful as transforming biblical reading.”[38]  In fact a great deal of modern hermeneutics is taken up with explaining why reading has these and other effects.

From specialisation to inter-disciplinary studies

Another shift is from specialisms to inter-disciplinary studies.  This is especially so in hermeneutics.  Thiselton speaks of, “the multidisciplinary area of hermeneutics.”  “The very questions in multidisciplinary hermeneutical theory about the nature of enquiry, language, and understanding which address the whole academic community also address the Christian community with parallel urgency to ask how the language of the biblical writings may speak creatively, and may be read and understood with transforming effects.”[39]  Literary theory not only interacts with linguistics, but also with Marxism and psychology; Eagleton’s last chapter, for example, is entitled Psychoanalysis.  Biblical hermeneutics also has now become multidisciplinary, interacting with a whole range of subjects including philosophy, sociology, and social anthropology.

From epistemology to hermeneutics

A more basic shift has been that from epistemology to hermeneutics.  At the most sceptical end of the spectrum Rorty says, “Hermeneutics… is what we get when we are no longer epistemological.”  Roger Lundin explains further, “Or, to use his metaphor, hermeneutics is the parasite that lives off the dead body of epistemology; it is the means we have of coping, through lively talk and poetic flights of fancy, with the fact that our minds have nothing in which to believe and our words have nothing to which they correspond.”[40]  It is not just the denial of metanarratives by Lyotard or Derrida’s view of language which is responsible for the demise of epistemology.  Science also, whether it is at the macro-level of astro-physics or the micro-level of particle physics, presents a world which is so far removed from our experience that it is inconceivable.  Reality is so far beyond us that the search for it has been given up.  The Enlightenment agenda has come to a dead-end.  But at least hermeneutics enables us to understand each other, to communicate within our communities and language-games even if not always between them, and enables us to live in peace with each other.

Our foundation in God

What this means for us is that we go back to the foundation of the living, sovereign God who reveals himself.  The God who made us has also put a sense of his being in each of us.  He created the first humans with language so that he could communicate with them and they with him, and then with each other.  As the God who communicates with us he has given us his Word in written form, and as fallen but renewed people we have received his Spirit to illumine our minds and incline our wills to obedience.  Biblical hermeneutics must pay the closest attention to the Bible itself, its genres, its language, its metaphors and imagery, its purposes and functions, and not least, the way the New Testament understands the Old Testament.

7. Interpretative Models

Several interpretative models have been suggested over recent years and this section briefly surveys some of them.

Fusion of horizons

The publication of Thiselton’s The Two Horizons resulted in a wide use of the term horizon - the horizon of the text and the horizon of the interpreter.  “The hermeneutical goal is that of a steady progress towards a fusion of horizons.”[41]  This means respecting the particularity of each horizon and allowing the text to speak.  Understanding takes place when the two horizons are brought together.

Opening up new horizons

Thiselton’s second book has a much more open and forward-looking conclusion; “In a co-operative shared work, the Spirit, the text, and the reader engage in a transforming process, which enlarges horizons and creates new horizons.”  There is a strongly eschatalogical note here, “the horizon of future destiny which beckons the reader.”  “The life-world which is bounded by the reader’s present horizons is in process of transformation towards new horizons which form an open system because the system constitutes a transcendental metacritique.”[42]  It is not always easy to understand precisely what Thiselton intends (!), but it is certainly vital to realise that hermeneutics is not just about understanding the past but being prepared for future glory.

The hermeneutical spiral

This phrase was coined to escape the futility of the hermeneutical circle.  In the hermeneutical circle the interpreter comes to the text with his own preunderstanding.  As a result of encountering the text his understanding is modified.  The next time he approaches the text with the modified preunderstanding which then alters again.  The idea of a spiral was introduced to bring in the thought of progress.  This is not just an aimless circle; it is spiralling in ever closer to the meaning of the text - though not coming to a conclusive understanding of it.  One disadvantage of this model is that it appears to involve a narrowing of understanding, continually reducing the range of possibilities in the text.

Perspectivalism

In John Goldingay’s Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation he says, “Understanding the OT resembles understanding a battle or a person, or appreciating a landscape… We can appreciate a landscape by starting from its roads, its contours or its water supplies, or by taking as a centre a hill, or a church, an inn or a bus stop; each perspective will lead us to a different aspect of its understanding.  Similarly, many starting-points, structures and foci can illuminate the OT’s landscape.”[43]  In my own mind I have tended to use the simile of a village rather than a landscape.  Just as you can consider a village from different directions, different distances, under different weather conditions, focusing upon different aspects, imagining what it might look like to an artist, a poet, philosopher, town-planner, housewife etc., so a text can be considered from many different angles and perspectives, each one of them illuminating and enlarging one’s understanding.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS

1.   Barth and Bultmann

In 1919 Karl Barth published Der Romerbrief (The Epistle to the Romans).  According to Grenz and Olson, “So influential was Der Romerbrief that many scholars date the end of the nineteenth and beginning of twentieth-century theology with its publication”.[44]  They trace twentieth century theology in terms of the twin truths of the divine transcendence and the divine immanence.  With Barth the transcendence of God’s sovereign freedom was re-asserted with great vehemence.

Karl Barth (1886-1968)

The teaching of Barth concerning the Word of God is summarised in the Church Dogmatics in this way: “The Word of God is God Himself in Holy Scripture.  For God once spoke as Lord to Moses and the prophets, to the evangelists and apostles.  And now through their written word He speaks as the same Lord to His Church.  Scripture is holy and the Word of God because by the Holy Spirit it became and will become to the Church a witness to divine revelation.”[45]  In these words we see both the strengths and weaknesses of Barth’s position.

For our purpose the most important aspect of Barth’s teaching is the transcendence of God who speaks in Scripture.  “…God was present in His Word as the Lord, as the One who commands and the One who shows mercy…” [46]  The Bible “has attested to us the lordship of the triune God in the incarnate Word by the Holy Spirit.”[47]  It is thus God who speaks, and human beings who are to hear.[48]  In hearing, or listening, the lordship of God becomes a reality: “If we have really listened to the biblical words in all their humanity, if we have accepted them as witness, we have obviously not only heard of the lordship of the triune God, but by this means it has become for us as actual presence and an event.”[49]  However, it is important to realise that in hearing we do not gain any mastery over the Word:  “The fact that it can be said and heard does not mean that it is put at the power and disposal of those who say and hear it.  What it means is that as it is said and heard by them it can make itself said and heard."[50]  Hearing, then, must be in obedience, “Where the lordship of the triune God is a fact, it is itself the basis, and a sufficient basis, for obedience.”[51]

