Hermeneutics of Hope

The key to the hermeneutics of the historic witness of the Bible is the “future of scripture.” The question as to the correct exposition of the Old and New Testament scriptures cannot be addressed to the “heart of scripture.” The biblical scripture are not a closed organism with a heart, or a closed circle with a centre. On the contrary, all the biblical scriptures are open towards the future fulfillment of the divine promise whose history they relate. The centre of the New Testament scriptures is the future of the risen Christ, which they announce, point forward to and promise. Thus if we are to understand the biblical scriptures in their proclamation, their understanding of existence and their understanding of the world, then we must look in the same direction as they themselves do. The scriptures, as historic witnesses, are open towards the future, as all promises are open towards the future. In this sense R. Bultmann is right when he declares: “It is not at all ‘in themselves,’ nor yet as links in a causal chain, that events or historical figures are historic phenomena. They are such only in their relationship to the future, for which they have significance and for which the present has responsibility.” “Thus it is true also of scripture that it is what it is only in relation to its history and its future.” Only, this “future of scripture” does not yet lie in the several readers’ own present, but in that which gives the momentary present its orientation towards a universal, eschatological future. Hence present perception of the “future of scripture” takes place in that mission which plays its part in history and in the possibilities of changing history. The biblical witness is witness to a historic forward-moving mission in the past, and hence in the light of the present mission it can be understood for what it really is.

Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1967), 283

Neo-Orthodoxy

Between the two world wars, the work of Barth and Bultmann spawned a new theological movement called neo-orthodoxy (or dialectical theology). Dominated by Barth and another Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, three basic assumptions guided the approach of neo-orthodox theologians to biblical interpretation. First, God is a subject not an object (a “Thou” not an “It”). Thus, the Bible’s words cannot convey knowledge of God as abstract propositions; one can only know him in a personal encounter. Such encounters are so subjective, mysterious, and miraculous that they elude the objective measurements of science. Second, a great gulf separates the Bible’s transcendent God from fallen humanity. Indeed, he is so transcendent that only myths can bridge this gulf and reveal him to people. Thus, neo-orthodoxy downplayed the historicity of biblical events, preferring to view them as myths that conveyed theological truth in historical dress. Third, neo-orthodox theologians believed that truth was ultimately paradoxical in nature. Hence, they accepted opposite biblical ideas as paradoxes, thereby implicitly denying that any type of underlying rational coherence bound the diverse ideas of Scripture together.

William Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Dallas: Word, 1993) 48.

Demythologizing

The restatement of mythology is a requirement of faith itself. For faith needs to be emancipated from its association with every worldview expressed in objective terms, whether it be a mythical or a scientific one…it has tried to project God and his acts into the sphere of objective reality.

R. Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth, 210.

Demythologizing

Demythologizing is the radical application of the doctrine of justification by faith to the sphere of knowledge and thought. Like the doctrine of justification, de-mythologizing destroys every longing for security. There is no difference between security based on good works and security built on objectifying knowledge. The man who desires to believe in God must know that he has nothing at his disposal on which to build his faith, that he is, so to speak, in a vacuum.

R. Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Scribners, 1958), 84.

Existential Hermeneutics

Here is perhaps the heart of existentialism. All effort to seek the meaning of one’s life in this world, whether by money, or relationships, or accomplishments, or tradition, or anything else that one can have, is inauthentic existence, and doomed to death. Only when one looks to one’s future possibility, to what one can be, and continually decides to act on the basis of that future possibility, does one live authentically. This, says Bultmann, is love. Love seeks nothing for itself, but always denies one’s self, not seeking one’s own security, but in faith choosing insecurity, the insecurity of faith in what is not phenomenally experienced.

Dan McCartney and Charles Clayton, Let the Reader Understand (Bridgepoint, 1994), 107.

