by O’Cearbhallain, Sean (嘉理陵)
Inasmuch as any text – classical or otherwise -- performs, or is intended to perform, a noetic, cognitive or communicative function1, it may be regarded as literature, whether major or minor. On the presupposition that a text is intelligently composed and therefore intelligible, any text is the expression, or aggregate of expressions, of an insight, or of a manifold of insights. If we accept the validity of the insight, grounded in the epistemological doctrine of Bernard Lonergan, that expressions, linked to one another, are more fundamentally linked in their source and that consequently any discussion “of the radical meaning of literature, of myth and mystery, of ritual and dance must be genetic,”2 it will follow that a discussion of any text must be genetic. Such a discussion, however, can only be genetic because the text has a genesis. Furthermore, any text, classical or otherwise, is an expressed expression, as distinct from an expressing expression3, of which of course it is the fruit. It may therefore be accepted as axiomatic that a text is the objective correlative of a subject-centred reality, where the subject is precisely the attentive, intelligent, rational and responsible knower and as such is the location and the originating origin of the genesis of any text. It is here that we learn to distinguish the transcendental method from any of an increasing multiplicity of categorial methods, for the attentive, intelligent, rational and responsible subject operates within a particular context, or cluster of contexts, within the space-time continuum of our human reality, and it is these contexts, singularly or in conjunction, which call forth the particular categorial methods which are the fruit of the transcendental method. The transcendental method then is to be identified as the human spirit, specifically the human spirit in its mode of operation, specifically in its inquiry.
Inasmuch as Biblical Hermeneutics is a category within the wider field of hermeneutics or the search for textual meaning in general, it is a fruit of the transcendental method. This paper, then, extrapolates from the relationship between transcendental method and the multiplicity of categorial methods to examine the importance of genetic method in biblical hermeneutics.
To illustrate this understanding of Biblical Hermeneutics and its importance, we might take a close look at Pauline scholarship and at the questions of the Pauline corpus and of Pauline theology, and so raise the question of the binding and unbinding of Paul. It would take a lot of time and effort to illustrate in fine detail the thesis proposed here, namely that, in determining the parameters of the Pauline Corpus in the New Testament and in interpreting the theology of that Corpus, there frequently appears to be an imposition of extraneous horizons on the vocabulary, literary style, and theology of the relevant texts, and that this imposition raises the question of the probability of a methodological invalidity, equivalent to eisegesis, in allowing a categorial, perhaps even a personalized, methodology, less than fully reflectively named “Pauline”, to replace the transcendental method, to the detriment of the emergence of a viable construct which might intelligently, rationally and responsibly be named either “The Pauline Corpus” or “A Pauline Theology” as the case may be. The probability of the invalidating imposition suggested here goes beyond anything Gadamer and others would attentively, intelligently, rationally and responsibly call a “horizon”, since such a horizon is an a priori constituent of all human understanding, whereas the imposition suggested here is usually thematically adopted and frequently, if not always, confessionally motivated.
I have said that it would take a lot of time and effort to illustrate this thesis, not because it is difficult but because the literature to be examined is rather vast, the tendency is fairly pervasive and so subtly woven into the texture of argument and explanation that it would require an attentiveness both time-consuming and challenging to one’s talents of analysis. I have offered a minor example of how the thesis may be examined, elaborated and evaluated in an article in Theology Annual, The Christology of the Letter to the Ephesians. 4
It remains to say something about genetic method. I quote here from my summary of Lonergan's doctrine as presented in the article I have just mentioned.
