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Toward a Post-Critical Paradigm*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

James P. Martin
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Extract

This paper explores some relations between dominant scientific Paradigms and hermeneutical schemas currently used in analyses of the history of biblical interpretation.

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Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 1987 , pp. 370 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

NOTES

[1] Frei, Hans W., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven/London: Yale, 1974).Google Scholar

[2] Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (London: SCM, 1984).Google ScholarKuemmel, W. G., Das Neue Testament: Geschichte der Erforschung seiner Probleme (Freiburg/Muenchen: Karl Alber, 1958)Google Scholar, agrees with Frei and Reventlow in the significance they assign to English Deism as a watershed in the history of interpretation. Kuemmel and Frei commence with English Deism. Reventlow ends his story with it. From the perspective of literary criticism Northrop Frye (The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, Toronto: Academic, 1982Google Scholar) addresses many of the issues discussed by these historical works.

[3] For convenience and brevity, whenever the three terms pre-critical, critical and post-critical need to be stated together, we denote ci j,k where ci = pre-critical, ci = critical, and ck = post-critical.

[4] Outler, Albert, ‘Toward a Postliberal Hermeneutic’, Theology Today, 42/3 (1985) 281–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[5] A wider cultural perspective is given in Ptirim Sorokin's, A. study, The Crisis of Our Age (New York: Dutton) 1941.Google Scholar He explores a progressive decay of sensate scientific culture and the emergence and slow growth of a new ideational culture in the West. The period of crisis - quite lengthy – manifests this double movement: an intensification of sensate culture and an increasing replacement of the sensate elements of science by new ideational elements. He sees the double process within the realm of religion in the simultaneous growth of militant atheism and religious revivalism.

[6] Peters, Ted, ‘David Bohm, Postmodernism, and the Divine’, Zygon 20/22 (1985) 193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[7] Bateson, Gregory, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (New York: Dutton, 1979) 58.Google Scholar Chapter IV, ‘Criteria of Mental Process’, attempts to define mind systems.

[8] Bateson, , Mind, 10–13.Google Scholar

[9] Bateson, , Mind, 14.Google Scholar

[10] Bohm, David, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul) 1981.Google Scholar Bohm illustrates the holomovement by models of enfolding and unfolding processes.

[11] Bohm, , Wholeness, 27–46.Google Scholar

[12] Pascal, Blaine, Pensées.Google Scholar

[13] Steinmetz, David, ‘The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis’, Ex Auditu 1/1 (1985) 74–82Google Scholar; originally in Theology Today 37/1 (1980) 27–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[14] Schwartz, Peter and Ogilvy, James, The Emergent Paradigm: Changing Patterns of Thought and Belief (Menlo Park, CA:SRI International, 1979) 13.Google Scholar

[15] See note 14.

[16] Capra, Fritjof, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (New York: Simon and Schuster) 1982.Google Scholar

[17] Berman, Morris, The Reenchantment of the World (Ithaca/London: Cornell University) 1981.Google Scholar

[18] Battista, John R., ‘The Holistic Paradigm and General Systems Theory’, General Systems, 22 (1977) 65–71.Google Scholar Also, ‘The Holographic Model, Holistic Paradigm, Information Theory and Consciousness’, in Wilber, Ken, ed., The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes (Boulder: Shambala, 1982) 143–50.Google Scholar

[19] Torrance, Thomas F., Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise (Belfast: Christian Journals) 1984.Google Scholar

[20] Winter, Gibson, Liberating Creation: Foundation of Religious Social Ethics (New York: Cross-roads) 1981.Google Scholar

[21] Bateson, , Mind and Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine) 1972.Google Scholar Berman, Reenchantment (Chs. 7 & 8), constructs a metaphysics of tomorrow on the basis of Batesonian holism which he believes provides a scientific foundation and a cybernetic/biological metaphor for such construction (see Table 2, note 48). For a critique of Bateson, we Toulmin, Stephen, Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature (Berkeley: University of California, 1982) 201–13.Google Scholar

[22] Battista, in Wilber, , Holographic, 144.Google Scholar

[23] Burtt, E. A., The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, 2nd ed. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1932) 17Google Scholar, quoted in Berman Reenchantment 183, writes, ‘In the last analysis, it is the ultimate picture which an age forms of the nature of its world that is its most fundamental possession. It is the final controlling factor in all thinking whatever.’ See also Polanyi, Michael, Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-critical Philosophy (Chicago: University, 1958) 307Google Scholar, note 1. Also, Schroedinger, Erwin in Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle, Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam Books, 1984) 18, 19 and 316, note 18.Google Scholar

[24] Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd enlarged ed. (Chicago: University, 1970) 52.Google Scholar

[25] Bachelard, Gaston, The New Scientific Spirit (Boston: Beacon, 1984) 19.Google Scholar Bachelard assigns great importance to the development of non-Euclidean geometries. He believes that the dialectical progress of thought is clearer in geometry than in any other science.

