Monday, November 19, 2007
"Can someone tell me what a post-modern hermeneutic is?"
I silently thanked the commenter who wrote this, because I was wondering the same thing; someone upthread had talked about a "post-modern hermeneutic coming to the rescue".
Putting the descriptor "post-modern" in front of anything generally means that I'll be confused by what follows.
It's generally used by people who want to accuse another of liberalism or relativism when it comes to interpreting the Scriptures.
"You're using a postmodern hermeneutic" = "You are interpreting Scripture so that it means whatever the reader wants it to mean."
The funny thing is that those most interested in self-identifying as being postmodernist will rightly point out that postmodern refers to a broad culture that refers to a time period with myriad values and ideologies, not just a certain subset of liberal philosophy, but those most interested in self-identifying as being postmodernist do tend to interpret Scripture so that it means whatever the reader wants it to.
Go figure.