For Barth hermeneutical principles must be drawn from the Bible, for “Bible hermeneutics must be guarded against the totalitarian claim of general hermeneutics.”[52]  In fact general hermeneutics must learn from biblical hermeneutics.  “It is not at all that the word of man in the Bible has an abnormal significance and function.  We see from the Bible what its normal significance and function is.  It is from the word of man in the Bible that we must learn what has to be learned concerning the word of man in general.”[53]  So the conclusion is: “There is no such thing as a special biblical hermeneutics.  But we have to learn that hermeneutics which is alone and generally valid by means of the Bible as the witness of revelation. We therefore arrive at the suggested rule, not from a general anthropology, but from the Bible, and obviously, as a rule which is alone and valid, we must apply it first to the Bible.”[54]

Barth lays emphasis on what he calls the subject-matter of the Bible; this is Jesus Christ, the living Word.[55]  The emphasis on the subject-matter is in contrast to “acting as though the interest in antiquities is the only legitimate interest.”[56]  It is the subject-matter which masters us: “It is rather a question of our being gripped by the subject-matter - not gripped physically, not making an experience of it and the like…but really gripped, so that it is only as those who are mastered by the subject-matter, who are subdued by it, that we can investigate the humanity of the word by which it is told us.”[57]  “It is as the sovereign freedom of the subject-matter of the Bible is presented to us that its character as a subject-matter becomes unshakably and unequivocally certain, so that we can no longer confuse it with the word or the humanity of those who speak, and even less with ourselves.”[58]

There are two further points to note.  The first is the role of the Holy Spirit:  “When it is a matter of instructing and instruction by the Word, that instructing and instruction are the work of the Holy Spirit.  Without that work there is no instruction, for the Word is never apart from the Holy Spirit.”[59]  The second is the importance of prayer:  “…the human side of [the Church’s] life with the Bible can consist only in the fact that it prays that the Bible may be the Word of God here and now, that there may take place that work of the Holy Spirit.”[60]  “Because it is the decisive activity prayer must take precedence even of exegesis, and in no circumstances must it be suspended.”[61]

These emphases on the transcendence of God, the Christo-centric nature of the Bible’s subject-matter, and the essential need for the Holy Spirit’s work, and thus of prayer, are all extremely important for evangelical hermeneutics.  But they raise some questions.  Does the fact that we identify Scripture as the Word of God mean that, in fact, we act as if we have a certain mastery over the Word?  Do we think that we can understand the Bible without being confronted by the lordship of the triune God, or gripped by its subject-matter?  Is Bloesch right when he says, “The breakthrough into meaning occurs when the text is no longer the interpreted object but now the dynamic interpreter”?[62]  Barth’s main significance has been theological rather than hermeneutical, and he does not figure much in hermeneutical discussion today.  It is interesting to note that Gerald Bray says of the Church Dogmatics, “Barth, who claimed to be a biblical theologian, quotes or uses Scripture only very sparingly in his great work.”[63]

Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976)

Bultmann, especially early in his career, shared the basic viewpoint of Barth.  Grenz and Olsen discuss his contribution to twentieth-century theology under the heading “The Transcendence of the Kerygma”.[64]  Bultmann has had a great influence on hermeneutics, and in certain respects continues to do so, yet at the end of the century he seems very much a dated figure.  Nor is this only because, as Thiselton notes, “the era of existentialism, associated especially with Heidegger and Bultmann, has largely passed.”[65]

Bultmann was a New Testament scholar and rose to prominence with his work on Form Criticism.  He showed an extreme scepticism about the historicity of the Gospels: “I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and legendary; and other sources about Jesus do not exist.”[66]  Such scepticism can scarcely be justified today.  Furthermore, amongst those scholars who adopt a literary approach to the Bible, and those who follow canonical criticism, the emphasis is on the final form of the text.

In addition Bultmann reflected an enlightenment view of science and history.  Bernard Ramm explains such a view like this, “All matters of faith are settled by the scientific method, and all historical statements can be accepted only if they can be verified by the ordinary procedures of historians.”[67]  So Bultmann says, “modern man acknowledges as reality only such phenomena or events as are comprehensible within the framework of the rational order of the universe.”[68]  Grenz and Olsen point out that he followed Kant’s lead and drew “an impenetrable line between the realm of the autonomous natural world and the transcendent realm of faith.  Subsequent advances in science and philosophy have indicated how unfortunate and unnecessary a move this was.”[69]  However, Bloesch is surely perceptive when he says of Bultmann’s continuing significance: “His reconceiving of God as ‘the Uncertainty of the future’ and the creative depths of existence resonates with an emerging neomystical spirituality that celebrates the universal drive for life and power rather than God’s irreversible act of redemption in past history.”[70]

Bultmann is best known for his concept of demythologisation.  His understanding of myth is complex.  It is not just that the biblical writings include mythic elements - the sun going across the sky, a three-decker universe and so on - they are mythological in that they express fundamental human concerns in the thought-forms and language of their day.  Demythologisation is not therefore a matter of identifying and discarding mythic elements in order to arrive at the New Testament message.  Rather what is expressed in the mythological language of the past has now to be expressed in the thought-forms and language of the modern world. Bultmann’s intent “Is not to make religion more acceptable to modern man by trimming the traditional biblical texts, but to make clearer to modern man what the Christian faith is.”[71]  So, for example, “to believe in the cross of Christ does not mean to concern ourselves with a mythic process wrought outside of us and our world, with an objective event… but rather to make the cross of Christ our own.”[72]

In seeking to understand the essential meaning of the New Testament message Bultmann used the categories of the existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger.  Conn explains the heart of Bultmann’s teaching like this: “Ultimately, Bultmann says that the basic features of New Testament mythology centre in two kinds of self-understanding.  One is life outside of faith and one is life in faith.  The terms sin, flesh, fear, and death are mythological explanations of this life outside of faith… Life in faith, on the other hand, means abandoning this adherence to visible, tangible realities.  It means release from one’s own past and openness to God’s future.”[73]  Life in faith comes about through a decision of faith-response to the Christ of the kerygma.  We know next to nothing about the Jesus of history, but through the New Testament the Christ of the kerygma confronts us.  “Faith is not a knowledge of historical facts, but a personal response to the Christ confronted in the gospel message…”[74]   Authentic existence is a life open to the possibilities of the future with the help of a God who is transcendent and yet “inescapably related to the being of humanity.”[75]

Some aspects of Bultmann’s legacy were developed by some of his followers in what is known as the “New Hermeneutic” and it is to this we turn next.

2.  The New Hermeneutic

The New Hermeneutic arose out of the work in the 1950’s of Ernst Fuchs and Gerhard Ebeling, both of whom studied under Bultmann.  It has had a major impact on hermeneutics, especially in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  Both Fuchs and Ebeling were concerned about the relevance and effectiveness of preaching.  “The key question in the new hermeneutic… is how the New Testament may speak to us anew.”[76]  Several main elements in the new hermeneutic can be set out.

