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.

At the same time as I was becoming acclimated to this new hermeneutical environment, I was also - because of my extra-curricular reading - thinking about the reader’s involvement in the generation of meaning. I was becoming increasingly concerned that neither of the prevalent views on campus - or within evangelical theology with rare exception - considered the reader’s involvement in interpretation as anything other than a receiver of data; that is, as far as the text’s meaning was concerned, the reader was to be a passive agent in the reading process.

It wasn’t just that the prevalent views did not consider the reader’s involvement in the determination of meaning, but they actively resisted such involvement. The fear was that if readers constructed meaning in texts, then the reader would have authority over the text, and not visa versa. Or, more bluntly put: scripture, if it is to function as such, has to be normative; if readers create the text’s meaning it loses it’s normative status - it ceases to function as scripture. This is a serious critique, and not to be taken lightly.

But by this time, I was becoming convinced that readers construct meaning, whether we like it or not; resisting the reader’s involvement in the creation of meaning was like resisting gravity: noble perhaps, but completely futile.

About this time I started working in a pastoral role in my church, and because of this dropped to part time at Multnomah. My two classes were Hermeneutics, in which the “authorial intent” (LGH) approach was taught as the only viable option, and Advanced Writing, in which were were given the opportunity to write a big research paper on whatever topic we wished. So, having a light class class load and a pressing theological problem, I went to town.

My paper, which was some 50 pages long by the time I was done (which the particularly masochistic can read here) was entitled: “Presuppositions, Situated-ness, and Hermeneutics: An Essay on the Possibility of (Almost) True Knowledge.” In it, I argued that humans construct meaning, that our brains act as machines for generating meaning and are not “wax tablets” upon which sensations are impressed. I then described how that process did not disqualify our knowledge from being authentic. The reading process, and the process of deciding on the “meaning of the text,” then, is always a process of “approaching” and never one of “achieving” I would only much later see this “provisionally” in meaning making to be connected to our anthropology: our knowledge is provisional because we are both created of God and Fallen.

At this point I felt like I had achieved a great success, having thought through a dense philosophical problem and having articulated my solution. And, in a sense, it was: but the sense of satisfaction was short lived. Still a student at Multnomah, I was beginning to see that my new found hermeneutical answers led me in different theological directions than were offered by the school textbooks and classes. And the direction I was heading was for me, and in that community, an uncharted land. Terra Incognito.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Books, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.