The inspiration of the Bible and the canon of the Bible are topics which have been matters of theological concern for Christianity from the patristic age to the present time.

• The task ofinterpreting the many passages in the biblical books, together with the principles and methods of interpretation, can also be traced through the centuries to the early history of Christianity.

• But, in contrast, the application of textual, literary, and historical criticism to the Bible has been so distinctly a development within the modern era of Christianity that only in the modern era and especially during the twentieth century has biblical criticism become a viable or necessary topic to be addressed by the systematic theologian.

I. BIBLICAL CRITICISM#

How should we understand the term ‘biblical criticism’? Probably it suffices to understand biblical criticism as the application of the principles of textual, literary, and historical criticism to the books of the Bible.

The rise and widespread usage of biblical criticism during the modem era is important not only in its own right but also, especially for systematic theology, because it has had a major impact on Christian views concerning:

• The inspiration of the Bible

• The interpretation of the Bible

• The reliability of the Bible

• The authority of the Bible

A. METHODS OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM#

The various major methods of biblical criticism which are employed today need to be defined and evaluated.

1. Textual (or Lower) Criticism

This is the science of ascertaining the true text of the Old Testament and of the New Testament in view of the variations and errors which crept in during the long period of the copying and transmission of manuscripts.

Modern printing of the New Testament, commencing with Desiderius Erasmus early in the sixteenth century, began by the rather uncritical use of late manuscripts. Such a printed text has come to be known as the Textus Receptus.

Textual criticism, probably traceable to the work of Origen in the third century A D., studies all extant manuscripts and papyrus fragments of biblical books together with the early versions (Greek, Syriac, and Latin for the Old Testament; Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Armenian for the New Testament). It posits the development of certain families in the transmission of the New Testament text and seeks to correct the Textus Receptus in the light of the great volume of textual evidence now available.

A similar but more limited task is undertaken by Old Testament textual criticism. Actually only a small portion of the Bible is under any uncertainty as to its textual authenticity, and no major doctrine is imperiled by alternate textual readings.

Some Christians who during the nineteenth or twentieth centuries have rejected as invalid literary criticism of the Bible and all other methods of biblical criticism have retained and employed textual criticism.

2. Literary (or Higher) Criticism

This is the study of the historical background, the authorship, the date of writing, the recipients, the literary genre, the philology, and the probable written sources, if any, used in the writing of the biblical books. Some refer to the study of the written sources as “source criticism” and hence differentiate “historical criticism,” encompassing historical background, authorship, date, and recipients, from source criticism.

Literary criticism of the Bible arose at least in part in the quest for explanations for numerous facts and problems such as the following:

1. The usage by New Testament writers of quotations from the Old Testament

2. Variations in the style of writing of different biblical writers

3. Variations among the Synoptic Gospels in recording the sayings of Jesus

4. Differences between the Synoptic Gospels and John’s Gospel

5. Evidences for more than one auL~or of a single biblical book (for example, Isaiah)

6. Evidences for a date of writing different from the traditional date ascribed to a given biblical book (for example, Daniel)

7. The place of human investigation and authorship in the writing of biblical books (for example, Luke 1: 1-4)

Source criticism has been employed chiefly in reference to the Pentateuch and the Synoptic Gospels. Relative to the former the employment of different divine names (“Elohim” and “Yahweh”) and other variations served as clues of the source critics, and respecting the latter the numerous variations in content and order opened the way for source criticism.

Literary criticism of the Bible has served to magnify the human factor in the Bible and to discredit those views of biblical inspiration in which the authors were utterly passive amanuenses of the Holy Spirit. In defense of literary criticism Marcus Dods wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century: “To attempt to bar out criticism by affirming inspiration is a futile enterprise.” Yet Dods also recognized that biblical criticism can be destructive.

Hence all the warnings by opponents of methods other than textual criticism against “higher criticism” were not irrelevant. Indeed, more recent biblical studies have sought to correct the excessively analytical and atomistic approach of earlier biblical critics.

