The Two Horizons. New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein by Anthony C. Thiselton (review)

480 BOOK REVIEWS Rahner is the philosopher of the transcendent; Wojtyla is the philosopher of action. Both affirm the mysterious and spiritual element of man, and the unified dynamic whole which is man. Yet in this unity lies a complexity rife with tension, distortion, and unwholeness. Still, synthesis is possible, and each, in his anthropology, aims to chart the path of authenticity and self-realization achieved thorugh transcendence. They are equally critical of an overly intellectualistic view of human nature, or even of one that too narrowly compartmentalizes man's reason and emotions and thus distorts the vital relationship between them. For both, nature is realized in the person, and the person is realized through transcendence. Cardinal Newman College St. Louis, Missouri JOSEPH pAPPIN III The Two Horizons. New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein. By ANTHONY C. TmsELTON. Grand Rapids: Eerdemans , and Exeter: Paternoster, 1980. Pp. xx + 384. $~~.50. Thiselton's work seems to point implicitly to a crisis in biblical studies. On the one hand he has written a fine book which both surveys and develops the field of New Testament hermeneutics, a valuable aid for any student of scripture or theology. On the other hand his remarkable study leaves one strangely unsatisfied. If he had bungled his task we could blame it on the bungling. But it is his very success which suggests that the problem lies elsewhere-in the discipline itself. I propose therefore: (I) to review Thiselton's work, and (II) to suggest that Thiselton's failure to satisfy is part of a larger failure on the part of biblical studies as a whole to come to grips with the complexity of the text, with the psychodynamics that went into its composition. I The book is in three parts. Part One begins by explaining why a student of the New Testament should bother with philosophy. The point is crucial; for, while theologians generally are aware of the need to read philosophy and poetry, biblical scholars in their anxiety over many things sometimes do not get a chance to sit and think. In their neglect of philosophy they may forget that they are working on unexamined philosophical presuppositions . It is the business of hermeneutics to help one to cope both with the ancient text and with one's own presuppositions, to establish an open and BOOK REVIEWS 481 fruitful dialogue between the different mental horizons of past and present. Particularly relevant for this quest are Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer and Wittgenstein. For in these four thinkers, indicates Thiselton (~4-47) , we find a major effort to see things afresh, to view them (partly under the inspiration of Husserl's phenomenological tradition) as phenomena to be described, not as pieces in an abstract theory. Of course all four realize that the viewpoint of the observer or interpreter is inevitably predetermined to some extent-one must have one's own world (Heidegger), pre-understanding (Bultmann), tradition (Gadamer), training or " scaffolding" (Wittgenstein)-but they are convinced that much can still be gained from calm, detached, philosophical description. And it is precisely this attitude of philosophical description which Thiselton believes can benefit the study of the New Testament. Before analysing in detail the contributions of the four thinkers Thiselton pauses (Part Two) to describe in greater depth the difficulties involved in understanding and interpreting. First of all (51-84) there is what might be called the massive generation gap. If there can be such incomprehension between those who live in the same house and who are separated by no more than thirty or so years, what are the chances of bridging a gap of twenty centuries? Nineham is sceptical about its feasibility, and seems resigned to leave the people of the New Testament in peace within their own horizon. Troeltsch, though in some ways sharing Nineham's views, took an opposite tack, a daddy-knowsbest approach: he sought to impose a modern horizon, in fact to impose his own personal horizon, on the past. This attitude is not that of philosophical description, and Pannenberg criticises it as dogmatic, positivistic, anthropocentric, stereotyped, and unrealistically clinical. Pannenberg does not solve the problem of reading the...