Hermeneutics: the philosophical discipline (integrating scientific and spiritual dimensions). In the 1960s it became popular to speak of “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” This phrase was designed to invite people to interpret things generally in terms of (1) Karl Marx’s critique of capitalist economics and the society and political order that he analyzed in terms of class struggle; (2) the pervasive quest for power unmasked by Friedrich Nietzsche; and (3) the struggle within the conscious mind, the battle ground between the often unconscious urges connected with sex and death and the controlling function of the “superego”, the function of the human personality trained by parents, teachers, and social authority generally to repress the socially dangerous urges, according to Sigmund Freud.
Jesus was realistic. In the ordination sermon he said, “In all the business of the kingdom I exhort you to show just judgment and keen wisdom. Present not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample your gems under foot and turn to rend you.” But Jesus taught a hermeneutic of understanding, leading in the direction of tolerance, and friendship, and love. Unlike Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, Jesus upliftingly, vigorously, embraced the whole truth of the human person.
Traditionally, hermeneutics has focused on the study of Scripture. My primary article on hermeneutics is on what The Urantia Book teaches about study.
