Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 37:1 (Fall 1974)
Article: The Meaningful Language Of The New Testament
Author: W. Harold Mare

WTJ 37:1 (Fall 1974) p. 95

The Meaningful Language Of The New Testament

W. Harold Mare

The new hermeneutic, following the “later Heidegger” and focusing on the poetic nature and aspects of language views language as not just setting forth certain external “objects” which are to be verified as either true or false, but language as a performer, as that which is “charged with existence” as well as describing existence.1 But does the one deny the other? It is well known that a reporter for any modern periodical or newspaper knows he must ferret out the truth about the events he investigates and then state the case as truthfully as possible. It is up to the reader to understand it in this light and to test the story’s truthfulness. Can we argue for less in the writings of the first century New Testament authors? Were they not mature men seeking to be faithful and honest in presenting their case for the historical Jesus and in the process relaying what the Savior actually meant to them?

Doty has well summarized the discussion regarding interpreting the language of the text when he states:

Up to the time of Bultmann, the assumption had been made that it was the text that was to be interpreted that required interpretation; the text was thought to be the object of the subject’s interrogation. . [and then] the conclusion was drawn that the NT is only a relative and indirect formulation of the Word of God … [for] the ultimate object of interpretation is not the text (such as the biblical canon) but the Word of God itself … [so] the remarkable conclusion of the new hermeneutic [is] that, strange as it may sound, it is not the Word of God that is interpreted but it is the Word of God that interprets … since it [the Word of God] is not something

WTJ 37:1 (Fall 1974) p. 96

that can be specified, labeled and passed around, it is more appropriate to speak of God’s Word reaching and seizing the interpreter.2

But then who is right as to what exactly the Word of God is? Is it fluid and changeable for each man? And was it thus fluid and changeable for each first century man? Hardly are the first century formulations of the events and sayings of Jesus to be taken as such in the light of the rigidity of the Rabbi-pupil relationship. And then what of the New Testament language and text itself as we have it preserved in the twentieth century? What are we to do with it? Can it not be faced objectively? Can its external “objects” as it describes existence in the first century be discovered and the truth of this applied to twentieth century life? When modern man reads a legal will, it is certainly his purpose to examine the t...