Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance

Commonweal, Nov 6, 1992 by Lawrence S. Cunningham

Jeanrond's book is a serviceable survey of the history of interpretation theory (i.e. hermeneutics) and of the importance of that discipline for theology. The work is useful for taking time to show how theories of interpretation developed in the classical past; how they took shape in theological and scriptural studies in the Christian tradition; and, finally, how they became a central issue in the intellectual discussion of post-Enlightenment Europe especially, but not exclusively, in theological circles.

After a tidy (and quite readable) historical survey that brings the story down to the usual suspects (Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, etc.) the author then stops to reflect on current thinking on the nature of the text, textuality, and reading in their own fight. His work concludes with three meaty chapters on recent debates and the status questionis of theological hermeneutics today. His concluding words include an apologia for the necessity of hermeneutics in theology against, I suspect, the critics who, with Rahner, feel that preoccupation with method and strategy is too like the constant sharpening of the knife without ever carving the roast.

Jeanrond tightly observes that theology not only must preserve the integrity of the Christian tradition but adopt strategies to me&ate it to a world, which in our day, is increasingly pluralist and less inclined to listen. That requires a sensitivity to the way in which people receive (or do not receive) words and how they encounter (or do not encounter) texts; that requires, in short, hermeneutics. His book is both a refreshet for those interested in the history of interpretation and an argument for how hermeneutics might be done. Students of theology would benefit from a reading of it.