Community Hermeneutics

Reading within community occurs as we approach the text conscious that we are participants in the one faith community that spans the ages. This consciousness involves recognizing the theological heritage within which we stand as contemporary readers of the text. Because we come to the text as participants in a trajectory of faith--because we come as those who seek to understand the whole of scripture as the instrumentality of the Spirit's speaking to us--we do well to keep in view what the church through the ages has considered this biblical "whole" to be.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 91.

Subjective Reading

Biblical scholars have been slow to awaken from the dream in which positivist science occupies a space apart from interests and values, to awaken to the realization that our representations of and discourse about what the text meant and how it means are inseparable from what we want it to mean, from how we will it to mean.

George Aichele in Grenz, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 85.

Illumination and Subjectivity

A theology of Word and Spirit need not lapse into subjectivism, however. What leads to subjectivism is the articulation of such as theology in the context of a basically individualistic understanding of the event of revelation. In other words, the problem of subjectivism arises only when we mistakenly place the individual ahead of the community...We, in turn, acknowledge individually that the Bible is scripture because we participate in this listening and confessing people. And it is this corporate confession of the Bible as scripture taht forms the context for our hearing the Spirit voice in its pages as well. Our participation in the Spirit-illumined congregation facilitates our personal experience of the Spirit's illuminating work.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 68

Authority of Scripture

The ultimate, final authority is not Scripture but the living God himself as we find him in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and the message about him constitute the material norm for our faith just as the Bible is the formal norm. The Bible is authoritative because it points beyond itself to the absolute authority, the living and transcendent Word of God.

Donald Bloesch in Grenz, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 67.

Westminster Confession of Faith

The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of counsels, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other than the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

The Danger of Theological Systems

In effect, the scholastic theological agenda meant that the ongoing task of reading the Bible as text was superseded by the publication of the skilled theologian's magnum opus. If the goal of the theological inquiry was to extrapolate the system of propositions the divine Communicator had inscripturated in the pages of the text, it would seem that systematic theology could--and eventually would--make the Bible superfluous. Why should the sincere believer continue to read the Bible when biblical truth--correct doctrine--is more readily at hand int he latest systematic compilation offered by the skilled theologian? Why read, that is, for any reason except to determine for oneself that the theologian's conclusions are indeed biblical truth--that this theologian had captured the one, true biblical system of doctrine?...In this way, theologians exchanged the desire to give voice to the text itself for the attempt to read through the texts to the doctinal system the texts concealed. Despite the well-meaning, lofty intentions of conservative thinkers to honor the Bible as scripture, their approach in effect contributed to the silencing of the text in the church.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 63.

Making the Bible Relevant

If the Bible has grown strangely silent in the church, we might follow the pathway suggested by commentators such as Hans Frei and lay the blame for this tragedy at the feet of theologians and biblical scholars themselves Of course, Christian thinkers did not set out to silence scripture. Rather, the Bible's loss of voice came as an unintended result of well-intentioned persons who sought to recover the Bible and save theology in the wake of the Enlightenment. The irony of this situation is that in a sense scripture caught laryngitis from its would-be physicians.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 58-59.

Wittgenstein

For Wittgenstein, meaning and truth are not related--at least not directly or primarily--to an external world of "fact" waiting to be apprehended. Instead, they are an internal function of language. Because the meaning of any statement is dependent on the context--that is, on the "language game"--in which it appears, any sentence has as many meanings as contexts in which it is used. Rather than assertions of final truth or truth in any final ultimate sense, all our utterances can only be deemed "true" within the context in which they are spoken. Further, viewing language as a "game" presumes that language does not have its genesis in the individual mind grasping a truth or fact about the world and then expressing it in statements. Rather, language is a social phenomenon, and any statement acquires its meaning within the process of social interaction.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2001), 42.