THE 611 BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS
Class V: Recent Approaches II – Postmodern,
Liberationist, and Reception hermeneutics
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
1.1 Introduction
• Proliferation of critical approaches since 90s – focus on the reader(s)
• Not a method – a critical lens/approach which influences…
• Texts read self-consciously in light of an experience, agenda, perspective
• Generally sees all readings highly perspectival (or contextual)
• Academic biblical study too apolitical & “ivory tower”-driven
• Selection of texts
• “forgotten texts” “texts of terror” “liberating texts”
• Which sections of the text are highlighted
• Approval/rejection or useful/non-useful texts
• Some approaches aim to be more objective
• E.g. psychological criticism
• Postmodern literary approaches
• Reader-response criticism & deconstruction
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Liberationist approaches – focus on socio-political liberation
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Feminist and womanist approaches
Latin American liberation hermeneutics/theology
Black hermeneutics
Postcolonial criticism
• Cultural hermeneutics – focus on identity
& cultural liberation
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• Various groups (Asian, Native American
Indigenous, queer)
Power
Psychological criticism
Ecological hermeneutics* Focus on
Disability hermeneutics*
Pentecostal hermeneutics – focus on pneumatic experience
Reception history/effective history - focus on Bible’s influence
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Effective history of the Bible
Cultural-historical criticism
Empirical hermeneutics
Dialogical hermeneutics & CBS [“reading-with”]
Use of sacred text to
legitimize practice
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
2.1 Reader-Response Criticism
• “Reader-response theories call attention to the active role of
communities of readers constructing what counts for them as
‘what the text means’” (Thiselton 1992: 515)
• Two reader-response approaches
• Moderate – Wolfgang Iser & Umberto Eco
• Reader “actualizes”/”concretizes” what is potentially in the text
• Bring about “operations which the text activates within the reader”*
• Based on narrative “gaps” & measure of incompleteness in all human perception
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Radical – Stanley Fish
• “The reader’s response is not to the meaning; it is the meaning”**
• Reader’s own strategies, goals, assumptions determine what counts as
meaning
• “Reading-meaning” constructed by interpretative communities
 Everything hinges on “social and institutional circumstances”
 What are the merits and pitfalls of reader-response approaches?
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
2.2 Liberationist (emancipatory) approaches
• Feminist & womanist hermeneutics – different perspectives/methods
• Historical-critical, literary, postmodern, cultural etc.
• “conservative”, moderate, radical
• Origins Elizabeth C. Stanton, The Woman’s Bible, 1895
• Modern feminist movement from 1960s
• Womanist critique of “white middle-class feminist” agenda
• Principles and starting points
• Begins w/ “women’s experience”
• Subjugation, exploitation, inferiority; history of marginalization
• Subjugation legitimated by Bible, tradition & other systems
• Exploitation is structural not just individuals
• Silencing of women in history & today
• Women’s voice not recorded – or is “hidden” in text
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Women’s experience as a critical lens to reality (and texts)
• Hermeneutics of suspicion & retrieval
• Suspicion of “objective scholarship” & “traditional readings”
• Interpretations clouded by patriarchal viewpoint – reading “against the grain”
• Retrieval of lost traditions
• Biblical texts/women lost by patriarchal tradition or “objective scholarship”
• Women’s voice sometimes explicit, sometimes “reconstructed”
 TASK: unmasking patriarchy and bringing liberation/equality
• Evangelical/conservative approach
• Retrieval of lost biblical women
• Gen 1:26-27 “God…created…image of God…male and female”
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Gen 2:18 “Helper” [Hb. ezer] – not “servant”, “inferior”, “doormat”
 Equal, not subordinate to Adam (God as “helper”; Ps 89:19; Deut 33:7, 26)
• Hebrew midwives Shiprah and Puah against Pharaoh (Ex 1:15-22)
• Paradigm of women’s dignity, fear of God, shrewdness, and resistance
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Lost women of OT: Miriam, Deborah, Hulda*
Lost women of NT: Mary, Anna, Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla**
Jesus’ revolutionary attitude to women (Lk 8:1-3; 10:38-42; Jh 4)
Paul & women – mixed response (Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 11:2-16; 1 Tim 2:11-15)
 non-traditional interpretation of “difficult texts”
 Retains biblical authority & inspiration
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Moderate feminism – reconstruction of women’s history
• To bring liberation for women – history and present-day implications
• Bible embedded in patriarchy
• Bible sometimes challenges patriarchy, at times ideologically condones it
• Need to reread or reject patriarchal texts & highlight liberating texts
• E. Schűssler-Fiorenza (In Memory of Her: Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins)
• Radical feminism – rejection of biblical God as patriarchal/misogynistic
• Bible cannot be “salvaged” or used to empower women
• Sometimes NT & Early Christianity reconstructed as “conspiracy” of
patriarchy
• E.g. E. Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels)
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Latin American liberation hermeneutics* - “option for the poor”
• Revolutionary climate of the 1950s & oppressive dictators
• Failure of desarollismo (development)
• Vatican II and CELAM conferences (1966, 68)
• Bible as “forbidden” book in LA
• Student movements and basic communities
• Bible rediscovered for the first time
• Three levels: theologians, pastoral agents, ordinary believers
• Problem & starting point in theology
• West: Does God exist?