3. Form Criticism

This is the study of the presumed oral forms of transmission which preceded various component parts of certain biblical books, especially the Gospels, but also the New Testament Epistles and portions of the Old Testament, and the occasions or situations (Sitzen im Leben) under which and out of which these oral forms came to be used and ultimately included in a biblical writing.

At its best, form criticism of the Gospels has focused on the period of the oral transmission of material later incorporated into a canonical Gospel.

• It has made clear, for example, that the Synoptic Gospels are not objectively scientific biographies of Jesus but rather the witness of the primitive church concerning Jesus Christ.

• It has helped to illuminate the situations in primitive Christianity which are identifiable with various units in the Gospels.

On the other hand, form criticism has received some negative evaluations. Under its impact the Gospels have lost any semblance of chronology. Units of Gospel material are like pearls which have been removed from a necklace and which no one knows how to restring properly.

Form critics deemphasize written sources for the canonical Gospels and tend to ignore the divine inspiration of the New Testament. Even the classifications of “forms” have been highly suspect.

But some British and American scholars have made more “cautious” and “productive use” of form criticism of the New Testament. These include Burton Scott Easton (1877-1950), Vincent Taylor, and Harvey Eugene Dana (1888-1945) on the Fourth Gospel, and Charles Harold Dodd andJoachimJeremias, a German, on the parables of Jesus.

4. Redaction Criticism

This is the study of the theological motivation of an author or compiler as this is revealed in the collection, arrangement, editing, and modification of traditional material, and in the composition of new material or the creation of new forms within the traditions of early Christianity.

Gunther Bomkamm (1905-1990), Hans Conzehnann (1915-), and Willi Marxsen (1919-) launched redaction criticism, called by some “composition criticism,” after World War II. Norman Perrin (1920-76) connected the rise of redaction criticism with the “fall” of the hypothesis of Marean priority, built as it was on the idea that Mark’s Gospel was historical and free of theological presuppositions.

Thus far redaction criticism has been limited to the Synoptic Gospels. The method may be too young for full assessment to be made of its work. The systematic theologian, however, cannot afford to be indifferent to this effort to ferret out and interpret the theological motivations of the Synoptists. On the other hand, redaction criticism tends to be indifferent to historical facticity and to attribute too much theological expertise to the Evangelists.

5. Canonical Criticism

The most recently developed study of biblical criticism has been canonical criticism, of which the leading proponents have been James A Sanders (1927-) and Brevard S. Childs. In one sense it is the logical successor to source, form, and redaction criticism. Moreover, it gathers up into itself the process of biblical canonization, especially the sixth century B. C. and the first century A.D., but moves on beyond.

It focuses on how the biblical stories were told and retold within canonical Scripture. But canonical criticism is also a hermeneutical method that begins with the hermeneutic embedded within the Bible and magnifies the context of the community of faith. It purports to provide the churches of the present age with the proper “stance” from which to read the Bible as Holy Scripture.

Hence, canonical criticism may serve as an excellent bridge from biblical criticism to biblical hermeneutics.

B. ASSESSING BIBLICAL CRITICISM#

In the various definitions previously offered for the differing methods of biblical criticism, one may take note that:

• Textual criticism was defined as a “science”

• Literary criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, and canonical criticism as “studies”

This distinction recognizes that textual criticism deals with literary documents-manuscripts, papyrus fragments, versions-and draws its conclusions largely on the basis of findings from existing documents.

In some other branches of biblical criticism probable conclusions are drawn:

• From projected source documents (J, E, D, and P for the Pentateuch; Q for the Synoptic Gospels)

• From projected classifications of Gospel materials in their oral form

• From the probable theological presuppositions of the Gospel writers

The subjective factor seems to play a greater role under these methods than under textual criticism. Awareness of the subjective factor should help the ordinary student of the Bible to be able to weigh or evaluate some of the conclusions drawn by the experts in biblical criticism.

Biblical criticism should not be regarded as a veritably infallible body of esoteric truth, the key to which is only in the hands of the experts. Rather the conclusions drawn in the various branches of biblical criticism must always be tested and retested in relation to other branches of biblical study, other theological disciplines, related secular disciplines, and the needs of the churches.

