NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

CONTEMPORARY HERMENEUTICS AND STUDY OF Õ. T. 131
the surface distortion of a presumably deeper level of meaning.
Rather, one must make his point of departure, as Robinson
puts it, "the unbroken linguisticality of understanding."
(2) A second stress, correlate with the first, is that all language
is itself interpretation. The significant implication of
this point, so far as the text is concerned, is that as it points
to the subject matter, the language of the text is not only in
need of interpretation but is already itself an initial interpretation
of the subject matter. In terms of this combination
of factors: the necessary correlation of language and understanding
and the hermeneutically problematic character of all
language, one can begin to see why the question of hermeneutics
has taken on such central importance. Hermeneutics
has (of necessity, as we shall see) come more and more to
deal with the phenomenon of understanding itself. It has felt
compelled to concern itself with the nature of understanding,
how understanding is at all possible, and other related and
equally crucial questions: what is meaning? what is the nature
of language? what is the precise relation between language
and meaning? In other words, the hermeneutical vista has
been extended to include some of the most basic questions
and problems that man raises and tries to answer; and these
are being treated as specifically hermeneutical questions and
problems. To describe the situation in a way which serves to
point up the revolutionary reshaping of theology which is
taking place, we may observe that the action confined formerly
to the area of prolegomena to systematic theology is now taking
place on a broad front which involves equally all of the theological
disciplines. In a word, today theology is hermeneutic.
This background needs to be kept in view in any approach
to the matter of hermeneutics. Such an awareness, moreover,
is particularly integral to a consideration of the topic I have
been asked to deal with this evening: the question of hermeneutics
as it relates to the study of the New Testament. For
it is primarily in the area of New Testament studies that the
contemporary preoccupation with hermeneutics which dominates
all of the theological disciplines has had its origin and
continues to receive its stimulus and direction. Hence the
scope of this paper has been kept broad deliberately. It is
intended as an orientation, to provide a necessary first step