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.