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Interpretation and the ‘Culture Gap’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

F. Gerald Downing
F. Gerald Downing
Affiliation:
The Northern Ordination Course, Luther King House, Manchester M14 5JP
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Extract

Presumably it is not necessary here to offer a potted history of discussions of ‘cultural relativity’ and supposed ‘culture gaps’ … we can press the story back through Professor Dennis Nineham, (and other contributors to The Myth of God Incarnate,) to T. S. Kuhn and to suggestions from Alasdair Maclntyre, and others such as Peter Winch claiming the support of Ludwig Wittgenstein. We can go. back beyond them to Rudolph Bultmann, as does Professor Joseph Runzo in his ‘Relativism and Absolutism in Bultmann's demythologising Hermeneutic’ recently in this journal. We can go back even further to Albert Schweitzer (‘Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time’) and then behind him to the Enlightenment — or at least to its immediate heirs' assessment of it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , May 1987 , pp. 161 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1987

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References

1 Nineham, D. E., The Use and Abuse of the Bible, Macmillan (London) 1976Google Scholar; Hick, J. (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate, SCM (London) 1977.Google Scholar

2 Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964Google Scholar; Maclntyre, A., ‘God and the Theologians’, Encounter, 120, Sept. 1963Google Scholar; Winch, P., The Idea of a Social Science …, Routledge, (London) 1958Google Scholar; on Wittgenstein see further Downing, F. G., ‘Games, Families, the Public and Religion’, Philosophy XLVI (Jan. 1972) 38–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Bultmann, R., e.g. in Jesus Christ and Mythology, (ET) SCM (London) 1960Google Scholar. Runzo, J., ‘Relativism and Absolutism in Bultmann's demythologising Hermeneutic’, SJT 32 (1979) 401–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Schweitzer, A., The Quest of the Historical Jesus, (ET) (3) A. & C. Black (London) 1954, 399. On the Enlightenment see further n. 7 below.Google Scholar

5 Runzo, art. cit., 418.

6 I note of late Wilson, B. (ed.) Rationality, B. Blackwell, (Oxford) 1970Google Scholar; Hollis, M. and Lukes, S., (eds.) Rationality and Relativism, B. Blackwell, Oxford, 1982Google Scholar; Davidson, D., Truth and Interpretation, OUP (New York) 1985Google Scholar; Skorupski, J., ‘Relativity, Realism and Consensus’, Philosophy 60 (July 1985) 341–358CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and G. Dawson, ‘Perspectivism in the Social Sciences’, ibid., 373–380. For earlier discussions, my own article noted at n. 2; Barton, J., ‘Cultural Relativism’, I and II, Theology LXXXII (March 1979) 103–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar and (May 1979) 191–199; and my own ‘Our Access to other Cultures’, Modern Churchman 21 (1977) 28–42.

7 (ET) SCM (London) 1984.

8 Examples of ‘background’ works would be Lohse, E., The New Testament Environment, (ET) SCM (London) 1976Google Scholar; Leaney, A. R. C., The Jewish and Christian World 200 BC-AD 200, CUP (Cambridge) 1984CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yamauchi, E., The World of the First Christians, Lion (London) 1981, best, but unevenGoogle Scholar. For illustrative texts, Kee, H. C., The Origins of Christianity, Fortress (Philadelphia) 1973Google Scholar; Cartlidge, D. R. and Dungan, D. L., Documents for the Study of the Gospels, Collins (New York) 1980Google Scholar; and Barrett, C. K., The New Testament Background, Selected Documents, SPCK (London) 1957, best of these three.Google Scholar

9 As for instance in Mealand, D. L., Poverty and Expectation in the Gospels, SPCK (London) 1980Google Scholar; Meeks, W. A., The First Urban Christians, Yale (New Haven) 1983Google Scholar

10 Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus, I ii 19–29 (W. A. Oldfather, Loeb, 1925–8); Cartlidge and Dungan, op. cit., 148–9.

11 Epictetus, ibid., II xxiv 18.

12 Epictetus, ibid., I xxiv 20.

13 Epictetus, ibid., I xxiii 8.

14 Epictetus, ibid., I xi.

15 Epictetus, ibid., Ill xxii 71–4.

16 Genesis Midrash XXVI 4 (Freedman, H. and Simon, M., Midrash Rabbah, Soncino, London, 1939).Google Scholar

17 Dio (Chrysostom) of Prusa, Discourses, 7 (J. W. Cohoon and H. L. Crosby, (Loeb). Thus Verner's, David C.The Household of God (Scholars Press, Chico, 1983), though interesting, remains very abstract until he cites an imaginary account of a young couple's tender first love-making, (55f., Xenophon of Ephesus' Ephesian Tale). But this is his sole at all extensive ‘fleshing’ of the bare bones of law and custom.Google Scholar

18 For these and much more, see Downing, F. Gerald, Strangely Familiar, published Downing, Manchester, 1985.Google Scholar

19 Austin, J. L., How to do Things with Words, Clarendon, Oxford, 1962Google Scholar; see also my ‘Meanings’ in Hooker, M. and Hickling, C., What about the New Testament? SCM (London) 1975, 127–142Google Scholar; and from a slightly different angle, J. Riches and A. Millar, ‘Conceptual Change in the Synoptic Tradition’, in Harvey, A. E. (ed.) Alternative Approaches to New Testament Study, SPCK (London) 1985, 37–60Google Scholar. Note also DrChryssides, George D., ‘Meaning, Metaphor and Meta-Theology’, SJT 38 (1985) p. 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘intellect … emotions, intentions and decisions — indeed, one might say, one's whole being.’

20 Olsted, R., ‘Wittgenstein and Christian Truth Claims’, SJT 33 (1980), 130, 129Google Scholar. His reading of Wittgenstein is similar to mine, art. cit., n. 2. The importance and propriety of asking such questions in archaeology (often taken to be purely ‘factually descriptive’) was strongly argued by DrStrange, J. F. in a paper ‘Interpretation in Archaeology’, SNTS meeting, Trondheim, 1985, Seminar on Cultural Context of Early Christianity.Google Scholar

21 Collingwood, R. G., The Idea of History, OUP (London) 1946Google Scholar.

22 See n. 18, above.

23 Epictetus, op. cit., III xxiv 16.

24 E.g. in TWNT/TDNT, ad be.

25 Epictetus, op. cit., II x 7.

26 Epictetus, op. cil., I vi 40.

27 Epictetus, op. cit., IV iii 9.

28 Earlier versions of this paper were first given to a seminar at the Manchester New Testament Conference, September 1985, and to the Wakefield Diocesan Clergy Seminar, and my thanks go to both.