It seems fair to say that evangelicals, even using the broadest definition of the term, believe that the writers of scripture wanted to convey specific meanings to their original audiences.Footnote 1 Therefore, one of the primary tasks and ethical responsibilities of good biblical scholarship, preaching and teaching is to describe what the various scriptural authors intended in their writings.
But is it possible to find the specific meaning the authors of scripture originally intended to convey to their original audiences in an objective fashion? In regard to this question, this article will argue three points. First, this article argues that it is impossible for us to discover such meaning objectively, based upon Hans-George Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics which suggests objectivity is impossible because we are all affected by various traditions and presuppositions. Therefore, while I agree that the biblical authors did mean something in their writings, I argue that it is impossible for readers and interpreters of scripture to define specifically what this ‘one’ meaning actually is.Footnote 2
Second, because of the impossibility of finding the objective, original, authorial intended meaning of scripture, this article argues that the authority of scripture is not and cannot be objectively separated from the church's interpretation of the text. Third, in light of losing objectivity, both in terms of authorial intended meaning and scriptural authority, this article argues that, in the end, the best ways in which to read and interpret scripture are through the lenses of various Christian traditions, church practices and, ultimately, through a central conviction of faith, namely that God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, draws us to accept the authority of scripture as a faithful confession which testifies to God's self-revelation, whose ultimate expression came through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.Footnote 3
The assumption and critique of the modern search for authorial intent and meaning
According to Stephen Fowl, ‘[d]ebates over the role, significance, and status of authors for interpretation have been hotly contested over the past fifty years’.Footnote 4 From Fowl's comment, it seems reasonable to suggest that people before the 1950s generally assumed that the purpose of reading texts was to find the meaning the author was communicating to the audience.
Indeed, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who is commonly referred to as ‘the founder of modern hermeneutics and the father of modern Protestant theology’,Footnote 5 created a hermeneutical method which sought objectively to understand the text better than the author through a comprehensive analysis of the author's work(s).Footnote 6 Consequently, the job of the interpreter was to ‘be perfectly familiar with the author's language, and moreover, he must acquire a knowledge of the author's internal and external life’.Footnote 7
According to Merold Westphal, Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), whose book ‘Truth and Method [is] the most influential twentieth-century work in philosophical hermeneutics’,Footnote 8 had two major problems with Schleiermacher's perspective of authors. First, Gadamer believed that, although ‘we [sometimes] read a text to learn about its author . . . [we] more typically read to learn about the subject matter . . . of the text, the natural, human, or divine realities the text is about’.Footnote 9 To illustrate Gadamer's point, Westphal provides the following example:
[W]e read Paul to learn (among other things) about justification, baptism, and what it means to be ‘in Christ.’ To be sure, we learn something about Paul from reading the Corinthian epistles . . . but normally we read and interpret these texts not to learn what it was like to be Paul but to learn what Paul had to say on a variety of topics – and what God has to say to us today through what Paul wrote.Footnote 10
Consequently, Gadamer believed that the vast majority of interpretative focus should be on the text rather than the author.Footnote 11
Second, Gadamer took issue with a major idea behind Schleiermacher's proposal, namely objectivity, which can be defined as the belief that humans can extract knowledge of the world which can have demonstrable universal validity through purely rational means. According to Chris Lawn, in Gadamer: A Guide for the Perplexed, Gadamer traced this fallacious concept of objectivity back to the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650), who is generally known as the father of modern philosophy.Footnote 12
In 1637, Descartes wrote The Discourse on Method. The purpose of this treatise was to ground human knowledge on some type of certainty which could not be questioned. In the end, Descartes proposed that certainty could only be found in the human ability to reason, and he was also convinced that knowledge gained through reason was ‘culture-and tradition-free, universal, and reflective of a reality that exists outside the mind’.Footnote 13 In other words, Descartes believed humans could have objective and true knowledge of the world which was not influenced by various subjective perspectives brought about through diverse human experiences.Footnote 14
