Helmholtz and Dilthey for not recognizing that scientific method itself is a tradition of sorts—a case of modernity invoking tradition in order to free us from tradition.309 The inevitability of presuppositions was captured bluntly by Bultmann, who said, “There cannot be any such thing as presuppositionless exegesis.”310 Poythress argues that this point would be made with greater clarity if certain distinctions were made. For example, the necessity of a reference point outside the system of analysis used in addition to reference points within a system. We must not merely ask, “Which analysis is valid?” but “Which analysis is useful for what purposes? . . . according to what standards?”311 Such considerations help to expose the hermeneutical situation as inherently presuppositional.
Rather than being considered a hindrance to interpretation, many have argued that pre-understanding and presuppositions must be embraced in order for understanding to be possible. Gadamer expressed dissatisfaction with the Enlightenment ideals of a perfected, comprehensive, and certain knowledge which is somehow detached from prejudice or tradition.312 He goes to great lengths to establish that “to stand within a tradition does not limit the freedom of knowledge but makes it possible.”313 Gadamer was opposed to what he saw as futile attempts to root understanding in empathy through an imaginative identification with an historical author (e.g., Schleiermacher and Dilthey), or to somehow neutralize prejudice (e.g., Husserl) in order to achieve understanding.314 Rather, understanding involves using our prejudice positively.315 Along the same lines, one could also ask the question, what pre-understanding is necessary to understand a given text?316 Polanyi contends that “all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge.”317 By tacit, he means that which is indemonstrable and cannot explicitly be stated. Rather, it is based on one’s conception of the nature of things.318 Scientific measurements are always tacitly personal and theory-laden.319 Coming from a different angle, Voelz argues that a purely objective reading is not only impossible, it is undesirable, due to the fact that an interpreter should understand a text in light of the expectations of the author and the assumptions of the text.320 In other words, if the goal is to understand the intent of the author and text, then there should be an awareness of the presuppositional intent as well. To summarize, presuppositions should be acknowledged to avoid clandestine bias and as an unavoidable necessity in order for understanding to take place. It is not that presuppositions are a necessary evil to be overcome, but are actually required. All of this raises an important question helpfully highlighted by Gadamer: what are the pre-conditions of true understanding in hermeneutics?
Historical Awareness
Another aspect of the interpretive endeavor which undermines an emphasis on objectivity and neutrality is the contextual nature of interpretation. There has been growing appreciation for the historical-situated-ness of both the author or text and the reader in which man’s relationship to history and the world is not as a user, but as a participant.321 Porter and Robinson claim that “a study of hermeneutics, like ourselves, belongs to history—to understand means to be historical.”322 In earlier treatments, the historical situation of the original author(s) and text received much of the attention, yet to the neglect of other historical aspects. Indeed, one characteristic tendency of modernity is a general uneasiness concerning history and tradition.323 As one writer put it, modernity’s approach has been “not so much out of the past, indeed scarcely against the past, but detached from it.”324 In other words, it sought to study historical objects of the past from a place outside history. Much contemporary literature, however, is focused on the historical-bound reader and the question of how understanding can take place between the author or text and reader, both being limited by their historical vantage points. “The modern interpreter, no less than the text, stands in a given historical context and tradition.”325 “There is no privileged access to a work of literature, no access that stands outside history and outside one’s own horizon of understanding.”326 Any notion of a timeless author, text, or reader is considered utterly naïve, labeled by one as a “view from nowhere.”327 Contrary to being a barrier to understanding, it is argued that one’s historical horizon provides the necessary pre-understanding to interpret an historical text.328
In light of these concerns, Gadamer’s aforementioned fusion of horizons has become highly influential. In order to move toward a proper fusion, one must first engage in a distancing in order to do justice to the historical context of the endeavor. One must take into account the particularity of a text before seeking to fuse with its horizon. However, this distancing and fusing does not take place through detachment from the text, but in dialogue with it.329 Akin to the issue of presuppositions, ignorance of historical distance is tantamount to ignoring pre-understanding.330 In Gadamer’s terminology, “temporal distance” (Zeitenabstand) is not an obstacle to be overcome, but rather helps “the interpreter to distinguish between fruitful and unfruitful pre-judgments.”331 Another important concept for Gadamer is “effective-history” (Wirkungsgeschichte), from which the interpreter cannot escape. By this, he means “the actual operation of history on the process of understanding itself.”332 He explains that “understanding is not to be thought of so much as one’s subjectivity, but as the placing of oneself within the process of tradition, in which past and present are constantly fused.”333 However one may answer the question of how to distinguish between the meaning of a text and the meaning of a text as the reader understands it, he or she cannot do so without reference to tradition and historical conditionedness.334 The historical nature of the key components in interpretation necessarily expands the definition of hermeneutics.
As influential as Gadamer’s idea of the fusion of two horizons has been in some evangelical circles, it has not been without criticism. Bartholomew, while commending Thiselton’s shift to focus more upon broader philosophical awareness,335 provides a helpful corrective to his endorsement of the two horizons concept. Namely, a third horizon must be addressed—the horizon of God and the world as his creation.336 Similarly, McCartney and Clayton assert that:
God’s horizon is totally comprehensive of all horizons, which is not to say that all possible meanings of texts are God’s meanings, but that the determinate meaning of any text is exhaustively known by him. Further, God is not mutable or bound by time, and so the meaning which he understands of a text is unchanging.337
This ultimate horizon, biblically conceived, would necessarily inform how the other two are to be understood not only in terms of what they are, but also how they are in relation to one another. The implications of God and his role in the process are far-reaching. Unfortunately, this aspect does not receive the attention it deserves in Thiselton’s work. He grants the possible model of Wolterstorff concerning divine discourse, but says that this is a different subject from hermeneutics. He suggests that the role of the divine author is primarily an issue of how God inspires Scripture. Besides affirming the incarnational mystery between the divine and human and avoiding the analogous errors of Docetism and Arianism, there is not much else to glean from such consideration.338 However, it would seem unnecessarily dismissive and reductionistic to relegate God’s role (or horizon) in hermeneutics to acknowledging inspiration and the incarnational analogy. Do not even these acknowledgements have implications for hermeneutics? The nature of Scripture as inspired affects how we interpret it. Considerations of God’s voice and intent in relation to the horizon of the human author and reader are integral to a proper biblical hermeneutic, not merely supplementary material to consider apart from the main interpretive endeavor. As Zimmerman points out, “the real question is whether philosophical hermeneutics can offer the radical exteriority necessary to lift the self beyond its own horizon.”339 This radical exteriority refers to that which transcends the two horizons and grounds their very intelligibility and evaluation. For all its awareness of historical complexity, there is an authority gap in seeking to distinguish between good and bad prejudice and ultimately between good and bad interpretation via a fusion of the two horizons.340 As such, the dialogue with the past neither ends nor reaches a state of comprehension, failing to provide a leg to stand on in terms of evaluating divergent interpretations or fusions.
From What it Meant to What it Means
A third factor contributing to the shift concerns the relationship between what a text meant and what it means
