Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §6.4
century overconfidence) when he talked of history as 'a critical practice through
which [the historian] attempts to correct his preliminary impressions of the object
until, through repeated reciprocal action, clarity as well as certainty
emerge'. 83 Once again, the likeness of the hermeneutical method to the historical
method described above (§6.3) is to be noted. As a reader of historical texts (the
Gospels and Epistles of the NT), therefore, I (and most others engaged in the
same exercise) do not despair over the hermeneutical circle but find that the reality
of a self-critical critical scrutiny of these texts can and does provide a growing
appreciation and understanding of why they were written and what they must
have conveyed to their first auditors and readers. The meaning intended by
means of and through the text is still a legitimate and viable goal for the NT exegete
and interpreter.
e. 'Historically Effected Consciousness'
Worth particular mention, because of its influence within contemporary hermeneutics
as they have impacted on biblical criticism, 84 is Gadamer's concept of
Wirkungsgeschichte, the 'history of effect' of a text. Here the hermeneutical circle
is correlated with the older hermeneutical recognition of hermeneutics as the
interplay between the polarities of familiarity and strangeness. The point is that
the gap between text and reader is not empty; it is filled by the effect which the
text has exercised in the in-between time between 'an historically intended, distanced
object and belonging to a tradition'. Consequently Gadamer questions
'the naive assumption of historicism' that the temporal distance is something
which must be overcome. Rather it should be seen 'as a positive and productive
condition enabling understanding'. The intervening tradition is part of us. 85
Gadamer's point is not to be reduced simply to the recognition that the interpreter
stands within a history influenced by the text. The key term is actually the
more elaborate phrase, wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein, 'historically effected
consciousness'. Here it is important to recognize the distinction between
the English verbs 'affect' and 'effect': to 'affect' someone is to move or touch or
influence that person; to 'effect' is to bring about or bring into being a certain result
or outcome. 86 Gadamer's point, then, is that the interpreter's consciousness,
or pre-understanding we might say, is not simply influenced by the text; rather, it
has in some measure been brought into being by the text; it is itself in some de-
83. From Mueller-Vollmer, Hermeneutics Reader 112-13.
84. See, e.g., Watson, Text and Truth particularly 45-54.
85. Gadamer, Truth 295, 297, 282.
86. As Gadamer's translators note (Truth xv).
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