Grant And Tracy - A Short History Of The Interpretation Of The Bible

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Grant (who)

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Carl Darling Buck Professor Emeritus of Humanities and of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Chicago (in the former Department of New Testament & Early Christian Literature and also in the Divinity School). His scholarly work focused on the New Testament and Early Christianity.

Anglican

STM and PhD from Harvard

Research interests in early Christianity, patristics, biblical interpretations

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Tracy (who)

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Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies and Professor of Theology and the Philosophy of Religions in the Divinity School; also in the Committee on Social Thought.

Roots in Transcendental Thomism, process theology, pluralism.

Despite this constant development of interest, however, his work has consistently focused on theological method and pluralism, emphasizing the role of interpretation and hermeneutics in systematic theological thought.

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Grant and Tracy (problem)

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How to value and employ the historical-critical method without becoming falling into historicism, which places premium value on the historical over the contemporary context.

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Grant and Tracy (thesis)

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Theological and historical-critical interpretation can co-exist insomuch as both focus on the source of continuity between pluralistic interpretations of the Bible--Jesus Christ, the revelation.

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With its emphasis on correlation, theological interpretation attempts to retrieve the revelation behind the different interpretations of Scripture. With its emphasis on suspicion, historical-critical interpretation identifies the superfluous elements of Scripture, thus revealing the Christ-event that stands behind Scripture and is the focus of its interpreters.

The idea here is that Grant and Tracy represent moves beyond the simple historical-critical method of the past. They desire theological interpretation that is historically conscious, but not captivated by history or its pitfalls.

*Grant draws deeply from Bultmann's concept of demythologizing.

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Grant and Tracy (interpretation)

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Liberal position

Interpretation must consider how the church AND contemporary culture interprets the Bible, because the original authors wrote to respond to situations in history and didn't intend a universal meaning for all people for all time.

One must enter into conversation with documents and authors behind the biblical text (sounds like Schleiermacher and Gadamer).

"The interpretation of any written record of human thought is the exposition of its author’s meaning in terms of our own thought forms" (4).

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Grant and Tracy (Bible)

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Witness to revelation, who is Christ. It is not revelation and does not replace revelation. The goal of interpretation is to experience the Christ-event in continuity to which the bible testifies.

Exitential emphasis.