The Greek God Hermes gave his name to the study of how ancient texts speak to the present. Hermes was the God of doctors, merchants, travellers and thieves – as far as I can remember. As such it is fitting we encounter hermeneutics in the marketplace; perhaps there is no better place for it!
Christian academic theology comprises two main activities:
- Exegesis – which is the study of ancient texts, primarily of the Bible
- Hermeneutics – the proper theological task of applying the results of exegesis to the present day.
The hermeneutical challenge is to avoid two approaches that do not do justice to either the text or present day human beings:
- The heavy-handed approach of “the Bible says it and that means there’s no debate about it”. This approach has many problems but perhaps they boil down to the observation that this mindset does not acknowledge all readings are interpretations of the text. There are no absolute certainties that can be wheeled across the years and applied in the presence.
- The other approach finds light-weight concepts in the text and floats them across the years. So, Jesus said we should love one another. This is a well-meaning pursuit but does not allow the text to challenge our assumptions.
What we need is a materialist reading of the texts. This may seem odd. Surely these are spiritual texts? They are spiritual but if you think that means these texts are not materialist then you have not understood the meaning of spirituality.
The Christian story is not one of humanity becoming more like God; a path leads to totalitarian readings. It is the story of God becoming human and so showing us how to be human.
Hermeneutics belong in the marketplace because the Old and New Testaments are preoccupied with money and community. The marketplace is where these texts test us. Even the relatively few texts about sex are usually primarily concerned about money and inequality. Sexual exploitation is an economic activity after all.
The challenge we all face is how to live in community. We all face temptation to use financial power to our own advantage. This can be subtle, appearing to be the usual way of doing things. One major difficulty, when challenging neo-liberal assumptions, is to most people it is simply the way things are. They meet any challenge with incomprehension, which usually manifests as an attack on some unrelated issue.
Hermeneutical Circulation
One well-known way of allowing ancient texts to challenge our assumptions is by using the hermeneutical circulation. Here reflection follows each activity and informs the next. It circulates from action to reflection to action and each turn of the cycle brings us somewhere new. (The word cycle is often used but it implies a return to the same place.) The texts aid reflection by introducing new perspectives.
A simple way of doing this is a three-step reflection:
Snaps – I have just experienced something, does it remind me of a story or any passage in Scripture?
Starters – turn to the passage or passages you identified and find out as much as you can, especially what they meant when written and how people have interpreted them since. (This is exegesis!)
Spin-offs – do these studies lead to new insights that might change my next action?
I’ve prepared this post in support of my sequence of posts about spirituality in the marketplace. It is also a precursor to my review of a book about Christian understanding of economics that should appear next week.