Journal of Faith and the Academy 5, no.

1 (2012): 40-54
1

Reading in Biblical Studies: Thomas Kuhn’s Significance for

Contextualizing the Discipline

J. David Stark

Introduction

In contemporary discussions, the phrase “contextual biblical studies” and

cognates have come to designate studies that “begin[] with . . . the contextual
nature of all interpretation . . . [b]ut [are] not content with an admission of
contextuality. Contextual [biblical studies] embraces and advocates that
context.”1 From this perspective, to speak of “contextualizing biblical studies”
may initially seem to be an odd goal for a discipline that is already interpretive
and, therefore, already contextual. Yet, ignoring these contexts or failing to
recognize them only constrains biblical scholarship so that, rather than
engaging the biblical text more fully, biblical scholars find themselves pushed
along from behind by forces of which they remain unaware.2 Thus, this essay’s
purpose is not so much to generate a context for biblical studies but to
encourage a self-consciousness of the multifaceted contexts in which biblical
studies already operates.3 As a potent ally to this end, Thomas Kuhn’s typology
of scientific revolutions instructively frames biblical studies and suggests two
contextual mandates for the church’s scholarship in this area: critical and
confessional.

Kuhn’s Typology of Scientific Revolutions

The process of scientific revolution and the paradigmatic state that results from
a revolution closely resemble the histories and paradigms involved in biblical
interpretation. In particular, Kuhn’s typology helpfully identifies the possibility
of embedded or sub-paradigms where revolutions might occur while having
only limited effects on continuing scientific work in their parent or sibling
paradigms. Especially on these points, Kuhn’s account of scientific revolutions
provides a helpful resource for aiding biblical scholars in developing an

1
Gerald West, “Contextuality,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture, ed. John F. A. Sawyer
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 401.
2
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. and ed. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd ed.
(New York: Continuum, 2006), 354.
3
Daniel Patte, “Critical Biblical Studies from a Semiotic Perspective,” Semeia 81 (1998): 9.
 41
2

appropriate effective-historical consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches

Bewußtsein).4

Paradigms and Communities

In Kuhn’s typology, a “paradigm” is essentially a worldview, or plausibility

structure.5 Thus, a paradigm ideologically forms its adherents into a single,
“normal scientific” community (e.g., solid-state physicists). Because of the
ideological unity that the paradigm creates among its adherents, those within
the community rarely disagree over their paradigm’s fundamentals.6 For all of
the community’s “normal” work, these issues are effectively settled, and the
community need not bear the burden of constantly rearticulating these already-
established points.7
Paradigms may attract new adherents by producing sufficiently
unprecedented advances, but even new paradigms leave room for further work
because these paradigms themselves create new problems or suggest new
relevant issues.8 Those outside a given paradigmatic community gain entrance,
in part, by learning to operate within that community’s paradigm. 9 On the other
hand, those who are already within a particular paradigm’s community may
largely dismiss the work of those who refuse to accept that particular
paradigm.10 For the community, its paradigmatic tenets are “obvious”;
therefore, the efforts of those who work outside these tenets are, in one way or
another, just as “obviously” unprofitable.11

4
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 301. Robert F. Shedinger, “Kuhnian Paradigms and Biblical Scholarship: Is
Biblical Studies a Science?,” Journal of Biblical Literature 119, no. 3 (2000): 453–71, has vigorously
opposed applying to biblical studies Kuhn’s typology of scientific revolutions. Yet, Shedinger’s argument
does not sufficiently account for the inherently constructive nature of all instances where a human subject
seeks to understand an observed object, whether that object is natural or textual. By contrast, Vern S.
Poythress, “Science and Hermeneutics,” in Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation, ed. Moisés Silva
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 462–73, proposes some qualifications for applying to biblical studies the
details of Kuhn’s proposal, but as Poythress acknowledges, these qualifications are far from genuine
exceptions to this application. For further discussion of Shedinger and Poythress’s arguments, see J. David
Stark, “The Hermeneutical Roles of the Teacher of Righteousness and Jesus of Nazareth in the Qumran
Sectarian Manuscripts and the Epistle to the Romans” (PhD diss., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary,
2011), 12–17. In addition, Anthony C. Thiselton, The Hermeneutics of Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2007), 162–73, remains cautious about applying Kuhn’s typology to biblical studies because, to him, doing so
seems relativizing. Yet, as suggested below, relativism need not be a concern precisely because the church
already identifies as truly proper the macro-paradigm that the rule of faith provides (cf. Poythress, “Science
and Hermeneutics,” 484).
5
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), 111–35. For an introduction to “plausibility structures,” see James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant:
Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 112–20.
6
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 11.
7
Ibid., 18–20, 23, 34.
8
Ibid., 10, 17–18, 80.
9
Ibid., 10–11, 15–18, 21.
10
Ibid., 19, 104.
11
Ibid., 10–11, 18–19, 118–21.
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Scarcely can any paradigm demonstrably achieve perfection, but a

