The Comical Doctrine: The Epistemology of New Testament Hermeneutics
Overview
This book argues that the gospel breaks through postmodernity’s critique of truth and the referential possibilities of textuality with its gift of grace. With a rigorous, philosophical challenge to modernist and postmodernist assumptions, Selby offers an alternative epistemology to all who would still read with faith and with academic credibility.
Top Highlights
“The paradigm or framework-governed nature of knowing—the so-called ‘sociology of knowledge’—carries inherent relativist risks. If every knower always belongs to, and lives within, a framework, only seeing and understanding by way of the spectacles provided by that framework, it is clear that questions will arise as to the validity of such framework-bound knowledge. Each knower can claim truth, but that truth-claim will only ever belong in her own framework. What, then, is ‘truth’ in this scenario? This is the problem of relativism to which later sections of this chapter will turn once the linguistic dimension of the rejection of objectivity has been discussed.” (Page 23)
“Rather, I am suggesting that this journey and these companions offer a possible route to reclaiming a way of interpreting the gospels that is neither defensive nor uncritical.” (Page 9)
“Must the community which is the recipient of revelation and the specific form of reference, the analogia fidei, also have the nature of givenness about it? If these arguments are a proper development of the foregoing chapters, then a community which does not have the appropriate relationship with a text would not have the ‘right’ to control it, manipulate it, interpret it in any way which affects others (rather than privately for personal amusement or intellectual stimulation) or judge the interpretation of others, perhaps with the exception of judging consistency.” (Page 7)
“introductory backdrop to postmodern rejections of objectivity and anything resembling transcendental foundationalism.” (Page 16)
Product Details
- Title: The Comical Doctrine: The Epistemology of New Testament Hermeneutics
- Author: Rosalind Selby
- Publisher: Paternoster Press
- Publication Date: 2006
- Pages: 273
Reviews
1 rating
Leonardo Buscemi
3/1/2017
This is from the Amazon product description, which I found more helpful: In this wide-ranging study Rosalind Selby explores the hermeneutical implications of a Barthian epistemology in which 'giveness' (of knowledge, talk of God and Scripture, and the Church) is paramount. From this she seeks to develop a 'hermeneutics of service' that challenges both liberal and fundamentalist approaches to theological language and biblical interpretation. Selby tackles the issues of knowledge, and especially knowledge of God, the language used to communicate that knowledge and that language as Scriptural textuality. Barth wrote of 'the comical doctrine that the true exegete has no presuppositions' In fact, he said, 'no one reads the bible directly-we all read it through spectacles' In the train of his insight, Selby examines the role of community as a prerequisite for knowledge and truth claims before examining the different ways that various 'communities' interpret Scripture (focusing on St. Mark's Gospel). The presuppositions of the different starting places are revealed and the appropriateness of various methodologies discussed. The Quest for the Historical Jesus and its struggles to handle the resurrection are used as a 'test case' to show the impact of different hermeneutical strategies. The insights in this thought-provoking study have implications for issues as wide ranging as the genre 'Gospel' the authority of Scripture, the Church as a 'reading community' the plurality of interpretations and the possibility of controlling them, the relationship between general and special theological hermeneutics, as well as epistemological foundationalism and its alternatives.
