Chapter 9

Lessons to be Learned from the Contextual Character of Knowledge

It is time now to take stock of what we have learned. Our concern so far has been primarily to watch what is actually going on in natural science and in biblical interpretation. We have tried to understand what is involved in research and theory formation, using Kuhn's work as a stimulus.¹ The main conclusion is that the context of a person's assumptions and past knowledge has a profound effect on what a person learns in any area of scientific study. Such a context or background includes assumptions about the world, past successes within the discipline (exemplars), tacit guidelines for fruitful areas of future research, and assumptions about the kinds of data that are relevant and valuable.

But now we want to evaluate this conclusion. Should things be going the way they are? Can we improve on the way that biblical interpretation is done? In preceding chapters, I have already hinted at some of the answers that I would give. I have here and there given some evaluations, rather than confining myself to pure description. But now we must draw together these evaluations. Let us examine directly the question of how biblical interpretation ought to learn from Kuhn and others who are doing work in history and philosophy of science.

33. Learning about basic commitments (presuppositions)

First of all, it is valuable for an exegete or a theologian to be aware of the role of basic commitments or presuppositions in the formation of knowledge. Kuhn and others alert us to the fact that such basic commitments or presuppositions do exist.² Exegesis and theological reflection always take place against the background of fundamental assumptions about the nature of the world. They are always motivated by values that a biblical interpreter holds dear. Both methods and results are evaluated in terms of standards and epistemological values already presupposed by the interpreter.

At this level, there can be no neutrality. No one evaluates methods or results without standards of evaluation, whether these be explicit or implicit. And not everyone cherishes the same values or the same standards! Often, indeed, there is some overlap in different people's standards. But there are very often subtle differences as well. For example, compare two groups of historical standards: (1) historical standards used by advocates of historical-critical method; (2) historical standards used by scholarly evangelicals who view history as the domain of God's providential and occasionally miraculous action. People in both groups are alert to the importance of weighing human testimony and not being credulous. To a degree, both would agree about the psychological and social likelihood of certain kinds of human behavior in certain circumstances. But they differ about what kind of evidence makes miracles credible, because their views of the limits of the world and the prerogatives of historical method differ. Behind this difference, their beliefs differ concerning what allegiance to God requires of someone engaged in intellectual reflection.

Some people who have become aware of their basic commitments use it as an excuse for complacency. They think that since everyone is committed to something, they have as much right to their commitments as anyone else. Since basic commitments are indeed basic, they supposedly need be defended, refined, or fought over. But precisely because basic commitments are basic, it is important that people have the right ones. These commitments will affect everything that they do. And though they may do some helpful things in spite of bad basic commitments (common grace), what they do will be tainted by bad basic commitments.

Even we who have Christian commitments must not be complacent. We know that our motives are contaminated by sin. Sometimes when we are sinful in our motivations and assumptions, we are aware of it. But other times, even when we are missing the mark, we may easily deceive ourselves into thinking that our basic commitments are fully biblical, fully in accord with God's standards.

So we must remember: the Bible is infallible, but our own understanding of the Bible is not. Hence some practice of critical self-doubt, in the light of the Bible's searchlight, is in order. As long as this doubting criticizes ourselves, rather than doubting God, or doubting the Bible as God's word, we are acting in conformity with Christian standards.

Moreover, we cannot be complacent about persuading others to adopt our basic commitments. Unfortunately, sometimes people do become complacent. They argue that since each person evaluates evidence in the light of their basic commitments, it is useless to argue with anyone. Others will just use their own standards. They will not accept any argument given on the basis of Christian standards.

Basic commitments are indeed at stake here. Arguments with non-Christians are frequently not easy. We are sometimes tempted to give up or to compromise by adopting standards based on alien basic commitments. So how do we remain persuasive while not compromising? Whole books are needed to deal with these issues.³ But we should note here a few simple elements in the solution. Everyone lives in God's world, and no one can escape that world or the knowledge of God that impresses itself on creatures in God's image (Rom. 1:18-22). Argument is not futile, because the facts are on our side, the standards that are truly legitimate are on our side, and--most of all--the Holy Spirit works to break down people's resistance to the truth.