paradigm’s community implicitly judges the problems that their paradigm
creates to be less severe than those that it resolves.12 Otherwise, the community
would presumably not trouble itself with affirming the value of the particular
paradigm that unites them. Even when a given paradigm’s adherents might be
strongly dissatisfied with that paradigm’s problems, these adherents might
continue affirming the same paradigm simply because they lack a viable
alternative that they judge to have improved upon the paradigm they currently
affirm.13 Because a paradigm defines the axioms upon which its community
operates, the community as such cannot systemically revise their paradigm
without changing both their paradigm’s and their community’s fundamental
attributes.
Yet, scientists that adhere to a particular paradigm may propose minor
refinements that develop ad hoc the paradigm’s ability to handle difficulties that
have been observed with it.14 For instance, geocentric cosmology came to
introduce epicycles as a way of explaining the apparently retrograde motion
that the known planets undergo in certain parts of their orbits. The overall
geocentric paradigm remained, but some of its details were adjusted to
incorporate more fully the whole body of observed data about planetary
movements.15
As a particular community comes to accept additional points as
“givens” and, therefore, as paradigmatic, this community transitions itself into a
sub-community and its most immediately governing paradigm into a subset of
the broader paradigm from which it has emerged.16 For example, “solid state”
and “high energy” are two particular sub-communities of physicists, each with
its own particular sub-paradigm, within the larger community of physicists. In
turn, the community of physicists is itself differentiable from that of chemists,
although both are sub-communities that operate within particular sub-
paradigms of their broader, shared paradigm of the physical sciences.17
Individual scientists may operate within more than one micro- or macro-
paradigm, but at each paradigmatic level, particular axioms still distinguish

12
Ibid., 23.
13
Ibid., 77, 79; Thomas S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
14
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 68–71, 75, 78, 86–87; Edwin H.-C. Hung, Beyond Kuhn: Scientific
Explanation, Theory Structure, Incommensurability, and Physical Necessity (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006),
78–79.
15
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western
Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 45–77.
16
Kuhn, Essential Tension, 294–97, 321–22; cf. Peter Achinstein, “A Discussion of Kuhn’s ‘Values’:
Subjective Views of Kuhn,” in Science Rules: A Historical Introduction to Scientific Methods, ed. Peter
Achinstein (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 413; Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 43–44, 46,
49; Quentin Quesnell, “On Not Neglecting the Self in the Structure of Theological Revolutions,” in Religion
and Culture: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., ed. Timothy P. Fallon and Philip Boo Riley (Albany,
NY: State University of New York, 1987), 125–26.
17
Kuhn, Essential Tension, 295–96.
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4

different paradigmatic communities from one another and identify the particular
communal domain(s) within which any given work of any given scientist might
fall.18

Crises and Responses to Them

As already suggested, however, scarcely does any paradigm at any level

achieve full and lasting perfection. Instead, within a given paradigm’s history,
“crises” will occasionally emerge. When it occurs, a crisis usually identifies a
particular paradigm’s inability to resolve a sufficiently important problem(s).19
During a crisis, a scientific community will sense a “pronounced failure” in
their paradigm.20 In this failure, the community may perceive issues that it finds
to be of too great a practical significance to ignore, or more threateningly, the
community may find its paradigm’s essential components to be under assault.21
Therefore, as one important symptom of a crisis environment, the community
may suggest several different bodies of adjustments to its paradigm in order to
salvage the paradigm for the community’s continuing work.22
Indeed, in the absence of other paradigmatic proposals, trying to
salvage their current paradigm in some way may be the community’s only
viable way of handling a given crisis.23 On the other hand, the community or
some part of it may respond to a crisis by setting aside the “normal science”
that their paradigm establishes and engaging in “extraordinary science,”
characterized by “a willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit
discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals.”24
Therefore, the practice of extraordinary science indicates an openness to a
“scientific revolution”—that is, to abandoning an old paradigm and adopting a
new one.25
Yet, because various scientific paradigms are related to, or perhaps
even embedded within others, any given scientific revolution may have a
different level of impact on different scientific communities.26 For instance, a
change quantum mechanical theory may well be revolutionary for solid-state
^ in
18
Ibid., 296–97.
19
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 67–68; cf. Paul Ricœur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on
Language, Action, and Interpretation, trans. and ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), 271.
20
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 67, 74–75, 77, 92, 97–98; cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, Thiselton on
Hermeneutics: Collected Works and New Essays, Ashgate Contemporary Thinkers on Religion (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2006), 711.
21
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 81–82; cf. Hung, Beyond Kuhn, 16–18.
22
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 70–71, 83–84.
23
Ibid., 76–79; Kuhn, Essential Tension; cf. D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts
Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 88.
24
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 91.
25
Ibid., 34, 90.
26
Ibid., 49–51, 92.
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5