The first is the nature and function of language.  “The importance of ‘language’ lies in the view of these theologians that language does more than simply impart information.  It actually conveys reality; it is grounded in ‘being’ and not just in thought.”[77]  Hendrik Krabbendam says, “…the fundamental concern of [this] hermeneutical discipline is no longer the theory of interpretation,… but the theory or art of understanding often designated as hermeneutic (singular)…”  The maxim is, “understanding through language”.[78]

The next element is preunderstanding.  In emphasising the particularity of the horizon of the text and the horizon of the reader stress is laid on the fact that no-one approaches a text with a completely open mind; everyone has his or her own set of values, principles of understanding and expectations.  On the one hand this is essential: without preunderstanding a text is just a series of signs on a page. On the other, preunderstanding may include misunderstanding, especially where there is historical distance between the horizons.

The third step, then, is distanciation, the conscious realisation of this distance.  “The very existence of a temporal and cultural distance between the interpreter and the text can be used to jog him into an awareness of the differences between their respective horizons…  Once this has been done, the interpreter is free to move beyond his own original horizons, or better, to enlarge his own horizons until they come to merge or fuse with those of the text.”[79]

The next element is the sovereignty of the text.  The object of seeking to bridge the gap between the horizons is not to tame the text, or to subdue or control it.  The text is the subject and it has to be allowed to speak for itself into the situation of the reader.  This is the point of bridging the gap; the text speaks again with its original freshness and power to those of a different horizon.  The emphasis here is on the text rather than the author.  This is inevitable because the author belonged to the old horizon.  He cannot speak to the present day, but the text can as its horizon and the new horizon are brought into focus together.

This brings us to the final element, the fusion of the horizons in what is called a language-event.  By a language-event is meant the text speaking anew in an encounter with the reader.  “This is achieved… when… the interpreter’s subjectivity is fully engaged at a more-than-cognitive level; and when… the truth of the text, actively grasps him as object.”[80]  This, however, is not a once-for-all event.  The reader comes to the text with his preunderstanding which is then modified by the text.  This leads to the concept of the hermeneutical circle by which the reader comes again and again to listen to the text and again and again finds his understanding altered.

The ‘understanding’ which is gained in an encounter with the text is not an intellectual understanding of what the text means. Ultimately the language-event has to be understood in existential and mystical terms.  In the language-event there is a religious experience, and encounter with Being. This sounds a very far cry from any evangelical understanding of meeting with God in Jesus Christ through the Bible.

Nevertheless it can be readily seen that there are features here that we ought not to overlook.[81]  Preunderstanding is a reality, and a proper consideration of this will lead to distanciation before the horizons can be brought together. We need to remember that texts do not just convey information, and we should not approach the Bible as if this was its only purpose.  Moreover the sovereignty of the text is an important one.  All too often the idea seems to have prevailed of the text as the object yielding its meaning to the sovereign reader or student.  It is also important to remember that the object of reading the word of God is not just intellectual understanding, but rather ultimately to meet with God.  The New Hermeneutic does challenge evangelical hermeneutics at some very important points.

3.   Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation

Earlier in the paper I referred to what is sometimes called the literary turn.  One of the contemporary problems faced by those who interpret the Scriptures is the predominance of what might be called utilitarian prose in our culture.  Newspapers, textbooks, reference books and commentaries - and this may represent practically the whole of our reading outside of the Bible itself - are all written using this form of discourse.  Even worse, modern translations of the Bible attempt to put the biblical writings into it too.[82]  As a result we are generally not sensitive to the nuances of narrative, to the imagery and imaginativeness of poetry, or to the lyrical prose which is not infrequently found in the Bible.  It is true that there are writers who deny there is anything that can be called literature (Eagleton, for example), but there are undoubtedly different sorts of writing and if we read them all in the same way there is bound to be a loss of understanding.  Tremper Longman has gone so far as to say, “Among the various academic disciplines, literary criticism would appear to have the greatest potential for shedding light on the task of biblical hermeneutics.”[83]  I can only refer to two main aspects, with a summary of some others.

Genre

When Daniel Defoe’s The Shortest Way with Dissenters was first published in 1702 it was accepted at face value, but when it transpired that its author was himself a dissenter who had written it as a sustained parody, applause was replaced by howls of rage.  You need to know what it is you are reading!  Margaret Davies defines genre as “a kind of literature or literary species.”  She says, “Recognition of the genre … brings with it expectations about content, style and structure, in the service of a coherent meaning.”[84]  Tremper Longman, following Hirsch (himself drawing on Wittgenstein), uses the analogy of a language game.  Just as games have their own rules - though each individual game of, say, football is different from another - so “genres also have rules that govern their successful operation.”[85]  However, these are not inflexible rules - though ancient literature conforms more to generic forms[86] - “Rather, [genres] are supple and malleable organic forms that can be shaped to convey old insights while creating new ones.”[87]

Longman points out that genres direct authors also: “Not only is genre recognizable in the expectations of the reader, but it also directs authors as they compose the text.  It shapes or coerces writers so that their compositions can be grasped and communicated to the reader.”[88]  Because genres take shape over time, “they carry the memory of the past, [and] they become laden with potential meaning.”[89]  Ronald Allen maintains, “One of the most important interests of the interpreter of the genre of scripture should be the conventions of world literature.”  He also asks a very important question, “May we not regard the literary sections of the Bible and the genre they employ to be designed to call for a response in the reader of mystery, wonder and music?”[90]  Isn’t it the case that detailed exegesis has as one of its dangers precisely the destruction of these qualities of the text?

Genre can be looked at in at least three ways when considering the Bible.  First of all there is the genre of the books themselves.  Self-evidently most of the New Testament books are letters; the first four books are Gospels, though there is great debate about what exactly a “Gospel” is.  In the Old Testament there are what may be termed prophetic-historical books, prophetic books, books mainly of law, and a variety of different sorts of books under the heading of Writings.

Secondly, there are broad generic categories: narrative, poetry, apocalyptic, wisdom literature, legislative material, biography and historiography. Clearly, numbers of biblical books are primarily narrative or poetry. Thirdly, looking at smaller units there is parable, proverb, diatribe, paranesis, hymns, doxology and so on.  These sub-generic units are utilised by authors and incorporated into broader genres.

Narrative

According to Klein, Blomberg and Hubbard, “Narratives dominate the biblical landscape… Narratives are the most common type of literature found in the Bible.  The OT makes up 75 percent of the Bible, and 40 percent of the OT consists of narratives.”[91]  If we do not know how to handle narrative, then, we are in trouble.  In fact this may be so, as they also say, “Most readers approach Bible narratives simply as historical reports of what happened back in Bible times.”[92]

Ryken says, “The writer of literature shows rather than tells”[93], and this is particularly true of narrative.  He adds - and we need to take note of this - “Truth is more than propositional, and the Bible implicitly acknowledges this by giving us truth partly in a literary medium.”[94]  A further important point is this, “With literature, we focus not only on what is said but also on how it is said.”[95]  None of these points necessarily denies the historicity of the text, but they alert us to the way it should be read.

