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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
The early Church engaged in a trenchant, philosophical debate over the nature of scriptural interpretation. Some writers on hermeneutical method showed great insight and perspicacity; others seemed to make less of the problem it raised than they ought. Although most held some general view of inspiration of the scriptures, it was more often over the question of interpretation that they disagreed. We shall examine one or two of the philosophical difficulties of hermeneutics which were raised by early Christians and which are debated still.
There were, of course, many areas of disagreement about how scripture ought to be interpreted but we can distinguish two major schools of thought, both of which cover a broad spectrum of ideas: the literalists and the allegorists.
a) The literalists: these were the people who believed that scripture could, somehow or other, be taken “at face value”; that there is an obvious and evident meaning of the text or, alternatively, that there is no hidden meaning.
A great literalist was Porphyry (c. 230 - c. 305), one of Christianity’s detractors. He attacked the allegorising tendency in the Church when he wrote of those “who boast that the things said plainly by Moses are riddles, treating them as divine oracles, full of hidden mysteries, and bewitching the mental judgment by then-own pretentious obscurity, and so they put forward their own interpretations” (Against the Christians, III).
1 This paper is remarkable, not because it contributes significantly to current theological debate or because it is in any way innovatory, but because it was written by three Religious Studies A Level students as part of the course work I set them. Although I directed their reading and gave general advice, they wrote the paper. [Ian Walker, Head of Religious Studies, Dulwich College, London.]
2 pp 15‐16, Pagels, E, The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis, Abingdon, 1973Google Scholar.
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7 Quoted in, T, Peters, “Truth in History: Gadamer's Hermeneutic and Pannenberg's Apologetic Method”, Journal of Religion, Autumn, 1975, p 40Google Scholar.
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13 pp 210‐211, “The Causal Theory of Names” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. vol xlvii, 1974.
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19 We would like to thank Mr Ian Walker of Dulwich College for his help in writing this essay.
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