Descartes’ idea that humans could put their trust solely in rationalism as the ruling authority for life became so popular that, by the end of the eighteenth century in Europe, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was challenging the validity and trustworthiness of any institution (e.g. the universal church) that based its beliefs and life on the authority of tradition rather than reason, and he won these challenges. As a result, the options for all non-Enlightenment disciplines, such as theology, the social sciences and philosophy, were either to be assimilated into the Enlightenment worldview or become extinct in Western culture.Footnote 15
According to Westphal, Gadamer's assessment of the objectivity Schleiermacher depended upon is incorrect for two major reasons. First, Gadamer demonstrated that every human being interprets texts of all kinds through some type of tradition.Footnote 16 In other words, ‘[w]e belong to tradition by virtue of . . . our immersion in it, and our formation by it’.Footnote 17 All of us are born and develop in a particular historical period and in various cultural contexts (i.e. traditions). Consequently, all of our interpretations are always affected by these various traditions.Footnote 18
Because tradition plays such a vital role in how we understand and interpret texts, Gadamer believed tradition to be one of the most important authorities we use in the interpretative process.Footnote 19 Consequently, tradition ‘makes claims on us’.Footnote 20 Therefore, ‘[t]he texts and other works that tradition has handed down to us . . . are voices to which we do well to listen’.Footnote 21
Gadamer's second problem with Schleiermacher is based on the first, namely prejudice (also known as pre-judgement or presupposition).Footnote 22 Because tradition so heavily influences human perspective, all of our interpretation contains presuppositions. As a result, ‘all interpretation is perspectival and no interpretation is presuppositionless’.Footnote 23 Consequently, ‘all interpretation is relative to the traditions that have formed the perspectives and presuppositions that guide it’.Footnote 24 Thus, all of ‘our interpretations are relative to (conditioned by) the presuppositions we bring with us, and those presuppositions, as human, . . . are themselves relative . . . and not absolute’.Footnote 25 Therefore, because humans are always affected by tradition and presupposition, Gadamer seems to suggest that the best Schleiermacher could provide was an interpretation, whether good or bad, of what the authors’ intended meaning was.
The critique of the critique: the fight for the modern understanding of authorial intent and meaning
Westphal correctly suggests that the fear of relativity is the major motivating factor driving critics of Gadamer's thesis of inescapable presupposition in interpretation, stating: ‘The vertigo of relativity is the fear that . . . [s]ince there are many interpreters and traditions . . . each [will be] relative to a different perspective’.Footnote 26 Consequently, this fear has called for critique of Gadamer's thesis.
One of the most direct critics of Gadamer's thesis was E. D. Hirsch Jr. According to Westphal, ‘Hirsch's primary focus [in Validity in Interpretation] is on the goal of interpretation and the nature of the object that alone can satisfy that goal’.Footnote 27 The object of interpretation is unchangeable, determinate meaning.Footnote 28 The goal is to reproduce and recognise this meaning.Footnote 29 Westphal offers the following example to illustrate Hirsch's theory:
It is like the number seven. It is reproducible in that it is the very same, unchanged object when I think it in the morning, [or] . . . afternoon, [or] . . . evening. It is re-cognizable in that when I come back to it in the afternoon and you come to it in the evening it is the same as it was in the morning and can . . . be understood by me in the afternoon and by you in the morning in the exact same way as I understood it in the morning. There may be many occasions of understanding . . . but only one . . . content of understanding . . . namely, the meaning of the text.Footnote 30
In light of this understanding, ‘Hirsch appeals to the . . . author to provide such a meaning, [because] . . . [t]he text means what the author meant’. Therefore, ‘[t]he author is the determiner of textual meaning’.Footnote 31 Consequently, the interpreter's responsibility is to accurately describe ‘what the author meant’.Footnote 32
Westphal believes the second critic, Nicholas Wolterstorff, would shout a hearty ‘Amen!’ to Hirsch. Wolterstorff suggests that objectively finding authorial intent is vital to scriptural interpretation because God is the ultimate authority who speaks and acts through scripture.Footnote 33 Consequently, everyone ‘must do the hard preparatory work of asking what the speaker or writer was saying to the original audience’.Footnote 34 Therefore, the goal of interpretation is to determine ‘whether one's conclusions are correct, whether they are true – whether the [biblical] discourser did in fact, by authoring or presenting this [scriptural] text, say what one claims he said’.Footnote 35
