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What Kind of Relativism?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
In his 1976 book New Testament Interpretation in an Historical Age, Denis Nineham advanced the thesis of cultural relativism in theology this way:
While the events of Jesus’ career were such as to demand interpretation in terms of a unique—indeed literally final—divine intervention, given the presuppositions of certain circles in first century Jewish culture, they might not have seemed to demand such an interpretation given different cultural assumptions, for example to a modern western observer if such a one—twentieth century presuppositions and all—could be carried back to first century Palestine on some magic carpet or infernal time machine.
Broadly speaking this is the theory that the relation between facts on the one hand and language and interpretation on the other is perpetually shifting. Facts that will demand one kind of description in one cultural context will require a quite different kind in another and conversely a given term or description will mean different things in different contexts.
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- Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 New Testament Interpretation in an Historical Age (Athlone Press, 1976), p. 20Google Scholar. His italics.
2 The Use and Abuse of the Bible (Macmillan, 1976), pp. 33ffGoogle Scholar.
3 Don Cupitt, ‘A Sense of History’Theology, September 1986, p. 365. This edition of Theology contained a number of articles commemorating the retirement of Denis Nineham.
4 This slightly eccentric example was suggested by Luis Borges’ story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (in Labyrinths, Penguin Modern Classics, 1970Google Scholar). In this, Menard, a twentieth century French poet, writes (without copying) the ninth and thirty eighth chapters of Don Quixote. The story consists of a comparison between Menard's work and Quixote's; though verbally identical, the different historical contexts make them vastly different works!
5 Use and Abuse, p. 29.
6 Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar which introduces this concept, is a fundamental work on relativism in science. Nineham uses Kuhn on pp. 19ff. of Use and Abuse.
7 Use and Abuse, p. 2.
8 Frege's Sense and Reference (translated by Geach and Black in Philosophical Writings ofGottlobFrege, Oxford, Blackwell 1960) explores the terms ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’ to show the contrast between sense and reference—or, in our terms, connotation and denotation. The terms have the same reference (the planet) but different senses.
9 W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object, Chapter 2, ‘Translation and Meaning’ (Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1960). Quine shows how if a native points and says ‘Gavigai’ as a rabbit leaps past, we cannot be sure whether whether Gavigai means ‘rabbit’ or ‘rabbit part’ or ‘temporal occurrence of rabbitness’ or what. Reference leaves us in the dark as to the metaphysical background of our utterance.
10 Berger, P. and Luckmann, T., The Social Construction of Reality (London, Allen Lane, 1967)Google Scholar. A work much cited by Nineham, e.g. p. 4 of Use and Abuse.
11 ‘Epilogue’ in The Myth of God Incarnate (London, SCM 1977)Google Scholar. Nineham says that ‘Anyone who walked into a room now as a twentieth century man would not be the historical Jesus, and if Jesus walked into the room now, it would not be as a twentieth century man’ (p. 192).
12 The ‘Private Language Argument’. Wittgenstein argues that an isolated individual could not construct his own language because he could not check his references to the world. A.J. Ayer, amongst others, contests this. Cf. The Private Language Argument, ed. Jones, O.R. (London, Macmillan 1971)Google Scholar.
13 Use and Abuse, p. 1 (my italics).