The Return of Participatory Scriptural Hermeneutics in Evangelicalism: An Augustinian Philosophy

434 Pages·2017·2.37 MB·English

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Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Fall 1-1-2016
The Return of Participatory Scriptural
Hermeneutics in Evangelicalism: An Augustinian
Philosophy of Communication
Joshua David Hill
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Hill, J. (2016). The Return of Participatory Scriptural Hermeneutics in Evangelicalism: An Augustinian Philosophy of
Communication (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved fromhttps://dsc.duq.edu/etd/38
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THE RETURN OF PARTICIPATORY SCRIPTURAL HERMENEUTICS IN
EVANGELICALISM: AN AUGUSTINIAN PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNICATION

A Dissertation
Submitted to the McAnulty College of Liberal Arts

Duquesne University

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

By
Joshua D. Hill

December 2016
Copyright by
Joshua D. Hill

2016
THE RETURN OF PARTICIPATORY SCRIPTURAL HERMENEUTICS IN

EVANGELICALISM: AN AUGUSTINIAN PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNICATION

By

Joshua D. Hill

Approved October 28, 2016

________________________________ ________________________________
Dr. Janie Harden Fritz Dr. Ronald C. Arnett
Professor of Communication Professor of Communication
(Committee Chair) (Committee Member)

________________________________
Dr. Richard Thames
Associate Professor of Communication
(Committee Member)

________________________________ ________________________________
James C. Swindal Dr. Ronald C. Arnett
Dean, McAnulty College of Liberal Arts Chair, Dept. of Communication &
Professor of Philosophy Rhetorical Studies
Professor of Communication

iii
ABSTRACT

THE RETURN OF PARTICIPATORY SCRIPTURAL HERMENEUTICS IN
EVANGELICALISM: AN AUGUSTINIAN PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNICATION

By
Joshua D. Hill
December 2016

Dissertation supervised by Dr. Janie Harden Fritz
Using a philosophy of communication approach adapted from St. Augustine’s
rhetorical theory, I propose the recovery of Augustinian scriptural hermeneutics to
meet the hermeneutical crisis in current Evangelicalism. Evangelical identity is
centered on scripturally mediated belief and mission that ties together its
ecumenical coalition, but its hermeneutic principles were co-opted by modernism
and have now become further embattled by the turn away from modernism to
philosophical hermeneutic approaches. Augustine’s hermeneutical principles of
charity, hermeneutical humility through responsiveness to the Word, and the
social/communal action of lived hermeneutics are explained in terms of
Augustine’s pre-modern cosmology of “participation” and are clarified by
comparison with the hermeneutic theories of Gadamer, Ricoeur, and their
iv
Evangelical respondents. Fulfilling its philosophy of communication emphasis,
this project concludes with a conceptual sketch of Evangelical interpretation as
practiced through Augustinian participatory hermeneutics.

v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for the consistent support, clearly communicated mission, and
intellectual freedom of the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies, a
tradition built up and maintained rhetorically over several years by Ronald Arnett, Janie
Harden Fritz, Richard Thames, Pat Arneson, and Calvin Troup. The organizational
philosophy of communication on display has not only been helpful to me in my academic
work but has also served me as a sign of hope for my possible future in academia. I give
special thanks to my committee chair, Dr. Fritz, who modeled both academic breadth and
charity in her review of my dissertation (and its early false starts). I also thank Dr. Troup
for giving me an excellent set of coordinates by which to explore Augustine otherwise
than convention, and I thank Dr. Thames for driving home the importance of the
historical moment by means of his battery of required history readings. And I thank Dr.
Arnett for his courage in preaching and practicing intellectual generosity.
As part of the long intellectual tradition in the temporal measure of the city of
God, I am thankful for Augustine’s labors, his love, and his life of service. Closer to
home, I confess that I would not have been able to complete any part of my program here
without the labors, love, and life of my wife, Stacy, who has endured much for the sake
of a work whose value she can take only by faith.
Finally, as befits my project, I confess that whatever good this work
communicates to any reader is a result of its participation in the Truth, in whom “we live
and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) and apart from whom we “can do nothing”
(John 15:5). I acknowledge God as the ground of being and communication.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ vi
Chapter 1 ..............................................................................................................................1
Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................54
Chapter 3 ..........................................................................................................................132
Chapter 4 ..........................................................................................................................214
Chapter 5 ..........................................................................................................................322
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................396

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Chapter 1
Introduction: Hermeneutics in the Historical Moment of Evangelicalism

This project takes an Augustinian philosophy of communication interpretive approach to
the current problem of biblical hermeneutics that has taxed the confidence in both the
interpretive praxis and communicative identity of the Evangelical coalitional community.
Bypassing the long-traveled Christian rhetorical focus on homiletics, this project applies
philosophy of communication to hermeneutics as the other main rhetorical concern of
Evangelical “people of the book.” After setting out the complexities and history of the crisis in
Evangelical biblical hermeneutics, this project explains and proposes the recovery of
Augustinian participation (an early Christian view of the cosmos), interpretation, and social
dynamics to provide linguistic-conceptual resources by which to meet that crisis. These
Augustinian philosophical resources are developed in the context of Evangelical conversations
about philosophical hermeneutics and Augustine for current biblical hermeneutics and
ecclesiology. After developing these conceptual tools from an Augustinian philosophy of
communication, the project concludes with a rhetorical turn, proposing a socially embodied
praxis of scripture reading as one solution to the Evangelical hermeneutical problem.
Telling the historical narrative of how Evangelical hermeneutics has interacted with the
broader hermeneutic tradition—under the prevailing Evangelical identity markers of unity
through mission and shared biblical reading practices1—this chapter sets the parameters of the
larger project, defines the hermeneutical problem within its rhetorical context, clarifies the
interpretive approach, and defends the appropriation of Augustine’s hermeneutic and social
theory in the move towards a new Evangelical hermeneutical praxis.

1
The Problem of Evangelical Hermeneutics
As Robert Bellah et al. have noted, the Christian church in the United States has been
radically compromised in its ability to communicate to itself, its members, and the culture at
large its mission/telos and rule of life, an indictment that holds for the significant Christian
subculture of Evangelicals.2 From their origins in biblical communal narratives, Bellah says that
American churches have largely shifted to being gathering places (“lifestyle enclaves”) for
people operating according to “expressive” and “instrumental” concepts of individual meaning.3
According to Evangelical historian Mark Noll, Evangelicals in particular have “lost all sense of
history” and have “ignored their own tradition’s resources” in their 20th century cultural
transformation into a fideistic and pragmatic political powerhouse, and historian Molly Worthen
argues that the root of this Evangelical “anti-intellectualism” stems from their community’s
“deep disagreement over what the Bible means,” as seen in their contradictory hermeneutic that
joins fideistic presuppositionalism and Enlightenment textual rationalism.4
The shift from an earlier Evangelical community for which the scriptures permeated
community and mission (constituting the background) to a 20th century movement organized
largely around the defense of a bible very much in the foreground was the result of a
combination of factors—sociological, theological, and historical—but the most telling blow was
to the practice of an evangelical biblical hermeneutics that, though undertheorized and imperfect,
had enabled many earlier Evangelicals to be both historically responsive and scripturally
focused, both socially constructive and an instrument of social critique.5 To use the bible as
scripture was to submit to it as the voice of God, authoritative for life and practice, even when it
stands over against one’s preferences, community ethos, or culture, whereas the focus on the
bible as bible was to stand over it as an authoritative interpreter, finding materials with which to
2