The third potential critic of Gadamer's thesis could be Kevin Vanhoozer, who seems to agree with Wolterstorff and Hirsch that the goal of biblical interpretation is objectively to describe the author's meaning as found in scripture, stating:
What we have in the Bible is discourse: something someone says about something to someone. Biblical interpreters read for the authorial discourse . . . Texts are the means by which authors perform communicative actions and do things with words. What we ultimately have in scripture is God discoursing by means of human discourse.Footnote 36
Therefore, Daniel Treier believes Vanhoozer is making the argument that readers and interpreters of scripture must do justice to the biblical authors. If ‘[w]e substitute our own thinking . . . in place of the text's teaching, [we are] failing to listen carefully to the . . . Author’. Consequently, ‘we are accountable’ for making sure that the biblical authors, through our accurate description of what takes place in scripture, are able communicate the messages and actions of God accurately.Footnote 37
Is there any validity to the argument for objective authorial intention?
Mark Brett summarises the objectivist emphasis well saying that ‘one ought to distinguish what an author is trying to say (which might be called a “communicative intention”) and why it is being said (which might be called motive)’.Footnote 38 Indeed, Vanhoozer suggests that readers and interpreters of scripture should be ‘describing what an author did/do say by using certain words in a certain fashion’, rather than focusing on what the author may have intended to say.Footnote 39 Therefore, as Fowl describes it, this view argues that biblical interpreters should pay ‘attention to matters of semantics, linguistic conventions at the time [of the various writings], and matters of implication and inference’. In other words, according to Fowl, this view emphasises the importance of historical study.Footnote 40
But is it possible to claim that the use of historical methods can simply describe the meaning of the author? Fowl thinks not, saying that ‘a quick survey of the critical landscape [within the discipline of biblical studies] makes it pretty clear that our situation is marked by interminable debate and disagreement about just what the meaning of the text is’.Footnote 41 In response, Vanhoozer could suggest that he is not looking for a purely, universal objective description of the author's meaning in terms of ‘100 percent certainty’. He, rather, seeks descriptive ‘proof’ that ‘is . . . beyond a reasonable doubt’, claiming such a description is ‘usually available’.Footnote 42
Such a response, however, seems highly presuppositional in and of itself, because it assumes that interpreters of scripture usually reach agreement over the meaning (i.e. the best method of description) of the biblical text.Footnote 43 So Fowl suggests that, although it is possible to reach some consensus concerning description, as soon as the question of meaning is raised, agreement is rarely achieved.Footnote 44 Therefore, Fowl is convinced that no ‘notion of authorial intention, no matter how coherent . . . can provide us with the “meaning” of a text without begging the question of what [the] textual meaning might be’.Footnote 45 Therefore, without an answer to this question of meaning, ‘we cannot expect any account of authorial intention to provide a theoretical basis for limiting . . . any particular set of interpretive interests at the expense of other interests’.Footnote 46 In other words, every biblical interpreter brings some type of bias, whether for good or ill, to the scripture. It is unrealistic to believe we are able to garner consensus as to whose bias should take precedent and be used as ‘the’ one bias by which scripture is interpreted. To do so would be to silence all other biases, thereby disregarding other potentially legitimate perspectives on how to understand and describe the meaning of scripture.Footnote 47
A biblical and theological case for interpretative plurality of scripture
In previous sections, the discussion focused on two major points. First is the need for some (e.g. Hirsch, Wolterstorff and Vanhoozer) to have objectivity in the process of interpretation for the purpose of maintaining that authorial intention can be discovered. Second is Gadamer's thesis, which claims that interpretative objectivity is impossible because each interpreter is naturally conditioned by presuppositions from which escape is not possible. At this point, one major question needing to be asked and answered is whether it is biblically and theologically justified to believe that plurality, rather than objectivity, in biblical interpretation is as unnatural and negative as objectivists seem to claim.
