Postmodernism and Hermeneutics

Postmodernism, as a phenomenon, impacts every area of research including all branches of humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, education, and religious studies.  The scope of this essay examines the impact of postmodernism on the particular area of hermeneutics, especially biblical hermeneutics and more precisely New Testament hermeneutics.  The general order of examination takes up the issue of explaining the essence of the hermeneutical problem, distinguishing between the general points of departure between modernism and postmodernism, scrutinizing any major shifts that may have taken place between modernism and postmodernism (as two significant paradigms), searching for any advantages in postmodernism for Christian theology in hermeneutics, and finally, some conclusions about the state of affairs for the Church and the academy.

 

1. THE ESSENCE OF THE HERMENEUTICAL PROBLEM

 

From the outset, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the origin of the hermeneutical problem.  Does it arise from postmodernism’s reorientation of the text or from the basic nature of hermeneutics in general?  Traditionally, hermeneutics required the establishment of acceptable strategies for the understanding of a text.  Consideration was given to linguistic and historical details as a means of getting to the meaning.  This required knowledge of the original language of the text, including grammatical, stylistic and vocabulary issues.  Texts were presumed to have an historical context.[1]  When the word “traditionally” is used in this essay, it refers to what is also known as the modern or critical methodology that can be broadly construed to have emerged from the Enlightenment and used, somewhat generally, until the early twentieth century.  Without engaging in the debate as to the causal origin of the problem, that is, either the emergence of postmodernism or the basic nature of hermeneutics, it is clear that a problem arises when the interpreter considers that historical conditioning is “two-sided:  the modern interpreter, no less than the text, stands in a given historical context and tradition.”[2]  Thiselton observes “to pay attention to the historical particularities and historical conditionedness of the text remains of paramount importance . . .However, the modern reader is also conditioned by his own place in history and tradition.”[3]  The reference in his title to the two horizons arises from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s acknowledgement of such in his monumental Truth and Method (1960).

 

The essence of the hermeneutical problem rests in the claim that both the ancient text and the interpreter are formed or conditioned by their respective locus in history.  Therefore, in order for understanding to occur, recognition of the distinctions of each must be made. 

 

On the surface this problem appears to be both obvious and, with no trouble, surmountable.  However, a closer evaluation raises two important concerns.  First, one must consider which side of the two horizons deserves greater attention, that of the text or that of the interpreter?  E. D. Hirsch claims that the weight should be given to the intention of the author.  “On purely practical grounds, therefore, it is preferable to agree that the meaning of a text is the author’s meaning.”[4]  One might argue that equal weight should be given to each.  Such an argument might be made by Gadamer and others.  On the other hand, as postmodernism would suggest, little, if any value should be given to the author and his or her historical context on the basis of a number of claims that will be addressed further in this essay.  Second, the suggestion of an interpreter’s historical position implies a pre-conditioning.  That is, the interpreter comes to the text with some degree of established reference.  Subject knowledge, cultural conditioning, previous engagement with existing interpretations all are part of the interpreter’s historical position.  This sets in motion a circle of interpretation.  Awareness with bias comes to the text.  Yet, each word, sentence, paragraph or chapter of the text brings a new awareness.  The point of concerns lies in where the interpreter should enter the circle.  If it is not possible to come to a text neutrally, then at what point may the interpreter gain access to the authentic meaning of a text? 

 

The hermeneutical problem as proposed is one of distance.  Given the historic situation of both the text and the interpreter, our attention turns, now, to the various approaches that have sought to provide the solution to this problem.  Herein are discussed the general points of departure between modernism and postmodernism. 

 

2.  POINTS OF DEPARTURE BETWEEN MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

 

As previously noted, postmodernism reaches into all areas of the culture, in the same manner modernism saturated western civilization.  In order to appreciate the dynamic influence of postmodernism on hermeneutics a comparison, or contrast, between how postmodernism and modernism relate to hermeneutics will be helpful. 

 

Limiting the scope of this paper to postmodernism’s impact on hermeneutics obviates a complete overview of the distinctions between modernism and postmodernism.  Historical-criticism was born out of the “Age of Reason”.  During this period the field of biblical scholarship became closely related to the development of western philosophy.  Many European orthodox theologians built their doctrine of biblical inspiration on the philosophical criteria for determining truth.  Conflict resulted when modern science began to discover evidence that did not appear to coincide with the biblical revelation.  Guided by the notion that such discrepancies could be resolved by reason, an objective standard was developed that would salvage the Church from total marginalizing.   A rational form of orthodoxy emerged seeking to synthesize basic Christian belief with the discoveries of natural science. 

 

Many philosophers and biblical scholars from the Enlightenment, forward, maintained that human reason without the aid of revelation was adequate for knowledge.  This philosophy may be roughly construed to define modernism.  Klaus Scholder cites Ebeling at this point, “The critical historical method first arose out of the intellectual revolution of modern times… In order to grasp the nature of the critical historical method it is thus necessary to take account of the intellectual change in the modern world.”[5]  From this standpoint a new approach to interpretation was developed that became the basis for biblical, and all other literary, studies known as the historical-critical method. 