During the twentieth century it was common for biblical critics and others to speak of “the assured results of biblical criticism.” These words were designed to emphasize that certain findings of biblical critics had attained wide acceptance and could be regarded as no longer a matter of dispute or question. Such language, of course, has its place when used to refer to obviously accepted conclusions such as:

• Daniel and Revelation belong to the genre of apocalyptic writings

• The content of John’s Gospel differs considerably from that of the Synoptic Gospels

• The apostle Paul seems not to have written the Epistle to the Hebrews

But such language needs to be coupled with the words “the criticism of criticism,” by which is meant the continued testing, evaluation, and assessment of the conclusions advanced by biblical critics. The assessment process and the acceptance process can proceed concurrently, but both are needed. Furthermore, the assessment process can sometimes confirm the conclusions of biblical criticism and at other times invalidate such conclusions.

Three examples can be cited wherein major conclusions by certain biblical critics during the modem era have been found subsequently to be untenable or to need to be balanced by other considerations.

• First, in the mid-nineteenth century Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) of Tiibingen applied Hegel’s dialectic to early Christian history.

As a result he seemingly posited a clash between the Petrine party (thesis) and the Pauline party (antithesis) and concluded that the primitive church (synthesis) was the result of that clash. Baur’s hypothesis was not universally accepted in his own time, and it has few advocates today if by “advocates” we mean those who would hold to it as a comprehensive explanation of early Christian origins.

• Second, the source-document hypothesis (J, E, D, P) concerning the Pentateuch was shaped and defended by Old Testament scholars, notably, K. H. Graf (1815-69), Abraham Kuenen (1828-91), and Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918).

Although resisted by more conservative biblical scholars and by many Christian believers, this hypothesis was the regnant view of the origin of the Pentateuch among Old Testament critical scholars for half to three-fourths of a century. But today Old Testament critics themselves are emphasizing much more the oral transmission of Pentateuchal materials and have modified the Graf-Kuenen-Wellhausen view.

• Third, Rudolf Bultmann advocated a theory concerning the predominance of the Hellenistic and Gnostic backgrounds to the New Testament, especially in reference to the Fourth Gospel.

Such a theory entailed the rather late dating of some New Testament writings and involved a deemphasis on the Old Testament as the most important background to the New Testament. But more recently Bultmann’s approach has been counterbalanced by a greater stress on the Jewish background to the New Testament and a movement toward the earlier dating of New Testament books.

• Joachim Jeremias showed the importance of the Aramaic language and rabbinical materials

• Robert McQueen Grant (1917-) clarified heretical Judaism, including Jewish forms of Gnosis and Gnosticism, thus making the theory of predominant Hellenistic influence less convincing

• William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971) saw the Gospel of John as both very Jewish and historically reliable and concluded from Qumran organization and concepts oflight and darkness at Qumran that a pre-fall of Jerusalem dating of many New Testament books was probable

• John A. T. Robinson surprisingly pushed the cause of early dating.

Thus what Edgar Martin Krentz (1928-) has referred to as the “self-correcting” aspects of biblical criticism goes on.

II. BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS#

Consideration of inspiration, canon, and criticism must inevitably lead to the principles and methods by which the biblical text ought to be interpreted. Biblical hermeneutics is the study of such principles.

It may be defined more extensively as the study of the approach(es) needed to bring the true meaning of an ancient Israelite or Christian canonical writing to the consciousness of the present-day interpreter or reader so that he /she may hopefully discern, hear, and heed the Word of God.

Also useful may be a differentiation between “exegesis” and “interpretation.”

• Exegesis is the more careful and detailed examination of all aspects of a biblical text by use of the original language of that text.

• Interpretation is the more practical effort to derive the meaning of the text, both for its author and original recipients and for Christians or the church today.

Both exegesis and interpretation should proceed from some general or guiding principle or principles. These constitute the hermeneutic of the exegete or the interpreter.

A. CLASSICAL BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION#

It is desirable to examine the major methods of biblical interpretation that flourished or prevailed prior to the modern era.

1. Typological Method

This is the hermeneutic of types and antitypes.

• “Types” are the anticipated counterparts, prefigurations, or foregleams in the Old Testament of truths in the New Testament.