John Franke, in Manifold Witness, suggests that God welcomes plurality. He argues in favour of interpretative plurality by examining the concept of truth, as it seems that many want to cling to objectivity out of fear of losing the ability to make truth claims. For Franke, absolute ‘[t]ruth is not found’ in objectivity or other ‘abstract notions or theories’,Footnote 48 but is only found in ‘a person, Jesus Christ’.Footnote 49 This truth, however, does not rest in Christ alone, because ‘he is the truth in relation to the Father [God], who sent him into the world out of love for the world’, and ‘[t]he [Holy] Spirit is [also] the truth because the Spirit leads the world to Jesus who is the truth’.Footnote 50
In proposing that truth is plural, however, Franke is not suggesting that we become a cultural relativist, whose attitude can be summarised in phrases such as: ‘“you have your truth and I have mine”, or “that may be true for you but it's not true for me”’.Footnote 51 According to Franke, such an attitude rarely, if at all, considers how God through Jesus Christ affects history by the power of the Spirit. So, although Christians can readily concede that we are unable to have ‘objective’ knowledge, or ‘knowledge that is not influenced by the circumstances that surround it’,Footnote 52 this does not mean God cannot have ‘knowledge that transcends the limitations of time and place that are characteristic of [human] finitude’.Footnote 53 Consequently, Christians can stand firm in the claim that ‘God uses human nature, language, and speech to instruct us about the shape of our beliefs and the conduct of our lives’.Footnote 54
In arguing that the interpretative plurality of scripture ‘is not . . . a problem that needs to be overcome’, but ‘is part of the divine design and intention for the church as the image of God and the body of Christ in the world’,Footnote 55 Franke suggests two pieces of evidence which support his argument. First, he believes plurality is acceptable because it is found in the very nature of God, namely, in the Trinity. For Franke, the Trinity represents the ‘God [who] is a plurality-in-unity and a unity-in-plurality’,Footnote 56 as Christian orthodoxy has always confessed; God is one but is also three distinct persons.Footnote 57
Another suggestion Franke gives for the theological acceptability of Christian plurality is scripture itself. So he claims that ‘the Bible is not so much a single book as it is a collection of authorized texts written from different perspectives and settings’, where ‘[e]ach of the voices represented in the canonical collection maintain a distinct point of view that emerges from a particular time and place’.Footnote 58 Such scriptural diversity, however, is not without unity. Franke suggests that this unity, which comes from the several ‘manifold witnesses’ of scripture, is the divine truth,Footnote 59 and is found in the universal proclamation that ‘the Father, out of love for the world, sends the Son to take on human flesh, live a human life, and experience death for the sake of the world. In this sending the Father gives all to Jesus who in turn gives himself to the world by entrusting all that he has to the Spirit.’Footnote 60 Thus, in light of the theological and biblical justifications Franke gives for plurality, he believes we should not be surprised to find that the universal proclamation of the story of God through scripture finds appropriate contextualisation in a vast array of settings, as this story ‘engages culture after culture, ethnicity after ethnicity, [and] situation after situation’.Footnote 61
Plurality and scriptural authority
In light of the suggestion that it is not possible to read and interpret scripture in a non-pluralistic fashion, how can we claim that scripture is the objectively authoritative standard for the life and practice of Christians everywhere? Some evangelicals seem to suggest that the plurality and authority of the Bible cannot coexist. For example, Alister McGrath states: ‘The evangelical insistence upon the authority of scripture reflects a determination not to permit anything from outside the Christian heritage to become the norm for what is truly “Christian”’.Footnote 62 But is McGrath's suggestion realistically possible? Christians, like all others, are conditioned by culture and history. Consequently, Christians are not a special group of humans who are immune to Gadamer's thesis, as they too are affected by various traditions and presuppositions.Footnote 63 Therefore, it seems unlikely that we use nothing from outside the Christian tradition as ‘the norm’ for what we believe about scripture and how it affects our lives, since ‘the norm’ for many of the presuppositions we use to interpret scripture are outside the ‘Christian heritage’.Footnote 64