Rudolph Bultmann

In all such factual knowledge or knowledge of principles the world is presumed to have the character of something objective, passive, accessible to simple observation. That is, the world is conceived in conformity with the Greek understanding of being…In such a conception of the world as an objective entity, man himself is regarded as an object (as a fragment of the cosmos); his self-understanding is achieved along with the understanding of the world (and vice versa)…But the existence of man does not have the character of an objective entity but is historic existence; where it is recognized that man in his history can become a new person and consequently can also newly understand himself; where, therefore, it is recognized that the being of man is potentiality to be. That potentiality to be is always at risk; its possibilities are grasped each time by man in resolve, in decision. An understanding of these possibilities of man’s existence here and now would obviously be a new understanding each time, since a historical situation with its character of possibility is not understood if it is conceived as a “case” illustrating a general law. The historical situation cannot possibly be “seen” in the Greek sense as an objective fact; it can only be heard as a summons.

R. Bultmann, Faith and Understanding, ed. R. Funk and L.P. Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 187.

Rudolph Bultmann

All historical phenomena which are subject to this kind of historical investigation are only relative entities, entities which exist only within an immense inter-related complex. Nothing which stands within this inter-relationship can clam absolute value. Even the historical Jesus is a phenomenon among other phenomena, not an absolute entity.

R. Bultmann, Faith and Understanding, ed. R. Funk and L.P. Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 31.

Source Criticism

An approach to texts that seeks to discover the literary sources of a document. The assumption is that certain biblical texts underwent a lengthy process of growth and com-position, both oral and written. Source critics examine texts in order to discover evidence of sources on the basis of language and style, the use of divine names, doublets of stories and any discrepancies within or between passages. In OT studies, the most prominent field for source criticism has been the Pentateuch. Source critics, for example, observe that Genesis 1–2:4a uses the name Elohim when referring to God, and is an orderly and tightly constructed account of creation, with the humans, male and female, being the climax of creation. In contrast, Genesis 2 uses Yahweh Elohim, is a story (not a day-by-day account) and has Adam being created first, then Eve. Thus source critics conclude that these two different accounts of creation derived from two different sources, the Priestly source (P) and the Yahwist source (J) respectively. In the study of the Gospels, source critics have the four Gospels, and particularly the three Synoptic Gospels, to compare with each other in order to construct the literary sources used. Source criticism addresses the problem of disparity between styles and accounts in a single document, but does not answer the question of how these accounts now fit into a unified composition.

Arthur G. Patzia and Petrotta, Anthony J, Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 107

History of Religions School

A late nineteenth and early twentieth century “school” (German Schule) or scholarly movement that sought to interpret Judaism and Christianity in terms of their broader religious environment and historical legacy. These scholars, who were mostly German (such as H. Gunkel, W. Bousset, R. Reitzenstein, W. Wrede, R. Bultmann, W. Heitmüller), argued that Judaism and Christianity borrowed concepts, language and practices from other religious movements. So, for example, early Christian christology was indebted to a pre-Christian gnostic “primal man” myth, and there were antecedents for Christian baptism in the mystery religions. This movement is also known as the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule.

Arthur G. Patzia and Petrotta, Anthony J, Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 59

Form Criticism

An interpretive approach that seeks to uncover the oral tradition that is embedded in the written texts we now possess and to classify them into certain categories or “forms” (German Formgeschichte, “history of forms”). These literary forms (laments, hymns, etc.) are thought to have had a particular function in the Sitz im Leben (“setting in life”) in which they originated. For example, Psalm 24 has the form of an entrance liturgy and may have originated with a ceremony in which the ark was brought into the temple, or with a yearly festival in which the enthronement of the Lord was celebrated. The psalm, however, works equally well with any symbolic entrance into a worship setting (e.g., Handel’s use of this psalm in his oratorio, the Messiah). In NT studies, form-critical scholars such as Martin Dibelius, Rudolf Bultmann and Vincent Taylor classified Jesus’ sayings into categories such as paradigms, legends, parables, miracle stories and pronouncement stories. Form criticism is helpful in identifying the different forms of literature (see genre) and the typical elements of those forms (thus highlighting the different ways authors use those forms), but it is more speculative and less successful in establishing the life setting of the forms.

Arthur G. Patzia and Petrotta, Anthony J, Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 47