The Hermeneutics of Doctrine
Overview
Drawing on the resources of contemporary hermeneutical theory, Anthony Thiselton in this volume masterfully recovers the formative and transformative power of Christian doctrine. The past 35 years have witnessed major steps forward in the use of hermeneutics in biblical studies, but never before has hermeneutics made a comparable impact on the formulation of doctrine and our engagement with it. Indeed, no other book explores the interface between hermeneutics and Christian doctrine in the same in-depth way that this one does. Throughout the book Thiselton shows how perspectives that arise from hermeneutics shed fresh light on theological method, reshape horizons of understanding, and reveal the relevance of doctrine for formation and for life. Arguably the leading authority worldwide on biblical and philosophical hermeneutics, Thiselton has written widely acclaimed works in the areas of biblical studies and philosophical theology. His probing interaction in The Hermeneutics of Doctrine with numerous other great thinkers—Gadamer, Ricoeur, Lindbeck, Balthasar, Vanhoozer, Pannenberg—and his original perspectives will make this volume a valuable resource for scholars and advanced students.
Top Highlights
“Might not a more significant interaction between hermeneutics and doctrine play some part in rescuing doctrine from its marginalized function and abstraction from life, and deliver it from its supposed status as mere theory?” (Page xvi)
“Second, many of these communal confessions of faith on the part of Israel and of the apostolic community of the church emerge in the context of narratives of events. In this way, too, they are embedded in historical life and action. Third, what emerges as a dispositional dimension serves in these communal examples also to underline the first-person self-involvement, active participation, and endorsement or ‘taking a stand’ on the part of a believing community and successive generations of believing communities. These communities, even if separated in time or place, perceive themselves as taking their stand and as staking their identity through sharing in the same narrative, and through the recital and retelling of the same founding events.” (Page 43)
“Action, contingency, particularity, and the public world of embodied life constitute part of the very grammar of what it is to believe. In the chapters that follow I argue that these features stand at the heart of a hermeneutic of doctrine. For hermeneutics is concerned with particularity and embodied life, as well as with a distinct dimension of coherence and with expanding horizons of understanding.” (Page 21)
“The purpose of this philosophical analysis of dispositional approaches has been to demonstrate the inextricable internal logical grammar that connects Christian doctrine or communal belief with dispositional responses and habits of mind to live and act in a correlative way in the public domain.” (Page 46)
- Title: The Hermeneutics of Doctrine
- Author: Anthony Thiselton
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Print Publication Date: 2007
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Hermeneutics › Religious aspects--Christianity; Theology
- ISBNs: 9780802826817, 0802826814
- Resource ID: LLS:HRMNTCSDCTRN
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:36:46Z