The elements of narrative - or story; the words are often used almost as synonyms - are summed up by Ryken like this, “The stories of the Bible, like stories generally, are made up of three basic elements - setting, plot or action, and character.  These three together make up the narrative world that we enter when we sit down to read a biblical story.  The writer’s goal in telling a story is to make us share an experience with the characters in the story.  This means that a prime requisite for reading the stories of the Bible is the ability to empathize with the characters in the story.  The stories of the Bible will succeed only to the extent to which we exercise our imaginations and allow ourselves to be transported from our own time and place into another time and place.  Having been thus transported we are both spectators and participants as the story unfolds.”[96]  Two features may be picked out from this paragraph.  First, the need to enter the narrative world.  As Ryken says later, “The primary literary rule of interpretation is meaning through form.  Whatever a story communicates, it communicates through setting, character, and action.  It is therefore necessary, not frivolous, to interact with a story as a story.”[97]  Second, the importance of empathy.  “The effects that a narrative has on its readers are often determined by the empathy that these readers feel with particular characters in the narrative.”[98]

Central to a story is its plot.  “The plot of a story is the arrangement of events.  Three time-honoured principles on which a plot is constructed are unity, coherence, and emphasis.  A plot is not a succession of events but a sequence of related events possessing a beginning, a middle, and an end.  In other words, a plot gives us one or more single or whole actions.”[99]  The plot often centres around conflict and is developed by suspense.  “Practically all narratives contain elements of conflict that drive the plot and involve the readers in the adjudication of opposing tendencies.”[100]  Suspense generates curiosity.  Ryken quotes from E.M. Forster, a narrative “can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next.  And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.”[101]  One wonders whether this should be applied to sermons!

Ryken also indicates that artistry pervades the stories of the Bible.  The elements of artistry include “unity, central focus, pattern, variety in unity, progression, balance, contrast, symmetry, repetition, and recurrence or rhythm.”[102]  “Its purpose is partly the aesthetic purpose of enjoyment and delight … it also intensifies the impact of what a story says.”[103]

The meaning of a story does not emerge simply as we immerse ourselves in its narrative world, “story-tellers use devices of disclosure, relatively subtle in nature, to influence how we interpret the meaning of stories.”  The rule is, “Pay attention to the devices of disclosure by which a storyteller influences you to approve or disapprove of the characters, events, and settings of a story, and formulate what the story communicates about morality and values on the basis of this pattern.”[104]

Other literary methods

“Comprising about one-third of the Bible, poetry is the second most common literary feature.”[105]  This is evident now that new translations of the Bible set out poetry in poetic form.  It is well-known that the basic structure of Hebrew poetry is parallelism.  However, this does not mean that there is simple repetition, “parallelism is that phenomenon whereby two or more successive poetic lines strengthen, reinforce, and develop each other’s thought.”[106]  Recent work has refined understanding of Hebrew parallelism and it is not wise to rely too much on accounts written before the 1980’s.  Other features of Hebrew poetry are rhythm and word-play (paranomasia).  Poetry is concerned to present ideas through images, “The LORD is my shepherd…”  It is probable that the thinking of many evangelical pastors is prosaic, and that not many are accustomed to read poetry.  We are more attuned to the Epistles than any other part of the Bible.  In addition many Christians find it difficult to understand most of the poetical books apart from the Psalms.  For these reasons more attention needs to be given to understanding biblical poetry than currently seems to be the case.

Rhetorical criticism is concerned with “Those distinctive properties of human discourse, especially its artistry and argument, by which the authors of biblical literature have endeavoured to convince others of the truth of their beliefs.”[107]  Rhetoric was developed amongst the Greeks and Romans, and was widely used by Christian teachers in the patristic period.  Jesus and the New Testament writers “were born into a culture whose everyday modes of oral and written discourse were saturated with a rhetorical tradition…”[108]  Rhetorical criticism “provides access to the purpose and persuasive nature of the author’s utterance.”[109]  There are three forms of rhetorical analysis, that which studies the Bible’s artistry; that which considers the New Testament in the light of classical rhetoric; and that which is concerned with the power to secure commitment and motivate action.  The last of these is utilised by feminist writers.  Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenze declares: “…rhetoric seeks to persuade and to motivate people to act right.  Rhetoric seeks to instigate a change of attitudes and motivations, it strives to persuade, to teach and to engage the hearer/reader by eliciting reactions, emotions, convictions, and identifications.  The evaluative criterion for rhetoric is not aesthetic, but praxis.”[110]

“Discourse analysis… examines texts as acts of communication and not as windows into a historical past.  This does not mean that questions of history and tradition are obliterated in discourse analysis; rather the weight of interest shifts.  Now the question is not ‘Did it happen?’ or ‘in what community was this tradition formed?’ but ‘How and to what end is the tradition being used?’”[111]  Discourse analysis proceeds on the basis that words, sentences and concepts have meaning within a particular discourse.  The word ‘goal’, for example, probably means something different in an article on the sports page than it does on page 1 of a newspaper in an article on the Government’s agenda for the next session of Parliament.  There are different relationships of discourse.  For example, discourse described within a text; discourse between the author and his original intended readers; and discourse between the text and later readers.  It is not clear that discourse analysis uncovers anything more about a text than a careful, thoughtful reading of it in its contexts would achieve.

It is doubtful whether Canonical criticism should strictly be included under Literary Approaches, but it seems best to refer to it at this point, not least because it stresses the use of the final form of the text as literary criticism tends to do.  It is this form of the text that has been canonised, and which therefore functioned in the confessing community in the past, and continues to do so.  Canonical criticism lays considerable emphasis on intertextuality, that is, the way in which prior texts are used in later texts.  An example of this is the way the motif of the exodus is picked up in Isaiah, and then occurs again in the New Testament.  It is also concerned with a theological interpretation of Scripture, with the interpretation of Scripture as a whole, and with the use of Scripture in the confessing community today.  Canonical criticism has been valuable in focusing on the way Scripture has been used within a community of belief but the lurking question is, Is this a way of using the Bible while either ignoring questions of history and fact or proceeding on the basis of their irrelevance?

4.   Case Study: Feminist Hermeneutics

Sandra Schneiders writes, “Feminist biblical interpretation is a species of liberationist hermeneutics.”[112]  It was my original intention to illustrate some of the main features of liberation theology from feminist theology and interpretation, but time and space forbid this.  However, there are aspects of the methodology of liberation theology which are important for us as evangelicals and some of these may become evident from feminist theology.  While Christian feminism is naturally concerned with the liberation of women it is not restricted to this.  As the Introduction to Feminist Theology from the Third World says, “Feminist theology from the Third World … is marked … by the quest and determination to seek the full humanity of women - and of all people: women, men and children.”[113]  Liberation is for all the oppressed.

