Hermeneutics of Affirmation and Hermeneutics of Suspicion

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Department of Liberal Education

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

PREFACE

The study of the Bible is, as it were, the soul of theology, as the Second Vatican Council says, borrowing a phrase from Pope Leo XIII (Dei Verbum, 24). This study is never finished; each age must in its own way newly seek to understand the sacred books.

It is not true that scholars like Ratzinger (1994) thinks that the historical-critical method opened a new era. The onslaught against the veracity of the Word of God has a history that started with Satan in the garden of Eden. Through the centuries one can trace the application of the same sentiments and hermeneutics of suspicion that Satan tried against Eve and succeeded. The opposite of the hermeneutics of suspicion is the hermeneutics of affirmation. What will become clear below, is that the overexcitement of pope Ratzinger (then cardinal Ratzinger in 1994) on the grand possibilities of the hermeneutics of suspicion as embodied in the HCM or Higher Critical Method, is actually deceptive and delusional. His claim that it is the only scientific method and that the hermeneutics of affirmation has no systematization to it, is completely out of touch with works like those of Gerhard Hasel, Understanding the Word of God and other of his books. The symposia on hermeneutics by the Seventh-day Adventist church is a systematization of the hermeneutics of affirmation with careful principles as well.

Definition of HCM or Higher Critical Method

A definition by a Catholic John F. McCarthy [1998] who is against the HCM or Higher Critical Method, is not out of place here:

"...by the "historical-critical school" is meant those writers who follow the method of biblical criticism initiated by Richard Simon in 1678, developed over the intervening years by Albert Eichhorn, Hermann Gunkel, Martin Dibelius, Rudolf Bultmann, and a host of other writers, and now in use among Catholic exegetes with various modifications of their own choosing. The hyphenated form, historical-criticism, form-criticism, redaction-criticism, etc., is used in this article to distinguish writers of what is commonly referred to today as the "historical-critical school" from writers who use other methods of historical criticism" (John F. McCarthy, "Two views of Historical Criticism," Roman Theological Forum 77 [September 1998] http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt77.html).

The arrival of Rationalism in the 17th-21 centuries brought with it a strong nuance of the hermeneutics of suspicion and in the wake of the preparation of the "Deadly Wound" given by Napoleon's Berthier to the papacy in 1798 [papacy's arrest, see also the pope naked in his chair by the artist of the famous Crowning of Josephine by Napoleon], Rationalism at Halle created the chaos to come for centuries until our day.

HCM or Higher Critical Method was systematized in that century and it created not new possibilities for understanding the biblical word in its originality [so Ratzinger 1994] but created barriers for arriving at a true picture of the Word of God. 

As cardinal Ratzinger admitted, "this method contained hidden dangers" (Ratzinger 1994). However, Ratzinger wrote the article to promote HCM or Higher Critical Method and to attack Fundamentalism or Biblicism of the kind the Seventh-Day Adventist church is practising. Correctly a few dangers are outlined by Ratzinger although he appealed to these very dangers to overturn Fundamentalists later in his article.

a. "The search for the original can lead to putting the word back into the past completely so that it is no longer taken in its actuality."

b. "It can result that only the human dimension of the word appears as real, while the genuine author, God, is removed from the reach of a method which was established for understanding human reality" (Ratzinger 1994).

Ratzinger correctly called the HCM or Higher Critical Method a "profane method" (1994). That is actually what the hermeneutics of suspicion accomplish, the application of profane methods of interpretation. When theology takes out God from the objects [Bible] they study, it becomes profane. Suspicion is a necessary ingredient towards such a profanity of the sacred and cardinal Ratzinger is encouraging it in the Pontficial Biblical Commission report of March 18, 1994. 

The HCM or Higher Critical Method cannot help us understand truth better. It will become clearer later why not. What is trying to harmonize the data of the two testaments, showing their interrelatedness, showing their dependency on each other, showing the threads that binds them and unifies them coherently, that is what is necessary for a helpful study in theology.

The hermeneutics of suspicion is crowned by Cardinal Ratzinger at the Commission as follows: "Everything that shrinks our horizon and hinders us from seeing and hearing beyond that which is merely human must be opened up." What he is actually saying [and in his later onslaught against biblicistic Fundamentalism this will become clearer], is that please focus more on the "human" in revelation than on the "God" of revelation.

About the application of the HCM method or Higher Critical Method the Catholic Church has taken different position a number of times (Ratzinger 1994).

