Chapter 4

Implications of Kuhn's Theory in Biblical Interpretation:
Romans 7 and the Historical-Critical Method as Examples

What do we make of Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions? Kuhn's book has had mixed reception by philosophers and historians of science.¹ Such a reception is just what we might expect. Kuhn claims that his book is part of a revolutionary change in the historiography of science.² A revolutionary change will meet resistance at the beginning.

13. Preliminary evaluation of Kuhn

My own opinion is that Kuhn is on the right track, that he does bring to light many aspects in the development of science concealed by the reigning philosophy of science and textbook remarks about the history of science.³ Moreover, there are reasons for thinking that much of what Kuhn says is applicable to scholarly communities of any kind, not just to science.⁴ Hence his ideas should be applicable to biblical interpretation. But not everything that is true of science will be true of biblical interpretation. Kuhn himself is just as concerned with the uniqueness of science as he is with its similarities to scholarly research of other kinds.⁵

So we must ask the question again: what relevance does the activity of science have for biblical interpretation? More particularly, what relevance might Kuhn's ideas have? The answer must be, we cannot know until we determine to what extent biblical interpretation does or does not have analogs to the processes that Kuhn describes in science. Whether or not Kuhn is right about science is somewhat secondary. Even if he is right, the same patterns and principles might not hold in biblical interpretation. Even if he is wrong about science, he may right when we apply his claims to biblical interpretation.

14. Romans 7 compared with immature science

Let us, then, look at a particular example: the interpretation of Rom. 7. Recall from our previous discussion (chapter 1) the conflict between three different interpretations of Rom. 7. This conflict looks vaguely like the situation that Kuhn describes in immature science, when a scientific field has not produced a single unified paradigm or disciplinary matrix based on a successful exemplar.

The most striking similarity between the two cases lies in the unresolved disputes between schools. In immature science the investigators may be grouped into a number of competing schools. Each school has a different idea about the fundamental nature of the field, and the lines of explanation along which understanding will come. Similarly, in the interpretation of Rom. 7 there were two schools, the regenerate school of interpretation and the unregenerate school. Later in history, these were eventually joined by a third school, the second-blessing school. Just as in immature science, progress is possible in a sense within a school.⁶ Members of the regenerate school can refine the understanding of individual verses, draw out the implications of these verses, expand on the connections that the verses have with other parts of the Bible, and so on. But there are two hindrances to progress, just as there are in immature science. First, if the existing school turns out to be wrong, all its work will later be judged as just a false trail, and not progress at all. Second, the existence of competing schools means that a good deal of the energy of any one school is spent in re-examining its own foundations and trying to show that its foundations are superior to the competing schools. Only when everyone in the field agrees on the foundations can there be concentration on the details, and progress on those details.

We should not be surprised at these similarities between immature science and the situation in interpreting Rom. 7. The similarities arise largely because schools are composed of human beings aiming at understanding some subject. In this situation human beings inevitably behave in ways that they think will most enhance understanding. Enhancing understanding involves interacting with their peers and with competing schools along the lines that we have just laid out. These are the same lines that scientific schools follow, according to Kuhn.

But there are also certain important differences between the schools of thought concerning Romans 7 and the schools in immature sciences. The former do not really have social cohesiveness. It is merely the case that we have classified people into schools "after the fact," for convenience in classifying the interpretations of Rom. 7. By contrast, the schools in immature science, the schools that Kuhn has in mind, have inner social cohesiveness. They are subgroups within a community of investigators. The community is bound together first of all by common interests in the subject matter. Because of the common interests, letters and articles will be sent back and forth, and there may be some degree of personal acquaintance. Each subgroup will, of course, be more intensely united because of the similarity of their views on the subject they are investigating.

The analogue of scientific schools within biblical interpretation would seem to be not the different schools of thought on Romans 7 but the schools of theology, such as Calvinists, Arminians, and advocates of second-blessing theology. These schools are schools within a larger community, consisting of all biblical scholars and theologians. These schools and the broader community in which they exist both have demonstrable social cohesiveness. They are social groups with communication back and forth; they have common goals, and some common standards of evaluation.

What about Rom. 7, then? The problem with Rom. 7 is one research problem on which the community works. The preferred approach to dealing with the problem varies from school to school, just as it might in an immature science.

There is one more difference between interpretation of Rom. 7 and immature science. Typically, in immature science, there may not even be agreement as to which phenomena are part of the field of investigation, or which phenomena are most revealing of the nature of things. Different investigators concentrate their research on different areas. The effect may be reminiscent of the story of blind men investigating an elephant, one describing the trunk, one the side, one a leg, one the tail, one an ear. As long as no one has a clue to the true extent of the phenomena that may be amenable to explanation by a unified theory, and as long as no theory has succeeded in dominating the field, it is understandable that the boundaries of the field itself should be uncertain.