Ursula King describes some of the basic features of feminist theology: [Feminist theology] “is not a systematically developed body of received knowledge handed down in traditional institutions of learning.  On the contrary, the emphasis is very much on ‘doing theology’, on theology in the active mode…  All feminist theology has an experiential and experimental quality about it, evident even in its language and style, in its stories, poems, prayers, artwork and even now liturgies…  Its negative task is the critique and struggle against all forms of oppression resulting from patriarchy, sexism and androcentrism; its positive task is one of reform and reconstruction, of a reinterpretation of the Christian tradition, especially the Bible and the core symbols and teachings of Christianity in the light of women’s experience, and with a critical attitude towards the socially and historically constructed notion of gender.”[114]

The key phrase in the quotation is “in the light of women’s experience”.  Referring to liberationist hermeneutics, Schneiders says, “What these types of interpretation have in common is their starting point in the experience of the oppressed..”[115]  Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza says, “The personally and politically reflected experience of oppression and liberation must become the criterion of ‘appropriateness’ for biblical interpretation.”[116]  However, there is a distinct difference at this point between liberation and feminist interpretation of the Bible.  Liberation theology points to all that the Bible says about deliverance from oppression and preaching the good news to the poor.  On the other hand to the feminist the Bible contains passages which are actively oppressive and which, in their opinion, are used to confirm sexism and discrimination within the Church.  For this reason the radical feminists have rejected the Bible and Christianity altogether, while the reformist feminists look for hermeneutical strategies which will enable them to use “the Bible as a source of empowerment for women.”[117]

For most feminists this is not just a matter of reinterpreting a few texts, though this is also done.  There is a recognition that some way of discriminating between biblical passages has to be found.  So Elsa Tamez says, “Women are called, therefore, to deny the authority of those readings that harm them.”  This may be done by focusing on “the central message, which is profoundly liberating.  From my point of view, it is precisely the gospel’s spirit of justice and freedom that neutralizes anti-female texts.”[118]  Fiorenza says, “Christian Scripture and tradition are not only a source of truth but also of untruth, repression and domination.”  She goes on to say, “The canon and norm for evaluating biblical traditions and their subsequent interpretations cannot be derived from the Bible… but can only be formulated within and through the struggle for the liberation of women and all oppressed people.”[119]

The Bible, then, must be read from within a situation of oppression.  Detachment and objectivity are impossible for feminists, it is essential to adopt an advocacy stance on behalf of women.  “Intellectual neutrality is not possible in a historical world of exploitation and oppression.”[120]  Two things follow from this. Firstly, it means that there is a strong emotional commitment on the part of feminists which makes debate and disagreement very difficult.[121]  Note how Schneiders writes about John 4:1-42; “As anyone familiar with the major commentaries on the Fourth Gospel knows, the treatment of the Samaritan Woman in the history of interpretation is a textbook case of the trivialization, marginalization, and even sexual demonization of biblical women…”[122]  Secondly, very often such a reading means entirely overlooking the original setting of the biblical passage and using it as a “model” for today.  For example, “Mary is presented by Luke as a discipleship model for all humankind…”[123]  The Reflections on Biblical Texts given in Feminist Theology of the Third World are all of this kind and in some cases end up by contradicting the actual text itself.

According to Schneiders interpretation must begin with a hermeneutic of suspicion.  No text is ever neutral, and it usually tells its tale from the viewpoint of the winners in society.  It carries its own ideology bound up in it, and suspicion uncovers the hidden assumptions and bias by looking out for tell-tale clues.  The same has to be done when considering traditional interpretations: “Until very recently virtually all biblical scholars (exegetes and teachers), pastors, and homilists have been men living in, trained for, and ruling over patriarchal churches and societies.  They shared the mind-set of those who produced the biblical text and so noticed nothing, or very little, amiss in its presentation of women and men.”[124]

She then sets out five of the most common critical strategies to “liberate the text from its own and its interpreters’ ideological bias”.[125]  The first of these is translation.  The second is “focusing on texts with liberating potential”,[126] what is called “woman material”.  She herself gives a feminist interpretation of John 4:1-42, where Christ meets with the Samaritan woman at the well.  The third is “raising women to visibility”; pointing out, for example, that when the people of Sychar call Jesus the Saviour of the world, “world” includes women.  The fourth is “revealing the text’s ‘secrets’”.  This involves looking for clues about “the hidden history of women that has been largely obscured and distorted if not erased altogether (but how can anyone ever know such a thing has taken place?) by male control of the tradition.”[127]  Finally, “rescuing the text from misinterpretation”.[128]  In the case of the Samaritan woman she sets out to show that identifying her as a “duplicitous whore” violates the text.  As this, however, involves denying the historicity of the story altogether (and thus overturning many other feminist readings of this passage!) the charge of violating the text is one that sits uneasily.

Deborah Middleton points out that in addition to the radical and reformist positions, in Britain a “third dimension …of feminist theology has appeared in the work of such Christians as Elaine Storkey (What’s Right with Feminism, 1985) and Mary Evans (Woman in the Bible, 1983).”  It is interesting to note that she adds, “… set alongside biblical interpretation on the question of women produced by other Conservative Evangelical writers their work could be perceived as extremely radical.”[129]  Some of their arguments are discussed by Stephen Rees in Men, Women and Authority[130].

The basic problem with feminist hermeneutics is that its starting-point is experience.  This results in the erection of a type of feminist canon, and considerable distortion of those parts of the Bible which it does allow.  On the other hand there is no doubt that the Bible itself bears witness to the oppression of women which has taken place in history, and it is extremely important that evangelicals do not simply react against feminism but take care that their interpretations of the Bible are well-founded, and that they are sensitive to legitimate insights which the rise of feminism has provided.

5.  Evangelical contributions to hermeneutics

Here I want to survey evangelical hermeneutics.  This is a brief, chronological review of a number of evangelical contributions to biblical hermeneutics.

In 1977 Paternoster Press published New Testament Interpretation, Essays on Principles and Methods, edited by I Howard Marshall.  Some saw the publication of this volume as the occasion when evangelical scholarship came of age.  Comprising 18 chapters divided into 4 sections, it was almost entirely a British production, with just one American contributor (E Earle Ellis; Ralph Martin was also a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary at the time).  Among the contributors were older stalwarts like F F Bruce and Donald Guthrie, and rising stars like James Dunn, Anthony Thiselton and John Goldingay, though they have since preferred to shine in a wider universe.  Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the volume are the examples of exegesis found in it.  What we have here, I think, are early examples of what Gerald Bray has called ‘sola exegesis’.[131]  ‘Sola exegesis’ focuses on the exegesis of particular passages to the exclusion of sola Scriptura which sees them in the context of the whole Bible and its theological perspectives.

