Virtue Hermeneutics: New Horizons in Textual Understanding

Contemporary hermeneutics is an unavoidable, but deeply troubled, discipline. At the root of the problem is the classic epistemological question, "What makes an interpretation justifiable?" Since the beginning of Modernity, interpreters have offered multiplied answers to this question. Historicity, linguistics, social constructs, and contemporary flashes of revelation are but a few of the proposed solutions, but if the question is ultimately epistemological, it follows that the answer may emerge from this same place. Current research in the field of virtue epistemology has awakened interest in a new path forward for hermeneutics by looking to a time before the emergence of unstable modern frameworks. In Virtue Hermeneutics, a justified understanding of Scripture that engages all of the participants in the interpretive dialogue (author, text, reader, and reading community) is discovered in the interpretive character of the wise reader. From this starting point, hermeneutics is able to move forward in a way that is responsive to contemporary challenges to discerning literary meaning. Ultimately, a justified understanding is one that virtuously engages the author, the text, and all reading communities. The illuminating work of the Holy Spirit in hermeneutics takes on a refreshing and meaning-filled place when readers readmit intellectual virtues into the discussion.