• Latin America: How does God allow such injustice?
• Poor masses suffering premature death, injustice/oppression
• Wealthy aristocratic [Catholic] Church aligned w/ powers
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Hermeneutical lens of liberation theology
• Poverty of the masses
• Lived experience of poverty/oppression as starting point
• Oppressive social structures & social analysis
• God’s “preferential option for the poor”
• Salvation as this-world liberation AND spiritual bliss
• Bible reclaimed by people (pueblo)
• Communitarian Bible study – Comunidades eclesiasles de base
• “What is God saying to us in our current circumstances?”
• Poor as ideal interpreters of the Bible (P. Richard)
• Goal – socio-political and spiritual liberation
• Resistance to “powers”
• Social change & political activism
• Some advocated/participated in armed resistance
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Hermeneutical circle of liberation hermeneutics
• Hermeneutics of suspicion toward traditional interpretation
• Justifies oppression & interests of clergy
• From life to text and back to life
Biblical text
• See-judge-act method
• See = analysis of present condition
• Judge = discern/judge based on Bible/theology
• Act = Take action to bring liberation
 Importance of taking action by the poor
and dignity of the poor
Pre-text*
God’s
Word
Community
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Favorite texts – texts that foster life, liberation & justice
• Exodus and the prophetic denouncements of injustice
• Jesus’ Nazareth sermon & preaching of the Kingdom
• Revelation as book of resistance and hope
• Hermeneutical movement to the present*
• Correspondence of terms (=) or correspondence of relationships ( )
Jesus
Jesus’ political context
Christian community (today)
Church’s political context (today)
Jesus
Jesus’ political context
Christian community (today)
Church’s political context (today)
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Exodus as paradigmatic event
• Cry of the poor and marginalized
• God hears the cry
• God liberated His people
• Salvation is socio-political, economic, and spiritual
 Paradigm for God’s people in OT and today
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• More recent developments in LA liberation hermeneutics
• Myriad of methods and approaches
• historical-critical, postmodern, various literary etc.
• Specific hermeneutics – expansion of socio-political focus
• Women, indigenous, black, peasant, immigration, children etc.
• Attempt to capture the “experience” of various specialty groups
 Focus on justice and human liberation
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Postcolonial criticism – focus on imperialism & identity
• Multitude of approaches & methods
• Experience of colonial subjugation & hybrid identities
 military, politics, culture, religion, art, identity
• Definition of postcolonialism:
A cultural, intellectual, political, and literary movement of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries characterized by the representation and analysis
of the historical experiences and subjectivities of the victims, individuals
and nations, of colonial power. Postcolonialism is marked by its
resistance to colonialism and by the attempts to understand the historical
and other conditions of its emergence as well as its lasting consequences.
(http://fajardo-acosta.com/worldlit/glossary.htm)
• Frantz Fanon (1961); E. Said (1978)
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Cultural representation – who is portrayed, how, by whom?