In the same year the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy was founded.  It soon became evident that it was not sufficient simply to affirm  and defend inerrancy.  What bearing does inerrancy have on hermeneutics, and vice versa?  In 1982 the ICBI Summit II Conference was held in Chicago.  Sixteen major papers were given, 32 Responses were made, and the Conference produced the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics consisting of 25 Articles.  The position papers and the Responses made to them were published in 1984 in Hermeneutics, Inerrancy and the Bible.  Not surprisingly the contributors were overwhelmingly American; British exceptions being J I Packer and Paul Helm.  (We might note that in March 1984 the BEC also had a conference on hermeneutics, whose papers, alas, were not published!  A report on this by John Legg appeared in Foundations no.12.)

The papers in this book cover a wide variety of subjects and, as might be expected, are of variable quality.  In some cases there is a strong emphasis on asserting inerrancy which leads to negative evaluations of positions advocated by non-evangelical scholars.  In others there is a greater concern to consider questions raised and see if new insights can be gained.  The range of subjects includes Truth: Relationship of Theories of Truth to Hermeneutics, Contextualization and Revelational Epistemology, Homiletics and Hermeneutics, and The Role of Logic in Biblical Interpretation.  Most of the most important, and vexed, questions raised by modern hermeneutics are opened up in this volume.

In between 1977 and 1984 Tony Thiselton’s first book The Two Horizons was published (1980).  Thiselton’s thought is evaluated in another paper. I have already referred to this volume and to his New Horizons in Hermeneutics (1992). These are massively comprehensive books of a conservative nature but it is questionable whether they can really be described as evangelical.

The next date is 1986 when IVP published Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon, edited by Don Carson and John Woodbridge.  It should be noted that this is a companion volume to Scripture and Truth (same editors and publisher; 1983): “Together, the two volumes constitute a whole.”[132]  The earlier volume has a very stimulating essay by Jim Packer on Infallible Scripture and the Role of Hermeneutics in which he insists that evangelical hermeneutics needs to be clearly linked to the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.  This volume also has an essay on The New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Text Form and Authority by Moises Silva.

The essays in the second volume are quite demanding, particularly that by Kevin Vanhoozer, The Semantics of Biblical Literature: Truth and Scripture’s Diverse Literary Forms.  Other contributions include The Problem of Sensus Plenior by Douglas Moo, and The Spirit and the Scriptures by John Frame.  It also commences with a very valuable overview - though 11 years old now - Recent Developments in the Doctrine of Scripture by Don Carson.

Coming to 1988 we have yet another symposium, Inerrancy and Hermeneutic, edited by Harvie Conn.  This volume was the third to be produced by faculty members of Westminster Theological Seminary, and is addressed primarily to the “Reformed and evangelical pastor”.  The preface has some interesting comments, “With the 1970s have come new creative directions and more hermeneutical sophistication on the part of the evangelical… This book seeks to warn against both superficial or reactionary orthodoxy and unguarded academic speculation.  Critical scholarship will judge our arguments as too conservative.  Defenders of the evangelical status quo may fear we yield too much ground.  The latter judgment is our deepest concern in this volume.”[133]  Unusually for a symposium, “all of the essays have been circulated among full members of the Philadelphia faculty for mutual corrections and suggestions.”[134]  In my opinion the warning against “superficial or reactionary orthodoxy” is a necessary one.  Dan Macartney needs to be heeded when he says, “Thus, our approved method of exegesis is tied up with a certain view of reality.  And for many American evangelicals as well as the liberal establishment, the view is not derived directly from Scripture but depends heavily on the Enlightenment construction of reality, and especially the eighteenth-century view of history as the reporting of things ‘as they were in themselves,’ or what we may call the videotape view of history.”[135]  This book begins with historical and biblical essays and then moves to a series of extremely stimulating studies.  It seems to me that it is because these essays are securely rooted in the concept of an inerrant Bible that they are able to consider creatively new questions and directions in hermeneutics.  The last main chapter is of especial interest to us in the BEC, “Bible Authority: When Christians Do Not Agree”.

The next volume appeared in 1991, Grant Osborne’s The Hermeneutical Spiral.  Here we leave symposia behind for a while.  This is a large book of nearly 500 pages.  It is divided into three sections General Hermeneutics, Genre Analysis and Applied Hermeneutics.  It also has two Appendices on The Problem of Meaning.  Osborne  shows considerable scholarship and understanding of the cross-currents of hermeneutical thought, as well as  independence of thought as he works out his own conclusions.  Statements like “In many types of poetry and narrative the text itself is multi-layered in terms of meaning, but that in itself is the author’s intended message” show how he is aware of current debate and ready to come up with his own synthesis.  This is probably one of the most thorough textbooks on hermeneutics which has appeared.  The chapter on Grammar in the first section is very demanding, and is followed by chapters on Semantics and Syntax.  Osborne maintains “that the final goal of hermeneutics is not systematic theology but the sermon”;[136] hence the third section.  However he only reaches The Sermon through Biblical Theology, Systematic Theology and Contextualization.  There is an immense amount of material here that is extremely rewarding, but it is more than just a casual read.

Also with an American provenance is Introduction to Biblical Interpretation by William Klein, Craig Blomberg and Robert Hubbard, published in 1993.  This is designed for students, intending to replace the standard textbooks of the 1960’s by Bernard Ramm and Berkeley Mickelsen.  It applauds Osborne’s book but says it “is more theoretical and better suited to advanced students.”[137]   It is as large as his but is organised quite differently.  It has a valuable chapter on “Old Testament Poetry”.  Regretfully “The Role of the Holy Spirit” is less than a page and a half at the end of the last chapter.  It has an appendix on “Modern Approaches to Interpretation” and a very helpful “Annotated Bibliography” listing “Hermeneutical Tools”.

One of the most important questions for evangelicals is how we view the way the New Testament uses the Old Testament.  The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts? (1994)[138] brings together 22 essays on this subject.  The title is ominous.  Have our Lord and the apostles based right teaching on the wrong texts, or do they present us with a pattern for our own exegesis?  The final essay by G.K. Beale, with the same title as the book, maintains “Thus, I believe a positive answer can and must be given to the question, ‘Can we reproduce the exegesis of the New Testament?’”[139]  This book includes essays by several writers who are not evangelical, but I have included it because of its relevance.  All the essays have been published elsewhere, but the value of this book is that it brings them all together.