Moreover, people can also be challenged concerning the idolatrous character of their basic commitments. Whenever people have basic commitments to anything other than God and his word, they are practicing a subtle form of idolatry. They are often attempting to escape responsibility to submit to God. Christ died in order to free us from these sins as well as others. We may command people to repent of these sins just as the apostles commanded people to repent.

But awareness of basic commitments has relevance for more than just carrying on argument. The fundamental value of this awareness is that it enables us to evaluate our own work and the work of others on more than one level. We can evaluate people's work both in terms of the basic commitments that motivate it and in terms of the value of its individual parts and details. Sometimes both the basic commitments and the details are good. Sometimes both are bad. But other combinations occur as well. Sometimes sloppy work comes from people with good commitments. Sometimes high quality work comes from people with bad commitments. Sometimes there is a complex mixture of good and bad in several areas.

Awareness of the influence of basic commitments makes us better able to discern the effects that good or bad commitments have had on scholarly work, and so to make adjustments. We will not be swept off our feet by a highly insightful work showing effects of bad commitments. We will be able to learn from the insights while noticing places where the bad commitments have infected the product. Conversely, we will not be impressed by mediocre work from those with good commitments. We will be able to honor the good commitments that a person has, while not ignoring the faults of the product.

Finally, awareness of the importance of basic commitments and their resistance to refutation should make us all the more aware of our finiteness and of our need for divine verbal revelation from the Bible. We never rise above our basic commitments. They control us and our interpretation more than we control them. In particular, human beings determined to escape from God's authority and to be their own gods can generate basic commitments, but they do so merely by projecting their own finite guesses into the infinite. They make idols that subsequently enslave them. To reform and purify our basic commitments from our sin and idolatry, we need a clear word from God expressing the content of the standards, a divine power of the Spirit transforming us, and a divine Savior from God cleansing us. In other words, we need just the richness of salvation that the message of Scripture promises and bestows.

34. Learning that facts are theory-laden

Another area from which we can learn is Kuhn's discussion of the role of facts in natural science. All facts, according to Kuhn, are theory-laden. That is, the facts are not just "there," the same for everyone regardless of their disciplinary framework. Rather, the facts are subtly different depending on who is looking at them. How important a fact is, what its relevance is, and even whether it counts as a fact at all, depends on the view of the world and the standards contained in a disciplinary framework.

To be sure, not everyone within the history and philosophy of science agrees with Kuhn. Opponents of Kuhn are uneasy with the provocative language that he uses. They would disagree with some of his formulations, and prefer to stress the ways in which the history of science shows up considerable common ground between differing disciplinary matrices with respect to some kinds of facts.⁴

But Kuhn does not mean that competing disciplinary frameworks have no way of talking to one another. Usually there will be many facts on which they agree. But the difference in framework may result in subtle differences in how those facts are seen. There is no perfect separation between what is fact and what is interpretation. Facts always exist against a background view of the world. Because of this, people in different frameworks will frequently use key words in different ways. Communicating between two different disciplinary frameworks may resemble a work of translation.

Moreover, one cannot single out beforehand a special domain of pure facts that must be accepted and accounted for by any scientific theory whatsoever. In science, the typical facts are the results of instrumental measurements and presuppose at least a theory of the instruments. In addition, anomalies, that is phenomena which do not fit into the framework of existing theory, are frequently ignored until for some reason--controlled by the disciplinary framework--they draw the attention of scientists.

Even if Kuhn is not entirely right about science, there is something to be learned here for the benefit of biblical interpretation. Let us ask ourselves what sort of facts biblical interpretation deals with. The facts of interpretation are first of all the concrete texts of Scripture. Secondly, all interpretation in one way or another is also interacting with the modern world. The facts of the modern world can sometimes be left in the background. Interpretation that is interacting with questions of application will, however, be directly concerned with the facts about the modern world.