 

John Barton suggests four characteristics of the historical-critical method that are central to this methodology.[6]  These, by no means, reflect the unanimous opinion of scholars regarding the defining aspects of the historical-critical approach.  They are, however, general enough to provide a working foundation for the following discussion of the method of historical-criticism as operative throughout modernism.  First, Barton points to genetic questions about the text.  These questions include when was the text written, by whom was the text written, and for whom was the text written?  As Barton indicates, in many cases the historical-critical method discovered a text was actually a composite.  Several separate sources were accounted in texts that were previously ascribed to one author.  In Old Testament research the historical-critical approach produced a fairly general theory that the Pentateuch was an aggregate of four separate, older sources.  Barton notes that “(o)nce they had established the existence of these sources, Pentateuchal critics took little further interest in the Pentateuch as it now stands.  Even where they asked about the theology of the work, they took this to mean four separate theological outlooks of the sources J, E, D and P, and made no attempt to integrate these into any larger whole.”[7]  Genetic answers became the standard for questions regarding the nature of the work.  The work’s origin was supposed to supply these kinds of answers without really addressing issues central to understanding.  New Testament studies went through the same kind of revolution.  The synoptic problem is a problem of the genetic nature.  Barton adds, “historical-criticism addressed itself almost entirely to the question of how we came to have the Bible, and when it had solved this problem, saw little else for the biblical scholar to do.”[8]

 

Moreover, due to emphasis and concern regarding the history of the text, the historical critic seemed to be more interested in the original meaning of a text.  What did the text mean to the intended readers?  This caused a single horizon to emerge.  No emphasis was given to what a text might mean to a modern reader.  Again, Barton observes,

The concern was always to place texts in their historical context, and to argue that we misunderstand them if we take them to mean something they could not have meant for their

first readers – indeed, most historical critics regarded this as obvious.  The original meaning was the true meaning, and the main task of biblical scholars was to get back to this meaning, and to eliminate false meanings that unhistorical readers thought they had found in a text.[9]  

So, the historical-critical approach was skeptical of resulting interpretations that could not be found in the “original meaning.”  This is not to suggest that biblical interpretation had no impact on the modern reader.  Scholder makes this point crystal clear when he states,

 

The prime concern was to try to make clear the unity of historical understanding in this period, and within this unity to understand the central position of the Bible as its presupposition and consequence.  The Bible was a presupposition, in that history as a whole and in detail was found in it; it was a consequence, in that all this was possible only within the relatively closed sphere of Western Christian culture.[10] 

Scholder continues to clarify the significance of historical inquiry on biblical research during the development of historical-criticism quoting J. Aurifaber’s introduction to his translation of Luther’s Supputatio

 

For otherwise men would not know the beginning of the world and divine revelations; people would live in cruel darkness and uncertainty; they would not know about their origins and how this noble creation and the human race in the image of God fell into cruel destruction, into sin and death, nor what is righteousness and what is sin, as God has graciously revealed…[11] 

Historical research as applied to biblical interpretation sought to discover the original meaning for the purpose of discovering what the author meant in his own historical framework. 

 

Historical-criticism, however, was equally interested in reconstructing the past.  Not satisfied with simply examining the historical context of words and meanings, critics wanted to know what really happened in the past.  The developing discipline of historical research in the German-speaking world impacted biblical critics such as W. M. L. de Wette, Julius Wellhausen and D. F. Strauss.  These, and others, put themselves to the task of setting forth a critical history of the classical world by returning to the original sources and scrutinizing the ancient writings of biblical literature.[12]  Skepticism toward the original authors intent was applied in this manner of research.  Implied in this method was that the author was not necessarily impartial or unbiased.  Reconstruction of historical data would give a more accurate picture of the Old Testament, the Gospels and Acts.  Extricating the earliest remarks of Jesus through means of source analysis in the New Testament and similar approaches to the Pentateuch allowed scholars to more clearly reconstruct the events. 

 

Finally, and most importantly, as Barton notes, the historical-critical method pursued its aim through disinterested scholarship.  Historical-criticism believed it could be “value- neutral, or disinterested.  It tried, so far as possible, to approach the text without prejudice, and to ask not what it meant ‘for me’, but simply what it meant.”[13]  The historical critic supposed himself to be a neutral observer, relegating all prejudice while pursuing the truth.  Presupposing that prior commitments to faith clouded or obscured ones honest reading of a text, the historical critic sought an examination of the text without a faith bias.  As a result, many of the accounts that resulted were in contrast to and in conflict with both the orthodox of the Church and the accounts given by the biblical writers. 

 

Each of these four characteristics that signified the historical-critical method were the product of, or more accurately, were part and parcel of the Enlightenment’s mood that scholarship could rationally and incisively arrive at objective truth.  Without reservation, it can be asserted that from the emergence of modernity, “The Age of Reason”, or the Enlightenment, to the post-war years of the twentieth century, historical-criticism has dominated biblical investigation in the academic arena. 

 

Having generally set forth the major points of modernism related to biblical hermeneutics, one can move to parley them with those of postmodernism.  Attention to what general shifts may have occurred between modernism and postmodernism will be delayed as noted previously.  Now, the investigation turns to the general points of departure between modernism and postmodernism.  Describing modernism using Barton’s four general characteristics of the historical-critical method, one correctly concludes that the epistemology of modernism was empirical in nature.  This meant that certain phenomenon could not be recognized or accounted for rationally.   Mysticism, miracles, divine intervention, divine inspiration were all truncated from rational enquiry.  These difficulties will provide adequate negative attention to modernism so as to introduce postmodernism. 

 

As will be shown later, the seeds for postmodernism were already planted in modernism.  What is the fruit?  The fruit may be seen in the new questions that arise in postmodernism.  At this point, this author admits that he is now treading where angels fear to tread by attempting to provide a brief survey of key postmodern issues, while relating them to specific problems of scholarship, especially within the arena of hermeneutics.  No less than Umberto Eco, identified as a postmodern writer, due in large part to his novel The Name of the Rose, has written of postmodernism, “I have the impression that it is applied today to anything the users of the term happen to like.”[14] Attempting a definition of postmodernism will only create further complication of an already complex milieu.  Tyron Inbody compares it to “intellectual Velcro dragged across culture” which “can be used to characterize almost anything one approves or disapproves.”[15] 
Readings of articles and books considered by most scholars to be postmodern reveals at least four recurring themes.  These themes will serve to contrast or demonstrate postmodernisms primary points of departure from modernism.  

 

The first theme of postmodernism is the rejection of a philosophical metanarrative that formed the foundation for much of modernism.  A metanarrative is a global worldview.  Pauline Marie Rosenau states that

 

Post-modernism challenges global, all-encompassing world views, be they political, religious, or social.  It reduces Marxism, Christianity, Fascism, Stalinism, capitalism, liberal democracy, secular humanism, feminism, Islam, and modern science to the same order and dismisses them all as logocentric, transcendental totalizing meta-narratives that anticipate all questions and provide predetermined answers.  All such systems of thought rest on assumptions no more or no less certain than those of witchcraft, astrology, or primitive cults.  The post-modern goal is not to formulate an alternative set of assumptions but to register the impossibility of establishing any such underpinning for knowledge, to “delegitimate all mastercodes”.  The most extreme post-modernists urge us to be comfortable in the absence of certainty, learn to live without explanation, accept the new philosophical relativism.[16] 

Metaphysical objectivity is replaced by sociological subjectivity.  The nature of reality cannot be located in objective truth but in the phenomenological linguistic event.  In the realm of theology this rejection of classical metaphysics has shifted the perspective from deductive theology to inductive theology.[17]  This transformation lays the foundation for liberation theology and countless other socio-political theologies now in style. 

 

The birth of sociological subjectivism gives life to the second major theme of postmodernism, that is, the rejection of human autonomy.  The individual is always part of a larger sociological web that includes history, culture, economics, religion, politics, and specific philosophical worldviews.  Theology does not fall from the skies but is constructed within a complex socio-cultural matrix.[18]

 

These first two themes have led to a movement in contemporary theology and philosophy known as antifoundationalism.  Within theology, antifoundationalism attempts to untie theology from objective foundations, i.e., scripture, creeds, confessions, and ecclesiastical tradition.  Within this framework, theology emerges from the needs of the community within the ebb and flow of culture and history. 

 

This leads directly to the third theme of postmodernism, pragmatism.  Pragmatism is the concern for the practical ethical aspects of human life.  Postmodern writers have been extremely critical of modernism on this count.  Postmodernism sees an underside to modernism that exploits and oppresses marginalized communities.  Philosophy has traditionally been a dialogue partner with theology.  Today it communicates more clearly with sociology.  Orthopraxis has replaced orthodoxy in postmodern theology.  John McGowan acknowledges Jean-Francois Lyotard in France, Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels in
America as the “neopragmatists” and therefore, the most fervent postmodern antifoundationalists.  McGowan, critical of Lyotard, cites his argument thus

 

Lyotard is determined to defend the local against the universal, and he takes theory as a primary instance of totalitarian terror.  “Reason and power are one and the same thing.  You may disguise the one with dialectics or prospectiveness, but you will still have the other in all its crudeness:  jails, taboos, public weal, selection, genocide.”[19]   

Furthering his conflict with Lyotard on this point, McGowan says that

 

Lyotard believes (apparently) that the way to disconnect scientific discoveries from their lamentable purposes is not to tighten the restrictions on what scientists can study according to some generalized moral formula but to sever completely the connection between research and the other language games of nationalist politics, morality, and the economic exploitation of technological innovations.  It is the current answerability of research to such external concerns, Lyotard suggests, that produces results calculated from the start to be used by the defense department or the technocrat.[20] 

At this point an obvious obstruction arises.  While elevating pragmatism over theory one cannot escape the hybrid nature of the current state of affairs.  McGowan gives illuminating insight into this problematic issue called “incommensurability.”  This refers to the inability to communicate across cultural differences.  Modernism is accused by postmodernism of power brokering by means of theories of knowledge.  Postmodernism’s concern with pragmatism must wrest the power in order to apply its fundamental ethic of pluralism.  McGowen does not believe that such incommensurability exists.  He clearly denies such by asking,

 

What differences can be said to constitute full incommensurability?  Pushed to the extreme, we get a particularism akin to Hume’s skeptical universe (or Nietzche’s description of sense impressions in “Of Truth and Lies in an Ultramoral Sense”), in which no connection between any speech act and another can be established, an endless proliferation of “private languages.”  Pushed to the other extreme, all the members of a single nation, or speakers of a single language, or even the inheritors of a single tradition can appear to share a fundamental world view.  (In this last strategy the buck almost always stops at some fundamental East/West distinction.  Jews and Catholics do not really appear to occupy incommensurate speech communities because they share something plausibly labeled the Judeo-Christian tradition; but then no one talks of a Judeo-Muslim tradition or a Hindi-Christian tradition.  The theoretical point is that justifying commensurability in the one case and its opposite in the other two would prove awfully difficult in the concrete; the practical point is that, the pieties of translators aside, we really do not pragmatically [i.e., as a matter of daily practice and belief] believe that the cultures of the West – Italian, German, French, English – are incommensurable.  Given this practical assumption, a habitual ethnocentricity that crosses national boundaries, it is hard to see how incommensurability is going to generate any great plurality of games in the West.)[21]    

While these arguments may sound like the ferment between two old, hostile rivals, they are the real issues that arise in the postmodern theme of pragmatism.

 

The fourth theme of postmodernism can already be presumed by the previous three.  Postmodernism has a strong anti-Enlightenment posture.  Some postmodernists, like Lyotard, as has already been shown, call the West’s attempts to make its values universal intellectual terrorism.  Within postmodernism there is, indeed, a refusal of the Enlightenment tradition with the simultaneous attempt to recover and restore the uniqueness of traditional cultures. 