physics. At the same time, it might have little or no impact on another scientific
paradigm, even within the physical sciences, like chemistry or perhaps still less
in a life sciences discipline like biology.27
Nevertheless, when scientific revolutions happen, they occur suddenly,
and they defy exhaustive demonstration and description. Consequently, the
historical period within which a particular revolution occurs often sees much
controversy and debate.28 To be sure, both broader and narrower scientific
paradigms specify criteria by which a particular scientific community can try to
evaluate a given paradigm as better or worse than their current one.29 Even so,
because individual scientists must apply these criteria and weigh their results,
this evaluation process is essentially hermeneutical and, therefore, not subject
to universally and infallibly certain a posteriori demonstration.30 Thus,
respecting its cognitive and social dimensions, paradigmatic change strongly
resembles “conversion.”31
Once this “conversion” happens, the scientists who have experienced it
look back on the previously-held paradigm as mistaken in some way, whether
large or small.32 Such scientists may continue observing exactly the same set of
data as they did before their conversion, but their new paradigm provides a new
cognitive and social framework within which to understand and explain these
data.33 Thus, this new paradigmatic framework may substantially alter how its
adherents perceive and relate to their fields, relevant data sets, and validation
standards. In other words, because these scientists have adopted a new
paradigm—a new worldview—how they construct the world that they inhabit
fundamentally differs from how they constructed it their paradigm shift.34

27
Ibid., 50.
28
Ibid., 89–90, 151–52, 159; cf. Bernard Barber, Social Studies of Science (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction,
1990), 97–113; Poythress, “Science and Hermeneutics,” 461.
29
Achinstein, “Kuhn’s ‘Values’,” 413; Kuhn, Essential Tension, 321–22; Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 43–44,
46, 49.
30
Achinstein, “Kuhn’s ‘Values’,” 413; Kuhn, Essential Tension, 320–22, 329; cf. Carson, The Gagging of
God, 89–90; Thomas S. Kuhn, The Road Since Structure, ed. James Conant and John Haugeland (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002), 208–15; Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 94, 152, 160–87. To the extent that
“hermeneutics” is directly involved with establishing or modifying a scientific paradigm, the activity would
not properly happen within normal science, which takes its constitutive paradigm for granted (Kuhn,
Scientific Revolutions, 222). On the other hand, to the extent that “hermeneutics” involves any interpretive
interaction with data inside a paradigmatic context, the label is also quite applicable even to normal science
(cf. Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, trans. and ed. Andrew
Bowie, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], 3;
David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope [San Francisco: Harper and Row,
1987], 33; contra Shedinger, “Kuhnian Paradigms and Biblical Scholarship,” 467).
31
Kuhn, Essential Tension, 338; cf. Poythress, “Science and Hermeneutics,” 473.
32
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 49–51, 84–85, 92, 115, 206; cf. Glynis Marie Breakwell, Coping with
Threatened Identities (New York: Methuen, 1986), 22; Hung, Beyond Kuhn, 8–9, 63; Thiselton, Thiselton on
Hermeneutics, 712.
33
Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 84–85.
34
Richard E. Grandy, “Kuhn’s World Changes,” in Thomas Kuhn, ed. Thomas Nickles, Contemporary
Philosophy in Focus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 246–59; Kuhn, Copernican
 45
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Kuhn and Biblical Studies

In this way, Kuhn’s typology of scientific revolutions essentially provides a

narrative map for fundamental shifts in socially-embedded human
understanding. Human understanding is itself historically effected
(wirkungsgeschichtlich), or determined by the whole body of preexisting
historical conditions that have shaped any particular human being.35 Therefore,
effective history also embraces the “hermeneutical situation[s]” in which
biblical scholars find themselves and provides the chief point for translating
Kuhn’s description of scientific revolutions into a hermeneutical perspective on
biblical studies.36
By definition, biblical scholarship operates from a certain paradigm, or
constellation of prejudgments, that constitute it and enable scholarly
engagement with biblical texts.37 This fact is perhaps obvious, but it bears
explicit expression because its significance is repeatedly overlooked or
obscured. First, scholarship exists as such not in or because of itself—that is, it
is not self-caused—but only because of other legitimating factors (e.g., valuing
stability and reliability; the perception of disciplined, methodical engagement
with evidence as helping to realize these values). These motivations are
properly paradigmatic and, therefore, pre-scholarly, but they legitimate the
possibility of and give rise to scholarship.
Second, scholarship exists as biblical scholarship only because of its
directedness toward a certain literary corpus.38 This corpus’s contents may be
debatable in certain dimensions,39 but that “biblical” texts function as a
constitutive center for “biblical” scholarship is hardly debatable. Indeed,
beyond all paradigmatic allegiances, what account can biblical scholars give of
their directedness toward such texts? Unless paradigmatically directed, why
should biblical scholars be biblical scholars and not, for instance, physicists?
Some biblical scholars, as indeed some physicists, may well cite a “sense of
vocation” as the reason they have selected their particular, disciplinary
specialty, but beyond this “sense of vocation” is a “plausibility structure,” or a
thing-that-renders-this-vocation-preferable. This thing-that-renders-this-

