306 - The Responsibility of Hermeneutics

The Responsibility of Hermeneutics
Roger Lundin, Anthony C. Thiselton, and Clarence Walhout
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1985. 129 pp. $8.95.

Three representatives from different locations and representing two diverse disciplines were Fellows at the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship in 1982-83. Together, they attempted to articulate the broader responsibility inherent in interpretation and present textual meaning emerging from actions inherent on the part of authors and readers. Roger Lundin outlines, with considerable skill, our interpretative inheritance. The Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College incidentally provides the advanced reader with an excellent bibliography. Clarence Walhout, Professor of English at Calvin College, moves interpretation specifically into fictional texts. The intention here is to place history and fiction in a more neighborly relationship. Both are texts and each can be true or false in some degree. Anthony C. Thiselton, Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, seeks to place literary theory and biblical hermeneutics closer together, or, more specifically, to relate the hermeneutic action model to the parables of Jesus. The effort proceeds through comparison of audience criticism and reader response. The search is clearly for new interpretative perspectives.

As one who has worked in this arena, both on the popular and scholarly level, I can recommend the book, more to the specialists, however, than the beginner. The oral interchanges of the Fellows and their audiences must be interpolated by an astute reader. This observation is a veiled way of saying that the book could have used more revision. I opened the book with a certain excitement, because I really expected more profound discussion of responsibility, to me the most provocative part of the title. The hope remains a hope.

P. Joseph Cahill
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta.