Being Interpreted by the Parables
Critical Realism as Hermeneutical Epistemology
In: Journal for the Study of the Historical JesusSearch for other papers by Donald L. Denton Jr in
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N.T. Wright’s historical Jesus work, along with his approach to New Testament studies generally, is informed by a hermeneutic grounded in a critically realistic epistemology. This latter can appropriately be considered a hermeneutical epistemology, and its impact on both Jesus studies and parables interpretation is evident in Wright’s work. It is of course grounded in the cognitional theory of Bernard Lonergan, but may be furthered by the holistic historiography derived from observations of R.G. Collingwood, as well as the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition represented by Heidegger and Gadamer, and ultimately the application to biblical hermeneutics by Ricoeur. Lonergan’s ‘world mediated by meaning’ and Heidegger’s ‘mode-of-being-in-the-world’ both make knowledge radically hermeneutical; Ricoeur’s world-projection in the narrative sees the narrative parable’s function as world-encompassing, similar to Wright’s worldview-subversion. All of these have in common that they are irreducibly participatory or hermeneutical.
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5
N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 1; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 55.
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14
N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 2; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), p. 175.
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26
R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 245. See my exposition in Denton, Historiography, pp. 122–23.
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32
Merold Westphal, ‘Hermeneutics as Epistemology’, in Overcoming Onto-theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), pp. 47–74.
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36
Teevan, Lonergan, Hermeneutics and Theological Method, pp. 185–86. It may be that the concern for both cognition as activity and the primordial role of the existential make Lonergan a resource for appropriating the concerns of hermeneutical philosophy without lapsing into excesses that would deny the need for something like epistemology or philosophy as such. Westphal is one who wants to do this; interestingly, one Lonergan interpreter attempts to relate Lonergan to Derrida in a way that explicitly acknowledges the orientation of Westphal in this regard. See Kanaris, ‘Calculating Subjects’.
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39
Stiver, Theology after Ricoeur, pp. 106–108. There is a reaction against such a conception of metaphoricity in parables interpretation, which insists that metaphors be seen as ornamental, secondary to univocal or ‘literal’ language, and so strictly illustrative in function. Gerhardsson takes this view, in ‘If We Do Not Cut the Parables’. See also William Brosend, ‘The Limits of Metaphor’, Perspectives in Religious Studies 21 (1994), pp. 23–41. Although some advocates of metaphor may be guilty of excess, I see this reaction as unfounded for various reasons related to hermeneutics and philosophy of language, and the work of Wright as a positive alternative.
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45
Vanhoozer, Biblical Narrative, pp. 138–39. Ricoeur ultimately applies the ‘parabolization process’ seen in the narrative parable to biblical interpretation generally, making the former ‘the most complete illustration of the biblical form of imagination, the process of parabolization working in the text and engendering in the reader a similar dynamic of interpretation through thought and action’. Ricoeur, ‘The Bible and the Imagination’, in Mark I. Wallace (ed.), Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and Imagination (trans. David Pellauer; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 147.
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56
Frank Matera, New Testament Theology: Exploring Diversity and Unity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), p. 68.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 384 | 87 | 6 |
| Full Text Views | 252 | 5 | 0 |
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Being Interpreted by the Parables
Critical Realism as Hermeneutical Epistemology
In: Journal for the Study of the Historical JesusSearch for other papers by Donald L. Denton Jr in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
N.T. Wright’s historical Jesus work, along with his approach to New Testament studies generally, is informed by a hermeneutic grounded in a critically realistic epistemology. This latter can appropriately be considered a hermeneutical epistemology, and its impact on both Jesus studies and parables interpretation is evident in Wright’s work. It is of course grounded in the cognitional theory of Bernard Lonergan, but may be furthered by the holistic historiography derived from observations of R.G. Collingwood, as well as the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition represented by Heidegger and Gadamer, and ultimately the application to biblical hermeneutics by Ricoeur. Lonergan’s ‘world mediated by meaning’ and Heidegger’s ‘mode-of-being-in-the-world’ both make knowledge radically hermeneutical; Ricoeur’s world-projection in the narrative sees the narrative parable’s function as world-encompassing, similar to Wright’s worldview-subversion. All of these have in common that they are irreducibly participatory or hermeneutical.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 384 | 87 | 6 |
| Full Text Views | 252 | 5 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 86 | 5 | 0 |
