Postliberal Hermeneutics: Narrative,Community,and the Meaning of Scripture

Abstract

This essay considers two “postliberal” approaches to biblical hermeneutics: that of Stanley Hauerwas and of Hans Frei. Both are committed to the integrity and particularity of the biblical narratives and so reject the assumption that these narratives should be fit into putatively general interpretive frameworks, but they disagree about the implications of this commitment. For Hauerwas, it entails that Scripture’s meaning is available only to those who have been transformed through churchly discipline, whereas for Frei, it entails that the meaning of the biblical narratives must be ‘directly accessible’—it entails, that is, that there must be no gap between the narratives and their meaning, between their meaning and their ‘plain sense,’ nor between the narratives and the ‘essence’ of the one they depict.