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Pre-Understanding and New Testament Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Geoffrey Turner
Geoffrey Turner
Affiliation:
St Mary's CollegeSt Andrews, Fife
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Extract

Almost all recent discussion in theological hermeneutics has been so abstract that it has had little relevance for the more practical task of the interpretation of biblical texts. This has largely been caused by the prominence in this discussion of proponents of ‘The New Hermeneutic’ who have had a predominantly existential interest in understanding the New Testament, but who represent only one of several alternatives in theological hermeneutics. Moreover, their exegesis has often been unreliable, to put it mildly.1 The chief deficiency of the New Hermeneutic is that it is concerned with the existential situation of the believing Christian, but hardly at all with the understanding and interpretation of texts. It is certainly true that theological hermeneutics can no longer provide a set of rules or principles for the extraction of the correct meaning from the text as was attempted in the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century, but hermeneutics can still analyse the process and structure of understanding which takes place in New Testament exegesis and can encourage self-reflection and self-criticism on the part of exegetes themselves. The task which now deserves attention, and which has for so long been neglected, is to relate the work done on the problem of hermeneutics by dogmatic theologians to the specific projects of interpretation carried out by New Testament exegetes. In this article I shall try to do just that by focusing attention on one particular problem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , June 1975 , pp. 227 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1975

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References

page 227 note 1 See, for example (an example which in its own way is now as classical as Augustine's interpretation of the Good Samaritan), Fuchs, E., Hermeneutik, Ergänzungsheft to the 3rd edition (Bad Cannstatt, 1963), pp. 9–13Google Scholar, in which Fuchs ‘interprets’ the opening of John's Gospel.

page 228 note 1 Cf. Barthes, Roland, ‘Critics Abroad’, Times Literary Supplement, 27 Sept. 1963, p. 739Google Scholar: ‘How can anyone believe that a given work is an object independent of the psyche and personal history of the critic studying it, with regard to which he enjoys a sort of extraterritorial status?’

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page 229 note 2 ibid.

page 229 note 3 Dilthey, W., ‘Die Entstehung der Hermeneutik’, Gesammelte Schriften, 5, p. 329Google Scholar, quoted by Bultmann, R. in ‘The Problem of Hermeneutics’, Essays Philosophical and Theological (London, 1955), p. 238.Google Scholar

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page 232 note 2 ibid., p. 73.

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page 234 note 1 Observe, for example, the way in which nineteenth-century German theologians used Geist to interpret πνεμα.

page 235 note 1 R. Bultmann, ‘Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?’, op. cit., p. 345.

page 236 note 1 Harnack's final letter to Karl Barth originally published in Die Chrislliche Welt, and now available in a translation by Rumscheidt, H. M., Revelation and Theology: An Analysis of the Barth-Harnack Correspondence of 1923 (London, 1972), p. 53.Google Scholar

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page 238 note 1 Habermas, J., Knowledge and Human Interests (London, 1972)Google Scholar; see also Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge (London, 1958)Google Scholar for a discussion of the same theme in terms of scientific knowledge (i.e. the natural sciences).

page 239 note 1 J. Habermas, op. cit., p. 196.

page 239 note 2 ibid., p. 198.

page 239 note 3 ibid., pp. 309f.

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