• “Antitypes” are those truths in the New Testament which are anticipated by and matched with types.

Typology is to be found among the Christian writings of the second century; the Epistle of Barnabas contains numerous types and antitypes, and the Commentary on Daniel by Hippolytus of Rome, the oldest extant biblical commentary, uses typology. Such patristic use of types did not involve the elimination of the literal sense of the text.

Geoffrey William Hugo Lampe (1912-80) has insisted that both type and antitype be firmly rooted in history and has rejected that typology which veers into allegory, having a correspondence “between the earthly and the heavenly, the shadow and the reality,” rather than between “the past and the future, the foreshadowing and the fulfillment.”

Whatever legitimate use may be made of typology today, it can hardly serve as the most basic hermeneutical principle.

2. Allegorical Method

This is the hermeneutic of the hidden spiritual meaning or meanings. Allegory, according to R. P. C. Hanson, “is a method of interpreting Scripture whereby the text is made to yield a meaning which is other than its literal or surface or historical meaning.” Allegorical interpretation is predicated on the concept of Scripture as “a vast ocean, or forest, of mysteries” or “a patchwork of symbolism.”

Building on the foundation laid by Clement of Alexandria (c.150 before 215), Origen employed a threefold hermeneutic. Accordingly there are three possible meanings of a biblical text, although not every text indeed has three meanings.

• The first meaning is “the fleshly,” literal, or historical meaning

• The second is “the psychic,” moral, or typological meaning

• The third is “the spiritual,” or allegorical meaning

Augustine of Hippo allowed for four possible meanings of a biblical text:

• The historical

• The etiological (which sets forth a cause)

• The analogical (which would harmonize the testaments)

• The allegorical or figurative

Patristic and medieval interpreters commonly sought and explicated allegorical meanings in biblical texts. The fourfold sense used by Thomas Aquinas (literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical) was also employed by Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270-1340).

Although allegory is to be found in the New Testament (Gal. 4:22), Christians in the modern era would be well advised to be aware of the fanciful and imaginative extremes to which allegorical interpretation has led and the neglect of literal or historical meanings which it has often caused.

3. Dogmatic Method

This is the hermeneutic of dogmatic or doctrinal presuppositions. During the patristic, medieval, and Reformation periods this method was frequently and widely employed by such authors as Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, the Scholastic theologians, and various Protestant Reformers.

An example of such interpretation may be found in the Christo logical exposition of Ps. 8:1 by Martin Luther. In explaining the words, “O Lord, our Lord,” Luther stated that

• The first “Lord” is indicative of Christ’s divinely given name and hence points to the deity of Jesus Christ

• The second “Lord” (Adonai) is his humanly given name and points to the humanity of Jesus Christ. Yet he is one person

But one may raise a very legitimate question: Does the Bible not contain doctrinal teachings or emphases, and should not good interpretation always allow for such teaching to be faithfully exhibited?

Yes, doctrinal teachings that are intended by the author and are endemic to the passage should be accurately reflected in the interpretation. But dogmatic hermeneutics involves bringing into the text and its interpretation doctrinal teachings derived from another biblical writer or from postbiblical Christian history.

4. Mystical Method

This is the hermeneutic of the way of the mystic. Mysticism is understood as “the theory of the direct contact of human consciousness with the realm of deity.” The mystical method may be used together with the allegorical method by the same interpreter.

Some mystics have denied the necessity for any historical revelation of God. Nevertheless the mystical method has been applied to the interpretation of the Bible. Hugh of St. Victor (1097?-1142) and Bernard of Clairvaux (1091?-1153) were representative of this method. Bernard in his interpretation of the Song of Solomon emphasized the love which Christ as the Bridegroom has for the redeemed soul.

Like the allegorical method, the mystical may downplay the literal or historical sense of the text. It may have difficulty in preserving the mediatorial office of Christ.

The typological, the allegorical, the dogmatic, and the mystical methods, although they were not without exponents during the twentieth century, were largely displaced by the rise and widening acceptance of the historical-critical method.