 

Postmodernism results in pluralism of theologies, with no one perspective commanding dominance over the other.  This new era of postmodernism is an intellectual marketplace that includes postmodern, modern, and pre-modern theologies.  This theological pluralism has profound effect upon the biblical scholar seeking to understand the text, or even more, discover what is or is not the text.  What gave rise to this shift in paradigms?  That shall be the undertaking of the next section of this essay.

 

3. THE PARADIGM SHIFT BETWEEN MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

 

An investigation of the differences between modernism and postmodernism raises some interesting if not salient questions.  A major question that begs an answer is, to what extent is postmodernism a paradigmatic shift from modernism?  Much of this debate arises from distinctions proffered by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.    Kuhn’s argument that scientific revolutions are based on paradigm shifts within the scientific community is emphasized in John Earman’s essay, “Carnap, Kuhn, and the Philosophy of Scientific Methodology” in World Changes.  Earman cites several passages from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970) to make his case.  Among these are the following:

 

Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community…. When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular.  Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense. (P. 94)

 

The proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds…. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. (P. 150)

 

In these matters neither proof nor error is at issue.  The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. (P. 150) 

 

Before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift.  Just because it is a shift between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience.  Like a gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily at an instant) or not at all. (P. 150)[22]

 

It has already been established that distinctions can be seen between modernism and postmodernism.  Do these differences amount to paradigmatic shifts?  Kuhn, obviously, believes that they do.  He is not without his opponents on this count.  Bill Readings and Bennet Schaber expose the opposing views in their introduction to Postmodernism Across the Ages:  Essays for a Postmodernity That Wasn’t Born Yesterday.  Referring to Linda Hutcheon’s work, A Poetics of Postmodernism (1988), they cite her objections saying, “Linda Hutcheon thinks she doesn’t agree, since ‘post-modernism cannot be simply used as a synonym for the contemporary.’  According to Hutcheon, the postmodern is not just the look of the contemporary; it is a part of the look of the contemporary.  It is not everything, it is style.”[23]  Again, referring to Hutcheon,
Readings and Schaber state, “Postmodernism is not a simple rupture, not a ‘new paradigm’ (we agree), because ‘it is contradictory and works within the very systems it attempts to subvert.’”[24]  The controversy rages, but to what extent or what degree it contributes to the essence of the discussion is questionable.  Perhaps the issue dissolves when understood as a matter of semantic debate.  While not within the scope of this paper, it seems apparent that underlying the controversy over the paradigmatic, or non-paradigmatic nature of postmodernism is the issue of semiotics.  Semiotics is a branch of linguistic studies that deals with the relations between signs and what they refer to and including theories of denotations, extension, naming, and truth.  This does not minimize the differences of the two camps.  It actually emphasizes what may be considered the central issue.  “The worst injustice is to claim that we can find the ‘right phrase,’ overcome differences.”[25]  

Therefore, without concluding that paradigmatic shifts have occurred between modernity and postmodernity, one may inquire as to what paradigmatic shifts may have occurred.  This approach seems logical if not necessary.  

Two themes surface when one seeks to understand the differences between modernism and postmodernism.  First, an obvious discrepancy appears between modernity and postmodernity concerning the validity and nature of truth claims.  Second, an obvious variant on the nature of a text arises between modernity and postmodernity.  These shall be considered in this order.  However, it must be noted that one cannot evaluate these matters exclusively.  Each has bearing on the other.  Pauline Marie Rosenau emphasizes this when she states, “Theory implies truth, and truth, at least in the social sciences, is theoretical in character.  Post-modernists are suspicious regarding modern versions of both.  In this chapter I first discuss skeptical post-modern views of truth, especially the contention that because all knowledge is language-bound truth is forever arbitrary.”[26]  As with all issues of hermeneutics, one cannot reduce a theory or concept without considering the underlying philosophical, or, in this case, epistemological, presuppositions of the author.   

Following Rosenau’s introduction to the matter of truth claims, she further contends, “Almost all post-modernists reject truth even as a goal or ideal because it is the very epitome of modernity.  Truth is an enlightenment value and subject to dismissal on these grounds alone.  Truth makes reference to order, rules, and values; depends on logic, rationality, and reason, all of which the post-modernists question.”[27]  She is not alone in her evaluation.  McGowan, describing the development of postmodern thought in a chapter entitled “Postmodernism’s Precursors”, cites Nietzsche’s ironist theory as being the ground of postmodernism’s emphasis on negative freedom.  “Postmodernism inherits from Nietzsche an extreme version of negative freedom, the association of freedom with the detachment from determinate wholes.”[28]  Citing from Nietzsche in his popular, Will to Power (1968), McGowan emphasizes the extent of the intertwining of truth claims with language.

Nietzsche, as in this case, often denies correspondence theories of truth on the ground that all conceptual and linguistic systems inevitably falsify the actual fact of endlessly different (we might say “incommensurate”) experiences.  A metaphysical statement about the nature of reality is used to refute all human accounts of that reality, because all accounts must rely on generalizing terms…. “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live” (1966 272).  One problem, of course, concerns the truth value of this definition of truth; the statement would suggest that Nietzsche’s own claims can only be recognized as the kind of error that best suits his needs…. “We really ought to get free from the seduction of words” (1973 27), writes Nietzsche, as if we had anything else but words. [29]

 

McGowan, sarcasm notwithstanding, makes the solid identification of the distinction between modernism and postmodernism that could be termed “paradigmatic.” 

Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism sought truth as a goal, contrary to postmodernism.  McGowan targets Jacques Derrida, a leading postmodern thinker, for displaying the concomitant Nietzschean nihilism in Derrida’s work, Margins in Philosophy (1982).  “Hence I find Derrida’s thought marked everywhere by the tragic revelation of irresolvable contradictions, aporias, that we also find in Nietzsche.”[30] 

Postmodernism categorically rejects truth claims as matters of control.  McGrath states,   

A fundamental theme of modernism is its desire to control, perhaps seen at its clearest in the Nietzschean theme of ‘will to power’.  Humanity needs only the will to achieve autonomous self-definition; it need not accept what has been given to it, whether in nature or tradition.  In principle, all can be mastered and controlled.  The rejection of tradition is an integral element of this demand to master, and to achieve emancipation from any form of intellectual or social bondage.  In part, the particular emphasis placed by modernism upon the autonomy of human reason was a desire to liberate thought from what was seen as oppression of the past.[31]

 

If McGrath is correct in his estimation of modernity’s desire to control and it’s rejection of prior tradition on those grounds, one finds uniquely similar objectives in postmodernity.  Postmodernism rejects the truth claims of modernism for the same reasons modernism absolved itself of the strictures of prior tradition.  The central matter may not be objectives but, rather, means.  From postmodernity’s perspective, modernism simply replaced one truth claim with another.  Postmodernism’s denial of truth claims results in various forms of cultural or historical relativism.  Rosenau distinguishes two categories of postmodern thought into “affirmative post-modernists” and “skeptical post-modernists.”  Yet, she indicates their similar relativism stating, “Post-modernists agree that values, normative questions, feelings, and emotions are all part of human intellectual production.”[32]   

Reminded of Rosenau’s observation that knowledge is language-bound, the second potential paradigmatic shift becomes apparent.  If knowledge is indeed language-bound, either in cause or effect, the nature and status of the text becomes critical.  Postmodernism and modernism vary greatly on the nature and status of the text.  Some attention has already been given to the traditional (historical-critical) approach to the text.  While not exhaustive, it has been shown that modernism, within which the traditional approach would fall, relied heavily upon autonomous human reason unaided by revelation was sufficient to know reality and to guide life.  This presupposition relied heavily upon the historical factor.  By examination of the historical, source, form and other genres of a text the interpreter could suggest that:  here at this place and in this time these people were doing and saying things of eternal significance.  In the latter part of the twentieth century confidence in the historical-critical method began to wane.  The question that plagued students of hermeneutics focused on the capacity of language to carry meaning, effectively, beyond the parameters of culturally conditioned groups.  Semiotics and structuralism are among the theories that first ask how language and literature convey meaning.  Structuralism and semiotics recognize that communities that share a textual history reach a consensus about meaning because they share codes and conventions of expressions.  That agreement is limited to the extent that individual experiences of codes differ.  Postmodern students of literature, including biblical literature, conclude that these codes, systems or signs are closed and, therefore, ancient language refers only to itself and to no world beyond itself (incommensurability).[33]  Historical-criticism utilized a prescriptive approach to hermeneutics.  That is, by following established criteria, the meaning of a text could be discovered.  The work of Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and others developed approaches that were more descriptive in nature.  Their goal has been not to develop a specific hermeneutical strategy but rather to understand what the interpreter does when she interprets a book, human action or other text.   Following Kuhn’s description of paradigm shifts, Vorster identifies the distinction between critical and post-critical New Testament scholarship as follows: 

This concept of texts and the meaning of texts have undergone radical changes among text theorists.  In the first place the focus has shifted from the author of a text as auto-semantic unit, irrespective of author or reader, and during recent years to the reader as the instance which attributes meaning to the text.  The implication is furthermore that the status of the phenomenon text has changed completely.  Text has become totally different reality than it used to be.

 

The initial changes were brought about by text theories influenced by structural and structuralist views which entered New Testament science.  Then the so-called “New Criticism” and modern text linguistic theories started to play a role.  That is how the idea was promoted that texts should be seen in entirety, and as signs in a system of signs of communication, or even as a network of signifiers.[34]

 

Vorster considers this a new epistemological status for the phenomenon text.  He says, 

This is taken seriously by some New Testament scholars. This change, which is not restricted to New Testament science, is a direct consequence of the progress which has been made in text theory, having far-reaching implications for the way in which we view New Testament science…. This change in epistemology had direct consequences for the way in which meaning in texts is constituted.  This is the case since epistemology has to do with how we obtain knowledge.  A change in epistemological status of a phenomenon also implies other changes.  New Testament texts started to be studied within the framework of communications and therefore emphasis was put on texts as (a) system(s) of signs.  Various theories were applied to New Testament texts in order to discover how meaning of texts works.  The present attempts to interpret the New Testament narratologically, structuralistically and rheotorically, are direct consequences of the change in the epistemological status of TEXT.[35]

 

Rosenau agrees that postmodernity and modernity can be distinguished by the nature of the text.  She is, however, not in agreement that this could or should be considered “progress.”  She summarily takes issue with the postmodern transformation stating, “The post-modern text also takes on a life of its own, independent of the author and without any pretense of an objective status.  Everything comes to be defined as a text in a post-modern context, and yet the text is marked by an absence of any concrete and tangible content.”[36]  Rosenau specifies how inter-related these two possible paradigmatic shifts are when she asserts that the postmodern view of the text results in unavoidable relativism.  “Any particular truth is relevant or valid only to the members of the group or community within which it is formulated.  Knowledge, then, is relative to the community, true in terms of the beliefs of one community but not for the other communities; any rules of knowledge apply only inside the community.”[37]  Anthony Thiselton displays sensitivity to this matter as it relates to biblical hermeneutics.  He carefully charts a course of procedure for the interpreter that gives reasonable appropriation to the biblical text as well as the role of the reader-interpreter.  He lucidly states,  

At first sight, any re-definition of textuality which loosens it from its anchorage in the flow of the historical processes of which it is part may seem to compromise the status of the text and its message as “given”.  Still more clearly, a reader-oriented or audience-oriented definition of texts which locates the reader “in” the text itself as part of the text will seem to relativize and to project into a more subjective (or at least inter-subjective) realm the whole notion of what “the message of the text” might seem to be.  But here judgments are made with care.[38]   

While recognizing the potential of relativizing as a result of changing paradigms in textual theory, Thiselton proposes that when appropriate “givenness as a quality of biblical texts”[39] is emphasized no conflict with most textual theory arises. 