Revolution; Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, 92, 102–103, 109, 111–12, 118, 128–29; Kuhn, Since Structure, 12–
32; cf. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin, 1988); N. T. Wright, The New
Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1992), 38–44.
35
See F. R. Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 436;
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Ligne, 1st paperback ed.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 10–17; Gadamer, Truth and Method, 299–306.
36
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 301.
37
Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 9, 13.
38
Ibid., 11.
39
For this point’s demonstration even beyond more detailed, text-critical points, one need only compare the
different biblical canons traditionally accepted by Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and at least
some Ethiopian Orthodox groups.
 46
7

vocation-preferable need not necessarily have any “religious” connections; it

may derive, for example, simply from one’s family or ethnic heritage.
Nonetheless, a thing-that-renders-this-vocation-preferable is necessarily present
and enables a particular scholar’s “sense of vocation” to be translated into
concrete action in the particular field of biblical scholarship.
their Consequently, even in its most general connections, biblical studies are
paradigmatically framed just as is any other field or discipline. Within biblical
studies, different sub-paradigms subsist (e.g., historical criticism, post-
structuralist criticism), and within the discipline’s history, examples of
paradigmatic revolutions abound (e.g., the Arian controversy, the iconoclastic
controversy, the Reformation, the rise of historical criticism). Indeed, as Kuhn’s
typology projects, in the history of biblical studies, periods of paradigmatic
revolution also see significant controversy as they rearticulate old paradigms
and spawn new ones. That contemporary observers of this history judge a given
paradigm shift as “good” or “bad” further stresses the reality of these observers’
own subsistence within a particular paradigm that is respectively “in” or “out of
step” with another. The same also holds true as current impulses in biblical
studies elicit wide varieties of approbation or censure from different quarters
(e.g., the New Perspective on Paul, canon and textual criticism, Bible
translation, scripture and hermeneutics) and illustrate Kuhnian dynamics
actively at play in biblical studies’ continuing existence.40 Because Kuhn’s

40
One could provide bibliographic illustrations on these and similar points ad nauseum, but a few salient
references will suffice. For convenience’ sake, these references are listed according to the categories noted
above, but some of the issues involved in each of these categories of paradigmatic conflict certainly overlap.
On what has come to be termed the “New Perspective on Paul,” see Krister Stendahl, “Paul and the
Introspective Consciousness of the West,” in Paul among Jews and Gentiles, and Other Essays (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1976), 78–96; E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of
Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1977), 1–12; James D. G. Dunn, “The New Perspective on Paul,” in
Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians, 1st American ed. (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 1990), 183–214; John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton,
IL: Crossway, 2007); N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2009); Thomas R. Schreiner, “Justification: The Saving Righteousness of God in Christ,”
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 54, no. 1 (2011): 19–34; N. T. Wright, “Justification:
Yesterday, Today, and Forever,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 54, no. 1 (2011): 49–63. On
the emerging possibility of a “post-New Perspective on Paul,” see Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of
God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); Douglas A.
Campbell, “Post-New Perspective View,” in Four Views on the Apostle Paul, ed. Michael F. Bird,
Counterpoints: Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, forthcoming). On canon and textual criticism,
see Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies
on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Bart D. Ehrman, Lost
Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press,
2003); Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary
Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, IL:
Crossway, 2010); Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the
Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1989); Wilbur N. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text II, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf
and Stock, 2003); Klaus Wachtel and Michael W. Holmes, eds., The Textual History of the Greek New
Testament: Changing Views in Contemporary Research (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011). On
Bible translation, see the preface to and text of the NIV2011 and Southern Baptist Convention, “Resolution on
the Gender-neutral 2011 New International Version,” Southern Baptist Convention, resolution posted June,
 47
8

typology of scientific revolutions resonates so strongly with both the history of

biblical interpretation and contemporary movements within biblical studies, one
may suggest that this typology can indeed function as a workable map for
navigating the field of biblical studies.41
In so doing, Kuhn’s typology stresses the paradigmatic determination
both of the biblical text and of its interpreters. As already mentioned,
approaching biblical studies without reference to this determination hardly
mitigates the discipline’s contextuality and instead only constrains biblical
scholarship to being pushed along from behind by determining factors that
remain unaddressed.42 This situation has been helpfully illustrated with the
metaphor of a “horizon”:

2011, http://sbc.net/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=1218 (accessed March 30, 2012); Committee on Bible

Translation, “A Brief Response to the SBC Resolution,” Committee on Bible Translation, open letter posted
June 15, 2011, http://www.niv-cbt.org/wp-content/uploads/cbt-response-to-sbc.pdf (accessed March 30,
2012); cf. D. A. Carson, The Inclusive-Language Debate: A Plea for Realism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998);
Vern S. Poythress and Wayne A. Grudem, The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy: Muting the Masculinity of
God’s Words (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2000); Glen G. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss, and Steven M.
Voth, eds., The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God’s Word to the World (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2003). On scripture and hermeneutics, see Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals
and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005); Gregory K. Beale, “Myth,
History, and Inspiration: A Review Article of Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns,” Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society 49, no. 2 (2006): 287–312; Peter Enns, “Response to G. K. Beale’s Review
Article of Inspiration and Incarnation,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49, no. 2 (2006):
313–26; John White, ed., “Official Theological Documents,” Westminster Theological Seminary, posted 2008,
http://wts.edu/uploads/images/files/Official%20Theological%20Documents%20for%20Web.pdf (accessed
March 30, 2012); Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010); Norman Geisler, “An Open Letter to Mike Licona on His
View of the Resurrected Saints in Matthew 27:52–53,” NormanGeisler.net, open letter posted August 2011,
http://normangeisler.net/articles/Licona/1stOpenLetterToMikeLicona.htm (accessed March 30, 2012);
Norman Geisler, “A Second Open Letter to Mike Licona on the Resurrection of the Saints of Matthew 27,”
NormanGeisler.net, open letter posted August 21, 2011,
http://normangeisler.net/articles/Licona/2ndOpenLetterToMikeLicona.htm (accessed March 30, 2012);
“Michael Licona’s Response to Norm Geisler,” Parchment and Pen, entry posted September 8, 2011,
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2011/09/press-release-michael-licona-response-to-norm-geisler/
(accessed March 30, 2012); Norman Geisler, “A Response to Mike Licona’s Open Letter,”
NormanGeisler.net, open letter posted September 8, 2011,
http://normangeisler.net/articles/Licona/3rdOpenLetterToMikeLicona.htm (accessed March 30, 2012); Albert
Mohler, “The Devil Is in the Details: Biblical Inerrancy and the Licona Controversy,” AlbertMohler.com,
entry posted September 14, 2011, http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/09/14/the-devil-is-in-the-details-
biblical-inerrancy-and-the-licona-controversy/ (accessed March 30, 2012); Michael R. Licona, “The Devil Is
Indeed in the Details, and We Do Well Not to Ignore Them: A Brief Response to Al Mohler,” Facebook, entry
posted September 15, 2011, https://www.facebook.com/notes/michael-licona/the-devil-is-indeed-in-the-
details-and-we-do-well-not-to-ignore-them-a-brief-res/160295627387705 (accessed March 30, 2012);
Norman Geisler, “A Response to Mike Licona’s Defense of Dehistoricizing the Resurrection of the Saints in
Matthew 27,” NormanGeisler.net, open letter posted 2011,
http://normangeisler.net/articles/Licona/4thOpenLetterToMikeLicona.htm (accessed March 30, 2012). At the
time of this writing, the issue of the Southeastern Theological Review that Licona, “The Devil Is Indeed in the
Details,” mentions as set to carry Licona’s further response to Geiseler and Mohler’s criticisms has yet to
appear.
41
Poythress, “Science and Hermeneutics,” 462–68, 474–84.
42
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 283, 301, 354.
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9

Every finite present has its limitations. We define the concept of

“situation” by saying that it represents a standpoint that limits
possibility of vision. Hence essential to the concept of situation
is the concept of “horizon.” The horizon is the range of vision
that includes everything that can be seen from a particular
vantage point. Applying this to the thinking mind, we speak of
narrowness of horizon, of the possible expansion of horizon, of
the opening up of new horizons, and so forth. . . . [T]he word
[“horizon”] has been used in philosophy to characterize the way
in which thought is tied to its finite determinacy, the way one’s
range of vision is gradually expanded. A person who has no
horizon does not see far enough and hence over-values what is
nearest to him. On the other hand, “to have a horizon” means not
being limited to what is nearby but being able to see beyond it. A
person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of
everything within this horizon, whether it is near or far, great or
small. Similarly, working out the hermeneutical situation means
acquiring the right horizon of inquiry for the questions evoked
by the encounter with tradition.43

In this light, Kuhn’s research in the history of science is one tool that may help
biblical scholars “acquir[e] the right horizon of inquiry” for their subject
matter.44

Kuhn and Biblical Studies’ Contextuality

In its most basic respect as text, the biblical text is written communication.45
However else one may approach or regard the biblical text, therefore, it is at
least a means of transferring a message(s) from one subject (i.e., a sender) to
another (i.e., a receiver). In communicative contexts, the receiver has the task of
understanding the sender. Therefore, when identifying a proper “horizon of
inquiry” for a communicative subject matter,46 the more that the receiver can
adopt the horizon of the sender, the smoother the communication will be. This
adoption does not involve the receivers’ transposing themselves into senders’
minds, but it requires receivers to transpose themselves into the perspective
within which a given sender has formed his or her views.47 That is, this

43
Ibid., 301–2; italics original.
44
Ibid., 302; cf. Patte, “Critical Biblical Studies,” 9.
45
Jeannine K. Brown, Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2007), 11–16, 29–56; Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the
Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 229.
46
Cf. Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 302; Patte, “Critical Biblical Studies,” 9.
47
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 292.
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10

adoption requires receivers to try to understand how a sender could be correct

in what that sender appears to be communicating.48 From a Kuhnian
perspective, this adoption and understanding will likely improve or worsen by
degrees as receivers seek to explain how senders could be correct and “shift”
their understandings of their senders’ horizons as necessary along the way. For
all the difficulties (i.e., misunderstandings) that typically attend the process,
humans communicate, and they do so across temporal boundaries of varying
sizes.49 Therefore, for the church’s biblical scholarship, two primary,
hermeneutical contexts emerge: critical and confessional.

