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Hermeneutics: Word and thing

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TF Torrance ends a series of articles on the hermeneutics of Athanasius by returning to a theme developed throughout the series: “Christian doctrines are not to be established or to be defended simply by appealing to Biblical texts, but by listening to the things they signify by and reflecting on the acts of God they attest and allowing our thought and statements to be objectively determined by them.”

And, “If we transfer our interest from the realities signified to the language itself, as though we could excogitate truth out of it, or use it only as the occasion for devising new forms of thought on our own in order to express what we are able to conceive of ourselves, then we shall fall away into heresy.” Put differently, the realities of which the Bible speaks are the criterion of our interpretation of the words.

How does this work?

What access do we have to the realities other than the words of Scripture? And if we have no independent access, how can the realities serve as criterion for our interpretation? If we have access to the realities in some other fashion than through the text, and if knowledge of the reality determines interpretation, how can we avoid making Scripture mean what we please? Crudely (to use an example that Torrance of course abhors), we might say: Sure, John says that the Word became flesh; but we know that eternal Beings do not become flesh; therefore, the text doesn’t mean what it says but something else, something consistent with what we already know to be the case, before we’ve ever looked at the text. Scripture is in danger of ceasing to be revelation.

Besides, the words are not transparent windows through which we grasp the realities; the words provide an interpretation of the realities. Torrance wants to protect Athanasius against the charge of being a (horrors) “Biblicist,” but it seems that something like biblicism is the only way to go if we want to affirm that the Bible is revelation, and to avoid hermeneutical subjectivism.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, December 4, 2009 at 2:20 pm

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Hermeneutics: Word and thing

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