Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§6.4 History, Hermeneutics and Faith
Each of the Synoptic Gospels comes somewhere in between the direct contextual
communication of the Pauline letters and the indirect non-contextual
communication of proverbs. But from the first the Gospels have been recognized
as intentional in form and content — as 'gospels'! And certainly since Wrede the
fact that each Evangelist has structured the earlier tradition to convey his own
rendering of the Jesus tradition has been taken as axiomatic. To what extent similar
theological intention can be discerned in the earlier forms of the tradition is a
good deal less clear. But the principle of respecting the text and allowing the text
so far as possible, using all the tools of historical criticism, to speak in its own
terms is still valid. Any less a goal for exegesis would be self-condemned. 59 How
far that takes us back to Jesus, of course, is a question still to be addressed.
c. The Priority of Plain Meaning
If we take seriously the fact that the NT texts are historical texts, it follows that
the old case for historical philology and the hermeneutical principle of plain
meaning can still demand respect. To be sure, plain meaning as appealed to by
such as Calvin was not always the literal or verbal sense tout simple, but a meaning
determined in part by Calvin's faith, by the rule of faith — 'plain' to those
who shared Calvin's faith. 'Plain meaning' as it has operated in practice is already
in some measure a product of the reader's perspective, a negotiated outcome.
60 We will explore the point further below. Here my concern is to emphasize
that the precedence accorded to the text has to include the primary task of
listening to the text, the goal of letting it speak so far as possible in its own terms.
Some concept of 'plain meaning' has to be granted if the text is to be properly respected
and if there is to be a genuine hermeneutical dialogue between text and
reader. I want to keep room for the experienced reality of a text being heard in its
plain meaning as breaking through previous understandings and calling for their
revision — for the great conversions of a St Anthony hearing Jesus' words to the
rich young ruler for the first time in their plain sense, as well as for the myriad
minor conversions which constitute typical growth in knowledge and wisdom.
It is true that postmodernism has put a question mark against the meaning of
59. It 'has always been a principle of all textual interpretation: namely that a text must
be understood in its own terms' (Gadamer, Truth 291).
60. Greene-McCreight concludes that a plain sense reading 'involves negotiating between
the constraints of verbal sense and Ruled reading . . . respecting the verbal and textual
data of the text as well as privileging the claims about God and Jesus Christ which cohere with
the Rule of faith'. 'The "plain sense" reading will result from a conjunction of verbal sense and
prior understanding of the subject matter of the text provided by the conception of the Christian
faith supplied by the apostolic tradition' (Ad Litteram ix, 244).
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