12W4

This essay on hermeneutics is due the first Wednesday back after Easter (29th April - note changed date) so you have almost a month to do it. I will write some full guidance notes later this week so please check back for them…

The title is:

“Hermeneutics is the art of avoiding misunderstanding” (Schleiermacher). Discuss with reference to the interpretation of the Bible.

For information check out all the posts on hermeneutics

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (Word document with just the articles here) is the 1978 conservative Christian understanding of Biblical inerrancy (or infallibility):

Holy Scripture, as the inspired Word of God witnessing authoritatively to Jesus Christ, may properly be called infallible and inerrant. These negative terms have a special value, for they explicitly safeguard crucial positive truths.

lnfallible signifies the quality of neither misleading nor being misled and so safeguards in categorical terms the truth that Holy Scripture is a sure, safe, and reliable rule and guide in all matters.

Similarly, inerrant signifies the quality of being free from all falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the truth that Holy Scripture is entirely true and trustworthy in all its assertions.

We thought about the statement and its pros and cons with respect to understanding the Bible. If you decide to write about this for your essay I suggest you look at the whole shebang as there is some explanation of the ideas on the page too…

In 1983 the same people wrote the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics which will also be helpful for your essay.

This is a short article from the New Dictionary of Theology (Ferguson and Wright eds.; IVP, 1988), pp. 641-3. It should help as a little further reading for the Augustine topic, especially in comparing him to other thinkers:

New Dictionary of Theology article.

See also the further reading here.

We were continuing to look at hermeneutics and today considered Schleiermacher and the concept of the hermeneutical circle. Then we looked briefly at Paul Ricoeur’s concept of the hermeneutic of suspicion.

Finally we thought about how these ideas might look when applied to the gospels, so we thought about Matthew, Luke, John and Mark, looking at ways in which their gospels might have been influenced by external factors.

The notebook presentation is here.

An extract from Alister McGrath’s “Christian Theology: An Introduction” (3rd Edition) [Oxford, Blackwell; 2001], pp. 171-76: Methods of Interpretation of Scripture.

This is particularly useful for information on how hermeneutics has developed, the interpretation of scripture as allegory and how this developed during the reformation.

Notebook presentation on evolution and intelligent design can be found here.

Attached is an essay I wrote as part of my degree. It’s on the importance of genre for interpretation of the Gospels, but the first four pages are on the concept of genre in general. Hope it helps!

Importance of Genre.pdf

I’ve marked the 12 essays I received and they were mostly pretty good! Well done, lots of you have shown good understanding!

Some common points:

• There is a distinction between sin (in the sense of specific things that people do wrong) and sinfulness (the general nature of something as likely to do things wrong). It is important to note that Hodge refers to sinfulness so he is not saying that everyone does the same things wrong, but that everyone is similarly inclined to sin. He is saying that it is in everyone’s nature to be sinful, and that original sin explains this inclination. If you don’t make this distinction then you’re on tricky ground.
• All of you argued against Hodge. That’s fine, but if you are arguing against someone then it’s quite easy to knock them down but it’s another thing all together to suggest an alternative. Hodge is suggesting that original sin is the “only rational solution” to the “universal sinfulness” of human beings. If you disagree with this then there are two ways of arguing:
  1. There is another rational solution to the universal sinfulness of human beings. You agree that everyone is sinful, but think there is another explanation. Lots of you started to do this by arguing that free will explains it but you need to be clear. Why should free will mean that I choose to do wrong? If I have free will and have the choice to do good or ill, why should I choose to do ill?
  2. Human beings aren’t universally sinful, in which case you deny that human beings have a natural inclination to do wrong. Could you give an example? Remember to explain why you dispute this!
• Quoting - if you refer to something someone else has written that is fine (even encouraged). However, you must put it in quotes and say where the quote has come from. If you quote something without declaring where it is from you are plagarising which is considered by examiners to be cheating. Universities take this very seriously and lots of people are kicked out every year for doing this. It is only polite to say where you get your information from, this allows whoever is reading your essay to look up the information for themselves if they wish to investigate further. You may like to use footnotes!

I haven’t given grades as grade boundaries do move from year to year but if you want to know roughly how well you are doing the grade boundaries are something like:

• A: 28 or above
• B: 25 or above
• C: 21 or above
• D: 18 or above
• E: 14 or above

Well done to all of you who handed something in. I enjoyed marking them…

Faye, Rosie, Alex, Sophie and Dani - I expect them handed in before the end of the week.

We’ve started looking at the concept of “hermeneutics”, which is the science/art of interpretation. We started off by looking at the parable of the sower and the manner in which you all interpreted that. I’ll upload some of what you came up with soon.

The kinds of things we’ll be looking at over the coming weeks are:

• The nature of the Bible - authors, editors, books
• The idea of interpretation - is there one interpretation or are there many?
• How might we decide if an interpretation is a good one?
• How do Christians think about these questions?

Thanks to those of you who have handed in essays. I will mark them over the weekend and get them back to you on Wednesday. They are marked out of 35, and for each 5 marks you get I’ll award a raffle ticket and we’ll hold a prize draw on Wednesday, with a prize involving chocolate. Everyone who got the essay to me on time gets a bonus of 3 tickets…

Good luck!