Clarity and Postmodernism
We’ve begun our investigation of the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture. As we saw last week, if we cannot understand Scripture then its authority and inerrancy have little to no value for us. It’s like taking English classes from a professor who speaks in broken English. You may recognize that they have the authority and expertise you need but it’s nigh impossible to learn the material. Clarity, then, is a foundational piece of any responsible Doctrine of Revelation. Yet there are many today who do not believe that it is possible to accurately interpret and understand Scripture. The influence of Postmodernism on the study of the Bible (known as Hermeneutics) has led to much of the weak and impotent Christianity that we have today.
In the late 20th century a shift in focus happened among Bible interpreters away from the text itself to the reader. The are three pieces to every interpretive attempt and they all have to be understood properly for good interpretation to take place: the author, the text, and the reader.
Author –>Text <–Reader
For much of interpretive history the focus has been on the text, particularly on what the author intended when he wrote the text. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), often hailed as the father of modern hermeneutics, proposed that the central focus on interpretation is not the author but the reader. By means of his psychologizing Scripture he moved the focus of interpretation away from objective knowledge to subjective experience. Philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Hans-George Gadamer fertilized these seeds with even more of a shift towards the subjective. Gadamer proposed a separation between the present text, which is fixed, and the author and past context of the text’s origin. What the author meant has no bearing on what the text now is, not directly anyways. It is our experience of the text that gives it meaning.
Jacques Derrida is probably the most important individual in the shaping of the postmodern hermeneutic. With the focus on Linguistics that took place in interpretive studies Derrida devised a philosophy which, in simplistic terms, stated that since all meaning is relative the interpretive process is about self-actualization, not about understanding the past author’s intent. Deconstructionism, as it is known, was about finding the hidden voices in a text, and unlocking multiple meanings. This process of interpretation has opened the door to a whole host of approaches to the text: the Marxist hermeneutic, the feminist hermeneutic, the homosexual hermeneutic, etc. Since the key is not to unlock an inherent meaning but to unlock the hidden (and indeed suppressed) voices of the text any number of approaches is admissible.
Now I plan to talk about the importance of the reader in the interpretive process, and the inability of reading devoid of presuppositions. Nonetheless, there is a very real sense in which this philosophy of hermeneutics robs the Christian faith of all its significance. If God’s communication to us is devoid of meaning, and if it requires the self-actualization of sinful man to be meaningful then we are in a desperate place. No one functions like this in real life, anyways. No professor teaching this kind of nonsense believes that his contract with the institution who hired him can be interpreted however a reader desires. Their tenure is based on one literal understanding, and no other will do. Yet, many of these same scholars deny the same principle to the Scriptures. And Christians who follow this path deny the God of Creation, the God of Scripture, the ability to communicate clearly and objectively with His creation. If God can’t communicate clearly with us then we have no excuse for living in sin, being disobedient, being ignorant, and making ourselves judges of morality and truth. This hermeneutic will not do for any form of a faithful church today! So, we must look at another approach if we are to make sense of the doctrine of clarity and make progress towards a faithful church.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 