First of all, we suggest that appropriate emphasis on givenness in no way conflicts with the basic distinction in virtually all theories of textuality between:  (a) the capacity of the text, as a sub-system of signs operative within a life-world to communicate a message; and (b) the actualization of the text as a particular act of communication within the time-horizon of a reader or reading community.[40] 

It is not so much his argument that is of interest at this point, as it is his recognition of the potential paradigmatic shift in the nature of the text due to varying textual theories.  In assessment of the hermeneutical situation related to emerging textual theories Thiselton states his warrant for reconsidering traditional methodology,  

None of these traditional assumptions, however, can escape question if some of the competing claims about texts and textuality which have entered recent theory are deemed to be convincing or true.  The collapse of many traditional assumptions and the need to at the very least re-assess and re-formulate them arises from the invasion of hermeneutics by three sets of forces:  movement in literary theory; the development of certain strands in semiotics and deconstructionism; and the development of a tradition of sociology that owes much to the sociology of knowledge.[41]

 

In an illuminating chapter on narrative hermeneutics, Clarence Walhout discusses texts as objects of action in The Promise of Hermeneutics.  He concludes the section with a warning that demonstrates the potentiality of relativizing by stating: 

Here a cautionary note is in order. In dealing with issues of evaluation and perspective, it is of crucial importance to distinguish between the author’s evaluation and the reader’s evaluation.  Because readers bring their own perspectives to the reading of a text, it is difficult if not impossible to establish an unbiased interpretation of the author’s perspective.  And since we read not just to peer into the imagined world or to observe the author’s perspective but also to gain something for ourselves from the text, that is, something beyond the pleasure of reading, we tend to nudge the work into positions that are most useful for our purposes, and our own purposes can bias our analysis.  Any evaluation we make needs to follow an analysis of what is given in the work itself as an object of the author’s making.[42]

 

Further in the chapter he deals with texts as instruments of action, in which he addresses the matter of relativism more in-depth.  His observations demonstrate that no final consensus has been formulated regarding the nature of the text among literary and philosophical scholarship.   

Much contemporary thinking about philosophical hermeneutics can be characterized as a debate over the issue of relativism.  Is it possible after the demise of Cartesian foundationalism to establish rational standards that escape the epistemological dilemmas that the relativists point out?  On the skeptical side we find such influential thinkers as Lyotard, Derrida, Rorty, and Fish.  On the other side we find equally influential thinkers who, in spite of their differences, reject the conclusions of the radical relativists:  Levinas, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas, MacIntyre.  None of these thinkers on either side believe that a return to Cartesian foundationalism is possible, but the latter group seeks to establish a basis for thought on firmer ground than is suggested by Rorty’s call  to “continue the conversation” in the face of unanswerable questions.  What emerges in all of these thinkers is a strong sense of the historical and cultural limits that are placed on understanding, but in the latter group there is as well the belief that history and cultural experience provide new ways of conceiving of our search for normative and even universal standards of thought and action.  Historical dependence limits our understanding to something less than the Cartesian ideal, but it also enables us to reach beyond extreme forms of relativism and subjectivism.[43]  

These two major themes; the validity of truth claims and epistemological changes in the nature of the text constitute what may be deemed a paradigmatic shift.  Do they in fact demonstrate a paradigm shift?  That answer escapes this author.  This is not because the academic community fails to release modernism, but, rather, due to the fact that the community of literary, philosophical and hermeneutical specialists fail to find enough common ground.  McMullin sights Kuhn in such a case, saying: 

Kuhn has only some hints to offer:  “With respect to divergences of this sort, no set of choice criteria yet proposed is of any use.  One can explain, as the historian characteristically does, why particular men made particular choices at particular times.  But for that purpose one must go beyond the list of shared criteria to characteristics of the individuals who make the choice.  One must, that is, deal with characteristics which vary from one scientist to another without thereby in the least jeopardizing their adherence to the canons that make science scientific.”[44]

 

4.  SEARHING FOR ANY ADVANTAGES IN POSTMODERNISM FOR CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND HERMENEUTICS 

Whether the postmodern hermeneutical outlook is now a paradigm or simply a phase remains to be seen.  However, some of the new approaches do offer some interesting, if not helpful, insights.  As has already been noted, there does not exist one single characteristic feature of postmodern hermeneutics.  Perhaps stating this illuminates a feature of current methodologies that can identify this movement, namely pluralism.  The variegated approaches are seemingly endless.  Recent works on the subject of New Testament hermeneutics vividly demonstrate the manifold approaches.  Green’s Hearing the New Testament (1995), Court’s Reading the New Testament (1997), and Barton’s Biblical Interpretation (1998) contain many examples of the ways in which biblical texts are now being interpreted.  One could conclude that the emphasis in New Testament hermeneutics is no longer in discovering unifying structures, but rather, demonstrating the immense diversity among the New Testament texts themselves.   

