Per Caritatem

Below are additional thoughts/findings related to my ongoing Augustine/Gadamer paper. 

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Interestingly, those who, in the spirit of B. Spinoza, adopt a strict grammatico-historical method of interpreting Scripture tend to embrace only the literal or historical sense of Scripture.  Likewise, those advocating this methodological stance often claim to interpret Scripture in an unbiased manner, free from all prejudices and uncritical claims of authority.  Postmoderns, of course, are very suspicious of this alleged neutrality, and from a certain perspective, premoderns are as well.  For example, as Henri de Lubac indicates (and Augustine would agree), the Church Fathers and medievals openly acknowledged their dependence on tradition and the interpretations handed down to the Church by the apostles and their successors.  “Right from the beginning, in the first century of the Church’s existence, at the time of the very first generation of Christians, it was a matter of Scripture being read or the word of God being heard in the Church and interpreted by Tradition.”[1]  So we see that the Church from its very inception openly acknowledged her dependence on the interpretative authority of her leaders-Christ being the chief interpreter, who in turn instructed the apostles, and they in turn faithfully taught others.  Moreover, neither the Church Fathers nor the medievals approached Scripture as just another human book or piece of literature to be studied or examined scientifically, much less as something to be dissected and treated atomistically.  Rather, Holy Scripture was first and foremost understood as the very word of God, which having many parts is nonetheless, one story, written ultimately by One Author, and culminating in One Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.[2]  In other words, instead of approaching Scripture as a collection of divergent and contradicting accounts, the Christian comes to Scripture assuming its unity because she understands both testaments as unfolding one drama whose main actor is Christ.[3] 

As Gadamer points out, in stark contrast with premodern hermeneutical practices, the modern Enlightenment critique is directed against the Christian tradition and in particular, against the authority of Scriptural tradition.  “In general, the Enlightenment tends to accept no authority and to decide everything before the judgment seat of reason.  Thus the written tradition of Scripture, like any other historical document, can claim no absolute validity; the possible truth of the tradition depends on the credibility that reason accords it.  It is not tradition but reason that constitutes the ultimate source of all authority.”[4]  Here, as well as in other places, Gadamer alludes to a kind of pride exhibited by modern Enlightenment figures in their claim to be free of all prejudices and to insist that we “accept no authority” but rather “decide everything before the judgment seat of reason.” If this is correct, then perhaps Gadamer’s critique of the Enlightenment shares another point of contact with Augustine’s hermeneutical views as elaborated in the Confessions, viz., the idea that virtue and vice affect one’s interpretative endeavors. In other words, it seems to be the case that at least part of Gadamer’s critique involves the claim that the Enlightenment proponents exhibited a lack of humility (and hence a vice) which blinded them from seeing that their own position was driven by a “prejudice against prejudice itself.”
Notes

[2] De Lubac in describing the two Testaments not as two books but rather as two dispensations or covenants also alludes to the progressive unfolding of Scripture in redemptive history.  “The goal of the one that is prior in time is to prepare the way for the second.  But this is not what merits them those respective terms of ‘old’ and ‘new.’  The New Testament does not take its name solely from the fact that it comes second in time. It is not merely ‘modern.’  It is the last word, in an absolute sense [...] The New Covenant is not repeated.  It is completed and fulfilled once and for all” (Medieval Exegesis, p. 227).

[3] As Thomas Martin observes, Augustine communicates the unity of Scripture in the way he chooses to structure book XII of the Confessions.  “The very tapestry of scriptural texts that permeate the entire narrative where Old Testament verses and allusions are inextricably intertwined with New Testament verses and allusions becomes an operative demonstration of the unity between the Old and the New Testaments and the vitality of their interrelationship.  Book Twelve’s exploration of the opening words of Genesis is done by way of a deluge of New Testament citations, and once again the careful reader knows that this is not simply rhetorical amplification or incidental ornamentation.  What is being demonstrated is the unity of the Bible, the very antithesis of a Manichean reading of the Bible” (“Book Twelve:  Exegesis and Confessio,” p. 190). 

[4] Truth and Method, p. 272.