5. Grammatical-Historical Method

Some discern another classical method of biblical interpretation, namely, the grammatical-historical method. Focusing on word meanings and word relationships and with some consideration of historic context, it has magnified the so-called literal sense.

• Theodore of Mopsuestia in the fifth century has been seen as its forerunner

• Pietists such as August Hermann Francke (1663-1727) and Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687-1752) as practitioners

• Johann August Ernesti (1707-81) as contributing to verbal grammatical exegesis

Conservative Protestants of the modem era have espoused and sought to practice it.

B. THE HISTORICAL-CRITICAL METHOD#

Theodore of Mopsuestia, the prolific biblical commentator who was so very representative of the school of Antioch, and John Calvin, one of the two most prolific biblical commentators of the Protestant Reformation, worked in ways similar to what is now called the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation and may be said in some measure to have anticipated such a method.

The historical-critical method seeks to interpret a text in view of lexical, grammatical, syntactical, comparative lexical, author-related, literary, comparative religious, secular historical, and other factors or to see the text, so far as possible, in the light of its total context and situation.

1. Contributions of the Historical-Critical Method

This method has brought to light or made more evident certain truths pertaining to the nature of revelation and of the Bible as historical. Included among those truths or values are the following:

1. Biblical interpretation should begin in the strange ancient world of the Bible, not in the traditions of later Christianity or the experience of present-day Christians.

2. Biblical interpretation needs to be in context.

A given biblical text or passage should be understood in reference to the preceding and succeeding verses and chapters. Either “proof-text” hunting or excessive biblical literalism can lead to misinterpretations of the Bible. Furthermore, the Old Testament should be interpreted in context and not merely in an effort to make the Old Testament say in advance precisely what the New Testament was later to say.

3. A biblical passage or text has only one meaning or sense, not several.

By “meaning or sense” is meant that which was intended by the author or compiler. The Protestant Reformers, rejecting the medieval fourfold sense of Scripture, insisted upon unus simplex sensus (one single sense) or sensus historicus sive grammaticus (the historical or grammatical sense).

Three important qualifications respecting the single sense of a biblical text need carefully to be noted.

• One is that the single sense in itself does not determine whether a given text should be taken literally or figuratively. Such a determination must be made on other grounds.

• The second is that the single sense does not preclude or prevent the making of multiple applications of the passage in the modern situation.

• The third is that Roman Catholic hermeneutics has made a place for the sensus plenior (fuller sense) of biblical texts, whereby the church discerns the sense or senses intended by God on the basis of further revelation or understanding, and such is placed alongside the author’s intended meaning.

4. The historical revelation of God recorded in the Bible was situational; that is, God addressed himself to human beings in their personal, social, geographical, and chronological settings.

Some theologians and biblical scholars, sometimes citing Heb. 1:1-3, Matt. 5:17, and Gal. 4:4, have gone on to assert that the revelation was “progressive” in nature. Such language may at times have been misused.

“Progressive revelation” ought not to be used to mean progression from error to truth, a straightline naturalistic evolution of religious concepts, or a view that denies or obscures Israel’s disobedience or retrogressions concerning the revelation. If used, it should mean that God’s revelation was conditioned on God’s awareness of the condition of human beings, especially of the Israelites, and his willingness to disclose himself meaningfully and redemptively to human beings (Israelites) in their situations.

The interpreter, however, must distinguish between God’s will or God’s ultimate ideal or God’s fully revealed truth on the one hand and man’s imperfect perception of or response to or obedience to the divine revelation on the other hand.

Accordingly, Old Testament divorce practices (Matt. 19:3-12) and rejoicing at the destruction of the children of one’s enemies (Ps. 137:8-9) are not to be taken as indications of God’s perfect will but of imperfect and sinful Israelite perception and the accommodation of God’s will in practice.

5. In the biblical record of a historically mediated revelation of God distinction must be made between the passing and the permanent, between the culturally restricted and the universally applicable.

Two illustrations may help to clarify the nature of this distinction.

Christians have made a distinction, which is traceable at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas, between the ceremonial law and the civil law of the Pentateuch as passing and therefore not binding on the Christians and the moral law of the Pentateuch as permanent and binding on Christians. Such a distinction was, of course, without precedent in Judaism.

