Word. Human speech: Theology Hermeneutics

Author: Yang Huilin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-03-01
Features: Actually, Dilthey proposed the "eternal experience" precisely because he saw that everyday experience is full of ambiguity and "constantly changing reception." He admitted: "The interpretation of everyday experience depends on everyday interests. What is frightening is that in the struggle for practical interests, every expression can lead to disagreements, and its interpretation will also change as our circumstances change." He hoped that "great works lead us into a realm where disagreements cease" because "certain spiritual contents are separated from their creators (poets, artists, or writers)," thus "the common ground of different individuals is objectified in the world of feelings," becoming what is called the "objective mind" (objectivemind)." The "objective mind," as a medium for "understanding others," once again brings to mind Schleiermacher's "universal religious experience." If one interprets Schleiermacher through Dilthey's "objective mind," then the meaning of Christian faith may not be the "objectification" of a common religious experience. If one looks back at Dilthey from Schleiermacher's perspective, one might say that "understanding others" is to grasp the practical meaning of faith through the communication of life experiences; while the "spiritual content" that is separated from the "creator" in the text, when transformed into "divine word" that can be shared by believers, becomes the "divine word." However, even so, Dilthey's hermeneutical goal remains difficult to achieve in a theological sense, namely: understanding the author better than the author (or understanding God better than God). Yet the problem that arises is also very clear: how do we determine an interpretation through the "polarity"? Aberlin proposed his unique view on "faith certainty" in this regard. First, he completely differs from Tracy's idea that "theologians never pursue certainty," believing that "theories about faith pursue the utmost clarity, certainty, and reliability," though the "way it possesses certainty factors" is special. Specifically, he divides the "hermeneutical certainty of Christian faith" into three aspects: , this certainty is neither objective knowledge nor subjective conviction, but the result of the "Incarnation," that is, "being established outside oneself"; second, this certainty lies in a "process of verification," that is, "the continuous questioning of truth"; third, this certainty "does not determine the truthfulness of what is believed," but rather "the self-understanding of faith," that is, "merely determining the believer's persistence in truth." Thus, the "process" of truth outside the "subject-object" dual model, and the faith feature of "self-understanding," become the basic foothold for saving the "hermeneutical certainty." Aberlin's "certainty" is, in fact, based on Martin Luther's "depression of the senses and reason," and is also a modern interpretation of Martin Luther's hermeneutical thought. The key is not merely to uphold "the certainty of faith," but to continue the Reformed tradition of "the sole Bible." Therefore, Aberlin particularly advocates "guarding against the imagination of certainty": "If skepticism refers merely to maintaining caution in a way that tests, exercising careful restraint over hasty judgments, appropriately considering and weighing all arguments, and humbly recognizing the limitations of one's own views, the possibility of making mistakes, and the need for revision, recognizing the variability of experience and thought, recognizing the temporal limitations of one's theology, then this type of skepticism may be appropriate for theologians." For this reason, Aberlin specially compiled "Luther on Theological Research" in his own works, using a passage from Martin Luther to echo the "hermeneutical certainty of Christian faith." Martin Luther's main point is to extract three theological hermeneutical methods from Psalm 119 of the Old Testament, namely prayer, meditation, and temptation (or "being tempted"), which he calls "David's Rule." Fundamentally, "prayer" corresponds to Aberlin's "being established outside oneself," and it is related to theological hermeneutics precisely because of the limits of human reason. As Luther said: "Although David was very familiar with Moses' writings and other books, he still prayed to God to teach me, to impart to me, and to guide me, so that he would not fall into reason." "Meditation" may be compared to Aberlin's "continuous questioning of truth"; while the meaning of "temptation" lies in "not only teaching you to know and understand, but also teaching you to experience"—this is exactly the basis of Aberlin's "self-understanding of faith." Aberlin's theological hermeneutical thought seems more open than Karl Barth and closer to Heidegger's later linguistic philosophy; but essentially, Aberlin's "new hermeneutics" mainly continues the Reformed tradition of hermeneutics since Martin Luther. Therefore, when he claims that "all theology is interpretation," he may truly want to express another meaning, that is: "hermeneutics as the theological rule of understanding, that is, the rule of God's divine word," in other words, "the basic task of theological hermeneutical thought is to determine the 'theological rule of language.'" In fact, all the hermeneutical relationships that Aberlin emphasizes are actually limited to the relationship between the divine word and faith, and the relationship between the text and interpretation only has a subordinate theological function. This is clearly different from the "universal hermeneutical principle" established by Schleiermacher. However, the "localization" concept we actually use is not so simple; there are always two obvious motivations, namely: the preaching strategy of the disseminator and the identity crisis of the receiver. When "localization" is not merely a description of the facts, but contains relatively active value choices, it first becomes an operational proposition, and immediately gives rise to a "movement." It is clear that people hope to achieve legitimacy for Christianity in the Chinese context through "localization," and to resolve the identity tension between "Chinese" and "Christian." It is worth noting that "localization" can both "transform and recreate the original culture" and be dissolved by the original culture. If we consider this dual possibility, we may need to ask the following two types of questions: , does the hermeneutical interpretation and actual reception of Christianity in China reflect the ideal form that "localization" may contain? Can its history and current state give Christianity a legitimate identity in the Chinese context? Second, since there is no possibility of "returning to the original meaning," what is the targeted significance of Christianity for contemporary Chinese people? Can we give "localization" a new meaning by focusing on the universal values in Christian thought? On the one hand, the statement of humans to God must rely on philosophical concepts (such as "God is Being itself") rather than merely using definitions from the Bible (even if such definitions may contain the same meaning, such as God being "self-existent"), otherwise interpretation will deviate from the experience of modern people and will not achieve precise and targeted understanding. On the other hand, interpretation that uses philosophical concepts must also lead to the revelation of the Bible and prove that the meaning provided by the Bible is the answer to the problems that human philosophy can reach, so that the value of the Bible can be continued. At this point, Tillich, like Barth, has denied the hermeneutical method of "natural theology," but he believes that the "sole Bible"ism since the Reformation has set too many restrictions for theological interpretation, making the message of the Bible lose meaning for later generations. In his view, the diversity of interpretation actually does not endanger the authority of the Bible, but rather expresses the authority of the Bible in the modern context; because the reason why modern people can challenge the determined meaning of the Bible in a skeptical way is precisely because Christian faith has shaped our thought and culture, and the spirit of the challenger is also modeled by the heritage of the Bible. Tillich even proposes in "The Courage to Be" that through the "correlation and response" between theology and philosophy, a "understanding of the meaning of Christian faith" can be "evoked" even in "those completely outside the Christian circle," because "skepticism makes people escape freedom (as Fromm said), so as to escape the anxiety of meaninglessness," and "God appears when God disappears in the anxiety of skepticism—the courage to be is rooted in such a God." Tillich's interpretation of the Bible can form an interesting contrast with the early stage of medieval Christian hermeneutics. The most representative allegorical interpretation of the Middle Ages ended with the reformer excavating new meanings from the "interpretation" activity and finally promoting an ideological revolution through the new meaning. Allegorical interpretation only confirmed the possibility of multiple interpretations, but the ideological revolution resulting from it precisely affirmed another "scripture" with "another authority and another layer of certainty." In the 20th century, when the "rereading" of classics and the multiplicity of meaning have become the norm, simply recognizing the legitimacy of multiple interpretations should no longer be the focus of interpretive activity. Because this trend actually equates "meaning" with "interpretation," and the limits and relativity of interpretation inevitably lead to the dissolution of meaning. Therefore, from this point of view, we can see from Tillich's efforts a shift in topic. That is, whatever interpretation is provided, the starting point must be the necessity of "meaning." Only under this premise can the activity of "interpretation" maintain its own boundaries and ultimately approach the "scripture." A fundamental fact related to hermeneutics in the world today is that people are calling and interpreting "justice" from completely different standpoints, and perhaps we are losing the "meaning" itself that is being interpreted through such interpretations. The historical thread of "scripture" and "interpretation" in Christian theology can at least bring us the following revelation. However, to truly clarify the meaning issue in the interpretation of the Bible, further discussion on the "power" relationships that accompany "interpretation" is needed. Some argue that no theologian in the 20th century thought about and disseminated hermeneutical issues in theology as much as Aberlin, because in the view of this Reformed theologian, the key issue of contemporary Protestant theology is "how to make revelation belong to the present age." McQuillie not only noted that Aberlin once "established a specialized hermeneutical library at the University of Zurich," but also quoted and explained Aberlin's discussions on theology and the real context: "The task of theology is to listen to and respond to God's divine word, making it renew in the existence of the present; 'making the preached word of the past become the preached word of the present.'" The gap between "today" and "history," "the present" and "divine word," "reality" and "tradition," is precisely the starting point of German theological hermeneutics since the Enlightenment. Aberlin proposed in the article "The Significance of the Historical-Critical Method for the Church and Protestant Theology" that "the Reformation did not fully realize the distance between it and early Christianity"; this has already been suggested in the Reformation proposition of "justification by faith." On the other hand, although "justification by faith" abandoned the effort to "modernize revelation," it actually contains the "personal dimension of encountering revelation in a historical context," although it lacks "consideration of its linguistic nature." Thus, Heidegger's ontological understanding of language comes into play. Aberlin's view of "word" as a "word event" (wordevent) was clearly inspired by Heidegger; and Heidegger's linguistic view and Christian faith can be unified here, the fundamental logic being the "Incarnation" that Aberlin emphasizes.