Thursday Theology: On “Seminex Hermeneutics”: A Response to Ron Roschke (Part One)

Co-missioners,

Last April we sent you a two-part essay by Ron Roschke on the interpretive tools that shaped the theology of Christ Seminary—Seminex. One of these tools was the Historical Critical Method used by Seminex’s biblical scholars. The other was the distinction between Law and Gospel that the school’s confessional scholars underscored.

Our reason for getting this essay to you was simple. Crossings is the closest thing there is in 2024 to an ongoing institutional proponent of Seminex-style theology, as Ron called it. To know what that was is largely to know what we’re about at Crossings these days. And when Ron talked as he did in the essay about “unfinished business” that Seminex-style theology needs to address going forward, we of all people needed to be listening.

With all this in mind we are pleased today and next week to send you a first thoughtful and extended response to Ron’s proposals in April. It comes from Steve Kuhl, a longtime leader of our work at Crossings and a frequent contributor to Thursday Theology. Steve has specialized in confessional theology over the years even as Ron has done with exegetical theology. You’ll find his observations of interest, we think. As with Ron’s in April, you’ll receive Steve’s work in two parts.

Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community

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Seminex Hermeneutics: Schroeder’s Ellipse and Bertram’s Cross
(Part One of Two)
by Steven C. Kuhl

Introduction: Schroeder’s Ellipse as a Hermeneutical Image

In his Thursday Theology essay on “Seminex-style theology,” Ron Roschke calls attention to Ed Schroeder’s image for Seminex-style hermeneutics as an ellipse defined by two foci. One is the historical critical method (HCM) of the exegetical guild; the other is the law/gospel hermeneutic (LGH) of the Augsburg Confession. Roschke asserts that the “unfinished business” of Seminex-style theology is that it failed to apply the historical critical method to the Lutheran Confessional writings. He suggests that doing this would help us understand the Confessions more fully.

Unfortunately, Roschke doesn’t identify what impact or change he thinks the HCM might make for reading the Confessions, generally, or on Seminex-style theology, specifically. At the end of his paper, he teases us with the idea that past or traditional interpretations of the Confessions suffered from an emphasis on the individual rather than the collective. We would all welcome hearing more about this.

For now, however, I would like to address what I see as misconceptions about the distinct role that each of the foci of Ed Schroeder’s ellipse plays. First of all, the respective roles of the two foci are not, as Roschke suggests, the HCM as the biblical hermeneutic we use to read Scripture and the LGH as a confessional hermeneutic we use to read the Confessions. Rather, the two foci of Schroeder’s ellipse together define how we approach theology today. They are not separate hermeneutics for separate tasks, but two poles of one hermeneutical method used for reading everything. The HCM is concerned with understanding the historical context of a text in order to ward off anachronism. The LGH is concerned with understanding the theological concern of the text to ward off legalism or antinomianism. Together these two concerns provide a methodological point of departure, not only for reading both Scripture and the Confessions, but also for doing and evaluating theology in a modern, post-Enlightenment, historically conscious world.

Hermeneutics and the Image of the Cross

In this discussion, it might be useful to consider the task of a theological hermeneutic as offered by Bob Bertram, Crossings co-founder and mentor to Ed Schroeder. Bob liked to say that the theological thrust of the Augsburg Confession revolved around the concern of “How to commend good works without losing the promise.” Thus, one might say—and this is entirely my phraseology, not Bertram’s—that the concern of a modern theological hermeneutic is “How to commend the historical critical method without losing the law-gospel distinction.” As Bertram sought to address this hermeneutical task, he suggested that, instead of using the image of the ellipse for describing a contemporary Lutheran hermeneutic, we use the image of the cross.

Bertram argued that the hermeneutical task or mission of theology is to cross or bridge two distinct but intersecting gaps. The horizontal beam of the cross represents the horizontal (space-time-culture) gap between people, for which the HCM is serviceable. The vertical beam represents the vertical gap between God and humanity, for which the LGH is serviceable. The interpreter will then want to pay special attention to where these two beams cross. That intersection represents the interpretation of the text for the world today.

The horizontal gap has to do with crossing the human/historical gap between reader and text because human self-understanding can be so different from one age to the next. The vertical gap has to do with crossing the gap between God’s law and God’s gospel through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (the LGH). Here the law designates a relationship of conflict between God and humanity (the theological function of the law) while the gospel describes a relationship of reconciliation between God and humanity.

The vertical gap or theological issue (really, conflict) that the law-gospel hermeneutic seeks to address is how God can reconcile being both a God who condemns sinners (through the law), on the one hand, and a God who forgives sinners (through the gospel), on the other hand. The resolution to that theological conflict is historical, not philosophical, in nature and it happens in and through the history of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: the God event in which gospel trumps law, forgiveness overrules condemnation, and resurrection surpasses death. Through Christ, then, God not only reconciles sinners to God’s self, but in doing so reconciles God to God’s self, God’s mercy to God’s wrath.