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Basic assumptions of postcolonialism
• Unequal power relations – colonizer-colonized
• Complexities of diasporic identity – hybridity
• Imperial representation all-pervasive
• Tasks and goal – critical of all empires & domination
• Expose imperial acts & representations – past and present
• E.g. Black Africans portrayed inferior/savages by colonial literature to justify
western domination
• Expose the “official” and “benign” accounts of the powerful as false
• Dynamics of colonialism – colonizer-colonized problematized
• Imitation, accommodation, elite benefit, mutual dependency, resistance*
• Foregrounding the victim
 socio-political activism & liberation
• Attention to the marginalized voices, literature, experience
 “Clearing space for multiple voices…previously silenced”
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Focus of postcolonial biblical criticism* – 1990s
• Biblical empires (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome)
• Colonial involvement and concerns of biblical texts
• Experiences of Israel, Jesus & Early Church under empires
• Egypt and Babylonian Exile; Roman Empire vs. empire of God
• Jesus is kyrios/soter or Caesar is kyrios/soter
• Use of biblical texts in the past and present
• Slavery in US; subjugation of Native Americans & Exodus
• Reread past texts in liberating ways & expose past colonial agendas
• Critic/interpreter – representation, knowledge, power
• Modern biblical studies & “western captivity”
• Historical-critical paradigm reflects western, white, male approach
 objectivist, detached, historic, rational, text-centered
• All readings constructed and have present-day “colonial effects”
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom
of heaven has come near.” 18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of
Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother
Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were
fishermen. 19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out
to fish for people.” 20 At once they left their nets and followed
him.21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of
Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father
Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22 and immediately
they left the boat and their father and followed him. (Matt 4:17-22)
• Postcolonial reading of Jesus’ call of the disciples
17 From
• Traditionally religious/spiritual calling of disciples to evangelize
• What imperial-colonial dynamics may be found in the text?
• How does that influence the interpretation?
• What are potential implications of the postcolonial reading?
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Clash of empires and demands on loyalties
• Lake of Galilee is not innocent or “neutral”*
• Socio-politically contested area and power struggle
• Periphery of Roman Empire – area of power struggle and violence**
• 4:16 “Galilee of the Gentiles” echoes Assyrian domination & liberation (Isa 9:1-2)
• “Kingdom/empire of God” stands in opposition what Roman empire claimed –
Jesus actions and words manifest God’s rule
• God’s rule disrupts people’s lives – claims total lives [imperial mimicry]
• Calling of fishermen – fishing industry under imperial control
“every rare and beautiful thing in the wide ocean, in whatever sea it swims, belongs
to the Imperial treasury” (Juvenal, Satire 4.37-77)
 Rome controlled people’s loyalties, labor & land – clash of empires
• Disciples are all male – imperial patriarchy and absence of women
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Other texts with explicit imperial overtones
41 If
anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles (Matt
5:41)
19 When
her owners realized that their hope of making
money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them
into the marketplace to face the authorities. 20 They brought
them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and
are throwing our city into an uproar 21 by advocating customs
unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” 22 The crowd
joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates
ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. 23 After they
had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and t
he jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24 When he
received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened
their feet in the stocks. (Acts 16:19-24)
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Liberationist and postmodern hermeneutics – brief analysis
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Dialogical & “Reading with” hermeneutics
• Two approaches – dialogical and empirical hermeneutics
• Empirical hermeneutics = mainly a research tool/method
• How people interpret, understand, and use the Bible
• Qualitative and quantitative methods
• Dialogical/”Reading with” approach
• “scholars and ordinary readers read the Bible together and mutually
enrich and correct each other’s perspectives.” (Autero 2014: 40)
• Meaning is negotiated in a dialogue (scholars &”ordinary readers”)
• “enlarge the subjectivities and reading horizons of both”
• Contested definition of “ordinary reader”*
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Contextual Bible Study method (CBS)
• Draws from liberation hermeneutics (Latin America & South Africa)
• Selection of texts and topics important & context-driven
• E.g. poverty, violence, community
• See-judge-act approach – hermeneutical circle: life-text-life
• CBS facilitated not taught – people’s concerns foregrounded
• Importance of local reading resources together with academic
• Intercultural Bible Reading – “Through the Eyes of the Other”
• Reading of text – mini commentary
• Exchange of comments – “reading through eyes of the other”
• Comments & closure
• Sample**: https://boliviabiblia.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/intercultural-biblereading-experience_bolivia-indonesia.pdf
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
Sample Contextual Bible Study, Luke 14:1, 12-14
14:1One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a
ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.
14:12 He
said also to the man who had invited him, “When
you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends
or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest
they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But
when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the
lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they
cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the
resurrection of the just.”
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
1.) Who did people normally invite for a dinner party
according to this text? Why?
• Who should have been invited according
to Jesus?
2.) What would have happened if people
had practiced this teaching during the time of Jesus?
