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Secularization and pluralism have created a crisis of biblical authority within contemporary Western Christianity. Responding to this, Christine McSpadden has produced a manifesto for preachers which approaches the Bible not as just one 'sacred text' amongst others but as a unique means of life-changing encounter with the living and active Word of God. Though she makes no reference to it, McSpadden's understanding of Scripture closely echoes that of one of the earliest Christian texts, the Epistle to the Hebrews. The purpose of this paper is to examine Hebrews' use of the Old Testament and what its interpretive method reveals about the author's understanding of the nature of Scripture; to identify the extent to which McSpadden's approach follows this understanding and method; and to determine what further implications this shared tradition may have for the doctrine of scriptural authority and the practice of biblical preaching in a contemporary Western setting. It concludes that McSpadden's approach stands firmly in the tradition first articulated in Hebrews and that together they reflect the most ancient Christian understanding of scriptural authority, which protects the Bible texts from historical irrelevance on one hand and from unduly speculative and subjective interpretations on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more debates in American politics become constitutional questions, effective citizens must engage in constitutional interpretation. While most Americans venerate the Constitution as a part of a national, civil religion, levels of constitutional knowledge are also very low. In this paper, we analyze how ordinary Americans approach the task of constitutional interpretation. An analysis of two cross-sectional surveys indicates constitutional hermeneutics are a product of political factors, religious affiliation, and biblical interpretive preferences. We also present the results of a survey experiment where the manipulation of a clergy's interpretation of a biblical passage affects how respondents interpret both scripture and the Constitution, providing a potential causal mechanism for learning how to engage in hermeneutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to relational views of autonomy, some social relations or forms of dependence are necessary for autonomous agency. Recent relational theorists have primarily focused on autonomy of action or practical autonomy, and the result has been a shift away from individualistic conceptions of autonomy in the practical realm. Despite these trends, individualistic conceptions are still the default when it comes to autonomy of belief or intellectual autonomy. In this paper, I argue for a relational account of intellectual autonomy. Specifically, I claim that intellectual autonomy requires a sense of one’s standing as an equal member of the epistemic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore the ‘hermeneutical gaps’ identified in a recent and ongoing investigation across the Anglican Communion into the way the Bible is read within worldwide Anglicanism. This investigation is of contemporary importance to the Anglican Communion as the Project's findings were recently presented to the 15th Anglican Consultative Council in October 2012. The ‘hermeneutical gaps’ which have been identified shed important insights into the strained fellowship which currently seems characteristic of the Communion. The approach of this paper is to evaluate whether these ‘gaps’ are symptomatic of an inevitable fracturing within the Communion or whether points of apparent disconnect in the use of the Bible are able to be bridged, held together or reconciled for the benefit of Anglicanism's common life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fist of Fury, starring Bruce Lee, debuted in Japan in 1974. Whilst its critical reception reflected its box-office success, a complex emotional reaction is nevertheless detectable towards the film's unsympathetic portrayal of the Japanese. This paper will explore this reaction and suggest that a post-colonial angst was piqued, one that betrayed fundamental shifts in current racial, erotic, cultural, moral, and historical understandings of Japanese manliness. At one level, the response to Lee is a hermeneutic cue into the manifold ways that this angst was constructed through contesting understandings of an emergent China and unresolved memories concerning failed imperial Japanese adventure. At another level, the phenomenon of Lee's Japanese reception points to longer-term shifts in the visual-cultural representation of masculinity: vulnerability as articulated in the cinema's ‘new man’, male nudity as ‘discovered’ in women's magazines, and most potently, modern Japanese manliness to challenge American neo-colonial hegemony. It is this panorama of masculinity that this paper seeks to open through an inter-disciplinary survey of a variety of media—film, pulp fiction, women's magazines, and homo porn; a panorama into which Bruce Lee exploded on screen, alerting us to the images and contradictory aspirations that script a visual poetry of Japanese manliness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Familiar questions about whether or how far to impose risks of harm for social benefit present a fundamental dilemma for contractualist moral theories. If contractualism allows “ex post” objections by considering actual outcomes, it becomes difficult to justify the risks created by most public policy, leaving contractualism at odds with moral commonsense in much the way utilitarianism is. But if contractualism instead takes a fully “ex ante” form by considering only expected outcomes, it becomes unclear how it recommends something other than