So what are these facts? The facts about the modern world will typically be facts about churches, about human beliefs, about philosophy, about economic, social, and political structures. But how does one gather facts? Does one rely on individual personal spiritual experience, personal contacts, statistical surveys, social critics, or Marxist class analysis? Clearly gathering facts is going to be influenced by one's world view and what sorts of facts one counts as important. The supposed fact of a person's membership in a particular socio-economic class is only a fact if one first accepts that such classes are in a sense an objective reality rather than merely a theoretical construct.

Even when we come to the study of the biblical text, we are not free from these difficulties. Careful study of the Bible requires some attention to the historical and cultural environments in which particular books of the Bible were written (at least if our framework of assumptions tells us that the original historical setting is relevant to interpretation!). Getting facts about these environments is again conditioned by one's methods and disciplinary framework. Practitioners of the historical-critical method have sometimes inferred whole social movements, schools, and literary sources using scant evidence. When the evidence is scant, the role of over-all assumptions is even greater than usual.

When we come to the text of Scripture itself, it might be thought that everyone agrees on the facts. Everyone agrees that such-and-such letters occur in such-and-such order in the received text (ignoring textual criticism). But it is easy to show that beyond a very elementary level the same phenomena are interpreted very differently within different disciplinary frameworks. For example, traditional historical-critical method uses the facts of aporias (apparent tensions or contradictions) and sudden transitions ("seams") in the biblical text as evidence for different sources. Traditional inerrantist method uses these same facts as a starting point for an investigation of harmonization. Newer literary approaches use the same facts as key clues to the techniques of literary artistry and subtlety.

Moreover, the text itself is not an object of study in the same way within different disciplinary frameworks. Traditional historical-critical method treats the text as merely one layer in a tradition. The text has earlier sources and traditions behind it, as well as later evolutions in front of it. No particular special status is to be assigned to the text itself, except that by historical accident it rather than its sources or its later evolutions has survived.

On the other hand, traditional inerrantist method treats the text as part of a whole canon, all of which is the word of God and in principle harmonizable. Some texts may have sources (e.g., Luke may have used Mark), but even then the sources are irrelevant to the meaning and authority of the product.

Newer literary approaches sometimes abstract the text from its environment. They may choose to ignore the sources and later uses valued by the historical-critical method. They may choose equally to ignore the references to historical events valued by evangelicals. They treat the material simply as a product of literary artistry, ignoring its straight-forward truth-claims in favor of finding a kind of artistic or aesthetic truth in its manner of expression.⁵

In sum, the facts receive vastly different treatment depending on which disciplinary frameworks they fall under. And we have only looked at disciplinary frameworks that are in current widespread use. We have not talked about the medieval framework for exegesis or theology, or a framework that might be generated by Buddhism or Islam.

In one respect, the influence of basic commitments is being recapitulated here. Basic commitments are bound to influence the development of any disciplinary framework, including methods of approach to the biblical text and to modern facts. Historically speaking, basic commitments certainly did influence the development of the historical-critical method, traditional inerrantist method, newer literary methods, theology of liberation, and so on. But the influence sometimes goes the other way as well. A disciplinary framework can influence the basic commitments of those involved with it.

How does this reverse effect take place? A disciplinary framework has a momentum of its own. A disciplinary framework by its record of success sometimes appeals to people with different basic commitments. People adopt the framework because of its successes, without studying whether the framework itself assumes or encourages a certain set of basic commitments. Then, as they immerse themselves in the framework, they find that their basic commitments themselves undergo subtle or violent change under the influence of hidden assumptions that they begin to adopt consciously or unconsciously.

Moreover, what counts as a fact has a subtle influence. If one is immersed in an environment where a single disciplinary framework is being used, one is constantly confronted with the facts that the framework counts as facts and considers to be especially revealing. One is made to feel that such facts do reveal something. To deny what they reveal is to "ignore the facts." Hence people are swept along into conformity with the framework, usually without ever adequately examining how the facts look from the standpoint of a competing framework.

This kind of influence of disciplinary frameworks is not merely hypothetical. Students at a seminary operating exclusively under the framework of the historical-critical method are often exposed only to the critical historical reconstructions of Israelite history, the supposed contradictions in the Bible showing its historically limited character, and theologies of revelation that have adjusted themselves to these viewpoints. Conversely, students at a conservative evangelical seminary may only be exposed to historical explanations and theology of revelation compatible with verbal inspiration. Some seminaries, of course, make an effort at wider exposure, but the professors will naturally spend by far the most time on those points of view which they themselves think have some positive contribution or some hope of being right.

What is the lesson from this situation? One must not, indeed, "ignore the facts." But every research framework is confronted with anomalies that are difficult to fit in. Every research framework tends to talk about its successes, and to concentrate on problems that the method has some hope of solving, rather than on what is most intractable. If one is trying to choose between disciplinary frameworks, or to modify an existing framework, one must avoid being intimidated by people who appeal to the facts. When people appeal to the facts, they are most often thinking of those facts which (they think) prove their case. Other facts, less easily explained, are not mentioned.

35. Evaluating competing research programs in biblical interpretation

We can also learn some lessons about the possibility of evaluating competing schools in biblical interpretation and research. Does Kuhn's idea of scientific progress through revolutions help us? How do we judge whether one of two competing schools is the more fruitful?

The lesson to learn from Kuhn is that evaluation is not easy. Kuhn points out that when a new exemplar appears, it appears as a theory in the process of development, not as a finished product. It may explain only experimental results in a tiny field, but be unable to explain the great body of facts covered by a theory already in existence. Only time can tell whether a fresh idea can be developed far enough and fruitfully enough to supersede a theory already dominating the field.

Hence Kuhn does not think that his analysis provides any basis for prejudging the success of new ideas or theories. For evaluating new ideas no better judges can be found than the practitioners in the field.⁶ Often people are presented with a choice between two disciplinary frameworks both of which have some strengths and some weaknesses. Such an occurrence is not surprising. If only one framework had strengths, only this framework would have a significant number of adherents, and we would not be thinking about how to choose between two frameworks.

Suppose, then, that we imagine a specific case. Two disciplinary frameworks vie for our attention and allegiance. One disciplinary framework has a long record of success. But it is now struggling with growing areas of anomalies that so far have been integrated into the framework only with difficulty or not at all. Nevertheless, because of its record of past success, it is rational to hope that continued effort might succeed in explaining the anomalies.

The second framework, by contrast, is a new one. It is a modification of the old one, and so hopes to build on the successes of the old framework. But it has not yet succeeded in explaining the whole field that the old framework covered so well. It has no long track record. However, it shows promise because it has done better in accounting at least qualitatively for some of the anomalies that have come to trouble the old framework. It is rational, then, to hope that continued effort might enable people to succeed in using the new approach to explain everything explained by the old framework, and the anomalies as well.

Such things take place within science. One can see something resembling this dynamic process in biblical interpretation as well. When the historical-critical method first began to arise, it was an inchoate framework in comparison with the established dogmatic, supernaturalistic frameworks. The initial developers of the historical-critical method did not explain all the details of the Bible with nearly the thoroughness attained by later practitioners. They were followed because of hopes that the evolutionary and naturalistic assumptions that gave a certain coherent picture of the modern world and of certain aspects of biblical religion would in the end provide a more satisfactory picture of everything.

The historical-critical method is one case of successful development of a new disciplinary framework--successful in the sense that it gradually came to be a dominating framework in scholarly circles. But there are failures too. Arianism, for example, may be listed as a failure. It was eventually rejected by the mainstream of the church. But at one time it gained many adherents, and continues to have periodic revivals in liberalism and cults.

One must also note that scientific theories thought to be outmoded may experience revival later on. The corpuscular theory of light gained dominance from Newton's time onwards. It was superseded by the wave theory in the nineteenth century, and then corpuscular aspects of light were reintroduced in the twentieth century in connection with the development of quantum theory. From this instance one can see that the historical eclipse of a point of view does not prove its long-range invalidity.

One suspects that the same type of thing may happen even more often in biblical interpretation and in the humanities than in science. In biblical interpretation and humanities basic commitments about the nature of human beings have a more direct influence on the nature of theory-building and disciplinary frameworks. Alterations in basic commitments over the centuries may result in the dominance of first one, then another interpretive school, without proving the superior of the later results over the earlier. Moreover, because of the multifaceted character of human beings, as people made in God's image, more than one type of explanation can account for a large number of facts. For example, there can be economic, sociological, psychological, political, and religious explanations. Such explanations have actually been offered for the events of the Reformation, and all of the explanations have some plausibility.

Even the domination of a single disciplinary framework for a long time may show mainly the dominant attraction of an ideology, a philosophy, or a world view, more than the inherent superiority of the framework. Marxism dominates scholarly analysis of religion in the communist world partly because of its appeal as a world view and its importance in supporting the present political structures. Likewise, one may suggest, the historical-critical method has dominated Christian scholarship for so long, partly because it supports the ideology of naturalism which has dominated Western thought since the Enlightenment.

One cannot, of course, prove scientifically that an inerrantist approach to Scripture is superior to the main-stream historical-critical approach. Showing in detail how an inerrantist approach makes sense of the data is important. But the differences between these two frameworks touch on one's deepest religious commitments. One must appeal to those commitments. And one must appeal to the hope for future success as well, since the present successes of a framework may not fully reveal its future potential. Evangelicals know that the future ultimately leads to the second coming of Christ. The Second Coming will be the ultimate place for revealing success or failure of disciplinary frameworks investigating Scripture. Because we base our hopes on God's promises, it is rational to think that at that point an evangelical framework will be seen to be superior.

I have used examples from biblical interpretation that represent rather deep-seated cleavages. But something can also be said about differences that are less serious. Suppose that we concentrate on evangelical interpretation alone. Among evangelicals there is a good measure of agreement on the basic teachings of the Bible and on hermeneutical principles. Hence, there are also standards to which we may appeal in evaluating theological innovations and competitions between different schools. Even with such a measure of agreement, we confront some complexities.

For example, suppose that we were present when one of the newer interpretations of Rom. 7 was set forth for the first time. A new idea, one that is just getting off the ground, may have greater promise, both because it has not been worked on yet and because it has apparently shed light on some difficulty in the Bible. In this case, the new interpretation claims to shed light on the difficulty of dealing with the language of Romans 7. But it is likely to be only weakly integrated with dominant theological systems. If it cannot succeed in integrating the insights of older theology, it may just spawn error or even heresy. In the particular case of Rom. 7, Lloyd-Jones's interpretation might lead to the idea that there was, ontologically, a third category of people distinct from regenerate or unregenerate. (This is not what Lloyd-Jones means, but one can see how someone else might further develop Lloyd-Jones's approach.)

A new idea always has to compete with the older approaches. The strength of the older approaches is that (a) they have thoroughly worked through the details of biblical passages; and (b) they are more thoroughly integrated with whole theological systems. People might prefer an older explanation because of this very thoroughness.

What do we do about this situation? I think that there is no easy answer. Whenever new ideas or new approaches arise, we must evaluate them. Evaluation takes into account their potential for future development, not just their present adequacy. But we must also take into account the fact that an older approach offers actual explanations at some points where a new approach may remain only a potential hope. Even when people have similar standards (as the community of evangelicals does), they may reasonably disagree about the relative merits of two approaches to a difficulty. This disagreement in turn will lead to differences in judgement about whether it is most worthwhile to spend time developing a new approach of reinforcing and enhancing an old one.