Reasonable Hermeneutics?
George W. Bratcher III
Dr. Douglas Welch
Biblical Hermeneutics
5 May 1993
REASONABLE HERMENEUTICS?
At the beginning of the semester the issue was brought up
that hermeneutics, if pressed far enough, is essentially, epis-
temology and our interpretation of scripture based upon epis-
temology. Also the class dealt with the issue of confessional
and pietistic communities and their interpretation of scripture
based upon their epistemology. There is nothing wrong with
having presuppositions, for we all have them, but what is also
important is knowing what those presuppositions are and what
limitations they have. Since epistemology is a form of philoso-
phy and involves philosophical presuppositions, I would like to
deal with in this paper some of the philosophical presuppositions
that lie beneath the epistemology of both the confessional and
pietistic communities. Now one may ask, "How is philosophy rele-
vant in any way to scripture?" When one translates philosophy
from its Greek context, the definition simply means, "a love of
wisdom!" Throughout Proverbs, we are admonished to acquire
wisdom at any cost. In the epistle of James we are admonished in
this way:
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who
gives generously to all without finding fault, and it
will be given to him. (NIV 1880)
But in seeking wisdom, we are dealing with a double edged sword.
Wenham is of help to us here:
"Knowledge of good and evil" is wisdom . . . . It
offered "insight" . . . (3:16). At first this inter-
pretation appears unlikely as moral discernment. It is
easy to see that God has wisdom and that children lack
it, but more difficult to see why it was forbidden to
man. The acquisition of wisdom is seen as one of the
highest goals of the godly according to the Book of
Proverbs. But the wisdom literature also makes it
plain that there is a wisdom that is God's sole pre-
serve, which man should not aspire to attain (e.g., Job
15:7-9,40; Prov 30:1-4), since a full understanding of
God, the universe, and man's place in it is ultimately
beyond human comprehension. To pursue it without ref-
erence to revelation is to assert human autonomy, and
to neglect the fear of the Lord which is the beginning
of knowledge (Prov 1:7). (Wenham 63)
The Reformation was a response to the abuse and powerhold held on
the interpretation of scripture that was forced upon society.
Pietist communities were a response to the confessional communi-
ties of the Reformation. The Enlightenment was a response to the
wars that existed between religious factions. The presupposi-
tions of all of these communities have flowed over into our time
today and exist in one form or another. In both the confessional
and pietist communities, appeals to wisdom were based upon either
reason or a special Spiritual revelation. I would like to
respond to both of these presuppositions; however, beginning with
the Enlightenment, other people questioned more adequately the
presuppositions of reason within the context of the human mind
and human existence, and how one acquires special spiritual
revelation and what it entails to the life of both the individual
and the community; therefore, I shall let voices from the past do
my arguing since I feel that their arguments are adequate enough.
I will however, comment on my understanding and interpretations of
these comments.
THE LIMITS OF REASON?
Beginning with Rene Descartes, we begin a new paradigm in
the interpretation of philosophy. Of greatest concern to Rene
Descartes was the adequacy of reason and how he could overcome
doubt and if there was something above all else that he could not
doubt:
Thus it must be granted that, after weighing everything
carefully and sufficiently, one must come to the con-
sidered judgment that "I am, I exist" is necessarily
true every time it is uttered by me or conceived in my
mind (Descartes 17).
Here there is an inherent danger because as philosophy develops,
it is the self which becomes the center of knowledge. Appealing
once again to the Genesis account, we can once again see the
danger:
The scene becomes a trial. The Gardener becomes a
questioner. The pitiful answer must be given: "I was
afraid" (3:10). It is the same answer that will be
given by Abraham (20:11) and then by Isaac (26:9) and
by all who cannot trust the goodness of God and submit
to his wise passion. The speech of the indicted couple
is revealing, for it is all "I." There lies the primal
offense: "I heard . . ., I was afraid . . ., I was
naked; I hid . . . . I ate . . . . I ate" (3:10-13).
Their own speech indicts them. It makes clear that
their preoccupation with the Gardener, with his voca-
tion, his permission, his prohibition, has been given
up. Now the preoccupation is "I." The fear and the
hiding helped no more than the eating. Life is turned
back on self. (Brueggemann 49)
Since I am a rational being, and I cannot be doubted, then my
reasoning becomes paramount in defining my world around me. As I
stated in class, the appeal to reason on the part of the confes-
sional and pietistic communities would have at one time had a
strong appeal to me. The educational system here in the United
States is so strongly governed by the scientific method, that we
here in the states can naturally, without really being fully
aware, accept appeals to reason without much questioning. The
irony of it is that in looking at the enlightenment, appeals to
reason were challenged by the empiricists, from which the scien-
tific method eventually came. The empiricists, rightly so, chal-
lenged the notion that reason was an end to itself. Their big-
gest criticism was that since reason was based just upon theor-
ies in the mind, one could make rational the absurd, provided one
had the right reasonings. This was not acceptable to the
empiricists since their appeal was to experience and what the
mind could know using reason within the limits of day to day
observations. Thus with a Wesleyan tradition which appeals to
tradition, reason, and experience (Dunning 77); we can see the
heavy influence of the modern mind that exits even today in the
later half of the twentieth century even within our own tradi-
tions.
