# Whose Community? Which Interpretation? (Westphal)



## RamistThomist (Jun 10, 2015)

By Merold Westphal.

Thesis: Westphal, following James K. A. Smith's _The Fall of Interpretation_, argues that we should not seek a "pure stream" reading of the Bible that bypasses the act of interpretation. This position of seeking an *im*mediate reading of the text has precendents in Plato when he said the philosopher apprehends the purely intelligible structures (Phaedo 66e). In other words, our reading of the Bible is mediated to us by our hermeneutical filters, be they cultural, linguistic, philosophical, or whatever.

Westphal then examines recent moves in philosophical hermeneutics from the Romantics to Schleiermacher to Wolterstorff.

_But What About the Radical French Postmodernists?
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The alleged problem comes with the French trio (Derrida, Foucault, and someone else) who assert, so it is said, "The death of the author." But maybe they aren't saying exactly that (mind you, I have my own questions about Derrida).

Even the French trio doesn’t think the author is truly dead. “To deny that the author is the unilateral source of a text’s meaning is not to deny that the author plays an important role” (58). Westphal explains, “For our French trio, the finitude of the author in relation to the text is expressed in a double relativity. In the first place, human authors ‘create meaning’ only relative to the language available to them...this language shapes and conditions their thought in ways of which they are unaware and over which they do not preside” (59).

To say it yet another way: “The author is not a godlike, infinite creator of meaning” (65). Humans are finite and our sub-creations (what Milbank would call mythopoesis) are always within the realm of the finite and conditioned. So far, this is good Reformed anthropology.

Westphal then comes to the heart of his project: Hans Georg Gadamer. We must affirm tradition, but in line with our anthropology, we must affirm the "finitude" of our tradition. (This is a HUGE point when you are dialoguing with hyper-tradition traditions: EO, Rome, etc.).

Gadamer's fundamental thesis about tradition is “belonging.” p. 70. Tradition plays a double-role. It gives us a place to stand and it is is plural. We do not belong to a single, universal tradition. “All interpretation is relative to traditions that have formed the perspectives and presuppositions that guide it” (71). And by "relative to" he doesn't mean a crude relativism. It is more of a situatedness-in.

“To be historically means that knowledge of oneself can never be complete” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 301-302).

Westphal then offers several theses on reading tradition and being read by tradition:

_Alterity Thesis._ Tradition as other. Tradition will set before us what it has already done within us.

_Authority Thesis_. We acknowledge tradition as a “sub-authority” over us. “My conscience is a grounded opacity that allows a richly mediated knowledge of its object” (Westphal 74).

_Fallibility Thesis_. Question of critique: “How can we distinguish the true prejudices--by which we understand--from the false prejudices (by which we misunderstand” (75). Tradition must be open to this critique. Even worse, the difference between true and false is not always either/or but a matter of degree.

_What the French Should have said
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Authorial intent is important in understanding a text, but only to a degree. Authors themselves are _wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstein_, historically effected consciousness. They don’t have absolute self-transperancy either. Westphal has an interesting suggestion: “there is a power at work in finite authorial creation--for Gadamer, tradition--of whose agency and effects the author is never fully aware” (81).

_Conclusion and Evaluation
_
In terms of philosophical analysis the work is first-rate. Westphal may be the only Continental-school philosophy who can write clearly. Unfortunately, Westphal moves to analysis--and since that deals with the church, theology. Here the book suffers from ambiguity.

Westphal suggests we should follow Gadamer in seeing Truth Beyond [Scientific] Method. I have no problem with that, but aside from references to beautiful art and literature, I am not exactly sure what he wants me to do.

Westphal offers an interesting paradigm for understand difference in the church. He highlights the debate between political liberalism (classical liberalism in society) and communitarianism (Alasdair MacIntyre). Political liberalism affirms difference but in the midst of an overlapping sphere of agreement among the parties involved. Of course, this is valuable for the church: we will disagree at times, and even traditions (Rome, EO) that pretend to be uniform have to own up to that. Ironically, though, it is rather strange to find a postmodern writer affirming classical liberalism, which is a child of the Enlightenment.

Westphal realizes that and admits the communitarian model is probably better for the church (but he rejects it for the state).

The book ends with a hopeful suggestion taken from the Roman-Lutheran Joint Declaration on Justification. The theology behind such a move is atrocious and one is disappointed that Westphal ended a fine book on so weak a note.


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