Finally, there is Gerald Bray’s monumental Biblical Interpretation Past and Present, which appeared in 1996.  The blurb refers to this book as “an indispensable resource for the study of the history of interpretation”, a judgment which, in this case, is fully justified.  Divided into three sections, Before historical criticism, The historical-critical method, and The contemporary scene, it spends 200 pages on the middle section. The text is interspersed with pen portraits of the most important writers and bibliographies of the most important books, hence its importance as a resource for research.  There are also frequent case studies.  Covering 2,000 years of interpretation Bray has to make generalising judgments.  BEC members are likely to dissent from some of the things he says about evangelical interpretation, while admitting the cogency and relevance of the issues he raises.  His last words form a fitting conclusion to this paper: “Whatever happens… the Christian cannot doubt that the interpretation of the Bible is in the hands of God, who by his Holy Spirit enlightens and strengthens the church.  It is this confidence which guided the great expositors of the past, and which will raise up and nourish the great interpreters of the future.  Let us pray that in our time we may see a work of God in the sphere of biblical interpretation which will be of lasting significance for the life of his people here on earth.”[140]

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

The background to 20^th century biblical hermeneutics

Carson, D. A.  The Gagging of God.  Leicester: Apollos, 1996.

Dockery, David S., ed.  The Challenge of Postmodernism.  Wheaton: Bridgepoint, 1995.

Eagleton, Terry.  Literary Theory: An Introduction.  Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.

Frame, John M.  The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God.  Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing House, 1987.

Lechte, John.  Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers.  London: Routledge, 1994.

Lyon, David.  Postmodernity.  Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994.

Selden, Raman, Widdowson, Peter, Brooker, Peter.  A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory.  Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1997.

Wells, David F.  No Place for Truth.  Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993.

Wells, David F.  God in the Wasteland.  Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994.

The development of 20^th century biblical hermeneutics

Bray, Gerald.  Biblical Interpretation Past and Present.  Leicester: Apollos, 1996.

Conn, Harvie M., ed.  Inerrancy and Hermeneutic.  Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988.

Green, Joel B.  Hearing the New Testament.  Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1995.

Klein, William W., Blomberg, Craig L., Hubbard, Robert L.  Introduction to Biblical Interpretation.  Dallas: Word Publishing, 1993.

Longman, Tremper III.  Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation.  Leicester: Apollos, 1987.

McKim, Donald K.  A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986.

Ryken, Leland.  Words of Delight: A Literary Introduction to the Bible.  Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987.

Silva, Moises.  Has the Church Misread the Bible?  Leicester: Apollos, 1987.

Thiselton, Anthony C.  New Horizons in Hermeneutics.  London: HarperCollins, 1992

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[1] Don Carson, The Gagging of God, (Leicester: Apollos, 1996).

[2] Grant Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral, (Downers Grove: IVP, 1991), p.12.

[3] Patrick Keifert, Mind Reader and Maestro: Models for Understanding Biblical Interpreters in A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics, ed. Donald McKim, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1986). p.228. Italics his.

[4] Op. cit.. p.14.

[5] Op. cit., p.167.

[6] Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice, (London and New York: Routledge, 1980), p.4,5.

[7] Anthony Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, (London: HarperCollins, 1992).

[8] Norman R Gulley, Reader-Response Theories in Postmodern Hermeneutics: A Challenge to Evangelical Theology in The Challenge of Postmodernism, ed. David Dockery, (Wheaton: Bridgepoint, 1995), p.212.

[9] See Appendix A Perspectivalism in John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), p.89,90.

[10] Stephen Prickett, Words and The Word, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).  “This book begins from the suspicion that the current problems in biblical hermeneutics are unlikely to be solved without some historical understanding of how the present situation arose, and that its roots cannot be understood simply in terms of development of theology or of literary theory considered as separate disciplines in isolation, but that they must be approached through their interaction and subsequent separation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.” p.2.

[11] Leland Ryken, Words of Delight, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987); Words of Life, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987).

[12] Anthony C Thiselton, The Two Horizons, (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1980).

[13] Thiselton himself compares the symposium New Testament Interpretation, ed. I. Howard Marshall (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1977) which has a majority of essays on aspects of historical interpretation with Hearing the New Testament, ed. Joel B. Green (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1995) which has very few.  Thiselton, New Testament Interpretation in Historical Perspective in Hearing the New Testament, p.17/18.

[14] Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).  Note this assessment: “By far the wittiest and most articulate general primer…was Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory…”  “The main part of Literary Theory is still the best bluffer’s guide to ‘The Rise of English’, ‘Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory’, ‘Structuralism and Semiotics’, ‘Post-Structuralism’ and ‘Psychoanalysis’…” Dennis Brown,  Postmodernity/Literature, forthcoming.  In writing this section I have not been able to imteract with A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, ed. Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, Peter Brooker (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester/ Wheatsheaf, 1997).

[15] Stanley J Grenz, Star Trek and the Next Generation: Postmodernism and the Future of Evangelical Theology in The Challenge of Postmodernism.  I do not necessarily endorse all he says in his essay.  Quotations from p.92 and p.93.

[16] Christopher Norris, What’s Wrong with Postmodernism, (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester/Wheatsheaf,  1990), p.129.  Norris himself argues against Fish and postmodern-pragmatist thought.

[17] Gail Chester and Sigrid Nielsen eds., In Other Words: Writing as a feminist, (London: Hutchinson,  1987).  The first two quotations are from Introduction: writing as a feminist, by the editors, p.9,10.  The third is from Parmar, Pratibha; Words are Weapons, p.149.

[18] Op. cit. p.38.  It should be noted that Saussure’s influence is not so great amongst linguists.

[19] John Lechte, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers, (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p.148/9.

[20] Op. cit. p.148.

[21] Belsey; op. cit. p.40.

[22] Belsey; op. cit. p.42

[23] Luce Irigaray, in Raoul Mortley, French Philosophers in Conversation; (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), p.64.

[24] Lechte; op. cit. p.162.

[25] Irigaray; op. cit. p.64.

[26] Jacques Derrida, in Mortley; op. cit. p.104.

[27] Irigaray; op. cit. p.64.

[28] Lechte; op. cit. p.163.

[29] Op. cit. p.63/4.

[30] Op. cit. p.60.

[31] E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967) p. 8; quoted in Walter C. Kaiser, Legitimate Hermeneutics in  A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics; p.113.

[32] Milton D. Hunnex, Chronological and Thematic Charts of Philosophers and Philosophies, (Grand Rapids: Academie, 1986), chart 24.  See also Eagleton; op. cit.; chapter on Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory.

[33] Frank Houghton, Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, (London: SPCK, 1954), p.331.

[34] Op. cit. pp.93-98; Appendix C: Meaning.

[35] Meaning in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. R.J. Coggins, and J.L. Houlden, (London: SCM, 1992), p.438.

[36] Dan McCartney, The New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament in Inerrancy and Hermeneutic, ed. Harvie M. Conn, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), p.107/8.

[37] Op. cit. p.19/20.

[38] p.1.

[39] op. cit. p.2

[40] Roger Lundin, Anthony C. Thiselton and Clarence Walhout, The Responsibility of Hermeneutics, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p.119, footnote 54.  The quotation from Richard Rorty is from his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, and is taken from Lundin.

[41] p.445.

[42] New Horizons in Hermeneutics, p.619.  The italics are his.

[43] John Goldingay, Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation, (Leicester: IVP, 1981), p.28/29.