Most Protestant denominations observe only two “sacraments” or “ordinances,” baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These they regard as practices to be observed in perpetuity during the Christian era, whether because of their symbolic and didactic functions vis-a-vis the death and resurrection of Jesus or for other reasons. The Brethren (Dunker) tradition, on the contrary, holds that the washing of disciples’ feet is also to be practiced as a church ordinance. The rationale offered by other denominations to the Brethren for not observing footwashing today may rest on the premise that such a practice was in Jesus’ time connected with the dusty roads and sandals worn in Palestine.

2. Alien Presuppositions Conditioning the Use of the Historical-Critical Method

Some practitioners of the historical-critical method have assumed presuppositions for their work which are alien or hostile to the biblical revelation attested to and embodied in the Bible. Especially has this been true of presuppositions drawn from either positivism or historicism or both. Those who have employed the historical-critical method with positivist presuppositions have been antimetaphysical and antitheological, insisting that knowledge can come “only by observation and experience. “The result can easily be a totally human Bible and a humanized form of biblical religion.

Historicism is the view that the history of anything, pointing to its origins, can fully account for its nature and values. It has tended to be antisupematural. Building on Ernst Troeltsch’s third principle, historicism would expunge divine causation from the biblical record and deny the possibility of miracle. According to historicism, history cannot serve as the bearer of the unique or the eternal.

Ernst Troeltsch’s third principle is that of correlation, which “allows only causation that is not theological or transcendent”.

In the eighteenth century onward, some users of the historical-critical method have sought to put a “cleavage between Scripture and the Word of God.”

3. Recent Criticisms of the Historical-Critical Method

Within the last three decades substantive criticism of the historical-critical method has surfaced outside the repeated objections of Fundamentalists. Such has occurred among German Protestant scholars. Theologians and exegetes such as Friedrich Mildenberger, Wolfhart Pannenberg,Jiirgen Moltmann, Peter Stuhlmacher (1932-), Ferdinand Hahn (1926-), and Martin Hengel (1926-) have participated in the critical reassessment of the historical-critical method.

One of the most thoroughgoing critiques, however, has been that of Gerhard Maier. Of his six criticisms of the use of the historical-critical method three are especially forceful:

• The method has not presented “a single ‘divine’ and ‘human’ Bible”

• Has not been “able to grasp the person-structure of the Bible”

• Has tilted its conclusions against the reality of divine revelation

Such increasing criticism of this major method of biblical intetpretation would seem to place on all its contemporary users some responsibility for responding to and evaluating the new critiques.

4. Present Alternatives concerning the Historical-Critical Method

Two major options seem to be available to present-day employers of the historical-critical method of biblical intetpretation.

• One would be to abandon this method and to adopt instead another method, either one of the classic methods or one of the contemporary methods.

• The other would be to correct, reform, or redirect the prevailing historical-critical method.

George E. Ladd advocated biblical-critical work by evangelical scholars. He was fully aware of the naturalistic and humanistic presuppositions assumed by many of the shapers of the historical-critical method. He knew that biblical criticism had “undermined confidence in the Bible as the Word of God” and had “resulted in violent controversy in the churches.”

But he declared that “biblical criticism properly defined is not an enemy of evangelical faith, but a necessary method of studying God’s Word, which has been given to us in and through history.” Hence he admonished evangelical Protestant scholars to assume a greater portion of the task of biblical criticism, the validity of which hinges on the fact that the Bible is “both the words of men and the Word of God.

C. CONTEMPORARY TRENDS IN BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION#

Perhaps never in Christian history has biblical interpretation been so greatly influenced by literary, philosophical, and cultural influences as during the final years of the twentieth century. What may initially appear as an unidentifiable maze of hermeneutical postures has been discussed by some authors with clarity under a threefold rubric: author-oriented, text-oriented, and reader-oriented hermeneutics.

1. Author-Oriented Hermeneutics

Author-oriented hermeneutics, which centers in the biblical author’s intended meaning, has a long history and was basic to the grammatical-historical and historical-critical methods. During the 1960s and 1970s Eric Donald Hirsch, Jr. (1928-), professor of English in the University of Virginia, published two books supportive of authorcentered interpretation of texts as normative.