Because of the realistic possibility that plurality and presupposition in human interpretation are inescapable, it seems that separating biblical authority from human presupposition (e.g. interpretation) does not seem possible as the two are interdependent. I suggest that the most convincing piece of evidence which demonstrates this interdependency is the formation of the various biblical books into what Protestants now call the canon of scripture. According to Roger Olson, in The Story of Christian Theology, it took approximately three hundred years for Christians to finalise the biblical canon.Footnote 65 Although evangelicals are quick to assert that the early Christians involved in canon formation were already recognising the authority of various biblical books rather than imposing authority on them,Footnote 66 the historical data suggest that the process of deciding what particular books belonged in the canon was also, and just as importantly, an involved human process of interpretation where many diverse and sometimes conflicting presuppositions and perspectives weighed in on what books should be included as scripture. Olson records this diversity of opinion, stating:
Church fathers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen created their own lists of Christian Scriptures, and they varied . . . from each other. Irenaeus listed the four Gospels and most of the later canonized epistles . . . Shortly after Irenaeus, Tertullian followed the same pattern, as did Origen . . . A difference remained between them, however, in that Tertullian wished to treat the canon, as a black-or-white, either-or category, while Origen acknowledged a set of Christian writings as doubtful and disputed but nevertheless helpful.Footnote 67
Although Olson says the principle the early church used to decide what biblical books belonged in the canon ‘is unclear’, the majority consensus is that they used ‘[t]he prophetic-apostolic principle’.Footnote 68 This interpretative principle suggests that the only books early Christians would accept as canon were those which ‘had be[en] widely recognized throughout the Christian churches as reflecting apostolic authority (if not written by an apostle) and [those] presenting important truth for salvation and Christian living’.Footnote 69
What I am using Olson to suggest here is that it is the power of the Holy Spirit along with human interpretation that God uses to establish scriptural authority. Scripture is not the product of God's Spirit acting alone to create the canon. Like most of the divine–human relationship, it is interdependent as God, through the work of the Holy Spirit, and humans work together to establish God's will for God's creation. So, John Webster states:
Scripture's authority is [not] conceived in purely formal terms, as if it were a property independent [from] . . . the common life of the Christian community. Authority is not independent of use . . . Accordingly, the authority of scripture stands in close relation to the practice of interpretation Footnote 70 [because] . . . Scripture's authority is not exercised apart from the work performed upon the text by its readers.Footnote 71
Christian practice, tradition and faith
If there is no objective method by which to determine the authorial intent of scripture, and the authority of the Bible does not objectively stand above human interpretation, then two major questions require answers. First, in light of plurality, how does one decide between good readings and interpretations of scripture and the inadequate ones? Second, what is the basis of the orthodox evangelical Christian faith when faced with the realistic possibility that not even scripture can stand objectively apart from human interpretation?
Webster offers a starting point in answering the first question by suggesting that ‘[t]he act of interpreting an authoritative text involves the adoption of specific attitudes and virtues’.Footnote 72 What he seems to suggest here is that good interpretation of scripture is done by those who are active participants in the practices and piety of the church.
