A DOUBLE ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY

THE 'POST-MODERN' ERA IN INTERPRETATION

Biblical interpretation has long been moving away from the older forms of positivism which affirmed historical fact as objective truth, and from the empiricism which held that traditions could be validated in terms of ‘presuppositionless’ scientific rules. Such stances are often held to constitute ‘modernism’, which is nothing other than the expression of Enlightenment dynamics, in which the subject comprehends and dominates the object, and ‘objective’ knowledge is separated from ‘subjective’ attitudes like commitment and faith. Such presuppositions prompted both an exaggeration of the ‘objective’ element at the hands of a ‘neutral’ interpreter, and an over-emphasis on the ‘subjective’ element as in romanticism. Claims to neutrality are now seen to be illusory, since the reading transaction impinges upon the readers as a demand to enlarge and change the perception of their world. At the same time, there has been a breakdown of the romantic view that reading involved thinking the author's thoughts after him or her. Now the weight is on engagement and encounter with the text so that its ‘word’ may be heard, as dialectical and kerygmatic theology insisted in their various ways.