But in biblical interpretation and theology the field of investigation is fixed. The schools in theology, Calvinists, Arminians, and second-blessing theologians, can pretty much agree on their subject matter. All study Rom. 7, all take into account the same lexical and grammatical information, all use the same standard lexicons and grammars. All agree on the relevance not only of Rom. 7 but of other passages of Romans, the rest of Paul's epistles, and ultimately the rest of biblical teaching as a whole.

But having said this, we can begin to see that this measure of agreement is not always achievable. Roman Catholics include in their list of canonical books some books and additions not included in the Protestant list. Traditional Roman Catholics also allow a role for church tradition and for papal teaching such as Protestants would not allow. Some critical scholars want to have a canon within the canon, perhaps Paul's epistles or Paul's teaching on justification, in terms of which they think it possible to judge other teachings of other parts of the Bible as substandard. Cultic groups like the Mormons and Christian Scientists have their own holy books supplementing the Bible. Clearly these different groups do not have the same standards nor quite the same field of investigation.

Even if we concentrate on evangelical Protestantism, which accepts the Bible as its standard, there are some differences. Confessional churches also give a role to their confessions. The confessions are "secondary standards," while the Bible is the primary standard. The confessions are in theory fallible and correctable, whereas the Bible is not. But confessional theologians are committed to paying attention to their confession. They respect it because it embodies the collective wisdom of their denomination and of past generations, as these generations have been illumined by the Holy Spirit. Confessional theologians will not lightly conclude that the Bible contradicts the confession.

The advantage of this stance is that it restrains arbitrary and facile innovation. It protects biblical interpreters from reinventing old heresies--that is, old schools of investigation that have been found to be dead ends. Its disadvantage is that it may keep investigators from acknowledging new truth that they find in the Bible. Moreover, to the degree that a confession actively functions as a standard for judging an interpretation of the Bible, it produces a difference of atmosphere in interpretation for the school that holds it. Thus there may be an attenuated sense in which the Calvinists, the Arminians, and the second-blessing theologians, or at least those who are bound to a doctrinal statement, do not completely agree on the very field of investigation or the methods by which to do the investigation.

15. The possibility of revolution in biblical interpretation

According to Kuhn's scheme immature sciences become normal, mature sciences when they develop a single, stable disciplinary matrix. The unified disciplinary matrix includes a key exemplar, a research result in the form of a theory with supporting experimental evidences. By its esthetic appeal, its superiority in explanatory power, and its fruitfulness as a basis for further research, this exemplar wins more and more adherents. Eventually it dominates the field. Some older scholars in the field never accept the new theory. They have too much confidence and too much investment in the old. But eventually they die or are effectively excluded from the research community. If they do research, they do it using other ground rules, and the main portion of the community is simply uninterested in paying attention to their results.

It is natural to ask whether we might find something similar in biblical interpretation. As long as theology is divided into schools of Calvinists, Arminians, Roman Catholics, and what not, it is like immature science. Can a revolution bring unity into this field, similar to the unity in a mature science? If so, how do we set such a revolution in motion?

Some people have already tried to apply Kuhn in a similar way to social sciences. For instance, the science of psychology presently works in terms of a number of competing schools, based on different principles and fundamental frameworks for research. Behaviorism, Freudianism, Marxism, humanism each offers itself as a base for psychological research. This situation is immature science. Hence people point to Kuhn, and argue that psychology must become mature. To do so, psychology must first decide on a unified approach. And then people offer their own approach as the basis.

But this is a misunderstanding of Kuhn. Kuhn does not think that one can have a revolution any time one wants. One cannot simply decide at a given point in time, "Now let us have a revolution so that we create a mature science and afterwards make rapid progress." Immaturity is precisely the state in which no one disciplinary matrix, no one theory is able to win everyone's allegiance. You cannot simply impose allegiance. You cannot simply decree that such-and-such theory will now be the standard. You must wait for the arrival of a theory with clear superiority or at least a promise of superiority. The progress of time, and the refinement of the theory, then makes its superiority more and more evident and irresistible. Or, perhaps, the progress of time makes things no better: attempts at refining the theory succeed well in some cases but not so well in other cases, and the new theory does not uncover order in new sets of phenomena in any more promising ways than the old ones. A revolution that one hopes will take place on the basis of a new theory may not take place.