Critical

Although all biblical scholarship is paradigmatic, not all biblical scholarship is

“confessional” in the sense in which the term is intended here.50 Treating first
biblical studies’ critical context could suggest this context’s natural primacy to a
confessional context in importance or method. Neither of these implications is
intended, but considering biblical studies’ critical context first makes good
sense in terms of the paradigmatic breadth that this context seeks to achieve.
In its simplest form, a “critical” biblical scholarship is biblical
scholarship that has criteria.51 Precisely which criteria are best for biblical
scholarship to employ and how to employ them is debated, but the label
“critical” usually connotes a paradigm that (1) regards the biblical text as a
historical and literary phenomenon and (2) applies to it standard, historical and
literary tools. Within the broader framework of the biblical text as
communication, treating the text as a historical and literary phenomenon is
essential. Only in this way is it possible for contemporary readers to do justice
to the biblical text’s various human authors as senders of specific messages to
specific recipients among whom contemporary readers, by definition, do not
find themselves in the first analysis. For instance, only by treating the biblical
text as a historical and literary artifact does anything like a reasonable, biblical
lexicography become approachable.52 Only by “knowing” the biblical authors
through their historical contexts do interpreters “acquir[e] the right horizon of
inquiry” for what these authors have attempted to communicate.53

48
Ibid.
49
Philip Esler, ed., Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its
Context, St. Andrews Conference on New Testament Interpretation and the Social Sciences (New York:
Routledge, 1995), 6; Gadamer, Truth and Method, 297.
50
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 283.
51
Ernst Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today, trans. W. J. Montague and Wilfred F. Bunge
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 265.
52
James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961); D. A. Carson,
Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 27–64; Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and
Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994).
53
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 302; cf. Patte, “Critical Biblical Studies,” 9.
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11

Often overlooked in this kind of scholarship, however, is some of the

self-criticism that should rightfully attend critical readings of the biblical text
within a communicative hermeneutical framework.54 Only rarely, if ever, does
any one party to a conversation fully and completely understand a speaker so
that another party can add nothing to the first’s understanding of the speaker’s
message. Similarly, critically engaging the biblical text requires self-critical
reflection that duly accounts for the interpreter’s own hermeneutical blindness.
Robustly critical exegesis is, therefore, even when it operates “normally,”
always open to becoming “extraordinary” and broadly reconceiving the matrix
within which it understands the biblical text.
Despite these considerations, contemporary critical scholarship has
consistently tended to underplay the value of cultural studies for its own
continuing efforts, and only comparatively recently has greater attention begun
turning to these concerns and greater emphasis been given to self-consciously,
culturally-located readings of the biblical text (e.g., Afro-centric or Mexican-
American readings).55 Where these readings are proposed and affirmed as
alternatives despite whatever diametrical oppositions they may entail among
themselves and other readings that make no self-conscious attempts at being
culturally located, they have justly been questioned about their implications for
the possibility of a coherent biblical testimony.56 On the other hand, where these
readings are proposed not as absolutely valid alternatives but precisely as
different lenses that may show up different features within the biblical text, they
provide an important and helpful way of qualifying how one’s own cultural
location impinges upon one’s reading of the biblical text. Thus, for instance, in
considering a text about exile or hospitality, both an Anglo-American
professional biblical scholar and a Mexican-American immigrant can have
something to learn and something to teach as they seek to do justice to the text
in its own historical situation.57

54
Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 31–46.
55
For one recent, substantial example of the benefits that cultural studies might yield for critical readings of
the biblical text, see Craig Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2011), 209–600.
56
Of course, simply because a reading “makes no self-conscious attempts at being culturally located” does
not mean that this reading succeeds in sidestepping its own cultural location. For example, an Anglo-
American or Central-European background provides an interpreter with a particular history from which to
read the biblical text just as much as does a Mexican-American or South Korean background. Even if some
quarters of contemporary biblical scholarship have behaved otherwise, each of these backgrounds is just as
paradigmatic as the next (M. Daniel Carroll R., “Reading the Bible Through Other Lenses: New Perspectives
and Challenging Vistas” [plenary address, annual meeting of the Institute for Biblical Research, San
Francisco, November 18, 2011]).
57
M. Daniel Carroll R., Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2008), 63–112; Ernst Käsemann, “What I Have Unlearned in 50 Years As a German
Theologian,” Currents in Theology and Mission 15, no. 4 (1988): 333–34; Käsemann, New Testament
Questions, 279; R. Barry Matlock, Unveiling the Apocalyptic Paul: Paul’s Interpreters and the Rhetoric of
Criticism, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement 127 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic,
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Confessional

