The promise of hermeneutics

276 Pages·2001·14 MB·English

by  Walhout, Clarence, Lundin, Roger, Thiselton, Anthony Charles

mi se
leutics
R oger L undin
Clarence W alhout
Anthony C. T hiselton

THE PROMISE OF HERMENEUTICS

The Promise of Hermeneutics
ROGER LUNDIN
CLARENCE WALHOUT
ANTHONY C. THISELTON
W illiam B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Grand Rapids, M ichigan / Cam bridge, U.K.
mi
paternoster press
© 1999 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published jointly 1999 in the United States of America by
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503 /
P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.
and in the UK by
Paternoster Press
an imprint of Paternoster Publishing
PO Box 300, Kingstown Broadway
rCarlisle, Cumbria CA3 OQS, United Kingdom
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
04 03 02 01 00 99 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lundin, Roger.
The promise of hermeneutics /
Roger Lundin, Anthony C. Thiselton, Clarence Walhout.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
Eerdmans ISBN 0-8028-4635-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Hermeneutics. 2. Bible — Hermeneutics.
I. Thiselton, Anthony C. II. Walhout, Clarence, 1934- III. Title.
BD241.L857 1999
121'.686 — dc21 99-12924
CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from die British Library
Paternoster ISBN 0-85364-900-6
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Interpreting Orphans: Hermeneutics
in the Cartesian Tradition 1
ROGER LUNDIN
Descartes: The Endless Recuperation 6
“Beautiful Fruit Already Picked from the Tree”:
Texts in an Orphaned Age 25
“The Shadow of Absence”: Orphans and the
Interpretive Quest 42
Beyond the Orphaned First Person 54
Confessing Our Part 62
Narrative Hermeneutics 65
CLARENCE WALHOUT
Texts as Objects of Action 65
Texts and Contexts 66
v
CONTENTS
Reference and Mimesis 71
Imagined and Actual Worlds 79
Textual Analysis 84
Texts as Instruments of Action 90
Relativism in Interpretation 91
Truth and Fiction: Authorial Stance 100
Truth and Fiction: The Text and the Reader 107
Ethics and Fiction: The Reader's Response 118
III. Communicative Action and Promise in
Interdisciplinary, Biblical, and
Theological Hermeneutics 133
ANTHONY C. THISELTON
The Unity and Coherence of the Argument
throughout This Study 133
Autonomy? Or Respect for the Other's Otherness
as Given and Giving 133
Between the Scylla of Mechanical Replication
and the Charybdis of Orphaned Indeterminacy 137
Some Presuppositions and Entailments of
Illocutionary Speech-Acts 144
Reader-Response Theories and Biblical
and Theological Fiction 152
“Why Hasn't Reader-Response Criticism Caught
on in New Testament Studies?": A Diagnosis
Suggesting Five Reasons 154
The Value of Some Specific Reader-Response
Models for Reading Biblical Fiction and the Role
of Imagination in Interpreting Plot 164
Polyphonic Voices in Theological Fiction: lob, Eliot,
and Dostoyevsky on Evil 172
vi
Contents
Hermeneutics within the Horizon of Time:
Temporality, Reception, Action 183
Natural Time, Clock Time, and Human Time:
Temporality, Hermeneutics, and Theology 183
The Temporal and Historical Character of
Jauss’s Aesthetics of Reception 191
Some Implications for Speech-Act Theory in
Hermeneutics and for the Post-History of
Biblical Texts 200
Further Implications and the Paradigmatic
Status of Promise as Communicative Action 209
Further Implications for Theories of
Knowledge and Philosophy 209
Socio-Ethical and Political Individualism
and a Theological Critique of Autonomy 214
The Paradigm of Biblical Promise as Trustworthy,
Temporal, Transformative Speech-Action 223
Promise as a Key Example for Understanding
Illocutions in Speech-Act Theory 231
Selected Bibliography 241
Index 255
Vll