aggregative cost-benefit decision-making. Focusing on T.M. Scanlon's version, this paper develops this basic choice of interpretation and recommends the ex ante version. The paper explains how contractualism is inconsistent with John Harsanyi–style utilitarianism and how contractualism supplies a principled framework for walking a careful line between the “bad aggregation” characteristic of utilitarianism and the “good aggregation” that is both unavoidable and fully appropriate in public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I first survey several paradigms of liturgical renewal that respond to the mandate of the Second Vatican Council and I restate a suggestion made in 2007 for a new model of liturgical study, ‘Appreciating the Liturgy’. This new model encourages a deeper appreciation of the current liturgy and is offered that the Church may better discern the way forward in the renewal of the liturgy. Then, following a brief presentation of the liturgical hermeneutic taught at the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy and a practical example of analysing a prayer with this method, I conclude by showing how the ‘Appreciating the Liturgy’ model has helped to reveal a liturgical hermeneutic heretofore overlooked, that of Christian maturation by developmental steps. The method which Daniel McCarthy and I have developed and used here can validly be applied to other liturgical sources, yet this paper's conclusions, based on the analysis of a newly-composed oration in one of the renewed texts ( editiones typicae) resulting from the Second Vatican Council and the Constitution on the Liturgy, suggest that Christian maturation was a real concern of those taking part in the Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matthew's five great discourses move from addressing the story's audience to direct engagement with the reader. The first section of the paper demonstrates that this rhetorical function of the discourses has found widespread agreement among scholars employing such diverse methodologies as redaction, narrative, rhetorical, feminist, and reader-response criticisms, as well as structuralism and post-structuralism. The paper's second section analyzes the means by which Matthew's reader is more directly addressed in the discourses than in the narrative portions of the Gospel. The rhetorical devices explored include plot devices in the narrative surrounding the discourses; discourse structural devices; and linguistic, topical, and generic techniques used within the discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many Western churches, the Church of Scotland has been divided in recent years over the ordination of gay clergy in committed relationships, and, more generally, over the status of homosexuality for Christian ethics. Yet there has been no academic research undertaken which situates the debate within the wider context of Scottish theology. This failure has resulted in theological and ecclesial impasse, which this paper seeks to remedy through a diagnostic analysis of division over homosexuality, drawing upon the analytic tools developed by R. G. Collingwood. While this article has as its focus the Church of Scotland, its method and conclusions will be relevant to other Protestant denominations, especially Reformed churches such as the Presbyterian Church (USA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ways in which theShahnamehthematizes the poet's fraught relationship with language to not only complicate our overall understanding of the epic poem but also our understanding of the language which makes the poem, and the world outside the poem, intelligible. Through a close reading of some of the prologues and epilogues that frame theShahnameh’s tales, this essay argues that rather than helping us understand how to interpret the epic's morally ambiguous tales, the frames to Ferdowsi's tales, ironically represent a narrator who is in no position to offer us any help. Of course, the poet does give us clues as to why he and consequently we are “helpless” (bichāreh) when it comes to understanding his tales, which, in its own way, can be considered helpful. What seems to hinder understanding at every turn for the poet is, paradoxically, the very language or speech (sakhon/sokhan) that makes understanding possible in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

John Henry Newman believed that all Christian doctrines must be accessible to all Christian believers, both the intellectually sophisticated and the uneducated. This implied that the intellectually simple must be able to apprehend and assent to mysteries, such as that of the Trinity. This paper discussion what Newman understood by the idea of mystery. Mystery for Newman was primarily a hermeneutical problem. Mystery was a result of the human incapacity and inability to grasp the fullness of truth. In Newman, the hermeutical problematic is one of limitations of language thus leading to submission of intellect to a sublime truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While second-order quantifiers have long been known to admit nonstandard, or“general” interpretations, first-order quantifiers (when properly viewed as predicates of predicates) also allow a kind of interpretation that does not presuppose the full power-set of that interpretation’s first-order domain. This paper explores some of the consequences of such “general” interpretations for (unary) first-order quantifiers in a general setting, emphasizing the effects of imposing various further constraints that the interpretation is to satisfy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How credible is the Catholic Church's teaching on Islam in the light of some modern appreciations of Islam? Does the teaching about Islam at the Council, welcomed by so many, represent a discontinuity of magisterial doctrinal teaching? This paper argues that Pope Benedict's hermeneutic for the Council can be tested using this question. It is argued that the discontinuity at Vatican II lies at the level of historically contingent circumstances, with continuity at a doctrinal level. Hence, the Church retains credibility in looking at a new issue and developing a 'new' response, discerning the signs of the times, without contradicting previously held doctrinal teachings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay seeks to vindicate the importance of the humanities or liberal arts deriving from their crucial contribution to the ‘humanization of humanity.’ This vindication is timely in view of the widespread curtailment of humanistic or liberal education in many institutions of higher learning. It is also timely as a pedagogical antidote to the fascination with violence in our world (which often culminates in ‘crimes against humanity’). In a first step, the paper traces the historical development of the humanities or liberal arts in the West. Next, I highlight some crucial features of humanistic education: the emphasis on ethical and character formation; the fine-tuning of moral judgment; and the cultivation of a sensus communis. Another central feature is that such education offers a counterpoint to the overwhelming preoccupation today with career training and utilitarian objectives. In the words of Martha Nussbaum: it is ‘not for profit,’ but serves an intrinsic good. In this respect, humanistic pedagogy bears a close affinity to the needed education for democracy and world citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper poses an epistemological challenge to students and researchers of old age. It argues that people in deep old age are a testimony to the failure to generate a language by which to comprehend extra-cultural phenomena, which aborts a meaningful dialogue between researchers and subjects. The arguments put forward are based on an analysis of the unique position of the very old as an ultimate, unconstructable ‘other’, as they appear in the relevant anthropological discourse, and maintains that cultural standing of that category is anchored in a symbolic and existential space that prevents communication with its inhabitants. The social processes that lead to this state of absent translation and a deadlock of interpretation are analysed by using examples a longitudinal study of the oldest old conducted by the Herczeg Institute on Aging in Israel. An alternative option for a new conceptual articulation of ways of understanding ageing is proposed; one that is free of conventional but ineffectual paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Thinkers in the Zhànguó period of Chinese history debated intensely whether men were by nature “good” or “bad”. This debate has for many years been an important focus of sinological interest, but usually these properties were not attributed to men, but rather to so-called “human nature” (xìng 性) – thus, in effect, mirroring well-known (and problematic) “European” positions and discussions. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to redirect attention to the original Zhànguó positions and to explore the reasons for their variance by offering novel and close historical readings of relevant passages, and on the other, to propose a viable historical reconstruction of the common anthropological assumptions underlying these positions by blending it with the traces of a dominant cognitive image present in the texts. This calls for a systematic rethinking of the role of hearts (in the plural), desires, and behavioural patterns in their interplay and as elements of a concept of the psychological build of human beings current in early China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to demonstrate that listening is not only a highly complex sensory-perceptive phenomenon, but also an activity that invites considerations of its moral, political and religious dimensions. Drawing from the perspective of an early monastic tradition that understood theology as a sounding practice rather than a primarily cognitive one, the author draws attention to the fact that the biblical tradition itself prioritized hearing over seeing in its portrayal of the human being as 'all ear' when communicating with and responding to a God that addresses her from the first. Analyses of Martin Luther's account of the new creation in Christ as one that will be awakened to hearing afresh, thus becoming attentive to the 'address of creation through creation', and of his theology of the psalter, in which the reformer presents an excitingly different hermeneutics of scriptural interpretation based on the sensory perception of hearing/chanting the text, prepare for concluding remarks on the inevitably communicative and quasi-sacramental character of listening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henri de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum, published during and immediately after the conditions of wartime France, had a profound influence on the theology and actual practice of not only Catholic, but also much Protestant liturgy in the course of the unfolding liturgical movement. The interpretative keys of the text were established primarily by Michel de Certeau and Hans Urs von Balthasar, and have emphasised a historical shift from understanding in the connections between a threefold hermeneutic of Christ's ‘mystical body’. The ‘mystical body’ is variously understood as the Eucharist itself, the extant body of the Church, and the actual body of Christ. The conventional reading of this text is to claim that de Lubac traces a shift, occurring in the High Middle Ages that points