Over at the group blog Religion at the Margins, Thom Stark does an interesting bit of rhetorical ju-jitsu in a piece called Why I’m a Conservative. Stark manages to reverse the current meanings of “conservative” and “liberal” by explaining how Reformed Evangelicals read the Bible through the lens of their own traditions and creeds:
… Evangelicals often tend to disguise their creedal hermeneutic under the pretense of an historical-grammatical hermeneutic, and this is not fine. If they were to be honest about their true biases, then I would accept their hermeneutic as part of their tradition, even though it’s not a hermeneutic I myself am willing to accept for my own practice.
From the vantage point of my tradition, I am a conservative, and they are the liberals. They are the ones who liberally filter the Bible through their own theological constructions. On the other hand, I and those within my tradition (insomuch as we live up to our ideals) are the conservatives. We wish to conserve the Bible’s historical-grammatical meaning, to conserve the original voices of the Bible’s authors, and allow them to speak to us without imposing our own assumptions and theological constructs upon them, which would be refusing to let them speak.
It works, largely because Stark is actually doing what his opponents can only claim to be doing. He’s caught then at their own game.
Whenever someone like Rob Bell steps up and suggests that the Bible should be interpreted in light of (insert interpretive framework), many Evangelicals will sadly shake their heads and act like the last defenders of the clear and evident truths of the Bible. As Stark is showing, this is just a pose. The Evangelicals all have their own interpretive frameworks, and that places them in the same position as Bell and the rest of the “liberals.”
while amusing, conflating conservative and conservationist is incorrect. (not trolling, the words mean different things, it just goes to show how much words have been spun into strange connotations that the real split is between conservationists and progressives, who in American politics are both considered liberals)
Hermeneutic is a fine word, and I appreciate people who use complex vocabulary.
That said, using it three times in as many sentences makes it look like someone is practicing with a new term from their ‘word a day’ calendar.
One would be hard-pressed to be a Biblical scholar for more than fifteen minutes without coming across the word “hermeneutic.” It’s a favorite in the field.
I’d like to see more posts like this on the UF blog. I like the more subtle inside-view critique of religion.
“For instance, I once believed that a principled ethic of nonviolence could be found in the Hebrew Scriptures. I no longer believe this to be the case. I once believed that Jesus was a principled pacifist. I no longer believe this to be the case. I once believed that the Synoptic Gospels made claims for Jesus’ divinity. I no longer believe this to be the case. ”
I’m not sure I understand how he EVER held the Babble was a source for these beliefs, but whatever. Given the concept of Hell and the smiting and genocide and all that.
I had to look up “hermeneutic”. Heh. Seeing as how it’s from the Greek root word for “interpret”, how could it possibly be left out of discussion?
I know one way: the aforementioned self-righteous stance of “ours isn’t an interpretation; it’s the truth.”
In the Church of Christ when I was a teenager, occasionally they would mention “denominations”. I was this far from saying in some youth-group-visiting discussion, “Well, aren’t we a denomination?”
That would have been too open-minded for them. Even without adding “Duh!” They would have crapped their pants. I still wish I hadn’t been so quiet and shy and had spoken up.
When one reads the first paragraph of Mr. Starks’s analysis (as quoted above) there is an impression that he could just as easily be talking about Tolkien’s fiction rather than the Bible.
Hermeneutic is a fancy word used by people who harmonize opposing ideas. It is the way that people force their own ideas into the bible texts, which have a range of opposing viewpoints.