Therefore, the ultimate aim of the historical critical method, Seminex-style, is to appreciate without anachronism the unique historical situation of the biblical witnesses (“the prophets and the apostles”) and One who sent, the God who acts in history. This aim is indeed a critical undertaking in that it has the responsibility, , on the one hand, to say “no” to interpolations and accretions of the text that do not fit its original intent and, on the other hand, to do so without negating the possibility of the text answering questions not yet conceived of by its original writer and audience, the questions that the latter-day interpreters, like us, might have.

The law-gospel hermeneutic has as its aim the purpose of not losing sight of the unique, universal, soteriological role of Christ in the divine economy. The notions of “uniqueness” and “universality” are key here. On the one hand, the Christ event is “unique” in that it is a one-of-a-kind event: God, entering human history in the flesh “for us and our salvation.” On the other hand, the Christ event is “universal” in that it is a once-for-all-time event: God fulfilling his promise of salvation to fallen humanity.

For Bertram—and Seminex hermeneutics—the LGH highlights the “need for Christ” in light of the “credibility (faith) gap” or scandal that the gospel presents to fallen humanity. This scandal is the magnanimous message that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone apart from the works of the law. Notice how the distinction between law and gospel is essential for articulating the Christian message.

The Complexity of the Horizontal Gap Today

Today, the historical distance (the distance in time) between reader and text is not the only kind of anthropological “distance” or “gap” that concerns us. Other examples of “gaps” between people that are being studied “critically” and “historically,” include, Critical Race Theory, Feminist Hermeneutics, Gender Studies, Liberation Theology, etc.

What all these theories assume is that there is a “distance” between people that is rooted in a variety of factors that comprise “human experience” itself. Historical location, race, gender, class, sexual orientation, social and economic location, age, etc. are all aspects of human diversity that have been misconstrued and exploited by sinful (self-centered vs. God-centered) humanity.

As a result, these anthropological differences not only make it impossible to fully understand one another, but they also diminish the common humanity we in our dialectical diversity as men-women, gay-straight, young-old, rich-poor, black-white, etc. share. This kind of anthropological distance or difference is rooted in the fact that we human creatures are temporal creatures who not only live in space-time and are shaped by space-time, but who also “experience,” that is, interpret and perceive, space-time happenings differently.

Sin as Impediment to the Hermeneutical Task

But this historical-anthropological distance is not the only challenge we face in interpreting texts or, for that matter, in interpreting the reality or happenings in which we presently live. The problem of “sin” is also a challenge. Sin is best translated today as “self-centeredness” versus “God-Centeredness.” Our sin is what Augustine and Luther called our turned-in-on-self nature (incurvatus en se). Because of sin, we as human beings are inclined to privilege our own experience over that of others in the process of interpreting both text and reality. Luther described this self-centeredness as a hermeneutical problem rooted in a twofold fallacious opinion or presumption that pervades the human (sub)conscious and that impacts our reading of everything from ancient texts (mediated experiences) to today’s news (immediate experiences).

Note, here “experience” is understood not as “raw” phenomena but interpreted phenomena or happenings. For all our experiences are in a sense interpreted phenomena, not because they are deeply analyzed, if only they were, but because we can help but attach some meaning or interpretation to them.

The first fallacious opinion Luther calls the opinio legis. This is the mistaken opinion or presumption that God’s law is given as a means of salvation or as a way for us to demonstrate our righteousness before God. Of course, this is just the opposite of what the law of God demonstrates. For as Paul says, the law of God is a critical principle the purpose of which is to show us our sin (Romans 3:20). For as he asserts “if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin,” i.e., known that I am a sinner (Romans 7:7). The second fallacious opinion, which is a correlate of the first, is the opinio iustitia. It is the opinion or presumption about ourselves that we are capable of fulfilling or satisfying the demands of the law and through it demonstrate our righteous before God.

The existence of the double opinion, which Luther gets from his reading of Romans and Galatians, not only contradicts the gospel and its three sola’s (that salvation is by grace alone, by faith alone, and by Christ alone), but it also distorts the reading of the biblical text so that even the most sophisticated interpreter, let alone the average, devotional reader, can easily miss its meaning and message.

Today, this latent human weakness is described as “confirmation bias,” the tendency within me to accept what confirms me and reject what disturbs me. This bias is so strong that it can distort even the well-intended, objective exercise of “criticism” in the historical critical method and undermine the intended meaning of the text. Therefore, as indispensable as criticism is for navigating the horizontal gap between text and reader, this double-opinion impediment—this inclination to confirmation bias—reveals the limits of the historical critical method and underscores how the antidote to sin—namely, faith in Jesus Christ, who justifies sinners apart from the law, apart from the critical process—is not only the heart of the Bible’s content, but also the key to reading and understanding every verse of the Bible.

—to be continued