Appendix
The Relation of Interpretive Method
To Other Fields of Research
In the course of our discussion we have here and there noticed points of contact between methods in biblical interpretation and methodological discussions in several different areas. I now intend to summarize the points of contact with a larger body of literature, focusing particularly on the theme of that larger contexts influence and qualify knowledge.
But let readers be on the alert. The people who write books and who have these ideas operate with their own presuppositions. They have their own world views, their own backgrounds of other things that they think that they know. Their presuppositions color what they know and what they write. So we must sift what is said in the light of our own presuppositions.
43. Study of influence of contexts in the philosophy of science
First of all, philosophy of science has been vigorously discussing the contextual character of knowledge ever since the appearance of Thomas Kuhn's book. Various edited collections of articles interacting with Kuhn may provide an introduction to the literature and the state of the discussion. One should note Gary Gutting, ed., Paradigms and Revolutions (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980); Ian Hacking, ed., Scientific Revolutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
One should also notice predecessors of Kuhn who shared some of his interests in the contextual conditioning of scientific research. Kuhn 1 acknowledges the influence of Alexandre Koyreé, Etudes Galiléennes, 3 vols. (Paris: Hermann, 1939); Emile Meyerson, Identity and Reality (New York: Macmillan Company, 1930); Hélène Metzger, Les doctrines chimiques en France, du début du XVIIe á la fin du XVIIIe siécle (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1923); id., Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la doctrine chimique (Paris: Alcan, 1930); and Anneliese Maier, Die Vorläufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhundert (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1949). See also Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); id., Science, Faith and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); id., The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967); Jean Piaget, The Child's Conception of Physical Causality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1930); id., Les notions de mouvement et de vitesse chez l'enfant (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1946).
In addition, one must notice developments which react in important ways to Kuhn. Some critics have simply misunderstood Kuhn. But there are also some significant positive developments. On the "left" of Kuhn, taking a more relativist, even anarchist position, is Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1978). On the "right" of Kuhn, but endeavoring to take account of his insights, is Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). A significant extension of Kuhn in the direction of embedding scientific explanation in historical explanation is Alasdaire MacIntyre, "Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science," in Paradigms and Revolutions, ed. Gary Gutting (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), pp. 54-74.
44. Study of influence of contexts in apologetics: presuppositions
Presuppositional apologetics founded by Cornelius Van Til has always emphasized the key role of presuppositions in theological and apologetic discussions. Presuppositions include not only consciously held philosophical assumptions, but unconsciously assumed elements of one's world view. They are one's basic commitments.2 Van Til has repeatedly emphasized the all-important question of religious roots: are you for God or against him? Do you bow before God as your Lord or do you wish to be your own god and lord? Do you endeavor to obey God or do you obey your own autonomous ideas and standards? The antithesis between Christian and non-Christian life and thinking affects everything that we do. See Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1963); id., An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1974); id., A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969); id., Christian-Theistic Evidences (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1976); Thom Notaro, Van Til & the Use of Evidence (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1980); John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987). For an elementary introduction, see Richard L. Pratt, Every Thought Captive: A Study Manual for the Defense of Christian Truth (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1979). Though some think that there are significant differences between Van Til and Francis Schaeffer, Schaeffer's works also belong in this category. See especially Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968); id., The God Who Is There (Chicago: InterVarsity Press, 1968); id., He Is There and He is not Silent (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1972).
Ideas similar to Van Til's have also been articulated by the Christian philosophers in the tradition of cosmonomic philosophy. See Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969); Hendrik van Riessen, Wijsbegeerte (Kampen: Kok, 1970); Hendrik G. Stoker, Beginsels en metodes in die wetenskap (Potchefstroom: Pro Rege-Pers, 1961); Daniël F. M. Strauss, Wysbegeerte en vakwetenskap (Bloemfontein: Sacum, 1973). See also Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967).
Van Til concentrated almost wholly on the question of religious basic commitments. The cultural outworkings of those commitments are less explored, although Francis Schaeffer and those associated with him may be cited as people who have done important ground-breaking work in exploring the cultural effects. See, e.g., Os Guinness, The Dust of Death (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1973); Hendrik R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (London: InterVarsity Press, 1970). Moreover, the general idea that one needs to inspect the philosophical presuppositions of theological and scientific work has become fairly widespread in evangelical circles. See, e.g., John S. Feinberg, "Truth: Relationship of Theories of Truth to Hermeneutics"; Winfried Corduan, "Philosophical Presuppositions Affecting Biblical Hermeneutics"; Millard J. Erickson, "Presuppositions of Non-Evangelical Hermeneutics"; all in Hermeneutics, Inerrancy, and the Bible, ed. Earl D. Radmacher and Robert D. Preus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984).