[26] Weiss, Johannes, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1892).Google Scholar To be sure, eschatology had always been represented, in J. A. Bengel for example. But except for textual criticism, he was not considered to be in the main line of biblical scholar-ship.

[27] Minear, Paul, ‘Christian Eschatology and Historical Methodology’, in Neutestamentliche Studien fuer R. Bultmann, ed. Eltester, W., BZNW 21 (Berlin: A. Toepelmann, 1954) 19.Google Scholar

[28] He, Karl, Christian Faith and Natural Science (New York: Harper 1953)Google Scholar, interpreted transcendence in terms of spatial dimensionalities. He was followed in this by Pollard, W., Physicist and Christian (New York: Seabury 1961, 96–101).Google ScholarBarbour, Ian C., Issues in Science and Religion (New York/London: Harper Torchbook, 1971) 434–7Google Scholar discusses Heim. LeShan, L. and Margenau, H., Einstein's Space and Van Gogh's Sky: Physical Reality and Beyond (New York: Macmillan, 1982)Google Scholar analyze the meanings of space and time in different domains or realms which represent structures of reality. Torrance, T. F. applied space analysis to theological themes in his books, Space, Time and Incarnation (Oxford: University, 1969)Google Scholar and Space, Time and Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976).Google ScholarBachelard, Gaston offers a phenomenology of spatial experience in The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon) 1969.Google Scholar

[29] Jonas, Hans, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (New York: Harper, 1966)Google Scholar, discusses these ontologies in his first essay, ‘Life, Death, and the Body in the Theory of Being’.

[30] Froehlich, Karlfried, ‘Biblical Hermeneutics on the Move’, Ex Auditu, 1/1 (1985) 3–13.Google Scholar

[31] See Taylor, H. O., The Medieval Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1949) 2, Bk. V, Symbolism.Google Scholar

[32] Taylor, , Medieval, 2, 87–91.Google Scholar Also Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1964 [1952]) Ch. III, The Victorines.Google Scholar

[33] Fletcher, Angus, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, New York: Cornell, 1964) 313, note 11.Google Scholar

[34] After describing Calvin's figural reading of the Bible and the subsequent loss of figural reading, Hans Frei (Eclipse) traces the problem of the single sense through eighteenth and nineteenth century hermeneutics. Northrop Frye (Great Code, 78–101) contrasts typological and causal reading of the Bible. According to the intentionality of the Bible itself, typological reading is the ‘right’ way to read it (79, 80). For the scientists of the seventeenth century revolution, creation was a type of efficient not purposive activity. Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicos subordinates the knowledge given by history (the Bible) to the superior knowledge provided by nature. In his ethics, Spinoza expressly disavowed teleology (Ethica), I, Appendix, in Opera (4 vols., Vloten et Lund (1914)) I, 68.

[35] A symposium on ‘Origin and Evolution of the Universe - Evidence of Design?’ was convened in June 1985 by the Royal Society of Canada to discuss recent developments in quantum theory and cosmology in relation to the classical teleological argument. Quantum theory has restored the observer as participant to the central place in the universe, and it is holistic. On holism in quantum theory, we Gribben, John, In Search of Schroedinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality (Toronto/New York/London: Bantam Books, 1984) 172.Google Scholar On the observer, the fine-tuning of the ‘Big Bang’ and the Anthropic Principle, we in addition to Gribbens, Davies, Paul, Other Worlds (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980).Google Scholar

[36] Note 24. Kuhn is credited with using twenty-six different meanings of paradigm in his study: see Kneller, George F., Science as a Human Endeavour (New York: Columbia University 1978) 65Google Scholar, note 4, on Margaret Masterson's analysis of Kuhn's terminology. In the postscript to the second edition of his book Kuhn defined the term in two primary senses. ‘On the one hand, it stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community. On the other hand it denotes one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle-solution, which, employed as models or examples can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.’ (Kuhn, 175).

[37] Polanyi, , PK, vii.Google Scholar

[38] Nations, Archie, ‘Historical Criticism and the Current Methodological Crisis’, SJT, 36 (1983) 59–72, provides a thorough overview.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[39] Steinmetz, , 1985.Google Scholar Also, Jones, Roger, Physics as Metaphor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1982)Google Scholar, perceives the medieval sense of space to be connecting and relating in contrast to the modern sense of space as alienating and distancing. Morris Berman's idea of participating consciousness represents in part a recovery of elements of original consciousness repressed and lost in Cartesian/Newtonian split consciousness.