Following the teaching of Bernard Lonergan, a genetic method is one which finds its heuristic notion in development.5 Expression is a function both of controlling meaning and of underlying psychic flow.6 While the underlying flow is the ground of the inadvertent recurrence of characteristic patterns, hence allowing a systematic component in expression which grounds the possibility of investigation, there are the further genetic and incidental components in expression. These components, it would seem, are grounded in the controlling meaning. For the genetic component arises from the fact that the system which the dynamic structures of the psyche strive to satisfy is not a static system but one on the move, and the controlling meaning is just such a system. The incidental component arises from the possibility of the intervention of the principal acts of meaning interrupting the sensitive automatism so that, for now irretrievable and unverifiable reasons, there is produced a difference in usage or an unexpected turn of phrase. These irretrievable and unverifiable reasons mean that, as in any science, so also in hermeneutics, total explanation is at best an ideal towards which our ever more probable penultimate and provisional explanations converge, and at worst a beguiling myth, or a theatre of the self. Thus it is hazardous to presume to know how to answer every question which might be raised about any text.
Let us say something about some at least of the elements called for in this description in order to apply them to Biblical Hermeneutics, specifically in the field of Pauline Studies. Lonergan speaks of [1] controlling meaning; [2] underlying psychic flow; [3] the ground of the inadvertent recurrence of characteristic patterns; [4] a consequent systematic component in expression; [5] genetic components in expression; [6] incidental components in expression; [7] moving system.
[1] In the case of Pauline Hermeneutics, I think that the controlling meaning can be fairly termed “Pauline Theology”, where the word “theology” primarily denotes an activity and only secondarily a content. For giving primacy to content immediately begs several questions: [a] what precisely is “Pauline Theology” as content? [b] How do we determine the parameters of that theology? [c] Who, if anyone, has the authority to determine exclusively the construct of that theology, if indeed “exclusively” is not a detrimental impediment to hermeneutics?
Therefore theology as theologizing, “Pauline Theology” as controlling meaning, is to be located within our second isolated element, namely [2] Underlying psychic flow. Some attention is paid to this when it is remarked that Paul's upbringing in Tarsus must have sparked within his soul a concern for those who did not belong to Israel and the vision on the road to Damascus was the revelatory answer to that concern. The underlying psychic flow in question did not come into existence on the road to Damascus. No matter how much of an unprecedented experience that vision was for Paul, it nevertheless occurred to Paul precisely at that stage in his career, that stage in his psychological, intellectual, spiritual and theological development.7 That psychic flow did not cease or become petrified when Paul attained the insight that Gentiles could be and in fact were saved outside the economy of the Law no matter how unique that economy was.
If we may analogously understand Paul's underlying psychic flow as the central potency of Pauline theology, and the actual Pauline writings as the central act of that theology, it is to be acknowledged that there can be no presumption that the central potency was totally and absolutely elevated to central act, least of all in any particular writing such as Romans or Galatians8.
In passing, as a cautionary reminder of what we may or may not affirm about Paul or about his theology as content, we might pay attention to Fitzmyer's remark on the comparative absence of the Covenant notion from Paul's writings.9 Part of the dynamism of Paul's psychic flow was, of course constituted by all the autobiographical elements which he refers to in his Letters: hereditary elements in Philippians 3:4-6 and 2Corinthians 11:22; vocational elements in Philippians 3:7-14 and other texts; and experiential elements in 2Corinthians 11:23-29.
While the underlying flow is the ground of the inadvertent recurrence of characteristic patterns, hence allowing a systematic component in expression which grounds the possibility of investigation, there are the further genetic and incidental components in expression. These components, it would seem, are grounded in the controlling meaning, in Paul's activity of theologizing, of having recourse systematically to the Christic horizon to deal with human and Christian life in the world.
Inasmuch as he is consistent in his faith and hope, in his theology and his apostolic ministry, there are of course in Paul's texts the third and fourth elements isolated above, namely [3] the inadvertent but congruent recurrence of characteristic patterns and [4] the consequent systematic component in expression. A study of presentations of Pauline Theology can help us to understand both questions and answers, the questions being the determination of the recurrent characteristic patterns and the determination of the elements which go to make up the consequent systematic component. The answers are attained by attentive, intelligent, rational and responsible study of the contents of the many presentations of Pauline Theology available. Let us offer a very simple example. In his original study of Pauline Theology in the 1968 Jerome Biblical Commentary10, Joseph Fitzmyer isolated four systematic components in Pauline Theology, namely reconciliation, expiation, redemptive liberation and justification. In the revised version of his study for the 1990 New Jerome Biblical Commentary11, he isolated ten elements which, with varying degrees of importance, we may fairly denominate as elements in the systematic component of Pauline Theology, namely justification, salvation, reconciliation, expiation, freedom, sanctification, transformation, new creation, glorification. We might perhaps add union to this list.
