Nielsen’s Nook

The introduction and first section of Osborne’s article in the IVP Dictionary of Paul and His Letters is concerned with “recent hermeneutical issues.” It is where Osborne defines foundational trajectories that will carry and influence the more practical sections of the article the follow. The scope of my interaction here is not to critique each of his interactions with the variety of interpretive traditions Osborne critiques, but to identify and briefly reflect upon some of the foundational elements of Osborne’s own thinking that seem to rise to the surface as he considers these other interpretive traditions. Osborne begins:

Classical hermeneutics has always identified the goal of interpretation as ascertaining the author’s intended meaning. Even in the Middle Ages, with the “four-fold sense” (literal, allegorical, tropological/moral, anagogical), scholars felt they were drawing out the meaning of the text (the “literal sense” on which the other senses were based). Recently, however, this approach has come under increasing attack, as attention has shifted from the author to the text (semiotic theory) and then to the reader (postmodern theories) as the locus of meaning.¹

Classical hermeneutics (CH) is a term that this writer wishes would be defined rather than assumed. From this opening paragraph, CH is clearer only by way of remotion. It is not obvious whether it includes the hermeneutic of the Middle Ages, which employed the so-called ‘four-fold sense’. However, CH is apparently other than (and over against?) the traditions Osborne considers in this section on “recent hermeneutical issues.”

I am encouraged to see Protestants considering interpretive traditions that precede the Reformation. However, it does not seem clear that Reformers saw their own hermeneutical methods as antithetical to the medieval tradition’s many senses of scripture. Nevertheless, the abuses of fanciful interpretations were surely something reformers sought to avoid.

Calvin may provide an interesting addition here. One of the greatest differences this writer sees between Calvin and his own Presbyterian and Reformed heritage is the interaction and employment of the patristics. Gamble observes that while Calvin rejects the allegory of Augustine, Origen, Jerome and other patristics, “he also maintained that there were many senses of Scripture.”²

At this point, I believe we have only clarified a bit of the scope Osborne may have had in mind with CH. If as Protestants the rubric of classical hermeneutic is going to truly be classical, i.e., connected to Christian interpretation throughout history, then it would seem to be necessary to make room for Calvin and Luther. Calvin rejects allegory while Luther employs it; both adhere to a multi-sense meaning of scripture.

If what is meant by classical hermeneutics is narrowly the notion that only the grammatical historical approach has been recognized by the church as legitimate, then we find that such a narrow scope on the definition becomes problematic. For such a narrow definition, seems to cut out those reformers who most certainly held that the meaning of the text was much larger than the so called “literal sense.” Luther, being an Augustinian monk, is known for his allegorical interpretations of scripture.

If the narrow scope is more representative of Osborne’s view then “classical hermeneutics” seems to not be so classical at all. It would not seem to account for patristic, medieval, or Reformation hermeneutics that all hold that the meaning of the text is multidimensional in its meaning.

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¹ Grant R. Osborne, “Hermeneutics/Interpreting Paul,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 388.
² Richard C. Gamble, “Brevitas et Facilitas: Toward an Understanding of Calvin’s Hermeneutic,” Westminster Theological Journal 47, no. Spring (1985): 4.