Explain the Purpose of Hermeneutics

The primary need of Hermeneutics is to determine and understand the meaning of Biblical text. The purpose of Hermeneutics is to bridge the gap between our minds and the minds of the Biblical writers through a thorough knowledge of the original languages, ancient history and the comparison of Scripture with Scripture. Through Hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation can be achieved in three ways; historically, the message and the doctrine. The Bible is totally authoritive and inspired by God, however is it propositional or not?

To be propositional means that God reveals certain truths at which we respond in accepting these truths. These certain truths may be found in scripture, creeds and or the teachings of the church. Non-propositional approach emphasise God revealing himself at which we respond with faith being a personal belief in God, resulting in us developing specific ideas and or propositions about God. A non-propositional view believes the Bible is a source book of many different accounts of human response to the divine.

In Hermeneutics, there are three, among many, significant schools of thought which we are principally concerned; fundamentalism, liberal approach, and traditional interpretations of Scripture. Fundamentalism was first used in the beginning of the 20th century, whose aim was to preserve what they saw as the ‘fundamentals’ of the Christian faith from being eroded by liberal thinking. The fundamentals included the following beliefs; the divinity of Jesus; meaning he was fully God, that God’s ultimate judgement and the existence of heaven and hell and the physical resurrection of Jesus, among others.

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Fundamentalists believed in the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration, this is the understanding that, the Bible is the actual word of God to the extent that it was dictated by God, word for word, to the people who wrote it down. To the fundamentals, the Bible is seen as being ‘inspired’ or ‘breathed’ by God in a direct and ‘unmediated’ fashion, meaning the actual writers of the Bible are just conduits and God is the actual author as it is God’s words that they are included, and so God is the words of the writers.

Fundamentalists would declare that their view of the Bible can be found in the words of the Bible itself. Similarly Fundamentalists may argue that the Bible itself makes a clear statement of its own dependability. Since the Bible is regarded as being entirely the work of God and that God is the author it is inerrant meaning it can never be changed, questioned or challenged, to do so means you’re challenging God himself. With this idea that the Bible goes without error goes beyond the concept that it is with theological error.

Rather the belief of inerrancy includes freedom from geographical, historical and scientific error as well. The second school of interpretation is Liberalism. This grew out of the discussion amongst rationalism and authoritarianism. The Liberal system of Hermeneutics suggests that the modern mentality was to govern someone’s approach to scripture, such as, if anything was not in harmony with ‘educated’ morality, it was rejected, for example Biblical concepts such as hell, sin and depravity as they offend moral sensitivities, and could not believe that their God could punish them in such a way.

The Liberal method of Hermeneutics allows the Bible to be open for criticism like any other scripture, for example, miracles are not always to be accepted as they are not of certain truths and are not scientific. Another approach the Liberal system suggest is that the scripture’s text itself could be rearranged, for instance in authoritive order the law comes first however it may be argued that shouldn’t it be ordered by the times in which they were written? The reason behind this approach is that the Liberal method rejects all forms of inspiration.

For a Liberal interpreter of the Biblical, the concept of revelation is redefined to mean human insight into religious truth. One of the consequences of the liberal school of interpretation is that the content of doctrinal and theological are not binding, this results to the belief that religious experience is therefore fundamental and that theology is an afterthought. The Liberals believe that the writers of the Bible accommodated their recipients and hence the Bible is not binding on us. Non propositional theology is often favoured by liberal theologians because it places the emphasis on human experience and rationality.

The third school of interpretation is Traditionalism. Traditionalists maintain that the Bible is full of truth, God is revealed within the Bible and that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit. One of the key characteristics of their approach to the Bible is its emphasis on the need to understand the nature of the different types of literature within the bible. However, traditionalists would not accept the fundamentalist’s notion of inerrancy as many would acknowledge that there are mistakes in the Bible. These are seen as a reflection of both the historical context in which they are written and the human fallibility f the authors.

As with Liberals, traditionalists believe that some aspects of the Bible need to be reinterpreted for today. Traditionalists place a lot of emphasis on the process of exegesis. However, after establishing the intended meaning of the author the next step in the traditional approach is the question of how it should be applied to Christian today. However, whereas fundamentalists believe that the true meaning of a text should be clear to each reader; traditionalists believe that exegesis is more of a complex process.

Another characteristic of the traditionalists is that they are open to a range of different forms of scholarship, for instance, open to forms of textual and historical analysis. However unlike the liberal approach such scholarship is generally used to support conservative positions. Unlike fundamentalists, traditional approaches appreciate both the human involvement in the authorship of Biblical books and the historical/literary process through which the books were developed.

However, although they acknowledge this human and historical process they do see it also as inspired by God as they recognise that there is something distinct and authoritive about the canon of scripture. Hermeneutics is the science, as it is guided by rules, and the art, the application of these rules, of Biblical interpretation. The description of Hermeneutics as the ‘art of understanding’ comes from a 19th century theologian, Fredrich Schleiermacher. In interpretation, we approach a text, with either, some kind of prior understanding, prejudgement or a pre-conceived idea in order to read out of the text, known as exegesis.

Or openly reading the text, to discover something about it which we would not of known before, known as eisegesis. Eisegesis, is most faithful to text, as you have no opinion on the text at hand, however this is also most confusing as it results in a variety of information. One major scholar, as mentioned, is theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, a founder of modern Hermeneutics, which within his work Biblical teachings are emphasized. Schleiermacher was the first person to introduce a philosophical theory of interpretation, which is appropriate to the Bible along with other texts.

He emphasized the affective or emotions as a source of religious experience which is ultimately different from the purely rational approach of philosophy. Schleiermacher also argued that what makes Christianity very special is the historical event of Jesus whose life was one of perfect God-consciousness. It is this which the early authors attempted to capture in their writings. Schleiermacher believed that as religious propositions can only be made known through language the role of Hermeneutics is to unlock the original experience.

Using Kant, Schleiermacher argued that the mind seeks to organise different experiences, which can be seen in the different categories or styles of literature contained within the Bible. One of the purposes of hermeneutics for Schleiermacher is to therefore ensure that the right literary genre is applied to the text. Another major scholar along with Schleiermacher is Paul Ricoeur a great philosopher of the 20th century. Unlike Schleiermacher Ricoeur argued that the author is not important in interpretation of texts, only the reader as he develops a view of the world which is enriched and enhanced through his engagement with the text.

Ricoeur established between semantic meaning, what the text says, that can me verifiable and the symbolic meaning, what the text means. It is this symbolic meaning which is the purpose of hermeneutics, as symbols go beyond language to the world itself and to human truths and human experience. Ricoeur argued that in modernity the message of symbols have been forgotten, so the hermeneutical task is to restore the original meanings to symbols. Hermeneutics is therefore the philosophy of finding meaning in life; language not only conveys meanings but Meaning of existence.

The world itself, it can be argued, may be considered a text in which we can find the meaning; however the advantage of a written text is its existence which makes it independent from an author and his culture therefore allows us the freedom to question it but to also be questioned by it. However we do not need to believe in the world that the symbols of the text refer to, but we can participate as we have the imagination to do so. Therefore the goal of hermeneutics is the understanding.

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