And with that we come to our definition of existentialism. To choose is to be free to create the much-needed identity and meaning in our quest to overcome the pressing meaninglessness of our postmodern world. To restrict such free choice is, therefore, the height of violence. To stop someone from "discovering themselves" is to wipe away their only chance at identity creation and meaning-making.
This philosophical climate has impacted hermeneutics in at least two ways. First, one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the twentieth century is Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976).
Bultmann cared deeply about the historical rootedness of the biblical text (thinking like a "higher critic," briefly described above), but also argued that the biblical worldview is simply no longer believable in our scientifically advanced world. He said, "We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament." The New Testament envisions a three-tiered universe: heaven, earth, hell. And these three tiers are permeable; persons and communications run between them. Revelation, angels, and even God himself come down from heaven. Satan and legions of demons come up from hell. Even Paul and John are "taken up" into heaven and sent back down (2 Cor 12:2-4; Rev 4:1-2). But can the modern man believe any of this? No. We have advanced so far in our knowledge of this world that it is now impossible to believe it is really connected to those worlds. Thus, the New Testament cosmology can only be described as myth. Bultmann, therefore, proposed a method of "demythologization" for understanding and applying the New Testament today. It is an approach to recognizing such "unbelievable" elements and reinterpreting them in terms of postmodern sensibilities—to take the mythological elements out. For example, the incarnation—the belief that the second person of the eternal Trinity has visited the world in the man Jesus Christ—is reinterpreted to reflect the future hope that anyone can become more (truly) human through decision-making. Or the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone can no longer be believed as God's declaration from heaven that exonerates sinners on earth. Rather, it discourages the pallid human attempts at security through anything in this world, be they riches or reputation or revenge, and so on, and teaches a humble trust in one's own fearless authenticity. Thus, Bultmann has "[restated] the existential truth contained in the myth."
Second, this is another example of a Zeitgeist haunting the halls of our hermeneutics. Bultmann seems not to have de mythologized the New Testament as much as he has re mythologized it to fit his philosophical precommitments. Bultmann has been influential in many other ways than described here. But he serves the purposes of this brief historical survey in providing another example of the way the philosophical waters in which the interpreter swims have rushed over his hermeneutical gills with decisive results. Existentialism in, existentialism out.
With that, we turn to relativism. It is not hard to see how the existentialism described above gathers fuel from individualism and in turn further strengthens individualistic penchants. To "choose to do otherwise" necessitates that each person makes their own choices. In fact, there is a sense that any external influence is suspected of inhibiting that authentically personal choice in light of any matter. Therefore, the discovery of the good, the true, and the beautiful is relative to each person. No one can tell another how to define and discover the good, true, and beautiful. That would stall the process of self- creation. Thus truth, ethics and the vision of the good life depend on—are relative to—each individual.
All this gets us to the final point regarding postmodernism: reader-response hermeneutics. As might be expected, with the new search for truth in individual choices, many have recently argued that meaning does not reside in the text (or in the author who—like the ultimate Author of the universe—is now dead) but in the experience of reading the text. That is, meaning resides in one's private interpretation of the text as they bring their existential precommitments to bear. The text is there as a servant to the reader's agendas, and meaning is thus found in the response of the reader. Hence the name. Thus, these recent developments make it increasingly hard to establish priorities among conflicting interpretations. Of course the text or the author cannot have control; that would inhibit the reader's freedom for self-creation and self-determination. All this is custom built to serve any Zeitgeist where the text can fit any reader's philosophical penchant—oftentimes without knowing it.
One particular philosophical penchant today is the habit of deconstructionism. Deconstructionism is complex, but we can define it here simply as an attempt to read (and/or rewrite) narratives (in texts or anywhere narratives are told) in a way that moves the center of attention away from traditional (and sometimes obvious) interpretations and give voice to the characters and ideas at the margins. There are social, political, and economic forces at work in all this that now make it hermeneutically in vogue as well. Take for example the recent TED talk by Malcom Gladwell about David and Goliath. Gladwell tells the story with particular emphasis on minor details, like some of the things Goliath says that might suggest he had poor eyesight. Also, Goliath's size is of course a major detail, but Gladwell brings in the "heretofore overlooked" point that his height likely meant he had a serious disease and was surely very clumsy. That he "needs" an armor-bearer suggests the same. Equally, David is small but his sling would have had the accuracy and deadliness of today's handguns. The location of the story too, and the kinds of rocks that were likely there, adds to the devastation of David's sling. Thus, whereas the central themes of the story draw readers to the conclusion in 1 Samuel 17:45-47, that the God of Israel goes to battle for his people and especially his Messiah (cf. 1 Sam 16:13), Gladwell has given attention instead to the peripheral details and hidden truths. So what has typically been understood as God's fighting for David is now reread to say Goliath was greatly outmatched, and David the odds-on favorite to win from the word go. And so everything we thought we knew about the story is exactly opposite!
