Pre-understanding

Pre-understanding is a technical term used in theology and philosophy of language to refer to what we unreflectively bring with us to the reading of a text. I am particularly interested in the role pre-understanding has to play in the interpretation of the Bible. The subject is both fascinating and important because it raises questions about our ability to understand the Bible (or any text). Thinking about this also helps towards an understanding of why we often find ourselves in conflict with one another about what the Bible says. We are surprised that what is clear to us is not clear to someone else. We want to know why we can't just read the Bible and let it say to us whatever it has to say and be done with it. One of the reasons is the problem of pre-understanding. We don't come to the Bible with a blank mind, waiting for the Bible to write across our consciousness whatever it pleases. We come to the Bible out of a particular culture, with a certain world view, with a set of things that we think we already know and understand, with certain bottom lines about what is reasonable and what is not, and so on. These things, that we come to the Bible with, affect the way we hear the Bible, aid in our interpretation, and direct the way we read the text and draw concepts and conclusions from it. This is unavoidable, the goal is not to come to the text with a blank mind but to make the effort to understand the mind that we are bringing to the text. There is no escaping the problems that are raised by this. It is logically impossible to come to the text with no understanding. I come with my pre-understanding and if I make an effort to be aware of what I am bringing to the text I may be prepared to make some changes in my world view where the text may seem to demand it. If this happens I can then have a refined pre-understanding which I will in turn bring back to the text the next time I read it. My world-view tells me how to interpret the text. I may wish to return to my naive position where I believed that the Bible was speaking to me and I was passively listening. Once I have begun to reflect on the problem of pre-understanding I can no longer be this naive. I am not a passive listener. I am shaping the meaning of the text as fast as the words are coming off the page and entering my mind.

As a simple starting place for reflecting on this consider the hermeneutical circle. The hermeutical circle says that I read a particular text and it helps me develop my global understanding of what the whole book is about. In Biblical terms we are talking about the relationship between exegesis and theology. I study a small passage of Scripture, seek to understand what it is saying and attempt to find a place for that in the development of my theology as a whole. The circle part comes in because, all the while, my theology is informing my interpretation of the particular passage that I am seeking to exegete. I don't reject my entire theological system in order to freshly interpret, without any pre-understanding, the text at hand. On the other hand, I don't want my theological system to be immune from challenge by a particular text. This presents a problem in reading that Bible that is best addressed by being aware of the problem. Creating a theology is a way of organizing everything I am learning from my regular reading of the text. This organizing begins to create a conceptual system that can become so complete and compelling that particular texts can no longer successfully challenge the sytem, they must be assimilated into it. My theological system becomes a pre-understanding that forces itself upon my reading of Scripture. Someone with a different theological pre-understanding becomes a conundrum to me when I see how he is reading a passage of Scripture that "obviously" means something quite different than he thinks it does.

The problem of pre-understanding is much bigger than this limited description of the hermeneutical circle. It takes in everything I think and believe about the world, in particular everything I unreflectively think and believe, everything that seems self-evident and obvious to me. Whatever I was when I came into the world I am definitely no tabula rasa by the time I begin to read the Bible. This is important because, if the Bible is the Word of God, it is most important that it be able to speak to me and to my world. If I am distorting its message every time I read it I had better at least be aware of it.

I believe that Herman Dooyeweerd has at least pointed the way to a corrective in his concept of a transcendental critique of culture.