Interlocking with a communicative-critical framework, confessions are also

paradigms but are not necessarily written (as are creeds, for example), and
confessions typically seek somehow to situate themselves as echoers of or
58
But, it mi- partners with the particular tradition(s) with which they side. A confessional
ght reject context for biblical studies typically situates itself within a broader critical
criticism en-
tirely (e.g.,
context. Yet, a confessional sub-paradigm sometimes finds itself at odds with e.g., in-
KJV only- how different adherents to the broader critical paradigm articulate that errancy
ism). The paradigm’s implications for biblical studies. Within the broad spectrum of
point is th- groups that profess some kind of Christian identity, confessional diversity
at confess-
ion often
abounds. Space precludes substantive engagement with even a modest sampling
implies so-of these groups’ confessions, but neither would this engagement necessarily be
me apprec-most profitable here. Instead, the key strand of the confessional context within
iation for which the church needs to pursue biblical interpretation is the context of the
the historic-
ity of the
rule of faith.59
texts' original According to Irenaeus, the rule of faith (Lat.: regula fidei), or in its
situatinos. earlier phrasing, the rule of truth (Lat.: regula veratatis) is the Christian
confession that: ^ or can be represented
as being (there are other
formulations)
There is one God Almighty, who made all things by His Word,
and fashioned and formed, out of that which had no existence, all
things which exist. . . . There is no exception or deduction stated
{in Scripture}; but the Father made all things by [Jesus Christ],
whether visible or invisible, objects of sense or of intelligence,
temporal, on account of a certain character given them, or
eternal; and these eternal things He did not make by angels, or
by any powers separated from His Ennœa {thought}. For God
needs none of all these things, but is He who, by His Word and

1996), 232; David Way, The Lordship of Christ: Ernst Käsemann’s Interpretation of Paul’s Theology (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 13–14.
58
Thiselton, Hermeneutics of Doctrine, 8–18.
59
Cf. The Westminster Confession of Faith (London: Westminster Assembly of Divines, 1647; repr.,
Suwanee, GA: Great Commission, 1998), §31.3. Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism
Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011), 96–97, also proposes
renewing the rule of faith as a central element in a distinctively Christian hermeneutic. Yet, Smith proposes a
Christological hermeneutic as at least a partial antidote to evangelicalism’s apparent interpretive pluralism
and fragmentation (Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, 97, 113, 116, 137–38). To this end, however, the
history of biblical interpretation renders dubiously effective simply a Christological interpretive method.
Rather, if combined with a shift in Evangelical identity toward the “mere” or “simple” Christianity, as
embodied in the rule of faith, the general outlines of Smith’s unity proposal hold greater promise (Smith, The
Bible Made Impossible, 120–21, 146–48; cf. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperCollins ed. [San
Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001], viii–ix). See also Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-centered Hermeneutics:
Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
2006); Michael Williams, How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens: A Guide to Christ-focused Reading
of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012).
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13

Spirit, makes, and disposes, and governs all things, and

commands all things into existence,—He who formed the world
(for the world is of all),—He who fashioned man,—He [who] is
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor initial principle,
nor power, nor pleroma,—He is the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. . . .60

Although Irenaeus’s phrasing is aimed at his own argument’s particular context,

taking even the Pauline tradition alone (e.g., 1 Cor. 8:1–7; 15:1–11; Gal. 6:14–
16; Eph. 4:4–6; Phil 2:1–13; Col. 2:6–14), a vastly similar tradition of core
Christian doctrine may be found.61 The key, hermeneutical role that this rule
plays for the church’s theology becomes clear when one observes the effects of
a thoroughgoing, purely critical approach—that is, that it alone cannot construct
a unified theology for the church.62 From a purely historical and literary
viewpoint, “the biblical text” is only an anthology of textual witnesses to
perspectives of individual people in other times and places.63 What remains,
(i.e., what therefore, is a movement inside the church’s historic, confessional paradigm.64
remains forFrom this hermeneutical position, the church’s confession is not simply a
interpret-
ers who historical datum; it is a genuine witness to the activity of the one true Creator
want to construct a unified theology for the church,
what is necessary for them to achieve this goal)

60
Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A.
Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1 (N.p.: Christian Literature, 1885; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), §§1.9.4,
1.22.1; curled brackets added; parentheses and square brackets original; see also Theodor Zahn, “Regula
Fidei (‘Rule of Faith’),” in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, ed. Samuel
Macauley Jackson and Lefferts A. Loetscher (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1953).
61
Cf. August Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der Apostolisch-katholischen Kirche
(Breslau: Grass und Barth, 1842), 64–68n5.
62
Werner Georg Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems, trans. S.
McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972); John Sandys-Wunsch and
Laurence Eldredge, “J. P. Gabler and the Distinction Between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology: Translation,
Commentary, and Discussion of His Originality,” Scottish Journal of Theology 33, no. 2 (1980): 133–44.
63
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Lessing’s Theological Writings, trans. and ed. Henry Chadwick (Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1957), 53–55.
64
Cf. Brevard Springs Childs, “The Canon in Recent Biblical Studies: Reflections on an Era,” in Canon and
Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig G. Bartholomew et al., The Scripture and Hermeneutics Series (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 52; Brevard Springs Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, 1st
American ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), 73, 82–83; Brevard Springs Childs, Old Testament
Theology in a Canonical Context, 1st Fortress ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 15; Gadamer, Truth
and Method, 283–84; James A. Sanders, “Text and Canon: Concepts and Method,” Journal of Biblical
Literature 98, no. 1 (1979): 29; Charles H. H. Scobie, “History of Biblical Theology,” in New Dictionary of
Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander et al. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 18; see
also John Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 1996), 90; Mary C. Callaway, “Canonical Criticism,” in To Each Its Own Meaning: An
Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Applications, ed. Steven L. McKenzie and Stephen R. Haynes,
rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 146; Richard N. Soulen and R. Kendall Soulen,
“Canonical Criticism,” in Handbook of Biblical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001),
30.
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God who reveals himself and his acts in the biblical text.65 In short, from this
self-consciously, theologically-located position,