away from the body of the Church to an objectification of the eucharistic species, resulting in the highly individualistic piety that manifested itself in the Catholicism of the nineteenth century. This paper challenges that hermeneutic key as an oversimplification of a much more subtle reading suggested by de Lubac himself and intrinsic to the text of Corpus Mysticum, and suggests that de Lubac understood the real shift to be the triumph of a certain kind of rationalism, exemplified by Berengar's thought, emerging to assert itself as the basis and ground of theological thinking, eclipsing the grounding character of the liturgy as the source of meaning in theology. It examines de Lubac's late claim that Corpus Mysticum was ‘a naïve text’ and asks what kinds of naïvety are indicated in this statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Parts of Classes (1991) and Mathematics Is Megethology (1993) David Lewis defends both the innocence of plural quantification and of mereology. However, he himself claims that the innocence of mereology is different from that of plural reference, where reference to some objects does not require the existence of a single entity picking them out as a whole. In the case of plural quantification "we have many things, in no way do we mention one thing that is the many taken together". Instead, in the mereological case: "we have many things, we do mention one thing that is the many taken together, but this one thing is nothing different from the many" (Lewis, 1991, p. 87). The aim of the paper is to argue that—for a certain use of mereology, weaker than Lewis' one—an innocence thesis similar to that of plural reference is defensible. To give a precise account of plural reference, we use the idea of plural choice. We then propose a virtual theory of mereology in which the role of individuals is played by plural choices of atoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe biblical figure of Samson (Judges 13: 1?16: 31) is not mentioned by name in the Quran. He was, however, incorporated by medieval Muslims such as al-?abar? and Tha?lab? into the quranic prophetic world. How and why that was accomplished is the initial focus of this paper. While the medieval ability to find Samson in the text of scripture was admittedly limited, the attempt does illustrate the process of fitting scripture into a pre-existing world view itself composed on the basis of a variety of competing priorities. That world view does not always agree with the biblical text, nor with the full dimension of the living traditions of Judaism and Christianity; rather, the overall cultural framework of the Islamic tradition necessitated a range of interpretive strategies, dictated by the demands of the interpretive situation. Putting this medieval interpretive process in focus provides a context for discussing some modern Muslim views of Samson, about whom it is sometimes proclaimed proudly that he is notto be found in scripture. Why that position should be taken proves revealing of the process and the priorities of modern quranic interpretation. Marked by the abandonment of the value of tradition, contemporary interpretive strategies involve the same hermeneutical processes found in the medieval approach ? the fitting of world views to the text of scripture ? with the primary difference to be located in the rejection of the accumulative nature of the interpretive enterprise. Finally, the role of modern ?secular? scholarship interacts with Muslim tradition by its focus on the boundaries of a strict scriptural text as the source of Islam. The scholarly focus on the textual is seen in a world view not of confessional dogma but one that still supports a confessional position that is also textually focused. It pretends to an appearance of being ?scientific?. Scholarship plays its own political role within the process of modern interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poststructural emphasis on the intertextual character of texts appears to threaten the integrity of texts, opening them to a dizzying infinite variety of meanings. One might respond by trying to shore up the boundaries around texts, but it is undeniable that texts take their meaning by harmonising with other texts. How can this dilemma be resolved? Using jokes as a paradigm, the paper defends the notion that texts are 'porous'. A text has its own integrity and specific meaning, but the boundaries between text and text are permeable. In dialogue with Kevin Vanhoozer, I argue that texts must be permeable if they are to have meaning at all. Jokes only work when the hearer has relevant information from outside the joke itself. The porosity of texts does not destroy authorial intention; the joker intends for the hearer to bring outside information to bear on the text. In these senses, every text is n joke, and a good interpreter knows the information from outside the text and has the wit to know what information is relevant. Good interpretation is always a matter of 'getting it.