What is the point? Ours is a culture that is increasingly making efforts to push reigning social, political, and economic powers out of the center of influence to open up paths for the historically marginalized to rush in. And that is, in itself, good. But here is another clear example where the Zeitgeist has put pressure on interpreters to adopt a hermeneutic (deconstructionism) that can do the same with biblical texts. The previously ignored details of the text have now been empowered and the center of the text has been de-centered. Our postcolonial world cheers this, and so it pops up in our hermeneutics too.
This is more prevalent than maybe we realize. Of course, many would not follow the philosophical path that got us to this place in our survey; it began above, after all, with the nonexistence of God. Nonetheless, any fish in any river is carried—sometimes unwittingly, but inevitably—by the current. And that current is affected by events far, far upstream and quite broadly across the watershed. The fish needs a high degree of self-awareness and strength to swim against the flow. So too, today's Western Zeitgeist is characterized by existentialism, relativism, and deconstructionism. We are the fish; those are the waters. We need, therefore, a high degree of self-awareness and strength so as not to be swept away with the current.
Biblical Theology: A Return to Antioch (Nineteenth–Twentieth Centuries)
There have, of course, been reactions to these trends. The canonical approach and theological interpretation of Scripture are two more recent schools. I will conclude our survey, though, by looking at a very Antiochene discipline called "biblical theology." This is an approach that understands the Bible as the record of the "history of salvation," or "redemptive history," a witness to God's actions in history for the salvation and redemption of humanity. Here interpreters look for unity across the biblical narrative—including recurring patterns and the presence of typology—as well as the diversity of all the parts. The result is an appreciation of the direction the Bible as a whole is going (a progress through the pages of the Bible) toward a grand conclusion. The pinnacle of the narrative patterns and types in the Bible is, of course, the person and work of Jesus Christ—the unifying point to all the diversity. "This [leads] to the conviction that the Bible contain[es] both history and a word concerning the ultimate meaning of history."
A particularly good example of this is found by reading Matthew 3:13–4:11 in concert with the second book of Moses. Jesus goes through the water (Mt 3:16) and is declared God's "Son" (Mt 3:17). Immediately the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness (4:1) where he remains for forty days and forty nights (4:2). He is there tempted with food (4:3-4), then with "testing" God (4:5-7), and finally with idolatry (4:8-10). Very interestingly, the book of Exodus reads the same way. There, Israel is called God's "son" (Ex 4:22-23), goes through the water (14:21-22), and is then led into the wilderness by God himself (Ex 13:17) where they are tempted in the exact same order: food, "testing God," and idolatry (Ex 14–32). Thus, Jesus' baptism and wilderness temptations look just like Israel's exodus. There is, therefore, a typological correspondence in the shape of the stories to invoke the similarities, but also to present Jesus as transcending the old. That is the work of biblical theology: to describe the similarities and the developments in the movement of the Scriptures—from start to finish—in christological terms. God has providentially moved both history and the writing of the Old Testament to highlight individual patterns, and a large sweeping arc toward fulfillment in the New Testament. The benefit of such observations is to elucidate how God has been at work in history, and through revelation, to demonstrate his plan of redemption that meets its full purposes in the person and work of Christ. History is therefore important because it is the stage of God's glorious acts of redemption. And the writing of redemptive history is important because Christ gives meaning to life, the universe, and everything.
The rest of this book operates within this tradition. It goes back to Antioch. It was certainly appreciated by Augustine and practiced by Aquinas. It gained wider attention with the Reformers. And now "biblical theology" has given it its most recent shape.
The Hermeneutical Spiral
The payoff from this historical survey is that we can draw two conclusions about the process of interpretation: (1) We see in texts what we expect to see. Our predispositions, presuppositions, biases, goals, and expectations heavily influence how we handle texts, and can actually determine what we see and what we do not see. They can cause us to see things that are not really in the text (we import them from our own worldview) and conversely miss things that are in the text (our worldview has no place for them, cannot process them, and so we are just blind to them). So strong are our philosophical precommitments and therefore reading proclivities. And (2) such predispositions, presuppositions, biases, goals, and expectations are invariably shaped by the cultures that made us and we currently inhabit. A jellyfish does not know it is floating in saltwater, nor that freshwater is such a thing, but its membrane is so thin it simply takes in the saltwater as a way of life. The larger culture and subcultures that we inhabit do the same to us.