Fallen Into Knowledge

Critical: (a continuation of my hermeneutic story)

Having wetted my appetite for things hermeneutical during my first year at PSU, for unrelated reasons I left there for Multnomah Bible College: having read Homer and Plato, I wanted to learn greek and at that time PSU did not offer the language. While I wasted no time jumping into my greek studies, all Multnomah students take Bible and Theology classes, and so I soon found myself in a class called, “Bible Study Methods.” Bible Study Methods was, and is, an embodiment of the New Critical approach to texts which I had been attracted to at PSU. While the class was chiefly directed at teaching students specific tools, I particularly relished the times when the class discussion turned philosophical - having been pre-prepared for such discussions at PSU. I soon found out that the New Critical approach was not the only hermeneutical approach represented on campus: in fact, there seemed to be two factions. There were those who followed the ‘cutting edge’ (sic) “text-centered” approach” and those who retained the more traditional “authorial intent” (hisorical/literal/grammatical) approach. Functionally, at Multnomah, this meant that those who favored the “text-centered” approach eschewed any “historical background” material or research, which the “authorial intent” folks embraced it.
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