When we look more closely at the history of biblical interpretation, we can see some patterns of revolutionary breaks, followed by periods of stability and consolidation. Western theology after Augustine largely built on Augustine and the ancient creeds. These, in a sense, formed the "exemplars" for biblical and theological scholarship through most of the medieval period. Something of a crisis was provoked by the absorption of Aristotelian philosophy in the late medieval period. More and more anomalies were found through the efforts to assimilate and harmonize the new philosophical influences with the Augustinian framework. The work of Thomas Aquinas was an answer to this problem. Thomas's continuities with Augustine make one hesitant as to whether to label this a refinement of Augustine or a revolutionary triumph. And one must not forget that Thomas did not ever win over the allegiance of the whole theological community of the Western world to the extent that Augustine did.

The Reformation period confronts us with a theological revolution in a sense. Humanistic interpretation introduced a new disciplinary matrix for the study of the Greek classics and the Bible. This produced more and more anomalies in the relation between the meaning of the Bible and the teaching and practice of the church. In addition, the late medieval synthesis in theology broke down as philosophical reflection found more and more anomalies in theological reasoning itself. The increasing number of anomalies, the finding of anomalies in areas of importance, the finding of patterns in the anomalies, all showed more and more the unsatisfactory character of piecemeal tinkering within the framework of dominant late medieval synthesis. The time was ripe for theological revolution. Revolution in the broad sense did come. People abandoned the old disciplinary matrix for theology. But no one new disciplinary matrix won everyone's allegiance, and so theology divided into multiple schools.

To describe the medieval and Reformation periods in this way is undoubtedly a vast oversimplification. And yet, and yet, there seems to be something in it. As we already observed, it appears that human beings in communities, interested in understanding a subject and solving its problems, are bound to proceed in similar ways in both science and theology.

16. The historical-critical method as a revolution

A second revolution in biblical interpretation took place with the growth of the historical-critical method. This revolution was again provoked by the increasing prominence of anomalies in theology. The anomalies were of two main kinds.

First, the doctrinal differences in the Reformation, and the theological schools associated with them, did not dissolve. Each school refined its arguments. Each position maintained that it was right, that its arguments were fully persuasive, and that it had adequately refuted the competing positions. Over time, people could not help wondering whether each position was maintained partly by prejudice. The anomaly here was the inability of the schools to deal with prejudice. Moreover, the differences between theologies were all the more painful because they were one factor in wars. Overcoming the differences seemed to be critically important. At the same time it was impossible to solve the differences using existing modes of argumentation.

Second, developing interest in study of human nature and culture gave people awareness of religious differences between cultures. It was easy to ask whether human reason could be used to sort through religious differences. Perhaps reason could adjudicate between theological schools. Philosophical reason, used by sinful people, wished to dictate what God was like and what divine revelation was like. Deism arose and was at odds with what the Bible claimed. For those attracted to deism, the conflict represented an anomaly.

The historical-critical method arose within this framework as an attempt to produce a scientific exegesis and an objective historical study of the biblical documents. The same standards were to applied to the Bible as applied to any secular historical document. The theological commitment of the practitioner was not to intervene. By this means one eliminated the "prejudice" contained in the interpreter's background within one of the theological schools or a church associated with a fixed theological school.

The historical-critical method did represent a revolutionary challenge in the Kuhnian sense. It altered, sometimes subtly, sometimes radically, the entire framework in which exegesis had been carried on.

Under the old framework or disciplinary matrix, exegesis took place by comparing a passage with other passages and trying to arrive at an interpretation which harmonized them all. Now, exegesis found tensions and contradictions wherever it could, because these were clues to the different sources behind the final text.

The old framework required that the exegete inquire concerning the meaning of the text in its final context within the canon. Now, the exegete inquired into the history behind the text, the history of story telling, composition, combination, deletion, and editing leading to the final text.

In the old framework, the exegete found guidance from his church's confession and doctrinal commitments. Now, the exegete was systematically to ignore such guidance.

In the old framework, the exegete accepted the supernatural claims of the Bible at face value. Now, the exegete sifted such claims in the same way as he sifted claims of any other historical document. More precisely, that usually meant that the exegete rejected supernatural claims out of hand, because a scientific historian knew that the history was composed of natural causes.

The contrast between old and new frameworks shows the potentially revolutionary character of the historical-critical method. It is a method capable of altering a person's perspective and method of attack on all of the subject. To a certain degree, one might even say that it changed the boundaries of the subject. The canon was no longer separated from other religious writings. Christianity in the first century rather than the New Testament might be the primary focus of research.

The contrast also shows that even though the post-Reformation theologies were divided, they shared to some degree a common hermeneutical framework. That unified framework, the old framework, still provided something of a disciplinary matrix for coherent research communities. The historical-critical method introduced an alternative disciplinary matrix.

