For one of my classes, I am reading Kevin J. Vanhoozer's book "Is There a Meaning in This Text?". Essentially, this is a work examining the way in which Scripture is read and interpreted. In his introduction, Vanhoozer discusses two groups. The "hermeneutic realist" and conversely, the "hermeneutic nonrealist." The realist assumes the existence of some intended meaning prior to interpretation, and the nonrealist "denies that meaning precedes interpretive activity." This idea of the realist vs. the nonrealist is at the very heart of the postmodern attack on Scripture.
Stanley Fish is one of the leading nonrealist critics amongst today's scholars. His main argument focuses on reader response criticism. In other words, a text contains no meaning apart from that which the reader projects onto it. Vanhoozer comments on his hermeneutic saying "Interpretation ultimately takes its cue not from the text, but from the reader's identity" (Vanhoozer, 24). For Fish, there is no one absolute interpretation to any text no matter how straight forward it may appear. It is easy to see how this approach begins to pose major problems to Biblical interpretation.
Another contemporary critic just recently deceased is Jacques Derrida. His theory of deconstruction has served to break down a text in order to rebuild it searching for some projected meaning. (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=deconstruction) Dr. Carl Raschke, a professor in the department of religious studies at Denver University, identifies deconstruction as "the death of God put into writing" (Vanhoozer, 30). Yet again, it is apparent how this poses a severe threat to the authority and inerrancy of Scripture.
Thus, it is important for believers to be prepared to counter the attacks of these great intellectual minds. Unfortunately, believers often fall back on the out of fideism. In other words, we know it to be true because we have faith, and faith is all you need. Vanhoozer calls for faith, but he also recognizes the times call for much more: "Fideism, is inappropriate in an age bedeviled by suspicion" (Vanhoozer, 31). If we are not careful, complacency will take over leaving evangelical Christians reeling in the wake of a postmodern assault bearing overwhelming intellectual support.
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- pjberner
- I'm a pastor learning to shepherd the flock while in desperate need of shepherding from the Great Shepherd.
3 comments:
Pete,
Good dissection of nonrealist hermeneutics. While I agree with your over-all premise on the threat of deconstructionism, I would pose you a question... is there something important to be gleaned in the "post-modernists" need to find meaning? That is, not to say that anyone should be able to just invent their own meaning of the text (whether it be scripture or not is almost a mute point), but, is there a point where, once the original/intended meaning of the text is discovered, isn't it important (if not critical) for the reader to find somesort of personal meaning in the midst of the intended meaning? What I'm suggesting is something akin to a personal ownership of the truth that scripture communicates. I agree with your critique of "fideism", and perhaps what I'm getting at is merely a different articulation of what you are saying. Those who take what the intended author wrote (be it gospel or epistle), and just accept it without critical thought are not going far enough. The reader who searches for, wrestles with, and comes to peace with the intended message of the text is therefore able to go on and find meaning for themselves in it, and is therefore able to live it (which I think is the best defense). What do you think? Feel free to email me at dfeis@aol.com. God's best blessings in Christ,
David Feiser
Dave,
Thanks for your comments brother. I am certainly a huge proponent of applying the meanings/truths of our reading. Meaning without application is empty knowledge. However, I disagree that there must be some other meaning aside from the intended meaning. To attempt to find some personal meaning in what we read is a dangerous endeavor. This is dangerous because it is possible to distort the text to a point that we make it say what we want in order to find this "personal meaning." As it pertains to the Word of God, this is particularly troubling. God's Word is not putty in the hands of the hermeneutical exegete. This is where the postmodern's quest for meaning becomes a threat to the authority of Scripture in a believer's life. Again I really appreciate your comments, as they challenge my own thinking and cause me to really know why I believe what I do. Peace be with you.
-pfberner
Here are the quotes from Fish that I was telling you about:
"No one would argue that the act of reading can take place in the absence of someone who reads--how can you tell the dance from the dancer?--but curiously enough when it comes time to make analytical statements about the end product of reading, the reader is usually forgotten or ignored."
"The informed reader is one who is a competent speaker of the language out of which the text is built up; is in full possession of the 'semantic knowledge that a mature...listener brings to his task of comprehension,' including the knowledge of lexical sets, collocation probabilities, idioms, professional and other dialects, and so on; and has literary competence. That is, he is sufficiently experienced as a reader to have internalized the properties of literary discourses, including everything from the most local of devices to whole genres."
"What I am suggesting is that there is no direct relationship between the meaning of a sentence (paragraph, novel, poem) and what its words mean...It is the experience of an utterance--all of it and not anything that could be said about it, including anything I could say--that is its meaning."
"Literature is still a category, but it is an open category, not definable by fictionality, or by a disregard of propositional truth, or by a statistical predominance of tropes and figures, but simply by what we decide to put into it."
These ideas make up the crux of his argument for reader-response criticism. When applied to Hemingway, Milton, or Dickens the outcome of debate over these issues doesn't matter either way. However, the danger lies in applying them to Scripture as a form of literature.
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