• COMMENTARY: During biblical times people generally invited:
1) Family and friends from the same socio-economic level
2) People from the same or higher socio-economic level in order to
receive benefits for themselves. It was an occasion to strengthen
friendship bonds among people of same level – all others were excluded!
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
3.) Who do we include and exclude
from our dinner parties or from the
community today? Why?
4.) Dream up a vision about a church that practices
this teaching of Jesus in their community.
• What would happen in the church, in the community, and the
society as a result implementing this vision.
• What do we need to do concretely as a result of this Bible study?
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Pentecostal/Charismatic Hermeneutics* – pneumatic focus
• Contested origins – C. Parham, W. Seymore or elsewhere*
• Azusa St. revival, April 9th, 1906
“[i]n the Los Angeles revival white bishops and black workers, men and women, Asians
and Mexicans, white professors and black laundry women were equals (this in 1906!).**
• Experience of the Sprit – the guiding hermeneutical principle
• Guiding principles of hermeneutics of early Pentecostalism
• “Latter Rain” motif – from revival to apostasy to latter day revival
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• “Latter Rain”* outpouring signaled the nearness of 2nd coming
• Restoration of charismatic gifts – esp. tongues as a sign
• Four-fold full-gospel: Jesus as…
• Savior, Healer
• Baptizer in the Spirit, soon coming King
Pentecostal experience is mediated through the preaching, testimonies, prayers,
prophecies, healings…rather than a strict exegesis of the text (Wightman 2008: 114-207)
• Bible reading method – mining KJV w/ concordance
• Pre-critical – no formal theological education
• “I am poor and have nothing but at the same time I have everything,
since I have the Bible.” (Sepulveda 2009: 112)
• Intuitive, Spirit-guided understanding of the Bible
• Key passages in Acts 2-4; 8; 10; 19 and 1 Cor 2; 12-14; Rev. formative
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Key proposals and questions in Pentecostal scholarship
• Role of the Spirit and experience in hermeneutics & exegesis
• Biblical authority, inspiration & Spirit
Pentecostals believe that God still speaks today and when God speaks,
God has more to say than just Scripture, yet it will be scripturally sound
(Archer 2013: 147-148)
• Hermeneutical approach and circulation
• What difference does Spirit-experience have to hermeneutics?
• Supernatural & experiential pre-understanding
1) Critical faculties under guidance of the Spirit 2) genuine openness
to the Spirit as texts are investigated 3) faith-experience as part of
interpretative process 4) response to Spirit through Word*
• Spirit bridges the historical-cultural gap to present
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• From text to life or life to text – or a dialogue?
• Sprit-Text-community triangle – dialogue [trialogue?]
• Based on Acts 15 & inclusion of Gentiles – not based on “literal” reading
• Community, Spirit-experience, text
Scripture with the aid of personal testimony through guidance of the
Spirit  esp. where Scripture does not resolve an issue
• Contested theological issues
• Prosperity teaching(s)
• Charismatic “manifestations”
• Pentecostal identity – not tongues but supernaturalism
• Protest against secularism and Dispensational Fundamentalism
• Oneness Pentecostalism
• Popular Pentecostalism, scholarship & theological education
• Bible “thumping” & “bashing”
• Charismatic excesses; anti-intellectualism; faith-movements
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Baptism of the Holy Spirit – John and Luke-Acts
• Jesus’ promise of the Spirit
• Jesus breathes the Spirit on disciples (Jh 20:22)
• Four main accounts of the “coming” of the Spirit in Acts (cf. Lk 24:49)
• Pentecost (2:1-4; cf. 4:31); Samaritans (8:15-19);
• Cornelius & friends (Acts 10-11); Ephesian twelve (19:1-7)
• Evidence that Spirit given after conversion (two-stage Spirit reception*)
• Pentecostal doctrine of the two-stage “baptism of the Spirit”
 Some add that Spirit-baptism is evidenced by speaking in tongues
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Further support of the Pentecostal Spirit-baptism
13 For
by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were
all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor 12:13)
• Many (non-Pentecostal) charismatics
• Experience of the Spirit & spiritual gifts
• Tongues – one gift among many
• No two-stage experience of conversion + Spirit baptism
• Continuous in-filling or experience of the Spirit
 Other parts of Scripture interpret in light of the Spirit-experience scheme
Postmodern, liberationist, & reception
hermeneutics
• Pentecostal-charismatic hermeneutics – a brief analysis