Beyond the Impasse: The Promise of a Process Hermeneutic (Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics, No 13)

Rating:
Summary: Farmer's work is simply outstanding!
Review: In Beyond the Impasse: The Promise of a Process Hermeneutic, Ronald L. Farmer attempts to present a comprehensive introduction to a process hermeneutic to those unacquainted with the process hermeneutical option. To accomplish this task, the book is divided into three segments. The first segment includes a rather lengthy chapter in which Farmer documents his personal quest to find a satisfying biblical hermeneutic. In recounting this adventure, he catalogs the assets and liabilities of various hermeneutical options including the historical-critical method, classical Liberalism's progressive revelation, the biblical theology movement, existentialist interpretation (Bultmann), the "new" hermeneutic (Bultmann's students and the later Heidegger), literary criticism/reader-response criticism, and deconstruction. After years of exploring and experimenting with these hermeneutical options, Farmer's personal "quest for a satisfying hermeneutic brought [him] to an impasse" (45). Almost every approach offered something of value, but none could be embraced completely; "consequently," he confesses, "I found myself engaged in 'tool box raiding'"(46). The examination of various options led Farmer to recognize that every hermeneutical system he had studied assumed a worldview - even those systems designed to deny the possibility of a world view. This led him to ask *which* worldview was the most adequate to undergird a hermeneutic because, as he argues, "it is far wiser to make one's worldview explicit and thereby open to criticism and improvement than to deceive oneself with antimetaphysical rhetoric" (45). Farmer eventually concluded that the provisional metaphysics of the process world view, most clearly laid out by Alfred North Whitehead, is the most adequate for the hermeneutical enterprise. The second, and most extensive, segment of the book is devoted to developing the implications the process world view has for hermeneutics. After hammering out the nature of language, text, and interpretation in this process hermeneutic, Farmer spends a chapter assessing what contribution a process hermeneutic makes to the field of hermeneutical studies. I list several here. (1) The process hermeneutic grounds the concept of "open-ended" meaning in the general nature of reality, thus accounting for why the meaning of a text will change, to some degree, as it is experienced by different readers in different contexts. (2) The process hermeneutic helps by objecting to the hard distinctions between religious and everyday language; the varieties of language are not essentially different because all language is relatively (in)determinate, subjective, and value-laden. (3) The process hermeneutic is more adequate because a process hermeneutic primarily regards texts as lures for feeling; therefore, the process interpreter need not be limited, as many modern approaches are, to commending a narrow portion of the biblical text for positive analysis. (4) Rather than being confined to interpretation of the essence of a text, a process hermeneutic affirms a trajectory approach by insisting that meanings undergo transformation in history. (5) Because a process hermeneutic is undergirded by a metaphysics available for public discussion, "a process interpreter can affirm that biblical studies can and should have a public character as well as address the needs of faith communities" (130). (6) Because the process hermeneutic emphasizes God's necessary role in the initial states of all events, the notion that God has inspired authors and communities can be given an adequate basis: "God is involved in both the writing and interpretation of a text," explains Farmer (132). To illustrate the power of his process hermeneutic, Farmer addresses the Apocalypse of John in the book's third segment. Many contemporary interpreters regard the Apocalypse as having little theological or ethical value because of the extreme difficulties the book has for interpretation. Farmer, however, suggests that paradoxes found therein may be transformed when the component lures of each idea, taken together, offer a novel contrast. He addresses the paradox of limited and universal salvation found in John's writing, for instance, and concludes with the novel interpretation that "God's justice involves both judgment and redemptive transformation" (193). Farmer's work is simply outstanding! The chronicling of his appropriation and dissatisfaction of various contemporary hermeneutical options is engaging as Farmer draws the reader into his personal adventure. The middle segment, dealing with process metaphysics and hermeneutics, brings together smartly a wide variety of issues pertinent to the interpretative task. Perhaps the book's only drawback is its status as an "introductory" book. It is introductory for graduate students perhaps, but, even with the extended appendix offering an overview of Whitehead's cosmology, it is highly doubtful that those without a strong graduate education will keep their head above the technicalities of the book's hermeneutically and philosophically enriched waters. Its greatest contribution may be to those who, like Farmer, have come to an impasse afer traveling widely on the eclectic hermeneutical terrain. For these adventurers, the process hermeneutic will likely hold profuse promise.