A common hermeneutic?
Sunday, May 24, 2009 at 5:03PM I have been sick with "flu like symptoms" most of the weekend and being in Flushing Queens chose to isolate myself from others...which left me time to think...even if it is in a flu like state. I got to thinking about hermeneutics....here are some opinions:
The closest thing that the RCA has to an official hermeneutic ….and I could be wrong….is that Scripture interprets Scripture. This can, and often does, lead to a circular argument. We all come with a hermeneutic of what the Scripture is that interprets itself…see already going in circles. If we start, as the RCA says we should, with the Bible being infallible in all it intends to teach, it says nothing about how exactly we are to interpret the Bible. We can interpret the Bible literally, we can say that some is literal and some allegorical, or any combination of both. The concepts of Infallibility and that Scripture interprets Scriptures say nothing about historical, textual, source, form, canonical, or narrative criticisms (not an exhaustive list of criticisms…I know.) Most Biblical scholars and even not so scholarly readers of the Bible each have their favorite criticisms or reject all criticisms. This alone makes having a common or “official” hermeneutic neigh near impossible.
Also as I was taught in Seminary…and as I now believe…the Bible is a living book and that it reads us even more than we read it. As we study the Scriptures our understanding of them change and grow..not because the Word changes but because we change. Each of us are unique individuals with unique experiences of Christ. This is shown clearly in the four gospels, each writer has a distinct “take” on the Gospel and they present it through their experience and to their particular audience. They each saw Christ in a unique way. If you ask anyone two people in church who Christ is to them…you will get two unique answers. Each of us reads the Word of God and God speaks to us through the word of God in unique ways. This, in addition to the above discussion of the scholarly issues, make having a common hermeneutic impossible in a local church let alone a denomination.
The RCA, in all it’s wisdom, (not being sarcastic) has never adopted an official hermeneutic, nor should they in my opinion, more than Scripture interprets Scripture.
So where does this leave us?
It leaves us with Christ. The RCA will never find a unified hermeneutic, but we can be unified in Christ. Someone asked in a follow up to one of the posts on these blogs if two who disagree can walk together. My answer is a hopeful yes! Peter and Paul disagreed but they still walked together. The Eastern and Western churches have disagreed yet they have still seem to walk together is some ways. The RCA and CRC have disagreed, yet we are now walking closer together than we have for over a hundred years!
With all things we need to trust the faithfulness of Christ, even if and when we prove to be faithless. Our hermeneutics may be wrong sometimes…but they for the most part are faithful and I trust that God will be faithful even when we err.
No matter what are hermeneutics are…Christ is common…Christ is the constant. If we start there we can walk anywhere with anyone.
Reader Comments (10)
But how do we define who Christ is? Is he the champion of social justice? The wise sage? The crucified? The risen? The ascended? Christ can be used and misused like any other portion of Scripture.
Ok... I'll bite :-)
Just as a place to start, I think one's hermeneutic boils down to...
1) Which passages they tend to use to interpret other scriptures (in other words, no matter how much we might like to pretend it isn't true, we all have particular passages that we use as the lenses through which we either intentionally or unintentionally interpret others.)
2) Whether (and, if so, HOW) they handle the concept of "fulfillment of the law" (and "law" in general.)
3) Whether (and, again if so, HOW) they handle biblical/literary genre, biblical culture, contemporary culture, and inspiration.
I actually think the first is key. It simply isn't honest to say that we treat all passages as equal. No one does (although I have seen many who claim to.) I've seen myself go through interpretive periods - often coinciding with the particularities of the congregation I'm worshiping with at the time. I can specifically think of times in my life where biblical interpretation has been wrought through Romans 8, James 2, 1 Corinthians 13, Matthew 25, Matthew 28 and a few others. All good passages, of course. But one interprets the world and the greater the biblical corpus very differently under each.
To take it a bit further. I think the RCA (as a denomination) currently does it's interpretation out of a fairly individualist, evangelistic-based approach to Matthew 28:18-20. Historically, I'd argue the Reformed tradition would have probably been more likely to lean on Romans 8:29-30 (and that, interpreted more communally than individualistically).
Thoughts?
Grace and peace,
`tim
Scott and Tim,
Both comments are well taken...and go further to prove the point that a common hermeneutic is impossible...if it is even desirable.
Scott, Christ, I think is self defining. We have a relationship because of him...not based on what we think of him or how we define him.(But again that is based on my hermeneutic)
Tim, 1. Exactly!
2. And I thought I opened a can of worms!
3. The problem with a common hermeneutic becomes all the more complicated
when we take into account all that you mention.
As to your last comment about a common lens for the RCA, I find it intriguing. If we were to have a common hermeneutic would we, could we, should we pick one passage which we interpret the others through?
What started my thinking on this were the comments in previous strings about how can we dialogue with different hermeneutics and wanted to explore that for a bit....
I was also fascinated by one comment that maybe it is our hermeneutics that need saving.
In response to Scott, yes, Christ is all those things. Advocate for justice, wise sage, exemplary life, sacrifical/atoning death, resurrected, ascended, reigning.
I wonder if part of the problem is that we are looking so hard for one answer ... one hermeneutic, one thing, one statement of faith, and we want to write that in stone and insist that it never changes. But it does change ... not the heart of the gospel itself, but the way we interpret and proclaim it. That's part of what it means to be always Reforming. And to live in a world which is very different from the world of the 1950s, let alone the world of 1509 when Calvin was born or 50 when Paul was writing.
Yesterday in worship after the reading of the ascension accounts from Acts 1 and Luke 24, I asked my son (fresh out of a college NT class) why Luke felt compelled to tell the story twice and nobody else did. (I later recalled that Mark did but it's in the disputed section of Mark 16). My son replied that in Luke Jesus ascends "about eight hours" after the resurrction and in Acts it's 40 days.
The Bible has diverse voices. That's partly what makes it so fascinating, and so difficult. And the Bible speaks differently to us at different times and places. I look at my sermons from 25 years ago. They were biblically and theologically "correct" and reasonably well received and meaningful to both me and my parishoners, but I wouldn't preach them now. I'm not in the same place and I have a very different audience.
The Bible itself has different hermeneutics. James reads the law differently than Paul does.
The Christian tradition has read the Bible very differently. Sometimes it insists on the purity of the church as a way to protect it from danger and corruption. Sometimes it insists on inclusivity. That purity vs. inclusivity debate has very much affected the last sixty years of the RCA's history. Most of our major arguments over ecumenism and social ethics and biblical interpretation are rooted in this question: do we need to protect the purity of the church or do we preach the grace and good news of the gospel and let God protect the church? Obviously that is a radical oversimplification and no one is advocating only one side or the other. But most of us tend toward one side or the other and these assumptions about the nature of the church have shaped recent RCA history and current debates.
My apologies for the length ... it's the professional hazard of being in the middle of a book project on recent RCA history.
Thanks Lynn that was helpful!
Dear Justin,
I'm hesitant to suggest this, because the idea is open to much subjectivity, but I would add to Tim TC's list, our experience of the Gospel. My experience of the Gospel is freedom from sin, shame, and guilt. I definitely bring that to my interpretation of the Bible, but it cannot be helped, it was and is a defining moment of my life. I can understand that other's have had a different experience of the Gospel, i.e. social justice, deliverance, community, healing, etc and they bring these into interpretation as well.
As for a common lens in the RCA, I suggest the confession of the early church "Jesus is Lord" Rom. 10:9
Grace be with you,
Paul
Thanks Paul.
Part of the problem of hermeneutics is that they are subjective. As you note Christ is Lord is a great starting place...but even after that we fall into subjectivity.
As we as a denomination begin then to deal with things like homosexuality, the Belhar, church planting, revitilization we all bring our own hermeneutics to the table...our own different hermeneutics.
I would love to start with Christ as Lord and go from there....but, sadly, it seems that that is not enough for us to unite around as a denomination.
Thank you for your input.
Justin
I think you are correct that the RCA does not have an "official hermeneutic." In fact, back in 1994-95, the Commission on Theology drafted a hermeneutical paper on "The Use of Scripture in Making Moral Decisions." The paper never was formally endorsed by the Synod. My sense at the time was that the Synod was too edgy about formally approving a hermeneutic that didn't already clearly indicate its bottom-line results--they felt it was too vague and imprecise. Of course, it is precisely such generality that is needed when trying to articulate an approach to Scripture that might inform decisions not yet faced or even contemplated!
But my learning from that experience was that the church needs agreement on the "bottom line" issues it is called to confess, but needs generosity and freedom outside of these core convictions.
This leads me to two observations about your discussion of hermeneutics. First, you don't say anything about confessional frameworks, which are clearly part of the lens through which we read the Scripture. The confessions clearly lay out acceptable and unacceptable ways, within the RCA, of interpreting at least some passages So in this sense, there is a binding hermeneutic of sorts within the RCA.
My second observation is that any hermeneutic finally must do justice to the text of Scripture itself. Arguing for diversity in hermeneutics does not mean that we simply choose what texts to take seriously and what texts to ignore. Rather, hermeneutics concerns the larger "whole" of Scripture into which each individual text finds a place. This construal of the whole is the point where there is legitimate diversity in interpretation, provided, of course, that the confessional core of the church's reading of Scripture is adequately addressed.
So of course Christ is at the center of the church's hermeneutic. But it is not simply the Christ of my own private experience. It is the Christ of Scripture--the same Christ who is confessed in the great creeds of the church. And if my personal experience of the Christ differs from this Christ, perhaps I need to remove myself from the center of my interpretive world, and listen to some other voices.
Thank you Dr. Brownson.
Could we find a moment to chat at Synod? So many questions...not enough Blog space!
Justin
Tim - good stuff and it strikes a chord with me, especially regarding the law and Matthew 28.
As far as a bottom line hermeneutic goes, I'd start here:
God is love. Jesus is Lord. Spirit is life. We are set free from the law and enslaved to love. Therefore, all things are lawful for me, but not all things build up, not all things are beneficial, and I will not be dominated by anything (other than love, as exampled by Christ and that, most definitely, on the cross).