This feature may not be new at all.  A careful examination of historical-criticism results in the conclusion that no single methodology ever truly prevailed.  While great trust was found in the power of human discovery, diversity always existed in the manner of that discovery, as well as the conclusions of such work.  Gaining competence in the use of historical-critical methods assured the scholar of a hearing in the academic community.  Yet, neither, the methods, nor the conclusions drawn from such efforts ever had absolute agreement in the academy.  Perhaps the ever-present differences among scholars caused the breakdown in confidence in historical-criticism.  Fresh perspectives began to emerge as a symptom of the differences that in turn created an atmosphere of suspicion.  Modernity, associated with historical-critical methods, fell into disfavor and as Thiselton correctly assessing the current scene of New Testament studies states, 

Yet in today’s intellectual climate, it is precisely this supposedly monolithic appearance of “modernity” – that is, of the period from the eighteenth century to roughly the 1960s—that has come under attack.  A hermeneutic of suspicion now seeks to dethrone all monolithic claims to represent a scientific “value-neutral stance outside or above history, and it calls for the breakup of such hitherto respected institutional traditions of modernity into a new pluralism that reflects differing community interests.[45]

 

It has been shown that much of the work of the historical-critic was complete upon the assessment of the sources and influences upon the text.  Further questions about the text where either extraneous or unnecessary to the scholar.  However, questions do remain.  Many of the postmodern approaches are unafraid to ask these questions.  This fact has promising impact on the Church.  While de-emphasizing history and emphasizing the reader, postmodern hermeneutics lends itself to more usefulness in diverse communities.  The fear of relativism, notwithstanding, a new interest in the New Testament cannot be seen as anything but a positive point for the Church.  The compilations cited above as postmodern strategies for interpreting the New Testament include the historical-critical method as well as subjects such as discourse analysis, genre analysis, narrative criticism, rhetorical criticism, political readings, poststructuralist approaches, feminist interpretation, and reader-response criticism.   

If one examines the philosophical landscape of postmodernity searching for an entrée  examples can be discovered.  The first of these entrance points may be the interest in reader-response criticism.  A highly controversial method of interpretation, reader-response criticism places emphasis on the reader as opposed to the historical author or authors of a text.  Resulting, are diverse readings of a text.  The nature of this approach makes it very difficult to pinpoint how it functions as a critical method.  It is this characteristic that makes it so controversial.  Great concern arises over the potential of one reading having equal value as another.  This fear of relativism is not without its basis.  Current attempts to discover the historical Jesus from a reader-response approach have rendered such varying works as the now infamous Jesus Seminar as well as more conservative examples like Tom Wright’s Christian Origins and the Question of God (1992).  Further concern about reader-response criticism is leveled at its devaluation of teaching New Testament Greek, since some feel that texts in translation are adequate for this type of criticism.  Many graduate theological schools have abandoned the requirement of original languages for those pursuing theological education, i.e., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas and

University of
South Africa.  The major concern seems to be that a declining standard has been and is being accepted.  However, the enormous rise of interest in Jesus and Bible study that has arisen cannot be overlooked.[46]  As if the Bible has been liberated from the shackles of modernity, a new desire to understand Scripture can be seen in the most unlikely places.  Home cell groups, village communities in third world countries, office work areas, school class rooms are all becoming the new halls of biblical study.  Much of this is due to reader-response criticism.  Walter Brueggeman believes this is the result of the academy changing the epistemological context in which it does its work.   

Theological thinkers have come to see, on the one hand that theology can no longer make absolute claims in a vacuum and expect ready assent.  On the other hand, this shift in categories indicates the reluctance of theology to accept any longer a muted position of marginality assigned it by the dominant position of other intellectual claims of both positivistic science and positivistic politics.

The new mode of theology now permitted and required reflects an acknowledgement that all claims of reality, including those by theologians, are fully under negotiation.  Theological discourse is prepared to and capable of participation in these negotiations, no longer pretending to be a privileged insider, no longer willing to be a trivialized outsider.[47]

 

Another entrée may well be relativism itself.  The emergence, post-Enlightenment of multiple worldviews concerns not only theologians but many other intellectuals as well.  The fact that many are driven to relativism by the failure of the Enlightenment could be construed as a symptom rather than a cause.  Undo confidence in the power to reason humanity into an era of prosperity or peace has resulted in a resignation to relativism.  Christianity has not recently been marginalized.  Its desire to be recognized as intellectually capable of withstanding the forward assault of the Enlightenment drove it to a scientific approach equal to that of secular fields.  Utilizing contemporary philosophical foundations, Christianity tried fruitlessly to maintain its standing in the academy.  Pervasive relativism and pluralism now affect every field of study.  The crisis in developed countries caused by the loss of confidence in the ideals of the “Age of Reason” gives Christianity the opportunity to demonstrate an intellectual confidence in an era of  suspicion.  Diogenes Allen explores this possibility in his intriguing work Christian Belief in a Postmodern World (1989).  He asserts, “There are two ways to deal with relativism.”[48]  Then he launches into a stimulating discussion of how Christianity can take advantage of the crisis.   

One is to examine and refute in detail all the grounds put forward for relativism in our pluralistic situation and thus to show that we can in principle succeed in our search for truth.  This would show the possibility of finding truth in various domains, but it would still leave us with the task of showing the grounds for Christian claims.  Another way to proceed is actually to give a case for the truth of Christian beliefs without directly refuting the various reasons people have today for becoming relativists.[49]

 

Following the latter course of action, Allen skillfully weaves an argument for the relation of faith with the evidence of Christianity.  The question that is pertinent in this approach is the disposition of the heart, a matter that Allen carefully examines.   