According to J. Todd Billings, in The Word of God for the People of God, there are several essential practices in which Christians should immerse themselves in order to be better interpreters of the Bible. He combines the first two together, namely prayer and memorisation. For Billings, these two disciplines ‘are ways to enter into the Spirit's work’ which ‘can provide the [necessary] space [we need] to hear the particular texture, logic, and flow of the biblical text’. Together, these practices are ‘way[s] to patiently and humbly allow the words of scripture to be chewed and digested’ so they can be ‘incorporated into our lives by the Spirit's power’.Footnote 73
The next two disciplines, baptism and eucharist, are vital spiritual practices for Billings because they are two of the more important ways Christian interpreters, through active participation in the community of the Church, experience the love of God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit in a tangible way.Footnote 74 Baptism is the practice which symbolises our ‘union with Christ’.Footnote 75 The eucharist ‘is a participation in Christ, a continued nourishment in this salvific life through communion with Jesus Christ and his body, the church, by the Spirit's power’.Footnote 76 By participating in these two disciplines, Christians show reverence for God by remembering and reflecting upon ‘God's mighty works that culminate in Christ, communion with God and others through Christ by the Spirit, and the hope for the final consummation of God's promises’.Footnote 77
One of the last, but equally important practices Billings mentions which help Christians be faithful and good biblical interpreters is the one which requires us to demonstrate our faith outside the universal church, namely missions.Footnote 78 According to Billings, ‘Christians are called to be witnesses in the world to Jesus Christ, proclaiming in word and deed the message of Christ's gospel’.Footnote 79 By being missional, ‘believers participate in the sending of the Son from the Father to the world in love’.Footnote 80 Consequently, the way Billings answers the first question is not by pointing to some objective standard which can reveal ‘the’ one interpretation of the text. Rather, he rightly suggests that the best methodology for reading and interpreting scripture is by proclaiming, listening and doing what it says in obedience to God.
In answer to the second question, it is important to take a look into the general ethos of pre-Enlightenment society. In this culture, one of the greater values which provided stability, structure and authority for life was significantly based upon the wisdom, work and experiences of preceding generations. These beliefs and actions, what we call ‘tradition’,Footnote 81 were carried on from generation to generation and provided the backbone for society to function. The idea of tradition was challenged and defeated by the Enlightenment throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was replaced by reason, the need for certainty, and objectivity.
As mentioned earlier, Westphal points out that one of Gadamer's goals was once again to make people aware of the fact that various traditions and subsequent presuppositions are the guiding forces behind our reading and interpretation. In the Christian context, it is the various traditionsFootnote 82 of the past which have helped to shape our current understandings of what it means to be Christian which are themselves one of the best and most powerful testimonies to the validity of the Christian faith. Consequently, this is the reason why some evangelical theologians are now looking to the past in order to learn, for example, how the church fathers read and interpreted scripture.Footnote 83
One of the most valuable insights these contemporary theologians are learning is that Christians of the past read and interpreted scripture in order to be transformed by God into Christ's image by the power of the Holy Spirit.Footnote 84 In others words, they are learning that the foundation for the Christian past was not certainty or objectivity, but a confessional faith driven by a central theological presupposition, namely that God is providentially acting in human history in order to unite and transform humanity through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.Footnote 85 The exercise of faith, in both word and deed, is what ultimately has sustained Christianity in the past and it is, scripturally, our best hope for sustaining Christian faith in the future.Footnote 86 Therefore, rather than put our faith in so-called objectivity to interpret scripture and its authority, I suggest that we act faithfully through Christian practices and piety. These spiritual disciplines are what put us in a better position to be good readers and interpreters of scripture, but they are also what allow God through scripture to be the authority over, in and through our lives.
Conclusion
The purpose of this article has been to suggest the following: (1) because presupposition is the driving force behind all human interpretation, it is not possible to objectively identify or describe the authorial intent of scripture; (2) in light of this, I also proposed that scripture cannot be considered an objective standard that is in some way set apart from human interpretation; (3) without the ability for Christians to exercise objectivity over authorial intent or scripture, Christian traditions, practices and piety, and faith in the central presupposition that God is providentially at work through the power of the Holy Spirit to unite and transform humanity into the image of Christ, are the most adequate ways to provide the best readings and interpretations of scripture.
It is unnerving to admit that, regardless of which methodology we use, how much historical reconstruction we do or how much we study ancient Hebrew or Koine Greek, that we will never be able to determine the ‘one’ original meaning intended by the scriptural writers. The main emphasis of biblical study and interpretation, however, should not be aimed at such, but should rather be focused on an increasing dependence upon the Holy Spirit to shed more and more light on the meaning of the holy scriptures as an act of worship to and for the glory of God.
