The Comical Doctrine: The Epistemology of New Testament Hermeneutics

by Rosalind M. Selby

Publisher:

Paternoster

, 2006

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.

Contents

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

About Rosalind M. Selby

Rosalind Selby is a lay preacher in the United Reformed Church and completed her doctorate at the University of Aberdeen, UK.