However, a certain man, by the name of David Hume challenged
the notion that any of our knowledge could be known with any cer-
tainty. He thus shook the foundations of reason and experience,
by this view:
The mind can never possibly find the effect in the sup-
posed cause, by the most accurate scrutiny and examina-
tion. For the effect is totally different from the
cause and consequently can never be discovered in it.
Motion in the second billiard ball is a quite distinct
event from motion in the first: nor is there anything
in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other.
(Hume 325)
Hume believed that the reason we infer a cause that we cannot know
for certain, since it is capable of having a contrary, comes from
the principle of custom or habit:
For wherever the repetition of any particular act or
operation produces a propensity to renew the same act
or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning
or process of understanding, we always say, that this
propensity is the effect of custom. (Hume 336)
This habit or custom is always understood to stand as a matter of
fact because of the feeling that we have for it being true (Keen,
CLASS NOTES). Since for Hume, the basis of all knowledge claims
comes from cause and effect, and since we cannot get at the cause
but simply keep going from one conclusion to another on the basis
of feeling and custom, then all we have is phenomena that seems
true (Keen, CLASS NOTES). From viewing all of creation and know-
ledge as phenomena, Hume thus makes the world as transcendent and
distant as any possible creator that it might have.
Skepticism, such as that promoted by David Hume, caused much
confusion in the world of philosophy over what, if anything could
be known. However, we cannot stay stuck in skepticism. Besides,
one can make an appeal to the progress we have made in the area
of physics and many other areas of science in the twentieth cen-
tury. Certainly there must be some certainty to what we know.
Rousseau was on the right track when he said that existence
is in feeling, for even our need for knowledge and order come
from desires which arise from our emotions and feelings. However
concerning Hume, Immanuel Kant said:
I openly confess that my remembering David Hume was the
very thing which many years ago first interrupted my
dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the
field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction.
(Kant 5)
Speculative seems to be the key and right word concerning the
philosophy Kant was investigating and especially concerning phi-
losophy in general after Hume's skepticism had left it generally
in a state of chaos. Kant followed wisely in the footsteps of
Rousseau in that he pointed out we were able to give meaning to
the word "is," in other words to make judgments about our exper-
iences (Rousseau 9). However the problem was that Hume's skepti-
cism said that all we could know from experiences were effects
and that we could never get to causes or truly see connections.
Concerning this Kant said:
The question was not whether the concept of cause was
right, useful, and even indispensable for our knowledge
of nature, for this Hume had never doubted; but whether
that concept could be thought by reason a priori, and
consequently whether it possessed an inner truth, inde-
pendent of all experience, implying a more widely ex-
tended usefulness, not limited merely to objects of ex-
perience. This was Hume's problem. It was a question
concerning the origin of the concept, not concerning
its indispensability in use. Were the former decided,
the conditions of its use and the sphere of its valid
application would have been determined as a matter of
course. (Kant 4)
Kant decided to go searching to see first what we could know for
certain in the mind, and then later, if we could find certainty
there, see if we could begin to know anything about metaphysics.
Concerning this Jones explains in a more simpler way what Kant was
doing:
Consider the process by which crude oil is refined into
various petroleum products--kerosene, gasoline of
various octane numbers, and so on. The refining pro-
cess corresponds, in this analogy, to the standard
forms of judgment in terms of which, according to
Kant's hypothesis, experience is organized. If we know
that such-and-such steps have been built into the re-
fining process, we can say with confidence that gaso-
line of such-and-such an octane will issue from the re-
finery. The "necessary connection" is not found in the
crude oil. It is supplied by the refining process.
(Jones 21)
Before going on into Kant's views on judgments, it is
important to understand how he saw the human mind within the
self. He saw the mind under two spheres: one the faculty of
the sensibility and two the faculty of the understanding.
Outside the faculties contained within the self are what are
called noumena which are the things in themselves, or what we do
not perceive. What we do perceive is known as phenomena, or
appearances, which are not the things in themselves. The
phenomena are chaotic. They are received by the senses as
chaotic or unarranged data. The faculty of the sensibilities
begins to arrange them and impress upon them intuitively, the
concepts of space and time (Keen, CLASS NOTES). But to under-
stand how these are involved in helping us make judgments, we
must see what Kant meant by judgment:
A judgment, according to Kant, is a movement of thought
in which two items are brought together and combined. .