The historical-critical method triumphed within academic circles. It won over enough adherents to make possible a new unified basis for proceeding with future research. As in the case of scientific revolutions, the people who were not willing to conform to the new standards of research were gradually excluded from participation in the scholarly community.

Of course, the historical-critical method never triumphed so completely as did the Newtonian revolution or the Einsteinian revolution in physics. Some orthodox, supernaturalist theologians and biblical scholars remained, and some held academic positions in major universities. The results differed in extent from country to country. Roman Catholic countries were for a long time little affected by historical-critical innovations. Germany was more thoroughly antisupernatural than England, England more than the United States.

Kuhn's comments about the later stages of a scientific revolution to some extent also characterize the historical-critical revolution. A revolution creates a divide between people who accept it and people who do not. The two groups have different conceptions of the important problems of research, the standards of research, the goals of research, the truths that are "assured results," and the kinds of evidence that are relevant. Once some people are sure that the revolution has triumphed, they waste little time debating with other people who are still not convinced. It is a waste of time to continue debating the foundations of the field. It is time to go on with research on detailed problems, because the disciplinary matrix provides agreed-upon foundations for the field.

Hence, after the historical-critical method had gained sufficient adherents, new faculty hired in university departments of theology were bound to be those who showed their promise partly by adherence to the method. Hence, after a time, people not adhering to critical method would effectively disappear from academic positions. To some extent, students had to conform to the method to pass courses and receive degrees. The same is still true today in some cases. Evangelical students have sometimes been told frankly by a scholar in the historical-critical tradition, "You don't belong in the doctoral program here. You can't be a scholar unless you are willing to study the Bible critically." That sounds harsh. But, comparing it with the situation in science, it is no more harsh than a physicist telling a student that he doesn't belong in a doctoral program as long as he doesn't accept the special theory of relativity.⁷

The practice of exclusion also takes place in scholarly publication. Articles are accepted in scholarly journals of biblical interpretation only if they conform to the standard of the method. Today evangelical scholars often write articles for publication in academic journals that move within the historical-critical tradition. Whenever they do so, for the article to be accepted, they must write the article about a subject where sufficient methodological agreement is possible. Some of the topics most important to evangelicals, such as the authority of Scripture, the resurrection of Christ, and the deity of Christ, are difficult to write about, because in most cases the evangelical finds it important to appeal to a high view of biblical authority, and this is just what the historical-critical method denies in principle, at its very foundation.

Finally, the practice of exclusion takes place in the publication and reading of scholarly books. Individual adherents to the historical-critical method often think that reading evangelical books would be a waste of time. Often it is a waste of time, granted the assumption that the historical-critical method is right. Some books by evangelicals on some topics use methods sufficiently close to historical-critical standards to be of interest. But a good many do not. When a book uses different standards, its results will be less interesting. The situation seems parallel to the situation in science. Scientists will never see the point of reading works of a previous (uninformed) generation or works of contemporary pseudoscience (that is, what they consider pseudoscience).

The effect holds also for whole seminaries and university departments of theology. If a seminary or department is committed to the historical-critical tradition, it will in all probability have few if any books by evangelicals on its readings lists. Those books are a waste of time for the students as well as the professors. Evangelical works, it is said, are less "scholarly." But of course most such books are bound to be less scholarly by the historical-critical standard. The result is that the next generation of students is mostly unaware that there is a reasoned alternative to the historical-critical tradition. Even those who for personal religious reasons would like to be evangelicals think that it is intellectually untenable.

To some extent, however, evangelicals have been less scholarly by any standard. Evangelicals, because of their views on the spiritual and eternal importance of biblical knowledge, have a natural concern to produce suitable popular and semipopular literature. In addition, the triumph of the historical-critical revolution has meant that few evangelicals were allowed to be scholars in the first place. Churches who still wished to hold to orthodox doctrine could and did react to this situation with anger and withdrawal that often produced anti-intellectualism. Of course, anti-intellectualism in the church discourages the next generation from doing scholarship. And so the unhappy situation continues. Today, fortunately, we see a resurgence of evangelical scholarship of high caliber in the United States, Britain, and South Africa.⁸

In sum, the history of the historical-critical method shows that there are many striking similarities between the social structure of knowledge in biblical interpretation and in science. Recall some of the comparable elements: the structure of an immature discipline with many schools, the problems of debating the foundations and boundaries of a field, the transition to a single dominant disciplinary matrix in a mature discipline, the effects of social exclusion on people who do not share this matrix, and the ability of the dominant framework to enable research to progress to details.

Evangelicals have repeatedly refused to accept some of the crucial assumptions of the historical-critical method. They have done so even though this method has become the dominant disciplinary matrix in biblical interpretation. Is this refusal really as obtuse as a refusal to accept special relativity?