Fitzmyer's 1968 study called attention to the non-exclusiveness of justification as the only systematic component in Pauline Theology, while his 1990 study is a clear reminder that our study of Paul is, and must be, a moving system, where achieved results may give rise to higher or wider viewpoints.
In determining the Pauline corpus and consequently the expanding parameters of Pauline Theology, we must not allow our sixth isolated element, namely [6] incidental components in expression, to assume a determinative importance which overrides all other considerations. An example might be Paul's apparent ambivalence towards circumcision: it is an advantage [Romans 3:1], something to be understood as “more than a physical operation” [Romans 2:25-29], or it is something secondary and subordinate [Romans 2:29]; it is something to be railed against in several important sections of his writings, or it is something to be dismissed as essentially irrelevant [Romans 3:30, 1Corinthians 7:19, Galatians 5:6, 6:15, Colossians 3:11]. The importance and the irrelevance as expressed in writing may be fairly subsumed under “incidental components in expression” whereas concrete missionary or theological settings would call forth a consideration of the wider salvific question and hence the question of how much of a systematic component the matter of circumcision was in Paul’s entire theological vision. It will be obvious of course that he would maintain that circumcision does not guarantee salvation nor does it of itself constitute a hindrance to salvation in any particular case. Obvious though this is, we still have a methodological obligation to ask the questions. These methodological questions also look to terms rarely used by Paul: is this rarity to be given a determinative force or is it merely one of many incidental components?
Nowadays, it is surely a platitude to remark, as Cambier did over 40 years ago12 that, like any creative thinker, Paul is not bound to his images. Consequently, any attempt so to bind him in the interpretation of his thought is an instance of that bias which is the almost inevitable shadow of perspective. Yet one can only feel that his interpreters seem to tend to bind Paul eternally both to the specificity of the theological content of his teaching and even to a certain literary form which includes, sadly, a restricted vocabulary. To put it in somewhat simplistic and obvious terms, in writing Romans, Paul was not suggesting, much less determining or defining, the limits of his theological imagery or vocabulary. How much more so must we affirm this with reference to the entire body of his theological thought or to his theology as a moving system.
Again in dealing with texts from a creative thinker such as Paul, given that the isomorphism of knowledge and expression is not an identity13, it should be clear that the insights the author is striving to convey may well not be not commensurate with the literary form chosen, or indeed any literary form, for presumably the insight could be conveyed in any one of a manifold of expressions, even textual ones. Diversity of literary forms, even incongruity of literary forms, where there is no contradiction on the conceptual level – in Paul's case, the theological level – can scarcely be a criterion for founding theories of authorship or provenance, for denial of a potency for diversity to an author is effectively a denial of the validity of the transcendental method, since it presumes a lack of diversity, even the impossibility of diversity in new experiences, as well as a lack of any possible diversity in degree of attentiveness either called forth by the objective experience or by the subjective exigencies of the particular human spirit called to attentive awareness by a new experience set against a cumulative background of insights.
In paying attention to the necessary consequences of positing the transcendental method, one must take into account the distinction between the systematic, genetic and incidental components of any expression, that is to say – within the context of the present discussion – of any text. The contention, for example, that Paul could not have said things in a certain way is a hazardous one. To put it simply, any affirmation of what Paul could or could not have said must be examined very carefully, not only on the basis of Paul's own experience and situation, but perhaps more importantly on the basis of the various contexts of the person making the affirmation. I have often felt that a sociological study of the full complex of life situations of each biblical scholar might reveal how a very particularized, let us say confessional, mindset determines to a disquieting extent the interpretation of texts being offered. The same could be suggested in calling for an analysis of the fidelity with which an interpreter, consciously or unconsciously clings to the transcendental method and avoids any reduction of that transcendentality to a categorial personally constructed Pauline methodology or Pauline Theology.
