HOW PEOPLE RESPOND TO NEW TRENDS 

It goes without saying that every time there is a new movement of thought, whether it be in the realm of philosophy or theology, that there are reactions and responses.  Thought trends always elicit responses, whether in the form of public outrage, or in quiescent meditation and reflection.

George Stroup the following:  

In the nineteenth century, several reinterpretations of revelation were offered in response to the impasse created by the Enlightenment.  Two appeared in the first third of the century and overshadowed subsequent discussions of revelation.  The first was the theology of Friedrich Schleirmacher, who argued in the Christian Faith that doctrines are reflections of the piety that emerges from the experience of redemption in the Christian community.  Christian piety articulates the experience of redemption as it is lived in the church and attributed to Jesus Christ, the founder of of the community.  By making the experience of redemption the basis for theological reflection, Schleirmacher  proposed a new foundation and method for the critical explication of the Christian faith.  Neither knowing nor doing but that form of feeling Christians refer to as "redemption" became the basis for theology.  Schleirmacher's turn to the experience of redemption created a new theological paradigm which escaped the the Kantian critique of classical metaphysics and theology, and also suggested a new interpretation of the meaning of revelation (Troup, p. 127).

In essence, what we have here is witnessing how new approaches to theology, and to revelation in particular, began to emerge.  The notion of an "unfiltered" divine revelation was called into question.

In the introduction to his major theological work, Schleirmacher denied that revelation has primarily to do with intellectual assent to revealed truths, since that would imply that revelation can be limited to the cognitive dimension of human existence. He readily acknowledged that revelation leads to the formulation of doctrines; nevertheless, he contended that that revelation refers primarily not to the apprehension of propositions but to the "originality of the fact which lies at the foundation of a religious communion."  This original fact shapes the life of the community and "cannot itself be explained by the historical chain which precedes it (Friedrich Schleirmacher, The Christian Faith, p. 50).

We stop at this point to ask the question as to whether revelation is something which is divinely initiated or humanly generated claiming to be "from God?"  All sectors of the Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant with all its variations) claim in one way or the other that revelation is divinely initiated, i.e. that God initiates the process of self-disclosure.  

Then we deal with the hermeneutical question, i.e. is our hermeneutics (interpretation) also divinely initiated?  Another way of posing this question would be to ask if our interpretation of divine revelation is the interpretation that God intended and wants us to have, or is hermeneutics a humanly generated response to the divinely generated self-disclosure?  

Given the fact that there are a variety of hermeneutical perspectives, we cannot make the claim or pretend that any one particular perspective is the "correct one."  Indeed, there are many who will claim that their particular hermeneutic was "revealed" to them by God as a way of shutting down all other hermeneutical perspectives.  

Insistence on the authority of a particular hermeneutical perspective reflects human arrogance and presumptuousness.  One can claim that the Catholic Church's Magisterium is the depository of the true hermeneutics, or that the Protestant churches, with their emphasis on "Sola Scriptura" have the "correct" hermeneutics, but in the final analysis, the claim to the inerrancy or infallibility of a particular hermeneutic is culturally-conditioned.  Theology is tentative and "in progress."  Revelation is absolute, authoritative, and final, but human response is always tentative.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary