Reform Judaism and the influence of "modern civilization"

Today we accept as binding only its moral laws and maintain only such ceremonials as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization. We hold that all such Mosaic and Rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas altogether foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. We recognize Judaism as a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason.

from the Pittsburgh Platform adopted by the Reform movement in the United States

in Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1997) 53.

Kant and Enlightenment Hermeneutics

For Kant practical reason provided the framework of categories for theology and also for christology. Anything "which is of no practical use" does not concern us. "Scripture texts which contain certain theoretical doctrines stated to be sacred, but surpassing every conception of reason (even of moral reason) may be expounded for the benefit of the practical reason, while those which conflict with practical reason must be so expounded." The doctrine of the Trinity "offers absolutely nothing of practical us...And the same is true of the doctrine of the incarnation of one divine person." Something similar can be said of the stories of the resurrection and the ascension. For "articles of faith do not mean what ought to be believed...but what for practical (moral) purposes it is practical and useful to accept, even though it may not be possible to prove it, but only to believe it." Thus the revelation of God can only be what is in agreement with what reason understands to be "appropriate to God." "In this way all expositions of scripture, in so far as they concern religion, must be made in accordance with the principle of morality intended in revelation, and without this are either in practice empty or even hindrances to good." For we understand only him who speaks with us through our own understanding and our own reason. Therefore "the God in us", i.e. the free conscience, is "himself the interpreter."

In Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 93-94.

Modernistic Homosexual Interpretations

The religious scriptures forbidding homosexuality were written in what was still a highly rustic milieu. Therefore they ought to have no hold on the present, at least as regards sexuality. When there is, in Bertrand Russell's famous words, "a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men," little in the way of moral progress can be achieved. Opposition to homosexuality, in whatever form it appears, indicates not so much a lower intelligence in the individual but participation in a consensus of opinion which represents a lower order of intelligence attained by civilized man. Let's hope a wiser, kinder, and more humane consensus will prevail.

John Zerilli, "Christians, Homosexuality, and the Same-Sex Marriage Question," The Humanist (May-June 2010), 32.

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

Meaning and Authority in Interpretation

Rationalistic/Positivistic Summary

Meaning: Human reason
Authority: Science/Reason
Question: Does this make sense?

Rationalistic Hermeneutics

The strongly rationalist ethos of the enlightenment was often reflected in what might be styled as a spiritual embargo on any kind of emotional involvement with Scripture, or any use of the human faculty of imagination…The Enlightenment forced evangelicalism into adopting approaches to spirituality which have resulted in rather cool, detached and rational approaches to Scripture…As Martin Luther constantly insisted, Christianity is concerned with totus homo, the “entire human person,” not just the human mind.

McGrath in David L. Little, “Inductive Hermeneutics and the Early Restoration Movement” in Stone-Campbell Journal 3 (Spring, 2000): 16.

Homosexual Hermeneutics

The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period…Our moral task, then, is to apply Jesus’ love ethic to whatever sexual mores are prevalent in a given culture. This doesn’t mean everything goes. It means that everything is to be critiqued by Jesus’ love commandment…Approached from the point of view of the Spirit rather than the letter, the question ceases to be “What does Scripture command?” and becomes “What is the Word that the Spirit speaks to the churches now, in the light of Scripture, tradition, theology, and, yes, psychology, genetics, anthropology, and biology?” We can’t continue to build ethics on the basis of bad science.

Walter Wink, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-walter-wink, 9-10.

Augustine

Augustine held a high view of Scripture: divinely inspired, it is without error and of supreme authority in matters of faith. With respect to its purpose, to bring salvation, the message is simple; but beyond that it is sublimely suprarational. Because unaided human reason cannot penetrate its profound truths, one must come to the Bible first in faith. It is faith which informs understanding, not vice versa. He said the goal of Bible study should be to learn how to love God and one’s neighbor. Therefore he guided interpretation by the twofold law of love: glean from it the principles of a pure life, which teach how to love God and one’s neighbor; and learn sound doctrine, which gives true knowledge about God and humankind.

James T. Spivey Jr. in Bruce Corley et al, Biblical Hermeneutics, 2nd ed (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2002), 101.