Biblical Interpretation and the Transformation of Life: A Ricoeurian Reading

Biblical Interpretation and the Transformation of Life: A Ricoeurian Reading

Jason T. LAM

The aim of this essay is to offer an appreciative yet critical interpretation of Paul Ricoeur's early biblical hermeneutics. We will begin with an exploration of Ricoeur's appreciation of Bultmann's demythologisation, so as to display his intention of achieving a life-transforming scriptural reading. In 1970s Ricoeur purposefully applied his complicated philosophical hermeneutics to biblical interpretation. Revelation is, in his explication, a manifestation of the world of the biblical text. We find that, as a believing Christian philosopher, Ricoeur did that for the sake of listening to the divine Word anew in contemporary situation. In our analysis great tensions, which are profoundly related to his concern for achieving a life-transforming scriptural reading, are detected in his agenda in that period. I claim that the role of the interpreting community in this hermeneutic process is a crucial but underdeveloped element in Ricoeur's account, especially since Scripture is taken seriously as a testimony to the divine in the history of the Christian community. Nevertheless, this early agenda still provides us invaluable insights for incorporating biblical hermeneutics into the scope of Christian theology and this may be a remedy to the broken relationship between biblical studies and theology in the contemporary academic realm.