. . The mind brings the items together in judgment
because it detects a connection between them. It is
this connection that is the warrant, or basis, for the
judgment. Now, the most obvious kind of evidence on
which we base our judgments is experience: It is sense
experience, for instance, that warrants our judging
that a particular house is large. Such a judgment Kant
called empirical, or "a posteriori." In contrast,
there is a kind of judgment that is "independent of all
experience." For instance, we do not have to measure
the angles of a particular triangle to know that its
interior angles equal two right angles; we know this as
a result of a geometric proof--it follows from Euclid's
definition of the nature of a triangle that the interi-
or angles of any triangle equal two right angles. This
kind of judgment Kant called pure, or "a priori."
(Jones 22)
A posteriori means "after the fact" and a priori "before the
fact." The concepts of time and space in the faculty of the
understanding are a priori. Therefore, the new data are
conceived beforehand intuitively in forms of space and time.
Kant explains:
Accordingly, it is only the form of sensuous intuition
by which we can intuit things a priori, but by which we
can know objects only as they appear to us (to our
senses), not as they are in themselves; and this
assumption is absolutely necessary if synthetic propo-
sitions a priori be granted as possible or if, in case
they actually occur, their possibility is to be con-
ceived and determined beforehand.
Now, the intuitions which pure mathematics lays at
the foundation of all its cognitions and judgments
which appear at one apodeictic and necessary are space
and time. For mathematics must first present all its
concepts in intuition, and pure mathematics in pure in-
tuition, i. e., it must construct them. If it pro-
ceeded in any other way, it would be impossible to make
a single step; for mathematics proceeds, not analyti-
cally by dissection of concepts, but synthetically, and
if pure intuition be wanting there is nothing in which
the matter for synthetic judgments a priori can be
given. Geometry is based upon the pure intuition of
space. Arithmetic attains its concepts of motion only
by employing the representation of time. Both repre-
sensations, however, are merely intuitions of bodies
and their alterations (motion) everything empirical, i.
e., belonging to sensation, space and time still re-
main, and are therefore pure intuitions that lie a pri-
ori at the basis of the empirical. Hence they can nev-
er be omitted; but at the same time, by their being
pure intuitions a priori, they prove that they are mere
forms of our sensibility, which must precede all empir-
ical intuition, i. e., perception of actual objects,
and in conformity with which objects can be known a
priori but only as they appear to us. (Kant 27-28)
Thus the phenomena, the chaos, the raw data, are perceived and
known immediately through the senses. There are no real
conscious judgments made concerning them. There are other
judgments we must look at in understanding how the mind
interprets phenomena, and to see if we can ever know noumena in
any sense:
In addition to distinguishing between a posteriori and
a priori judgments, Kant distinguished between analyt-
ical and synthetical judgments. In an analytical
judgment the predicate is covertly contained in the
subject and may be obtained by by analysis of it.
"Roses are flowers" is an example: That roses are
flowers is a part of the definition of roses. In a
synthetical judgment the predicate is not contained in
its subject. "Some roses are red" is an example: Red
is not a part of the definition of rose. (Jones 22)
There are three possible judgments yielded: one is an ana-
lytical a priori judgment, which is involves the law of contra-
diction (Kant 12). It would be foolish to say that a rose is not
a flower because that is a contradiction. Synthetic a posteriori
judgments are warranted by experience (Kant 13). In these judg-
ments, an opposing statement can be just as true as a supporting
statement. A rose may be red, but then again, it may not be red.
Synthetical a priori judgments involve both mathematics and ge-
ometry. For instance, 7+5=12 may seem analytical, until you
realize that 12 contains that concepts both 7 and 5 and without a
concept of 12 one could never have as a reference or measurement
to compare 5 and 7 to find that they are in 12 a priori (Kant 13
-14). Also concerning Geometry Kant best explains it when he
says:
Any principle of geometry is no less synthetic. That a
straight line is the shortest path between two points
in a synthetic proposition. For my concept of straight
contains nothing of quantity, but only of quality. The
concept of the shortest is therefore altogether addi-
tional and cannot be obtained by any analysis of the
concept of the straight line. Here, too, intuition
must come to aid us. It alone makes the synthesis
possible. (Kant 14)
Thus when the phenomena are conceived in terms of time and
space a priori and intuitively in the faculty of the sensibility
then are they thought about and judged in the faculty of the
understanding where the subject is given a predicate according
to one of the three methods of judgment just discussed. So as
we move from simple judgments and perceptions, the question comes
up, how do we understand natural laws such as in science and
physics? Kant says:
Nature is the existence of things, so far as it is de-
termined to universal laws. Should nature signify the
existence of things in themselves, we could never cog-
nize it either a priori or a posteriori. (Kant 38)
Nature refers to a product of the mind. It is chaotic, as raw
data, but the mind gives it order (Keen, CLASS NOTES). How then
are natural laws universal and a priori since some experience is
involved. Kant states:
In the first place we must state that while all judg-
ments of experience are empirical (i. e. have their
ground in immediate sense-perception), yet conversely,
all empirical judgments are not therefore judgments of
experience; but, besides the empirical, and in general
besides what is given to sensuous intuition, special
concepts must yet be superadded--concepts which have
their origin quite a priori in the pure understanding,
and under which every perception must be first of all
subsumed and then by their means changed into exper-
ience.
Empirical judgments, so far as they have objective
validity, are judgments of experience: but those which
are only subjectively valid I name mere judgments of
perception. The latter require no pure concept of un-
derstanding, but only the logical connection of percep-
tion in a thinking subject. But the former always re-
quire, besides the representation of the sensuous in-
tuition, special concepts originally generated in the
understanding, which make the judgment of experience
objectively valid. (Kant 41)
When the sense data has been impressed with space and time, and a
judgment is made involving experience in the sensibility of the
understanding, it is subjected to the categories of the under-
standing in order to be a valid judgment of experience. The
categories of the understanding which are a priori and come
under pure concepts that are known to the mind intuitively. The
catergories of the understanding as according to Kant are listed
below:
LOGICAL TABLE OF JUDGMENTS
1 2
As to Quantity As to Quality
Universal Affirmative
Particular Negative
Singular Infinite
3 4
As to Relation As to Modality
Categorical Problematic
Hypothetical Assertoric
Disjunctive Apodeictic
TRANSCENDENTAL TABLE OF THE CONCEPTS
OF THE UNDERSTANDING
1 2
As to Quantity As to Quality
Unity (Measure) Reality
Plurality (Quantity) Negation
Totality (Whole) Limitation
3 4
As to Relation As to Modality
Substance Possibility
Cause Existence
Community Necessity
PURE PHYSIOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE UNIVERSAL
PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL SCIENCE
1 2
Axioms of Anticipations of
Intuition Perception
3 4
Analogies of Postulates of
Experience Empirical
Thought in
General
(Kant 46-47)
It is important to remember that these are not the origins
of experience, but what lies in our experiences (Kant 47). Much
in the same way a program lies in a computer and helps define how
the computer will perform. Kant says of these:
Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the
sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a
work of the understanding. But the judgments which the
understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions
are far from being judgments of experience. For in one
case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they
are given in sensuous intuition, while the other judg-
ments must express what experience in general and not
what the mere perception (which possess only subjective
validity) contains. The judgment of experience must
therefore add to the sensuous intuition of its logical
connection in a judgment (after it has been rendered
universal by comparison) something that determines the
synthetic judgment as necessary and therefore as uni-
versally valid. This can be nothing but that concept
which represents the intuition as determined in itself
with regard to one form of judgment rather than
another, viz., a concept of that synthetic unity of
intuitions which can only be represented by a given
logical function of judgments. (Kant 47)
This is very similar to Hume's concept of custom and habit.
By these we can see how natural laws of science can be
universal. To sum it up quickly, the faculty of the sensibility
simply intuits and perceives and the faculty of the understanding
thinks. Yet all that we know with certainty is only in our
minds, therefore, how do we get to the noumena, the things in
themselves. How do we get to know the self, the universe, or
God? Reason is our ticket out. It is not satisfied until it has
formulated something transcendent. The synthesizing process is
performed by the imagination. Reason seeks to pass beyond exper-
ience and give to experience a unity not given by the sensibility
or the understanding. Reason wants to conclude something about
the noumena that is transcendent. Such a conclusion is an allu-
sion, and such an allusion is unavoidable (Keen, CLASS NOTES).
Kant says concerning this:
Pure reason requires us to seek for every predicate of
a thing its own subject, and for this subject, which is
itself necessarily nothing but a predicate, its sub-
ject, and so on indefinitely (or as far as we can
reach). But hence it follows that we must not hold
anything at which we can arrive to be an ultimate sub-
ject, and that substance itself never can be thought by
our understanding, however deep we may penetrate, even
if all nature were unveiled to us. For the specific
nature of our understanding consists in thinking every-
thing discursively, i. e., by concepts, and so by mere
predicates, to which therefore the absolute subject
must always be wanting. Hence all the real properties
by which we cognize bodies are mere accidents, not even
excepting impenetrability, which we can only represent
to ourselves as the effect of a force for which the
subject is unknown to us. (Kant 75)
Concerning ourselves, the universe, and God Kant replies:
Whether the soul is or is not a simple substance is of
no consequence to us in the explanation of its pheno-
mena. For we cannot render the concept of a simple be-
ing understandable sensuously and concretely by any
possible experience. The concept is therefore quite
void as regards all hoped for insight into the cause of
appearances and cannot at all serve as a principle of
the explanation of that which internal or external ex-
periences supplies. Likewise the cosmological ideas of
the beginning of the world or of its eternity cannot be
of any service to us for the explanation of any event
in the world itself. And finally we must, according to
a right maxim of the philosophy of nature refrain from
all explanation of the design of nature as being drawn
from the will of a Supreme Being, because this would
not be natural philosophy but an admission that we have
come to the end of it. . . . Yet there must be a
harmony between the nature of reason and that of the
understanding, and the former must contribute to the
perfection of the latter and cannot possibly upset it.
The solution of this question is as follows. Pure
reason does not in its ideas point to particular ob-
jects which lie beyond the field of experience, but
only requires completeness of the use of the under-
standing in the complex of experience. But this com-
pleteness can be a completeness of principle only, not
of intuitions and of objects. In order, however, to
represent the ideas definitely, reason conceives them
after the fashion of the cognition of an object. This
cognition is, as far as these rules are concerned, com-
pletely determined; but the object is only an idea in-
vented for the purpose of bringing the cognition of the
understanding as near as possible to the completeness
indicated by that idea. (Kant 72-73)
So concerning metaphysics what we are left with is speculative
philosophy which is based upon theoretical knowledge at best.
Our ability to make judgments that are accurate depend upon our
understanding of relations and to give "is" to the predicate of
the subject. Reason is ultimately a matter of psychology. Today
we accept psychology as speculative. What seems the best
definition to us is. Thus reason is not the end of wisdom, but
only the beginning. Thus our appeals to reason as an end in her-
meneutics is invalid. Our way of telling the sacred story may be
better evaluated by literary and narrative criticism in the con-
text of our communities. However, our communities must realize
that these are extensions of reason and thus our task is never
ending. One might speculate as to how the Divine fits into our
hermeneutics, since that is ultimately what we are concerned
with, since our perception of the Divine helps shape our communi-
ties. We have many responses from scripture and tradition, how-
ever, Immanuel Kant's critique of reason showed us its limita-
tions. We cannot even come before the Divine with any certainty
that is intrinsic to ourselves. Many have attempted to respond
to Kant and they have some valid criticism on minor points, but
still his estimation of the limits of human wisdom has yet to be
adequately challenged. I now turn to a philosopher who attempted
to speak to the Christian community in response to developments
of philosophy after Kant.
As a side note before going into the next section, one
might say, what place has philosophy in the story? If one looks
a little more closely to the Genesis account mentioned earlier,
and pays close attention to the commentaries of Brueggemann and
Wenham, then the answer becomes a little more clear.
LIMITED SPIRITUALITY?
With Soren Kierkegaard we find someone who believes that
the noumena are outside of human experience, but yet he acknow-
ledges at the same time that humans can possess wisdom in a
form of truth which is from the Divine. Kierkegaard starts out
in the PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS asking the question, can truth be
learned? (Kierkegaard 9) To this Kierkegaard replies:
. . . a person cannot possibly seek that he knows, and
just as impossibly, he cannot seek what he does not
know, for what he knows he cannot seek, since because
he knows it, and what he does not know he cannot seek,
because, after all, he does not even know what he is
supposed to seek. Socrates thinks through the diffi-
culty by means [of the principle] that all learning and
seeking are but recollecting. (Kierkegaard 9)
With Socrates' view, he as a midwife, had to bring forth that
which the person did not remember by helping him recollect that
which he forgot. He believed the truth to be in the individual.
Yet Kierkegaard disagrees with Socrates that truth is in the in-
dividual. If that was the case, then man, being the center of
total truth, should have the truth before his eyes plain as day.
He should have no need of questioning and inquiring to find it.
Of this Kierkegaard says:
. . . for the ultimate idea in all questioning is that
the person asked must himself possess the truth and ac-
quire it by himself. The temporal point of departure
is nothing, because in the same moment I discover that
I have known the truth from eternity without knowing
it, in the same instant that moment is hidden in the
eternal, assimilated into it in such a way that I, so
to speak, still I cannot find it even if I were to look
for it . . . . Now if the moment is to acquire deci-
sive significance, then the seeker up until that moment
must not have possessed the truth, not even in the form
of ignorance, for in that case the moment becomes mere-
ly moment of occasion; indeed, he must not even be a
seeker. This is the way we have to state the difficul-
ty if we do not want to explain it Socratically. Con-
sequently, he has to be defined as being outside the
truth (not coming toward it like a proselyte, but going
away from it) or as untruth. He is, the, untruth.
(Kierkegaard 13)
Even though Kierkegaard was in disagreement with Socrates that
man had the truth in himself since eternity, still he was not a
skeptic in saying that nothing whatsoever resembling truth could
be known. For Kierkegaard, a teacher was still needed to bring
truth to man, however, Kierkegaard believed that the beginning of
wisdom for man was to realize that he was untruth, and not truth
itself (Kierkegaard 14). But even this truth could not be
brought to one finite man by another finite man whose condition
is the same. Therefore, the teacher of this truth must be divine
and come from the outside. Of this Kierkegaard says:
The teacher, then, is the god himself, who, acting as
the occasion, prompts the learner to be reminded that
he is untruth and is that through his own fault. But
to state--to be untruth and to be that through one's
own fault--what can we call it? Let us call it sin.