[40] Huizinga, Jan, The Waning of the Middle Ages (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954) 210, 202.Google Scholar

[41] Wellhausen, J. (Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1883). English edition, New York: Macmillan, 1957, 13Google Scholar, and vii (1885)) used the term archaeology with respect to biblical literature. For a general discussion of connecting patterns between geological and historical science, we Toulmin, Stephen and Goodfield, June, The Discovery of Time (Chicago: University Phoenix edition, 1982) 237.Google Scholar

[42] Koch, Klaus, The Growth of the Biblical Tradition (New York: Scribner's, 1969) 72.Google Scholar

[43] Jantsch, Erich, The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution, Systems Science and World Order Library (Oxford/New York/Toronto: Pergamon Press, 1980) 34.Google Scholar See also Prigogine and Stengers, Order, Book II ‘The Science of Complexity’, and note 20.Google Scholar

[44] Capra, , Turning Point 103.Google Scholar

[45] Koch, , Growth 64–6Google Scholar, citing Rad, Gerhard von, Das Formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuch, BWANT 4, 26, 1938.Google Scholar

[46] Bateson, , Mind 14, 18Google Scholar, sees patterns between living creatures as stories and story structures in general. He believes that anatomy ‘must contain an analogue of grammar’.

[47] Capra, , Turning Point 93, 92–6.Google Scholar

[48] Berman, , Reenchantment, Chart 2, 238.Google Scholar

[49] For a positive view, see Campbell, Jeremy, Grammatical Man (New York: Simon and Schuster) 1982.Google Scholar For a negative view, see the afterword by Georgescu-Roegen, N. in Rifkin, Jeremy, Entropy: A New World View (New York: Bantam Books, 1981) 263.Google Scholar

[50] The book of Dengbich, K. G. and Dengbich, J. S., Entropy in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge (Cambridge: University, 1985) came to my attention as I was completing this paper. I have not yet read it.Google Scholar

[51] Jeremy Campbell, 15.

[52] Battista, in Wilber, , Holographic 145.Google Scholar Battista believes that information is a holistic concept.

[53] We do not consider here the informational entropy created by ever increasing specializations in the university social system which develop languages which operate as noise except within a very narrow community of experts.

[54] See Berman, 237–64, and the works of Bateson.Google Scholar Also Gregory, Richard L., Mind in Science ([1981], Penguin Books)Google Scholar; Barrett, Wm., The Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1986)Google Scholar; Augros, R. M. and Stanciu, G. N., The New Story of Science: Mind and the Universe (Chicago: Gateway, 1984).Google Scholar

[55] Polanyi, , PK, 55–7, and see index on ‘focal and subsidiary awareness’.Google Scholar

[56] Sanders, Andy F., ‘Religion and Science as Cultural Systems: Polanyi's View on the Problem of Meaning’, NZ Sys Th, 27 (1985) 86.Google Scholar

[57] Wink, Walter (The Bible in Human Transformation: Towards a New Paradigm for Biblical Study, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973) has been accused of psychologism.Google Scholar However, he distinguishes psychologism from the use of psychological insights in Transforming Bible Study (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980) Appendix 3.Google Scholar

[58] Schüssler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth, In Memory of Her (New York: Crossrds, 1983) 28.Google Scholar

[59] Bonino, J. M., Revolutionary Theology Comes of Age (London: SPCK, 1975) 91.Google Scholar

[60] See Robertson, John C., ‘Hermeneutics of Suspicion versus Hermeneutics of Goodwill’, SR 8/4 (1979) 365–78Google Scholar, and Stuhlmacher, Peter, Vom Verstehen des Neuen Testaments: Eine Hermeneutik, 2te. Auflage (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1986) 222–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[61] Bonino, , 94.Google Scholar ‘Third-world’ theologians are increasingly critical of Western critical scholarship. See Harrington, David J., ‘Some New Voices in New Testament Interpretation’, ATR 64/3 (1982) 362–70Google Scholar; Gregorios, Paulos, ‘Hermeneutics in India Today’, The Indian Journal of Theology 28 (1979) 1–14, and the entire July–December 1982 issue of IJTGoogle Scholar; Veitch, James A., ‘Is an Asian Theology Possible?’ in The Human and the Holy: Asian Perspectives in Christian Theology, ed. by Nacpil, Emerito P. and Elwood, Douglas J. (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day, 1978) 216–30, especially 225–7 on Western historical-criticism and the Asian world.Google Scholar