Letter & Spirit, vol. 3 – The Hermeneutic of Continuity

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Letter & Spirit, vol. 3 (2007)
A Journal of Catholic Biblical Theology

Scott Hahn, editor

David Scott, managing editor

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This is the third annual volume of the remarkably popular journal of biblical theology edited by Scott Hahn. This volume features important contributions by Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, and Cardinal Avery Dulles. Also included are original and though-provoking contributions on such topics as: the biblical basis of indulgences; feminine and maternal images of the Holy Spirit in early Christianity; and the “image of God” doctrine in St. Thomas Aquinas’ writings. Hahn contributes a deep exploration of how the Gospel of Luke portrays Christ as the Davidic Messiah and the Church as the restoration of the Davidic kingdom.

Table of Contents

Editors’ Introduction

Book Reviews

From the Editors’ Introduction

For us, the hermeneutic of continuity describes the original and authentic Christian approach to understanding and interpreting divine revelation in general and sacred Scripture in particular.

The Church has always thought in an organic way about the truths of the faith and the revelation and proclamation of those truths. The entire edifice of Christian thought, worship, discipleship, and mission is founded on a series of core conceptual unities—between Christ and the Church; the old and new covenants; Scripture and tradition; Word and sacrament; dogma and exegesis; faith and reason; heaven and earth; history and eternity; body and soul; God and man.

The Church’s outlook, in other words, has always been catholic, recalling that the original Greek term means “according to the totality.” This holistic vision in turn rests on an act of faith—in the unity of the divine plan, the economy of salvation revealed in the pages of sacred Scripture and continued in the life of the Church (Eph. 1:9–10).

A hermeneutic of continuity is needed both to understand and to enter into the sacred mysteries of our salvation. This is clear in the New Testament witness. The portrait of Christ in the gospels—as the new Adam, the new Moses, the new Temple, the new David, and the like—bears the imprint of his own preaching. It conforms to the instruction he gave on the first Easter night, when he opened his apostles’ minds to understand the Scriptures.

This hermeneutic of continuity, rooted in the teaching and in the person of Christ, undergirds all the Old Testament quotation, allusion, and interpretation found in the New Testament, especially in the writings of the greatest of exegetes, St. Paul. It undergirds the sacraments of the Church, by which believers receive the Spirit of adoption (Rom. 5:5; 8:23; Gal. 4:6).

Unfortunately, for more than a century in the academy and in some Church intellectual circles, a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture has been the preferred model of interpretation. In large parts of the academy, exegesis and theology begin by assuming a kind of professional agnosticism and skepticism about the interpretative claims of the Christian tradition. Much of the work itself proceeds by means of dissection or breaking down in an attempt to discover some more original, presumably more authentic, form and meaning of the text.

To our way of thinking, these hermeneutical assumptions limit the possibilities and the effectiveness of historical-critical methods. The methods themselves are crucial, indispensable to understanding the Scriptures. The problem is that they are just that—tools and methods. But, detached from any larger hermeneutical understanding or purpose, these methods are often wielded today as if they are ends in themselves.

Our hope is to bring about an intellectual reconciliation between faith and reason, by restoring the historical-critical method to its most fitting place—within a hermeneutic of continuity.

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