(Kierkegaard 15)
How then did man, fall into this condition? Kierkegaard talks
about it somewhat in THE CONCEPT OF DREAD, but basically it is
the fact that in the Genesis account, mankind was given the
capacity for understanding the truth as God, but when mankind was
tempted with the notion that they could be truth for themselves
and fully understand and have knowledge of good and evil, it is
at that point that they fell away from the infinite truth, by
choosing to be their own truth, which is finite, and not being
fully truth, they became untruth. It is this condition that has
been passed on through the ages. Mankind has the condition to
understand the truth, but since he is untruth, and cannot see
truth, he looks to himself as the truth:
If a person originally possesses the condition to
understand the truth, he thinks that, since he himself
is, God is. If he is untruth, then he must of course
think this about himself, and recollection will be un-
able to help him to think anything but this. Whether
or not he is to go any further, the moment must decide
(although it already was active in making him perceive
that he is untruth). If he does not understand this,
then he is to be referred to Socrates, even though his
opinion that he has gone much further will cause that
wise man a great deal of trouble, as did those who be-
came so exasperated with him when he took away some
foolish notion from them that they positively wanted to
bite him. (Kierkegaard 20-21)
Since man is untruth, he cannot comprehend truth, and is a
slave to himself. Originally, mankind was created free, but in
choosing to be truth for themselves, and this they did freely,
they chose to exist in untruth where they did not have the power
to grasp truth and became slaves to themselves. In order for
them to leave this condition, as we said earlier, they need a
divine teacher. A teacher who sets them free and allows them to
see themselves as untruth in relation to the truth. Such a
teacher Kierkegaard called savior (Kierkegaard 17).
So what does Kierkegaard call a person who has been set
free? He calls that person a learner and follower. In fact it
is not the same person as before:
When the leaner is untruth (and otherwise we go back to
the Socratic) but is nevertheless a human being, and he
now receives the condition and the truth, he does not,
of course, become a human being for the first time, for
he already was that; but he becomes a different person,
not in the jesting sense--as if he became someone else
of the same quality as before--but he becomes a person
of different quality or, as we call it, a new person.
Inasmuch as he was untruth, he was continually in
the process of departing from the truth; as a result of
receiving the condition in the moment, his course took
the opposite direction, or he was turned around. Let
us call this change conversion . . . . (Kierkegaard 18)
When the new person or convert comes to see the truthfulness
of his or her condition, then they see themselves as untruth and
this awareness that they are responsible for their own condition
causes him or her to look back upon their former condition with
sorrow, and this sorrow causes them to quicken their pace toward
what lies ahead, not content to stay behind in a condition of
untruth in which they cannot see. Such sorrow, Kierkegaard calls
repentance (Kierkegaard 19).
In the moment that one becomes aware of his or her sinful
condition and repents by following a new way of life, a new birth
takes place. Of this Kierkegaard says:
In the moment, a person becomes aware that he was born,
for his previous state, to which he is not to appeal,
was indeed of "not to be." In the moment, he becomes
aware of the rebirth, for his previous state was indeed
one of "not to be." If his previous state had been one
of "to be," then under no circumstances would the mo-
ment have acquired decisive significance for him, as
explained above. Whereas the Greek pathos focuses on
recollection, the pathos of our project focuses on the
moment, and no wonder, for is it not an exceedingly pa-
thos-filled matter to come into existence from the
state of "not to be?" (Kierkegaard 21)
Yet one is left with questions concerning, how this appre-
hension of truth, by untruth, even with the aid of truth, comes
about and for what interest is there for that which is infinite
and divine, to bother to associate at all with that with is fi-
nite and incomplete in relation to the truth? Further yet, how
is a relation with the divine even a possibility, if not some
conjecture of the imagination. Kierkegaard begins to answer
these questions by looking at the relation of God as teacher and
savior in relation to the pupil:
Between one human being and another, this is the high-
est: the pupil is the occasion for the teacher to un-
derstand himself; the teacher is the occasion for the
pupil to understand himself; in death the teacher
leaves no claim upon the pupil's soul, no more that the
pupil can claim that the teacher owes him something. .
. . But the god needs no pupil in order to understand
himself, and no occasion can act upon him in such a way
that there is just as much in the occasion as in the
resolution. What then, moves him to make his
appearance? He must move himself and continue to be
what Aristotle says of him, unmoved, he moves all . . .
. But if he moves himself and is not moved by need,
what moves him then but love, for love does not have
the satisfaction of need outside itself but within.