45. Relativist philosophy: relativism and pragmatism
Various forms of relativist and pragmatist philosophy have enjoyed a rapid growth of attention and interest because they focus on the relativity of pieces of knowledge to a whole framework or conceptual system. As examples one may name the works of Nicholas Rescher, Methodological Pragmatism (New York: New York University Press, 1977); Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); Fredrick Christopher Swoyer, "Conceptual Relativism," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1976; Jack W. Meiland and Michael Krausz, eds., Relativism, Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982).
These philosophies may be called relativist because they do not see any supposed knowledge as foundational. No area is immune to criticism for all time, no area is in principle so certain that we can say it is not subject to revision no matter what may come. We may be confronted with facts or alternative interpretations that lead to revise our world view. However, these philosophies are sophisticated forms of relativism. Usually, they believe in truth of some kind, but they do not think that we can achieve an absolute philosophical certainty about that truth. Hence they cannot be dismissed using the typical antirelativist argument to the effect that if all knowledge is relative, the statement that "all knowledge is relative" is itself relative and therefore refuted.
Of course, we who are evangelical Christians know of a source of knowledge outside of the limitations of human finiteness. We can never adopt a full-fledged relativist position. But we ought not for that reason to ignore the revival in relativist philosophy. Non-Christians can still have insights about what human finiteness implies.
46. Philosophical hermeneutics
The phenomenological/existentialist tradition in philosophical hermeneutics has long been interested in the conditioned character of human understanding. Human understanding always takes place against the background of assumptions and realities of human existence in history, existence as a person in society, existence as a person immersed in language as a pre- and supraindividual reality, existence "unto death." The key figures are Heidegger and Gadamer. See Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1985); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury, 1975). One may also add the "hermeneutics of suspicion" practiced by people with interest in economic and political conditioning of ideologies and propaganda. See Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon, 1972); id., Theorie und Praxis (3. Aufl.; Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1969). For a combination approach, see Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory (Forth Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976); id., The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977).
The sociology of knowledge has long been interested in studying the ways in which what a society counts as knowledge is passed along, maintained, legitimated, and supplemented by social processes and institutions. The sociology of knowledge makes clear just how highly dependent knowledge is on a social setting for its maintenance. Kuhn's work might be understood as nothing more than the application of sociology of knowledge to the field of science. Sociology of knowledge is in fact interested in the social context for knowledge in any academic discipline, including biblical interpretation. It is also interested in social context of the more informal and tacit knowledge of ordinary practitioners of religion. Many of the similarities which we have observed between biblical interpretation and Kuhn's view of science are similarities rooted in the general characteristics of the social context of all human knowledge.
Sociology of knowledge has roots even in the previous century, but it received a kind of formal inauguration with Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968; original edition, 1929). One may find more up-to-date discussion in Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966); Irving L. Horowitz, Philosophy, Science & the Sociology of Knowledge (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1976); Michael Mulkay, Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979); K. J. Regelous, ed., The Sociology of Knowledge (New York: State Mutual, 1980); Gunter W. Remmling, ed., Towards the Sociology of Knowledge: Origin and Development of a Sociological Thought Style (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1974); Nico Stehr and Volker Meja, eds., Society and Knowledge: Contemporary Perspectives on the Sociology of Knowledge (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984); Susan J. Hekman, Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Knowledge (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1983).
The field of cultural anthropology is full of studies of the influence of world views and the influence of culture on knowledge. It is therefore difficult to cite individual works. We must be content with referring readers to evangelical discussions of the implications of anthropology. See above all Harvie M. Conn, Eternal Word and Changing Worlds: Theology, Anthropology, and Mission in Trialogue (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984); Paul G. Hiebert, Cultural Anthropology, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983); Charles H. Kraft, Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979).
49. Study of contexts in theological method
Some discussions are also taking place concerning the implications of contexts for our methods of biblical interpretation. Liberation theology and contextualization (as the term is used in missions theory) both study the influence of culture on the shape of our theological questions and answers. They involve strenuous reexamination of traditional interpretive method. The radicals in these areas are advocating something like a Kuhnian revolution in method. But discussing these trends in detail would be beyond my competence.3
More to the point are discussions of the implications of modern science for biblical interpretation. As we noted at the beginning of this book, there have been plenty of discussions about the relation of science and theology. But there have been fewer discussions on scientific method in comparison with theological method.4 Still less has there been much written taking into account Kuhn's move away from the idea that science presents us with a purely objective, disinterested account of the way the world is. The most notable exception is Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).5 Barbour's book is very important work in this area, because it stands almost alone in being a post-Kuhnian attempt to spell out some of the connections between science and religion on a methodological level.