[44] Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20^th Century Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1992), p.67.

[45] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol.1 The Doctrine of the Word of God, 2^nd half-volume, p.457.  This is the synopsis at the beginning of chapter 3.

[46] Ibid. p.499.

[47] Ibid. p.457.

[48] “Hearing” has become a significant word for reading or listening to the Bible; as in Hearing the New Testament.

[49] Barth, ibid. p.463.

[50] Ibid. p.469.

[51] Ibid. p.458

[52] Ibid. p.472.

[53] Ibid. p.466.

[54] Ibid. p.466.

[55] Thomas Provence, The Sovereign Subject Matter: Hermeneutics in the Church Dogmatics in A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics, p.246.

[56] Barth, ibid. p.493.

[57] Ibid. p.470.

[58] Ibid. p.471.

[59] Ibid. p.243.

[60] Ibid. p.514.

[61] Ibid. p.695.

[62] Donald Bloesch, Holy Scripture (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1994), p.186.

[63] Gerald Bray, Biblical Interpretation Past & Present (Leicester: Apollos, 1996), p.42.

[64] op. cit. p.86.

[65] New Horizons in Hermeneutics, p.273/4.

[66] Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribners, 1958), p.8.  Quoted in Harvie M. Conn, Contemporary World Theology (Nutley: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1976), p.29.

[67] Bernard Ramm,  Protestant Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 23^rd printing 1995), p.84.

[68] Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p.37.  Quoted in Bloesch, op. cit. p.249.

[69] op. cit. p.98.

[70] op. cit. p.224; see also p.243.

[71] Bloesch, ibid. p.231/2.

[72] Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology, p.36.  Quoted in Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, p.282.

[73] Conn, Contemporary World Theology, p.35/6.

[74] Grenz and Olsen, op. cit. p.88.

[75] Bloesch, op. cit. p.251.

[76] Anthony C. Thiselton, The New Hermeneutic in A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics, p.80.  This study first appeared in New Testament Interpretation (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1977), pp.308-333.

[77] R.A.Piper, New Hermeneutic in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, p.492.

[78] Hendrik Krabbendam, The New Hermeneutic in Hermeneutics, Inerrancy and the Bible, ed. Earl D. Radmacher and Robert D. Preuss (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1984), p.535/6.

[79] Thiselton, ibid. p.92.  Italics his.

[80] Thiselton, ibid. p.92.  Italics his.

[81] J.I. Packer poses the question: “How… can the decisive absoluteness of Scripture, and its transforming power when preached, be explicated, if not in the terms proposed by the new hermeneutic?  Can any of the bits and pieces… of the new hermeneutic serve evangelicals as a means to this end.?”   A Response to the New Hermeneutic in Hermeneutics, Inerrancy and the Bible, p.569.

[82] See Prickett, op. cit. ch.1.  Note his words; “This belief that religious experience, and the historic record of mankind’s deepest longings, can only be adequately described today in the slack, verbose and cliché-ridden language of international communication would be disconcerting if it were not… so evidently self-defeating.  How far it is possible, in the words of the Good News Bible’s Preface, ‘to use language that is natural, clear, simple and unambiguous’, when the Bible is not about things that are natural, clear, simple, and unambiguous?…” p.10. Italics his.

[83] Tremper Longman III, Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation (Leicester: Apollos, 1987), p.vii.

[84] Genre in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, p.256.

[85] Ibid. p.78.

[86] Quotation from Tremper Longman in Grant Osborne, Genre Criticism in Hermeneutics, Inerrancy and the Bible, p.175.

[87] James L. Bailey, Genre Analysis in Hearing the New Testament, p.203.

[88] Literary approaches to Biblical Interpretation, p.77.

[89] Bailey, ibid. p.202.

[90] Ronald B. Allen, A Response to Genre Criticism in Hermeneutics, Inerrancy & the Bible, p.198/9.

[91] Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, p.261.

[92] Ibid. p.260.

[93] Words of Delight, p.13.

[94] Ibid. p.15.

[95] Ibid. p.16.

[96] Ibid. p.53.

[97] Ibid. p.81.  Italics his.

[98] Mark Allan Powell, Narrative Criticism in Hearing the New Testament, p.246.

[99] Ryken, op. cit. p.62.  Italics his.

[100] Powell, op. cit. p.245.

[101] Ibid. p.63.  The quotation from Forster comes from Aspects of the Novel (1927; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p.35.

[102] Ibid. p.92.

[103] Ibid. p.104.

[104] Ibid. p.86.  Italics his.

[105] Klein, Blomberg, Hubbard, op. cit. p.215.

[106] Ibid. p.225.

[107] Rhetorical Criticism, C. Clifton Black, in Hearing the New Testament, p.256.

[108] Ibid. p.257.

[109] J.I.H. McDonald, Rhetorical Criticism in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, p.598.

[110] Rhetorical Situation and Historical Reconstruction in 1 Corinthians, NTS 33 (1987) 387; quoted in Black, ibid. p.263.  Italics hers.

[111] Joel B. Green, Discourse Analysis and New Testament Interpretation in Hearing the New Testament,  p.178.

[112] Sandra M. Schneiders, Feminist Hermeneutics in Hearing the New Testament, p.349.

[113] Feminist Theology in the Third World, ed. Ursula King (London: SPCK, 1994), p.20.

[114] Ibid. p.4.

[115] Schneiders, op. cit. p.349.

[116] Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Toward a Feminist Biblical Hermeneutics: Biblical Interpretation and Liberation Theology in A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics, p.378.

[117] Title of Part Three of Feminist Theology from the Third World, p.181-242.

[118] In Feminist Theology from the Third World, p.194.

[119] Fiorenza, ibid. p.378.

[120] Ibid. p.360.

[121] Bray, op. cit. p.523/4.

[122] Schneiders, ibid. p.358.

[123] Deborah Middleton, Feminist Interpretation in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, p.234.

[124] Schneiders, ibid, p.351.

[125] Ibid. p.352.

[126] Ibid. p.353.

[127] Ibid. p.354.

[128] Ibid. 355.

[129] Middleton, op. cit. p.232.

[130] Men, Women and Authority, ed. Brian Edwards (Bromley: Day One Publications, 1996); see chapters 4 Interpreting the Bible on gender and 7 How feminism affects your theology.

[131] Gerald Bray, Whatever happened to the authority of Scripture in The Anglican Evangelical Crisis, ed. Melvin Tinker (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 1995), p.62ff.

[132] Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon, p.ix.

[133] Ibid. p.11.

[134] Ibid. p.12.

[135] Ibid. p.105.

[136] Ibid. p.12.

[137] Ibid. p.xix.

[138] The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts: Essays on the Use of the Old Testament in the New, ed. G.K. Beale (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994).  I refer to this book because of its importance, but pressure of time has prevented me from reading it through.

[139] P. 404.

[140] P.588.