His resolution, which does not have an equal reciprocal
relation to the occasion, must be from eternity, even
though, fulfilled in time, it expressly becomes the
moment, for where the occasion and what is occasioned
correspond equally . . . . Out of love, therefore, the
god must be eternally resolved in this way, just as his
love is the basis, so also must love be the goal, for
it would indeed be a contradiction for the god to have
a basis of movement and a goal that do not correspond
to this. The love, then, must be for the learner, and
the goal must be to win him, for only in love is the
different made equal, and only in equality or in unity
is there understanding. Without perfect understanding,
the teacher is not the god, unless the basic reason is
to be sought in the learner, who rejected what was made
possible for him. (Kierkegaard 24-25)
So here one can see that God's goal is to unite with man in
love, yet how is this possible? Kierkegaard points to the
analogy of a high and lofty king who wishes to unite with a lowly
maiden, who in ignorance cannot even begin to fathom how a
relationship and love with one so high and lofty is possible.
Yet Kierkegaard shows how God in love, reaches to the lowly who
is nothing, by way of becoming the lowly's servant:
But the form of the servant was not something put on.
Therefore the god must suffer all things, endure all
things, be tried in all things, hunger in the desert,
thirst in his agonies, be forsaken in death, absolutely
the equal of the lowliest of human beings--look, behold
the man! The suffering of death is not his suffering,
but his whole life is a story of suffering, and it is
love that suffers, love that gives all and is itself
destitute. What wonderful self-denial to ask in con-
cern, even though the learner is the lowliest of per-
sons: Do you really love me? For he himself knows
where the danger threatens, and yet he knows that for
him any easier way would be a deception, even though
the leaner would not understand it. (Kierkegaard 33)
God became like the lowly in order for the lowly to understand
His love and realize that in the relationship of love he too can
share in the truth of God's reality. Yet this too involves just
as much effort and suffering on the part of the lowly learner,
because equality with God is offered freely, but not something to
be grasped after reasonably:
And the situation of understanding--how terrifying, for
indeed it is less terrifying to fall upon one's face
while the mountains tremble at the god's voice than to
sit with him as his equal, and yet the god's concern is
precisely to sit this way. (Kierkegaard 35)
Thus is involved an absolute paradox. The infinite God who
dwells in eternity has chosen to limit Himself in the form of a
servant in this present time to walk with man in his lowly
position. This defies reason, and yet it is necessary if man is
to truly and freely exist as the individual that God created with
capacity to accept Him as truth. But to untruth this does not
and cannot make sense. It is what Kierkegaard in the following
selections on JOHANNES CLIMACUS, expresses as man's doubt which
is essential to his conscious way of looking at life and not
being able to assimilate reality and ideality adequately
(Kierkegaard 171-172). This is the paradox of the incarnation,
that God in truth (ideality) has become incarnated in the flesh
as Jesus of Nazareth (reality). Yet this is an offense to one's
senses. So how does one grasp the paradox? To Kierkegaard, it
is when one is faced with a reality that is beyond the believer's
untruth, and all of his objectivity, reason, and doubt are of no
use to him. So how does one leap into grasping what the paradox
is? Kierkegaard sought to answer it in this way:
How, then, does the leaner come to an understanding
with this paradox, for we do not say that he is sup-
posed to understand the paradox but is only to under-
stand that this is the paradox. We have already shown
how this occurs. It occurs when the understanding and
the paradox happily encounter each other in the moment,
when the understanding steps aside and the paradox
gives itself, and the third something, the something in
which it occurs (for it does not occur through the
understanding, which is discharged, or through the
paradox, which give itself--consequently in something),
is that happy passion to which we shall now give a
name, although for us it is not a matter of the name.
We shall call it faith. This passion, then, must be
that above mentioned condition that the paradox pro-
vides. (Kierkegaard, PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS 59)
There is no understanding of an absolute paradox, but merely
an acceptance of what one has encountered as divinely real in
the present time. It is the paradox that gives the condition for
faith to be available, and when one chooses to use that faith
there is a happy reconciliation. Kierkegaard says it best in
this statement:
If the paradox and the understanding meet in the mutual
understanding of their difference, then the encounter
is a happy one, like erotic love's understanding--happy
in the passion . . . . (Kierkegaard 9)
The encounter is for every believer at any time an eternal
one, since eternity has entered time, and God in the flesh, now
by his Spirit comes to live with mankind in the flesh, and it is
indeed a paradox, but there is no looking behind to see if it is
real, for it is beyond reality of which the human consciousness
can doubt, but that the subjective side can embrace because of
its overpowering reality. Our existence is subjective, but that
does not advocate irrationality, rather, it is our limited
cognitions encountering something infinitely good in the form of
God and accepting suprarational instruction and guidance by way
of embracing faithfully, that eternal love.
In regard to our hermeneutical endeavors, one might say that
because I have chosen to use Kierkegaard, my hermeneutic is sole-
ly an existential one. However, the concept of the Divine in
Kierkegaard comes from eternity. In dealing with epistemology in
regards to hermeneutics, we as Christians affirm that our meta-
physical foundation is in the person of Jesus Christ and that
that foundation lies beyond that concepts of time and space in
the future. In Exodus 33:18-23 we have the account of Moses
wishing to see the glory of God. In verse 19 God says to Moses:
I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you,
and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your
presence . . . (NIV 140).