CONCLUSION
If I were to set a sub-title to this paper, in the light of what I have been saying, such a sub-title could well be “Paul Unbound”or“The Unbinding of Paul”. However, that could be misleading in that the focus of what I am saying is not only Paul. My intention is rather a plea for a more extensive reflection on a methodology for Biblical Hermeneutics which would more congruent with the“spirit as inquiry” notion of transcendental method and so liberated from its historical enmeshment in psychological, personal and political factors deriving from sixteenth century Europe.
Though it may be contentious to suggest so, perhaps Luther's reformation tells us more about Luther than about Paul. Perhaps Bultmann's theology of the New Testament tells us more about Bultmann than about the New Testament writers. Mutatis mutandis, the same may be suggested about others. The configuration of a construct to determine what is definitively “non-Pauline” may run the risk of subjecting the transcendental method to categorialization by giving to incidental components a transcendental value, by grounding the systematic component, not in the genesis of Paul's thought, but in the second order genesis of thought about Paul's thought, and so leading to a neglect of the relevance of the genetic component, thus binding Paul, when he himself would not be so bound.
1.On these functions, see Lonergan, Bernard J.F., Method in Theology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972, pp.786, 78-79, 89-90, 104. In general, this paper applies to hermeneutics the teaching of Lonergan as instanced in his two works, Insight. A Study of Human Understanding. London: Longman, Green, 1965, and Method in Theology.
2.Navone, J., Ongoing Collaboration: The First International Lonergan Congress. Gregorianum 51(1970) p. 553. See further, note 5 below.
3.The rather awkward phrases “expressed expression” and “expressing expression” are, of course, based on the pairs intentio intenta and intentio intendens, pensée pensée and pensée pensante noesis and noema, with a similar intention. On these pairs, cf. Insight, pp. xviii, xxv-xxvi, 73, 81, 320-321, 324-325, 349, 369, 371,452, 486, 515, 644.
4.O Cearbhallain,S.,The Christology of the Letter to the Ephesians. Theology Annual 23 (2002) p.153-199.
5.On the notions of development and genetic method, cf. Insight, pp.451-483. On possible development in Paul's teaching, cf. briefly Fitzmyer, JBC 79:8 and, more critically, NJBC 82:9; further JBC 79:13, NJBC 82:15. On Paul's background, cf. Fitzmyer's convenient and succinct treatment of “five factors that influenced Paul's theology” [NJBC, 82:10-23], especially 82:14 on the contrast between an underlying basic theology and a differentiated Christology, and 82:15 on the implicit recognition of a development from a basic insight attained on the road to Damascus to “all the implications” of this vision which “was to color all that he [Paul] was to learn about Jesus…...” Full bibliographical data for Fitzmyer's two studies in notes 10 and 11 below.
6.For this statement and what follows, cf. Insight, p. 593.
7.On the debate about development in Paul's thought, cf. note 5 above. What is debated about possible developments in Pauline texts suggests we may move from this objective correlative of texts to discuss the subjective dynamic of Paul’s personal development in all the relevant aspects of his being, psychological, personal, spiritual, theological, missionary, apostolic.
8.On central potency, central act (and central form) in discussing genetic method, cf. Insight, p.459.
9.Fitzmyer, NJBC 82 :14.
10.Fitzmyer, J.A., “Pauline Theology”, JBC #81.
11.Fitzmyer, J.A., “Pauline Theology”, NJBC #82.
12.Cambier, J. La Signification Christologique d' Eph 4:7-10. New Testament Studies 9(1962-1963) p. 274, note 4.
13.On the distinction, isomorphism and interpenetration of knowledge and expression, cf. Insight, pp.554-555. In this regard also, cf. note 3 above.