Hirsch distinguished between

• A text’s “meaning,” which is “what the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence”

• A text’s “significance,” which is “a relationship between that meaning and a person, or a conception, or a situation, or indeed anything imaginable”

Authors utilize “language conventions” to control a text’s meaning. Authorial intention must be found in the text. Interpreters, therefore, should not disregard authorial intention.

2. Text-Oriented Hermeneutics

Paul Ricoeur (1913-) has been a leading exponent of text-oriented interpretation. He has focused on the results or the achievements of the text, which can be discerned despite the temporal-cultural separation of interpreter from author and the impossibility of interrogation of the author.

“In many ways” Ricoeur’s method “closely parallels” Hans Georg Gadamer’s ( 1900-2002) “fusion of horizons which occurs when the text is disclosed to the reader.”

Structuralist hermeneutics also reflects the text-oriented approach. Arising from the work of such scholars as Ferdinand de Saussure (1854-1913), a Swiss linguist, Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-), a French anthropologist, and Roland Gerard Barthes ( 1915-80), a French literary critic, structuralism is an interdisciplinary “method” and “ideology” which seeks to identify the “deep structure” that brought about a given text, thus focusing on a “poetic or aesthetic” study. Language systems have “binary oppositions” (such as life/death and male/female), and structuralism engages in “synchronic study” rather than tracing the development of language diachronically.

Inasmuch as language is ontological, “significations are imposed upon man.” Structuralist exegesis has seived to reestablish “the text itself as the center of biblical scholarship” but can hardly suffice as the only method of interpretation, for it has “an antipathy toward history.”

3. Reader-Oriented Hermeneutics

Reader-oriented interpretation puts the stress on the meaning supplied by the postbiblical, i.e., modern, reader or readers of a text.

• Its practitioners tend to magnify the great distance or gulf between the biblical authors and modern interpreters as to time, culture, and language.

• Its goal is for the reader/interpreter “to come to a common understanding about something of interest to both reader and author.”

• Its conclusion is that the reader-derived meaning usually “exceeds and is broader than the meaning” of the author.

Post-Bultmannian existentialist hermeneutics, as represented by Gerhard Ebeling (1912-), and Ernst Fuchs (1903-1983), although making an effort to take history more seriously than had Bultmann, nevertheless made the focus of biblical interpretation to be existentialist philosophy and the modern human situation.

Hans Georg Gadamer, turning from existentialism to linguistics, sought “the vital knowledge of the subject matter [die Sache] that” can “emerge from a text’s language” when reader and author have been in conversation. What the text means to the reader far outweighs any meaning intended by the author.

Reader-oriented interpretation has also been reflected in the hermeneutics of liberation theology and of feminist theology.

• Some have interpreted as an expression of reader-response hermeneutic the movement known as narrative criticism, which focuses on the narratee as well as the narrator

• Others have advocated reader-response as the legitimate future hermeneutics.

But the most radical form of reader-oriented interpretation now appears to be that influenced by the deconstructive branch of postmodernism. Rejecting any “objectivity of reality,” the “referential understanding oflanguage,” and the “correspondence theory oftruth,” deconstructionism, as spearheaded by Jacques Derrida (1930-) and Mark C. Taylor (1945-), divests the biblical author and the biblical texts of any ultimate truth and makes language to be an unending succession of signs.

CONCLUSION#

Author-oriented and text-oriented trends would seem to be more highly regarded among contemporary Evangelical Protestants because of their compatibility with the doctrines of biblical inspiration, biblical truthfulness, and biblical authority.

Hence there would be limited use, if any, of reader-oriented interpretation, unless it should stay under the control of the author and the text.

The task of interpreting the Bible goes on, even while discussion of principles and methods of interpretation takes place. Whatever decisions are to be made, the goal should continue to be the most accurate, balanced, and responsible unfolding of the meaning of the biblical text, which is inspired in its nature and form, so that human beings at the dawn of the twenty-first century may hear and heed the Word of God.