An Existential Way Of Reading the Bible

When God spoke to man centuries ago, it was far easier to believe that the sun stood still or water turned into wine. But what is science-minded man to make of the Bible? How can he extract its real meaning for today from a hard-to-swallow supernatural framework? These are not easy questions, and lately they have been getting a rather hard answer from Dr. Rudolf Bultmann's Marburg Disciples (TiME, June 21), who dominate German theology the way the Russians rule chess. They call their answer "the new hermeneutic."

Solving the problem of hermeneutic --meaning the theory of interpretation --is a game that Americans can play too. In the jet age, sages from Basle and Marburg can breeze in to enlighten their U.S. colleagues at a brisk three-day seminar, and theology has become increasingly international. One proof is a new book called The New Hermeneutic (Harper & Row; $5), the second in a series devoted to a dialogue between Continental and American theologians on major religious issues. Edited by James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb Jr. of the Southern California School of Theology, the book contains essays on hermeneutic by Ernst Fuchs of Marburg and Gerhard Ebeling of Zurich. Their contributions are analyzed by three topflight U.S. thinkers: Amos Wilder of Harvard Divinity School, Robert Funk of Drew, and John Dillen-berger of San Francisco Theological Seminary.

The Central Problem. Robinson distinguishes the new hermeneutic (without the s) of the Marburgers and the traditional science of hermeneutics. This now somewhat neglected branch of theology outlined the basic principles of interpreting a text, in contrast to exegesis, which was practical application of these principles. Far wider in scope, the new hermeneutic deals with the key issue of how to retranslate the Christian message for man today, "the meaning of the text in the situation of modern religion," as Robinson explains it. So conceived, hermeneutic, which derives from Hermes, messenger of the gods, becomes the central problem of theology.

The Marburg Disciples' interest in reinterpreting the scriptural message, says Robinson, stems from two landmarks in 20th century theology. One was Karl Barth's famous Epistle to the Romans of 1921, which rejected the rationalist, antiquarian approach of Protestant liberalism to scriptural texts and dramatically hurled at the church a modern interpretation of Paul that tried to capture the spirit instead of the letter of his message. A more immediate source is Bultmann's demand that the Bible must be demythologized--that is, stripped of its fictional heaven-above, hell-below framework, and its message restated in ideas that make sense now.

The Inner Meaning. The new hermeneutic tries to establish the principles for this task of translation. Fuchs and Ebeling agree that one basic problem is understanding how language itself not only expressed what the Biblical writers had to say, but also, by the nature of language, limited what they could say. Thus, the peculiar qualities of 1st century koinonia Greek, a rough-hewn language less graceful than the classical tongue of Sophocles, may have prevented St. Paul from expressing all he meant to say. Hermeneutic seeks to analyze the degree to which the Biblical writer's inner meaning was helped or hindered by the cultural instruments available to him.

But how is this inner meaning to be recovered? The hermeneutical answer is: through one's own understanding of the problems of existence. Fuchs and Ebeling believe that the Biblical books are existential documents--that is, they are efforts to answer the basic questions man asks of life. Armed with his own understanding of the questions raised by existence, the theologian can look within Scripture for the equivalent questions raised by the Biblical writer, and for the answers given. Only then can the theologian turn his mind to the problem of retranslating that answer in a preaching word meaningful for contemporary man. One key existential answer of the Bible is found in Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God. In Fuchs's translation, this is an announcement of a "time of love," and Christian faith is faith in the victory of love over death.

Cultural Limitations. In his analysis of hermeneutic, Dillenberger argues that the abstract terminology employed by the Germans is too far removed from the language of daily life. Funk feels that the Marburgers sometimes fail to see the relativity of their own position as interpreters. Far from being a philosophical absolute, existentialism is itself a product of history and thus subject to the limitations of language. Theologians therefore must remember that their own expression of the existential questions may be quite as limited as was St. Paul's. Wilder, who is a brother of Playwright Thornton, criticizes Fuchs's emphasis on faith as obedience, ignoring the New Testament concern for the content of faith. In a chatty postscript, Fuchs answers that his colleagues are aware of the cultural limitations of existentialism; but they still believe it is the most useful starting point for their Biblical reinterpretation.

Robinson and Cobb are pleased that their series' first volume, The Later Heidegger and Theology, has already been translated into German, showing that a dialogue is in process. Although both books are forbidding in tone and terminology, the editors argue that the problems considered are not purely academic. Far from being a blue-sky issue, hermeneutic grapples with something that faces every preacher--how to make God's word vivid for a congregation--and represents a link between the pastoral ministry and academic theology. Says Robinson: "The new hermeneutic is designed to help the pastor do what he's paid to do: to tell people about Christianity in terms of their own lives."

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