Inerrancy and disunity

N.T. Wright observes, "It seems to be the case that the more you insist that you are based ont eh Bible, the more fissiparous you become; the church splits up into more and more little groups, each thinking that they have got biblical truth right." Likewise,Kevin Vanhoozer admits that "inerrancy--the belief that the Bible speaks truly in all that it affirms--does not necessarily generate interpretative agreement among those who hold to it...It is one thing to posit the Bible's truthfulness in all that it affirms, quite another to say what the truth of the Bible is." Similarly, D.A. Carson notes that "I apeak to those with a high view of Scripture: it is very distressing to contemplate how many differences there are among us as to what Scripture actually says...The fact remains that among those who believe the canonical sixty-six books are nothing less than the Word of God written there is a disturbing array of mutually incompatible theological opinions." As far back as 1958, Geoffrey Bromiley had observed--anticipating the present book's view--that "We have to recognize that the Bible is...a fruitful source of dissension and disunity in and among churches, so that acceptance of its authority does not solve at once the problem of unity...The interpretation of the Bible gives rise to a whole series of more or less important and divisive differences...These are obviously very real difficulties which cannot be ignored even if they cannot be fully embraced and answered....Even in this sphere (of the Bible) there is the constant bias to disunity."

In Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2011), 18-19

Morality of Literary Understanding

...With regard to the moralityof literary understanding, Augustine advocates what is for him the prime hermeneutical virtue, namely, charity. This is a far cry fromt eh typical modern appraoch that puts a premium on distrust and suspicion, a strategy best exemplified perhaps by an essay by W.K. Clifford entitled "The Ethics of Belief." Clifford argues that it is immoral to believe something unless you first have sufficient evidence or proof: "To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." In contrast, Augustine's treatise On the Usefulness of Belief states that "nothing would remain stable in human society if we determined to believe nothing that we could not scientifically establish." With regard to reading, it "is most honorable to believe that an author was a good man, whose writings were inteded to benefit the human race and posterity." The first hermeneutic reflex, therefore, should be charity towards the author. If we come to a text believing that there is nothing in it, we are likely to go away as empty as we come. Augustine encourages readers to approach texts, paricularly the classics and especially the Scriptures, in the expectation that they contain something valuable and true...

...There is something in the text that is not of the reader's own making. The believing reader must not violate but venerate this "other." For readers come not only to knoweldge but also to self-knowledge when they allow the text to have its say. The interpretive virtues that I will commend throughout this work also figure among the cardinal virtues of Christian theology: faith, hope, love, and humility. These are the same virtues that make society possible. Life together is largely interpretation; good hermeneutics makes good neighbors. The Golden Rule, for hermeneutics and ethics alike, is to treat significant others--texts, persons, God--with love and respect.

Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 32

Messy Hermeneutics

Interpretation is not an exact science. Understanding--be it of God, works of art, ourselves, or others--is both messier and more provisional than explanations that work with causal laws. Why should this be so? Three reasons: 1) because what we're trying to understand is often singular and unique, 2) because meaning is a matter of seeing the parts in relation to larger wholes of which finite human interpreters have only partial glimpses, and 3) because interpreters often have vested interests for seeing things in one way rather than another and lack the requisite virtues to see things as they really are coram Deo (before God).

Kevin Vanhoozer, Everyday Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 36

Trinitarian Hermeneutics

Postmodern thought has developed an “a/theology” built on the premise that the author/Author is dead, leading to a pluralistic hermeneutic. However, speech act theory in a Christian interpretive approach recognizes that “the Father is the locator, the Son is his preeminent illocution…(and) the Holy Spirit—the condition and power of receiving the sender’s message—is God the perlocutor, the reason that his words do not return to him empty.”

Vanhoozer in Osborne, 495.

Speech Act Theory

J.L. Austin proposed in How to Do Things with Words (1962) that there are three levels of language: locutionary, in which meaning is presented (“go home”); illocutionary, in which an action occurs (a command or request); and perlocutionary, in which an effect is caused on the hearer/reader (departure).

Grant Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 494.