Belief, then, is not necessarily a result of credulity and nonbelief necessarily the result of a proper respect for the principle that evidence must warrant truth-claims.  A prior question is whether our hearts are open or closed to religious matters.  One whose heart is not open might agree that the existence of the universe poses a real question and that it might be a reason to say the world is created, and since religion is irrelevant to scientific progress, the question of why the universe exists is dropped.  Nature cannot be a witness to God’s existence and goodness to a person with a closed heart.  The same is true with everything that contributes to belief.  To the closed heart every indication of God in nature, history, and human nature are thought to be insufficient to establish God’s existence or irrelevant to scientific progress, and Christ is not given admittance.  How we seek –with an open or closed heart – is crucial.[50]

 

 

5.  CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE STATE OF
AFFAIRS OF POSTMODERNISM AND HERMENEUTICS 

If New Testament studies will proceed under the postmodern approach or not seems clear.  Too many questions have been raised to return undaunted to traditional historical-critical methodologies.  Historical-critical work appears to have had its day.  On the horizon are many new methodologies that can be integrated with time-tested research bringing fresh desire to New Testament research.  The course will not be easy to direct.  If postmodernism teaches us anything it is that control will be rejected.  The paradigm may not have shifted but the certainty of modernity has indeed waned.  The great challenge to New Testament scholars will be to integrate the new approaches with the old and draw from the vastness of history, ancient and recent, to provide students with renewed vigor and value in the pursuit of understanding the Bible.

---

[1] THISELTON, A., 1980.  The two horizons.
Grand Rapids:  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 11.

[2] Ibid., 11.

[3] Ibid., 15.

[4] HIRSCH, E. D., 1967.  Validity in interpretation.  New Haven and London: 

Yale
University Press, 25.

[5] SCHOLDER, K., 1990, The birth of modern critical theology. 
Philadelphia:  Trinity Press International.  3.

[6] BARTON, J., 1998.  Historical-critical approaches. In:  J BARTON, ed.  Biblical interpretation.  Cambridge, UK: 

Cambridge
University Press, 9-20.

[7] Ibid. 10.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 10-11.

[10] SCHOLDER, 70.

[11] Ibid. 71.

[12] BARTON, 11.

[13] Ibid., 11-12.

[14] ECO, U., 1989. Postscript to the name of the rose. trans. William Weaver.
San Diego:  Harcourt Brace Jovanavich, 65.

[15] INBODY, T., 1995. Postmodernism: Intellectual Velcro Dragged Across Culture.  Theology Today, 57, (4) 524.

[16] ROSENAU, P. M., 1992.  Post-modernism and the social sciences: insights, inroads, and intrusions. Princeton: 

Princeton
University Press, 6.

[17] See THISELTON, A., 1992.  New horizons in hermeneutics: the theory and practice of transforming biblical reading.
Grand Rapids:  Zondervan Publishing House, 68-79.

[18] See CASALIS, G., 1994. Correct ideas don’t fall from the skies: elements for an inductive theology.
Maryknoll, N.Y.:  Orbis Books.

[19] McGOWEN, J. 1991. Postmodernism and its critics. New York: 

Cornell
University Press, 181-182.

[20] Ibid., 183.

[21] Ibid., 188.

[22] EARMAN, J., 1993.  Carnap, Kuhn, and the philosophy of scientific methodology.  In:  P. HORWICH, ed.  World changes:  Thomas Kuhn and the nature of science.  Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
London, England:  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 19.

[23]
READINGS, B., SCHABER, B., 1993. Introduction, The question mark in the midst of modernity.  In:  B.
READINGS, B. SCHABER, eds.  Postmodernism across the ages:  essays for a postmodernity that wasn’t born yesterday.  Syracuse, New York: 

Syracuse
University Press, 6.

[24] Ibid., 7.

[25] Ibid.,14.

[26] ROSENAU, 77.

[27] Ibid.

[28] MCGOWAN, 71.

[29] Ibid., 73.

[30] Ibid., 91.

[31] MCGRATH, A., 1996.  A passion for truth:  the intellectual coherence of Evangelicalism. 
Downers Grove, Illinois:  InterVarsity Press.  30-31.

[32] ROSENAU, M., 114.

[33] MCGOWAN, J., 187-191.

[34] VORSTER, W. S., 1988.  Towards a post-critical paradigm:  Progress in New Testament scholarship?  In:  J. MOUTON, A. G. VAN AARDE, W. S. VORSTER, eds.  Paradigms and progress in theology.
South Africa:  Human Sciences Research Council, 37.

[35] Ibid., 37-38.

[36] ROSENAU., 25.

[37] Ibid., 31.

[38] THISELTON, New horizons in hermeneutics.  63.

[39] Ibid., 64.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ibid., 56.

[42] WALHOUT, C., 1999. Narrative Hermeneutics.  In: R. LUNDIN, A. THISELTON, C. WALHOUT,  eds.  The promise of hermeneutics.
Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.  89.

[43] Ibid., 91-92.

[44] MCMULLIN, E., 1993.  Rationality and paradigm change in science.  In:  P. HORWICH, ed. World changes:  Thomas Kuhn and the nature of science. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
London, England:  Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 57.

[45] THISELTON, A., 1995.  New Testament interpretation in historical perspective. In:  GREEN, J., ed. Hearing the New Testament:  strategies for interpretation. 
Grand Rapids, Michigan:  William B. Eerdmans, 17.

[46] BARZUN, J., 2000.  From dawn to decadence:  500 years of western cultural life; 1500 to the present. 
New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers.  xviii.

[47] BRUEGGEMANN, W., 1993.  Texts under negotiation:  the Bible and postmodern imagination. 
Minneapolis:  Fortress Press.  17.

[48] ALLEN, D., 1989.  Christian belief in a postmodern world:  the full wealth of conviction. 
Louisville, Kentucky:  John Knox Press.  9.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid., 14.