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop Mauricio Suárez's distinction between denotation, epistemic representation, and faithful epistemic representation. I then outline an interpretational account of epistemic representation, according to which a vehicle represents a target for a certain user if and only if the user adopts an interpretation of the vehicle in terms of the target, which would allow them to perform valid (but not necessarily sound) surrogative inferences from the model to the system. The main difference between the interpretational conception I defend here and Suárez's inferential conception is that the interpretational account is a substantial account--interpretation is not just a "symptom" of representation; it is what makes something an epistemic representation of a something else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Middle Horizon (A.D. 600-1000), the Wari state extended its influence over much of Peru. One popular view of the Wan expansion is that the state constructed a system of administrative centers that ruled through an idiom of generalized reciprocity and extracted, stored, and redistributed goods from local groups. This paper considers how this model of the Wan periphery was constructed over the last 100 years, and argues that interpretations that fit within this model have been given added weight in academic literature because they fit our expectations of what the past should be like. I suggest that there are significant problems in this understanding of the Wan periphery that need to be addressed, and offer an alter- native model that better fits the available evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Galatians 4.21-31 opens with a brief allusion to events recounted in Genesis 16–17, to which Paul aptly appends the following comment: ατıνα ϵστıν αλλΒγoρoζυμϵα (4.24). Through a re-evaluation of the meaning of the verb αλλΒγoρϵω in the context of Hellenistic rhetoric and by setting Paul's own hermeneutic in the context of Jewish hermeneutical norms of the first century, this paper argues that Paul's allegory of the two covenants is more reflective of Jewish reading practices which sought to eschatologize the Torah, such as Paul's reading of Gen 16.1 through its haftarah, Isa 54.1, rather than Christian typology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a range of philosophical and linguistic responses to the phenomenon of indeterminacy and the place of authorial intention in the hermeneutical task. In the face of these responses, others have developed various theological responses to the problem, responses which this paper refers to collectively as 'believing criticism'. A theological undergirding for all such approaches may be found in the application of the incarnation to an understanding not only of the nature of the Christian scriptures but also of the interpretative process itself. This application enhances our appreciation of the role both of divine intention in the divine discourse evident in the Bible and of the contextualised response to that discourse, and provides further impetus for those who would argue that both intention and indeterminacy must be recognised in the apprehension of meaning. This is in tune with an epistemology of 'personal knowledge' as espoused by Michael Polanyi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a reading of two representative texts--the 1917 lecture 'Die neue Welt in der Bibel' and the preface to the first Römerbrief--that seeks to highlight the theological basis of Barth's early characterisation of the task of biblical interpretation. It further suggests that by describing the engagement of the contemporary reader with scripture in terms drawn from the text itself, Barth makes a distinctive and still relevant contribution to church's attempt to account for its reading practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a paper outlining and discussing Giambattista Vico's conception of the nature and importance of hermeneutics. Information on Vico's theory of hermeneutics; Reference to the book `Law of War and Peace'; Detailed information on the second conception of a methaphysical hermeneutics.

The theme of this season of lectures is hermeneutics, Verstehen and humane understanding. It is my contention in this paper that long before Droysen or Dilthey, Windelband or Rickert came up with the notion of cultural science (Geisteswissenschafte), it had been flourishing in the scholastic tradition of theology and philosophy of religion, though I am not sure that its practitioners would thank me for saying so. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

My aim in this paper is to outline and discuss Vico's conception of the nature and importance of hermeneutics. Vico never used the word ‘hermeneutics’ but since we would now recognize one aspect of what he was offering in his New Science as a theory for the interpretation and understanding of past cultures, I shall occasionally talk in terms of a theory of hermeneutics. My procedure will be to indicate first the context which led Vico to think that it was important to have a theory of hermeneutics and why he thought that such a theory ought to have a certain form. I shall then try to show that there are two forms of the theory. The first, in which hermeneutics is dependent upon metaphysics, involves certain unacceptable features which arise from the context in which he originally formulated it. The second, in which metaphysics is dependent upon hermeneutics, requires that the theory be freed from an important aspect of this context. Finally, I shall ask whether, in this second form, the theory has something to commend it to contemporary thinkers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Values Based practice is a new skills-based approach to balanced clinical decision making where complex and conflicting values are in play. In medicine, complex and conflicting values have traditionally been associated in particular with ethical issues of the kind raised by treatment. This paper will use a clinical case history to show that complex and conflicting values are no less important in diagnostic assessment than in treatment. Various interpretations of the importance of values in diagnosis in psychiatry will be outlined. In the final part of the presentation I will outline some of the practical applications of a values-based approach in supporting policy and service developments that are both evidence based and person centred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]