God tells Moses that he cannot see His face and live, then He
puts Moses in the cleft of the rock and Moses sees God's back.
Commenting on this passage Dunning says:
Using the vivid pictorial language of God's "face," His
"hand," and his "back," the passage suggests that men
may only see where God has passed by, and so know Him
by His past doing and acts. God as He is in himself
cannot be known or comprehended. (Dunning 103)
At most we might be able to see glimpses of God in the present.
But God exists in beyond our future in eternity where our time
has yet to be literally "filled full." Concerning this
particular metaphysical stance I must now appeal to Pannenberg
who says:
In reflection on the most comprehensive whole of all
finite reality, each particular finite thing in its
concrete, individual definiteness is mediated with God.
For this reason, religion as a vivid and deeper appre-
hension of reality consists, as Schleiermacher saw, in
the becoming conscious of the infinite and whole in the
individual and finite, a whole out of which each indi-
vidual thing is, as it were, carved by means of its
definition and its determination . . . . This applies
also to christology: Only through the relation to the
whole of humanity in its history, only through the
eschatological import of his appearing and his history,
can the unity of Jesus with God be expressed. This
unity announces conversely (from God's perspective)
that God was incarnate in this person. Through this
relation to the whole of humanity in its history, the
relation of each human life to God revealed in Jesus is
disclosed in the light of the history of Jesus as the
new Adam. No objection to this position can be based
upon the observation that history is not present as a
completed whole, that its process is, on the contrary,
incomplete. Moreover, it remains true that the actual
process of history devours individuals and empires
rather than bringing them to harmonious completion as
parts of a meaning-whole. We already saw that histor-
ical hermeneutics diverges from that of literature in
this respect. Individuals are caught up and snatched
away in the process of their history; but Jesus, in
bringing close to them the meaning that is tied up with
their wholeness, discloses to them their salvation
within a history that is not yet complete. (Pannenberg
146)
A history that is not yet complete is important to remember.
Although there is an appeal to some idealism here, it is not out
of the context of our experience. I know that a chiliagon is a
thousand sided object. I can say it, but cannot conceive of it
as a picture in my head. So I have an idea perhaps, a theory, a
relative understanding of infinity as being great in number,
although I cannot conceive infinity as a picture. The fact is
that all Christians, whatever their eschatological views are,
acknowledge that this creation is not yet complete, therefore,
God does exist in the future, but because in Jesus Christ he has
broken into our time from eternity, we can be hopeful that the
God who created time, will bring those who have the Spirit of
Christ to completion with time at the end of the age. Concerning
this Pannenberg says:
The connection of the Old Testament concept of the
Divine Word with the Greek notion of logos means noth-
ing less than that the context of meaning which encom-
passes the entire creation and its history up through
the eschatological completion that has been made
manifest in Jesus Christ. (Pannenberg 170)
Our theology informs our understanding of scripture and scripture
our understanding of theology. Scripture however, echoes. Hays
comments on this concerning the epistles of Paul:
Although the foregoing test are serviceable rules of
thumb to guide our interpretive work, we must acknow-
ledge that there will be exceptional occasions when the
tests fail to account for the spontaneous power of
particular intertextual conjunctions. Despite all the
careful hedges that we plant around texts, meaning has
a way of leaping over, like sparks. Texts are not
inert; they burn and throw fragments of flame on their
rising heat. Often we succeed in containing the ener-
gy, but sometimes the sparks escape and kindle new
blazes, reprises of the original fire. (Hays 32-33)
Philosophy, epistemology, theology, have come from sparks of the
original fires of understanding the Divine. The professor may
wish to use some of the arguments against reason and special
Spiritual revelation as an end in an appendix to the end of his
book. He suggested that our paper deal with further defining a
part of hermeneutics. It would be my proposal from the end of
this paper that another hermeneutical consideration would be from
a metaphysical viewpoint that the fulfillment of our witness to
the Divine Word or Truth be viewed in an eschatological sense.
This will allow for deconstruction of the texts, but in such a
way as to place them within the contexts within the whole of his-
tory. This will embrace all the different criticisms and help to
give them focus whether it be from a historical, literary, narra-
tive or various liberation views. Since history is not yet com-
plete, this should be an ongoing process, challenge, and respon-
sibility to those of us who still wait for the parousia on this
side of eternity. The question is whether we are going to be or
not going to be, not only now, but at the end of time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
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DUNNING, H. RAY
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HAYS, RICHARD B.
1989 ECHOES OF SCRIPTURE IN THE LETTERS OF PAUL.
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HUME, DAVID
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_______________
1984 HOLY BIBLE. New International Version. Grand Rapids:
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