Scripture asserts nothing but the catholic [≈ true, orthodox] faith,

in regard to things past, future, and present. It is a narrative of
the past, a prophecy of the future, and a description of the
present. But all these tend to nourish and strengthen [love], and
to overcome and root out lust. [For, love is] that affection of the
mind which aims at the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and
the enjoyment of one’s self and one’s neighbor in subordination
to God[, and] lust [is] that affection of the mind which aims at
enjoying one’s self and one’s neighbor, and other corporeal
things, without reference to God.66

Joining the church’s historic confession involves the interpreter in a living

engagement with both text and tradition.67
To draw an illustration from Victor Fleming’s classic film, The Wizard
of Oz, from a purely critical perspective, one may merely see Kansas in black-
and-white, but from a confessional viewpoint, one may see Oz in Technicolor.68
Common elements move within both worlds (e.g., Dorothy’s “You and you and
you and you were there”). Yet, both worlds combine these elements in
fundamentally different ways, and what stands between them is a tornadically
violent revolution of one’s hermeneutical world (cf. Acts 17:6–7). Indeed,
although they are intimately related, so different are these two worlds that
speaking from one into the other may well have the appearance of insanity (cf.
Acts 26:1–29). It simply “does not make sense” (cf. 1 Cor. 2). Nevertheless,
just as the Ozian world “is not a place you can get to by a boat or a train . . . but
it [i]sn’t a dream. It [i]s a place . . . a real, truly-live place,” so also one does not
come to join in this confession purely by a posteriori demonstration.69 When
once one steps inside the Christian confession, however, one sees that it is a

65
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 278–84.
66
Augustine, “Christian Doctrine,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 2
(N.p.: Christian Literature, 1887; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), §3.10.15–16.
67
Cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description
with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein, 1st American ed. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1980), xix.
68
Victor Fleming, The Wizard of Oz (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939). Objecting that The Wizard of Oz’s real
viewing audiences “know better” than to think of Oz as a real place is not to the point here. Whatever
criticisms might be leveled at the film’s narrative structure, few people, if any, would find it legitimate to
criticize the film because “Oz is not a real place.” Rather, within the film’s own narrative world, Dorothy’s
sic, omit trip to Oz is precisely the kind of thing that would is plausible (cf. Aristotle, Ars Poetica, ed. R. Kassel
[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966], §1451b).
69
Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, ed. William Edgar, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and
Reformed, 2003), 129, 193.
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true tradition that bears the weight of the observable data that it is obliged to
handle.70

Conclusion: Kuhnian Impulses and a Confessional-Critical Hermeneutic

As the Reformation and its heirs have recognized, precisely in order to paint
Christian doctrine in full color, biblical interpreters must unceasingly return to
the sources (ad fontes).71 The goal of this return is not simply so that one may
read the sources again as one always has but that, confessing the church’s rule,
one may come to understand it.72 “[W]herever truth may be found, it belongs to
[the] Master,”73 and critical engagement with the sources from within the
church’s confessional tradition enables interpreters’ efforts toward self-
undeception and toward obtaining a truer grasp of the true tradition that has
been committed to the church (2 Tim 1:14; Jude 3).74 When “the outside [has
become] the inside,”75 old “worlds” of possibilities may stand in sharper relief
or new ones may open, but in either case, the biblical text and the church’s true
doctrine—not the interpreter’s understanding of them—become the centerpoint
around which these worlds revolve. Losing this centerpoint means losing the
biblical text itself as a communicative act. To be sure, “there’s no place like
home”—but only when “home” is seen through the lens of the place that is not
home. Only when approaching the text both critically and confessionally do
Christian biblical scholars do the biblical text full justice in their vocation as the
text’s and the church’s servants.76

J. David Stark currently serves three different institutions as an adjunct online

faculty member in Religious Studies, and he is the Research and Writing Fellow
for Information Technology at the Christian Institute for the Study of Liberal
Arts.

70
Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der Apostolisch-katholischen Kirche, 64–68n5; Van Til,
Christian Apologetics, 193–94.
71
Stanley James Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern
Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 125. At its core, the motto “always reforming”
(Lat.: semper reformanda) is essentially identical to the motto “to the sources” (Lat.: ad fontes) when the
latter is applied to a Christian, biblical and theological context.
72
Anselm, “Proslogion,” in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), §1; Augustine, “Homilies on the Gospel of John,” in Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 7, §29.6.
73
Augustine, “Christian Doctrine,” §2.18.
74
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 279–83; Käsemann, New Testament Questions, 264–65.
75
Cf. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, corrected ed. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997), 27–73.
76
Cf. Käsemann, New Testament Questions, 261–62.