REVIEW 5

Faithful Interpretation: Reading Bible in a Postmodern World

A.K.M Adam
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006

Reviewed by Yahu Vinayaraj

In Faithful Interpretation, Reading Bible in a Postmodern World, Adam tries to elucidate a postmodern approach of biblical hermeneutics that attends the multi-model differential hermeneutics with various points of emphases and trajectories. His intention, here, is to go beyond the modern technical interpretation and to search for a more interactive and flexible approach to meaning. Adam intends to propose more meaningful transformative hermeneutics in the postmodern context.

The first chapter discusses with the trajectories and limitations of modern biblical interpretative program that constituted the modern biblical theology in the history of the hermeneutical tradition. According to Adam, it was the quest for an authoritative, scientific, historical foundation that led the modern biblical theology into a contradiction and crisis (p.20). In fact his intention is not to reject the historical critical method, rather to de-centre it from the biblical hermeneutical program and give much more emphasize to the aesthetical and the ethical-political content of the interpretative engagement. He asks the question; can we live by this biblical theology today? Adam seems to be located in the  ethical hermeneutical tradition.

The second chapter confronts with one of the most common rationales for assigning historical critical analysis the authority in the interpretative program-the rationale of delineating Docetism. By countering Ernst Kasemann's argument that validates the historical critical method in delineating Docetism, Adam explains that the historical critical method is ill suited for a role as defender of faith (P. 43). He argues that "the opposite of Docetism is not certified historical scholarship, but a resolutely Chalcedonian Christology" (p.13)

The third chapter takes up the problem of subsistent meaning and textual agency. Adam argues that interpretations of biblical texts as traffic signs- always have consequence; because it is ineluctably a social act. He clarifies it: " The constraints upon textual interpretation do not derive from the nature of understanding, or texts, or of language  or of communicative intent, or of truth, or of speech-acts, but always only from the sunday collocations of circumstances within which we formulate interpretations and judgements" (P.59). The legitimacy of an interpretation is determined by the body of readers evaluating it. There is no single  universal criterion to determine the truthfulness of any interpretation. On the other hand, he reminds us that there is a strong connection between our hermeneutics and the ethics we proclaim and practice (P.65).

The forth chapter deals with the question of meaning and ethics with particular references to the gospel of Matthew's attributed nature of anti-jewish text. Adam explicates his postmodern theoretical position and says: "no text is ideologically tainted without cooperation of readers and institutions that construct the text as "Ideologically tainted" (P.71). Thus, he contends that it is not just the 'reading effect' but 'our living effect' makes our hermeneutics transformative and just (P. 79).

In the fifth chapter he argues for a 'differential hermeneutic  (which locates meaning in human interaction, with the result that different interpretative outcomes are only to be expected as signs of the pluriform character of the human imagination) over against an 'integral hermeneutics  (which assumes for each text a singular, correct meaning). according to adam the differential hermeneutics affords the prospect of a more harmonious practice of biblical interpretation, "attentive to the myriad particularities that constitute biblical interpretators as different people, with a view toward embodying the truth we claim to learn from the Bible" (P. 103). Chapter 7 exemplifies Adams' 'differential hermeneutic' with its examination of the interpretation of the 'sign of Jonah" in the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.

Chapter six spells out further the ethical focus of the church's interpretative work, emphasizing interpretations that generate multiple/ different forms of christian discipleship resembling/ enacting the life of Jesus. Adam contends that "thus we can sponsor an imitation of christ's unwavering faithfulness to the gospel that respects distinction and particularities at the same time it draws us ever closer to one another and to God" (p, 17). Chapter 8 engages with a similar agenda, this time with reference to human sexulaity and hallowed relationships. It develops the criteria for discerning what characteristics bespeak holiness in intimacy and how churches may face the difficult challenge of putting discernement into practice.

In this book, adam succeeded to a certain extent elucidating the postmodern content of biblical hermeneutics, in constitution with his previous work. As he proposes the differential hermeneutics that attends the plurality, contextuality and intractability of the hermeneutical triad-the text, author and the reader, in a way signify the inter-textual, intra-textual and the multi-cultural aesthetical dimensions of the biblical interpretation. What is significant in his postmodern hermeneutical program is the sole emphasis on the ethical content of the biblical hermeneutics. Here adam shows his invincible allegiance to the idea of the communicative action of Habermas. According to Adam, reading Bible meaningfully is the responsibility of the faithful community that imitates or interprets Jesus christ who has been placed in the order of signs. Thus the faithful or the disciples are the called out communities who engage creatively with the Bible in their local practices of every day life. The biblical theology or systematic theology is to de-sign the texts, the selves and the events that come across in the everyday experiences and find a harmonious order of justice and fraternity in the postmodern world.