But Barbour's book does not do all that one might wish. In the first place, Barbour is interested mostly in the comparison of science and religion, not science and Christianity or science and theology. He is most concerned for philosophical issues concerning the viability of religious language in general. On this philosophical level, Barbour's book contains many useful ideas. But he says too little about the implications for hermeneutical method and the academic subdisciplines of biblical interpretation. What he does says shows that he is uncomfortable with the exclusive claims of Christianity, the claims of propositional revelation, and the orthodox doctrine of God.6 In particular, when Barbour provides us with examples of alternative models for Christ and for God, the newer alternatives are heterodox. Though Barbour is interested in world views, he is not willing to challenge in a radical way the dominant Western dream of human autonomy in thought. Hence, evangelicals will find here a mixture of good and bad. If we wish to reform biblical interpretation on the basis of a biblical world view, we will have to look elsewhere.
My own book Symphonic Theology: The Validity of Multiple Perspectives in Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, forthcoming) works out the methodological problems related to practice of single perspective vs. multiple perspective approaches to theological problems. Many of its concerns are similar to those I discuss in this book. But Symphonic Theology interacts primarily not with Kuhn but with internal developments within theology and linguistics. Hence it should be seen as complementary to the discussions in this book.
We might, then, say of Torrance what we would say of many contemporary works discussing the interaction of science and theology. These works are important, but their focus is characteristically different from Kuhn's. For example, Torrance has important points to make about (1) the mutual dependence of subject and object in both scientific and theological investigation (rejecting relativism, empiricism, instrumentalism, subjectivism, and objectivism); (2) the necessity of adapting our means of study to the nature of the object; (3) the structured, hierarchical nature of knowledge; (4) the Trinitarian roots of theological knowledge; (5) the way in which all of this shows the inadequacy of the dominant man-centered, linguistic-centered, and proposition-centered reductionistic approaches to theology. Point (1) has significant points of contact with Kuhn. Points (2)-(5) bear fruit only as they are related to Torrance's profoundly theological reflections on the nature of Trinitarian revelation.
Torrance's own principle (2) about the nature of the object is relevant. It means that Torrance's trinitarian reflections must be weighted much more heavily than the analogies he draws from science. At this profound level Torrance and many others must be judged in terms of the soundness of their views of biblical revelation. Torrance's theses are determined not mainly by analogies with science (though these may make suggestive preaching illustrations),7
Footnotes
1. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. vi.
2. See John M. Frame, "God and Biblical Language: Transcendence and Immanence," in God's Inerrant Word, ed. John W. Montgomery (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1974), pp. 159-77.
3. See volume 7 in Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, forthcoming).
4. Despite expressed concerns for theological method, Thomas F. Torrance belongs together with other people who explore the general topic of science and theology. His procedure is more like that of a philosopher building a world view or building an epistemology, than it is like Kuhn's sociological approach. See Torrance, Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Divine and Contingent Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Reality and Evangelical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982); Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1984).
In the latest of his books Torrance makes mention of Kuhn (Transformation and Convergence, p. 243) and takes note of the conditioning character of world views and the social backgrounds of knowledge, especially the philosophical dualisms of modern Western thought (e.g., ibid., pp. x-xiii). Nevertheless, Kuhn has not influenced Torrance in a substantive way. A closer analysis shows that Torrance selects from modern physics and from philosophical epistemology just those features that he finds convenient for analogically illustrating his Barthian theology. His presuppositions greatly influence what he selects and how he describes it. Torrance's work is thus more an illustration of Kuhn's observations on the role of frameworks and presuppositions than a continuation or supplement to Kuhn's work.
5. Note also a related book by Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). Some very sweeping appeals to paradigm shifts are to be found in James P. Martin, "Toward a Post-Critical Paradigm," New Testament Studies 33 (1987): 370-85.
6. Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models and Paradigms (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 8, 176-77; pp. 18, 134, 138; Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion.
7. Sometimes Torrance's comparisons between science and theology use evidence from science in a trenchant way. But at other times the connections are too loose to bear any weight.
An illustration may help. Torrance says that the split between space and time [in pre-Einsteinian physics] "... corresponds to the destructive dichotomy of object and subject, being and form, substance and structure, that has infected all European science, philosophy and theology in one way or another" (Transformation and Convergence 69). Is this really so? No doubt, there are "destructive dichotomies" in European philosophy. And there is a dichotomy of space and time in classical mechanics. But these two dichotomies have little more in common than the bare fact that they are both dichotomies.
In fact, any claim to the contrary is headed for serious trouble. Suppose there is a some "deep" connection here. Then classical mechanics is wrong because it is somehow contaminated by a bad philosophical dichotomy. Hence, apparently, God could only have created a universe whose physical regularities are Einsteinian rather than more conventionally Newtonian. That claim seems to involve the very rationalistic hybris that Torrance elsewhere decries.
There is an additional difficulty with trying to draw a philosophical inference here. In some respects Einsteinian relativity theory increases the "dichotomy" between subject and object, since its creates greater structural dissimilarity between our psychic, "subjective" experience of space and time (which remains just as "dichotomous" as it ever was!) and the mathematical formulations that bring together physical variables for space and time in a single "objective" whole.