Why are they saying such awful things about truth and interpretation?
“All this stuff about hermeneutics is really a way of avoiding the truth question.” So spoke homo Tyndaliens, Tyndale man, to be precise, a NT Ph.D. student at Tyndale House, Cambridge, in 1984. My immediate reply: no, all this stuff about truth is really a way of avoiding the hermeneutical question. What I now want to say to my erstwhile colleague is this: all this stuff about hermeneutics is a way of facing up to the truth question: “Hermeneutics has become a bogey with which to frighten the children, and yet . . . its message is really rather simple. Appropriating ancient . . . texts [and not ancient only!] requires an effort of understanding and not just philological skills.”
Contemporary evangelicals had best face up to both questions. The temptation of conservative evangelicals is to play the propositional truth card in order to trump interpretation; the temptation of what we might call “emergent” evangelicals is to play the interpretation card in order to trump propositional truth. Neither move is ultimately satisfying, nor edifying.
From 'Lost in Interpretation: Truth, Scripture and Hermeneutics,' JETS Mar. 2005 89-114
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But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
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