Thomas A. Howe

This book is an exposition and analysis of Critical Realism, a philosophical approach that is quickly becoming the go-to position among Christian authors. Critical Realism poses a serious threat to Christian theology. Influential Christian authors argue for Critical Realism as an essential aspect of hermeneutic methodology. Evangelical scholars claim it has great potential for biblical studies. But as Howe shows, Critical Realism is incompatible with Christian doctrine. This book shows how Critical Realism conflicts with and subverts orthodox Christian theology and hermeneutics, and how it undermines Christian apologetics by blunting the possibility of deciding between the claims of conflicting and contradictory theologies and beliefs. This book is an effort to alert Christian authors to the dangers of adopting CR as a part of a Christian worldview. It will be of interest to all those committed to orthodox Christian theology and hermeneutics.

In this Post-modern age, there is a great emphasis on acknowledging one's perspective. This is evident in the natural sciences in terms of one's paradigm. In hermeneutics the emphasis on perspective is discussed in terms of one's preunderstanding or presuppositions. The post-modern charge against modernism's prejudice against prejudice announced the necessity to embrace one's prejudice as the very possibility of understanding. This "perspectivism" has created a climate in which the possibility or even the suggestion of objectivity is rejected as self-evidently impossible. In this context, the term "objectivity" does not mean "fairness," although fairness is a necessary part of all academic debate. Rather, "objectivity" is taken to indicate that there is a meaning that can be discovered in a text, and that this meaning transcends all individualizing perspectives and means the same in all perspectives regardless of the preunderstanding or presuppositions of the interpreter. The idea of objective meaning in interpretation is comparable to the notion of objective truth. Objective truth is true for all people, at all times, in all cultures, in all places, from all world views. ;Addressing the question of the possibility of objectivity in interpretation will begin by tracing the history of philosophy and hermeneutics in an effort to isolate the primary influence that has issued in the contemporary "perspectivism" in hermeneutics, namely, representationalist epistemology. Having isolated this tradition, the study will seek to focus on the role of presuppositions in hermeneutics which is the primary ingredient that characterizes this tradition in its influence on contemporary hermeneutic theory. After considering this primary ingredient, this study will seek to examine the role of presuppositions in hermeneutics and the impact that presuppositions have on the possibility of objectivity. Finally, this dissertation will set forth some proposals relating the foundation of a hermeneutical methodology that will argue for an objective starting point in interpretation that may provide a theoretical basis for objectivity in hermeneutics