Beyond Literalism and Expressivism

In a chapter entitled Beyond Literalism and Expressivism, George Hunsinger describes what he calls Karl Barth’s “Hermeneutical Realism.” This way of understanding theological language avoids the naive univocality of literalism as well as the skeptical equivocality of expressivism, going beyond both, by describing the relation between text and referent as analogical.

This is something that has been on my mind the past few months (mainly because of Childs and Frei). I found the following quotation to be helpful:

Barth’s decision to construe the relation [between text and referent] as analogical rather than univocal or equivocal depended not on general considerations but on his reading of the texts as a modern human being within the community of faith. If one asked about the “semantic force” — that is, about the mode of reference — of the biblical texts, then the referent itself was the decisive factor, Barth reasoned, which ruled out both the “literalist” and the “expressivist” solutions. The “univocal” solution proposed by the literalists was ruled out because it could not do justice to the referent’s abiding mystery. It failed to honor the mysterious divine hiddenness in the midst of the divine revelation. Likewise, the “equivocal” solution proposed by the expressivists was ruled out because it could not do justice to the referent — this time to its self-predication. It failed to honor the perspicuous divine self-unveiling in the midst of the divine hiddenness. The alternative was therefore to construe the mode of reference “analogically.” The reticence of analogy honored the mystery, the predication of analogy the perspicuity, of God’s self-revelation as attested in Scripture.
- George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 221.

Tags: Expressivism, George Hunsinger, Hermeneutic, Karl Barth, Literalism