Pope Leo XIII 1892 and the HCM

Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus of Nov. 18, 1893, gave some directions about the HCM or Higher Critical Method. It was a time of the blooming of liberalism [to use pope Ratzinger's words: "liberalism was extremely sure of itself and much too intrusively dogmatic" (Ratzinger 1994)]. Leo XIII expressed himself critical against this method but admitted some positive aspects and new possibilities of this method (Ratzinger 1994).

Catholic scholar quenched for attack of HCM

Dain Cohenel Dolino Ruotolo was a scholar who wrote a 10 000 page attack against HCM or the Higher Critical Method between 1929-1939. It was written in Naples. It was entitled La Sacra Scrittura: Psicologia, commento, meditazioni (Naples: n.p., 1929- 39), This collection was so outlandish that it was placed on the Index by a decree of the Holy Office dated 20 November 1940 (for this information, see Marcellino D'Ambrosio, "Henri de Lubac and the Recovery of the Traditional Hermeneutic" (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1991) but cited in http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/53/Henri_de_Lubac_and_the_Critique_of_Scientific_Exegesis.html footnote 1 and 2.

Let us look at two citations from this work of Ruotolo:

Ruotolo said about HCM

"accursed spirit of pride, presumption, and superficiality, disguised under minute investigations and hypocritical literal exactness."

"Un gravissimo pericolo per la Chiesa e per le anime: Il sistema critico-scientifico nello studio e nell'interpretazione della Sacra Scrittura, le sue deviazioni funeste e le sue aberrazioni" (Naples: np., 1941), 40.

"A most serious danger for the Church and for the spiritual ones: it arranges critically-scientifically neither the study and neither the interpretation of the Sacred Writing, [it is] the disastrous deviation of it and the abberation of it".

The result it that his work is unavailable in the US and elsewhere for study because it was classified in 1940.

Pope Pius XII 1943 and the HCM

In his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu of Sept. 30, 1943, Pope Pius XII [after classifying and silencing the opposition to the HCM by Ruotolo, "was able to provide largely positive encouragement toward making the modern methods of understanding the Bible [HCM] fruitful" (Ratzinger 1994).

Vatican II in 1965 and HCM

Says Ratzinger:

"The Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, of Nov. 18, 1965, adopted all of this. It provided us with a synthesis, which substantially remains, between the lasting insights of patristic theology and the new methodological understanding of the moderns" (Ratzinger 1994).

The scholars of the hermeneutics of suspicion thinks that only their method has broadened over the last 30 years. However, the hermeneutics of affirmation has also come up with excellent books on interpretation and hermeneutics which is not mentioned by Ratzinger.  

Not only for the hermeneutics of suspicion but also for the hermeneutics of affirmation application was made in doctoral dissertations from Andrews University and elsewhere of new methods and new approaches: structuralism, comments on materialistic, pscychoanalytic and the dangers of liberation exegesis. All of us who worked in the 1980's with structuralism with hermeneutics of affirmation are well aware of this method but for the hermeneutics of suspicion to claim that only they are using structuralism, is farfetched. It will become later clear how cardinal Ratzinger refuse to accept that Fundamentalism or biblicism has any systematization

Ratzinger defined the Pontifical Biblical Commission, "in its new form after the Second Vatican Council, is not an organ of the teaching office, but rather a commission of scholars who, in their scientific and ecclesial responsibility as believing exegetes, take positions on important problems of Scriptural interpretation and know that for this task they enjoy the confidence of the teaching office." That is to say, that what he is describing in the document of 1994 that we used for this writing, is actually sanctioned by the teaching organs of the Catholic Church. 

INTRODUCTION

The interpretation of the biblical text is still a lively enterprise. Increasingly the hermeneutics of suspicion is shifting gears in working towards an agnostic and nihilistic understanding of the Word of God, more as a result and maybe not necessarily as a target or goal.

Hermeneutics of Affirmation and Hermeneutics of Suspicion

One cannot properly enter the subject of principles of interpretation or methods of interpretation if one does not clearly understand that there are since the Fall of Man in Eden, two sets of hermeneutics to the Word of God: hermeneutics of suspicion and hermeneutics of affirmation. The hermeneutics of suspicion removes God from the Bible and the hermeneutics of affirmation acknowledge Him there. The hermeneutics of suspicion wants to secularize the Bible but the hermeneutics of affirmation wants to let God keep speaking through His Word. Ratzinger in the 1994 description on this topic actually wants to empty the Word of God from God [only human focus] and then go back and try to see what it has to say for us today in a faithful manner with the help of course of tradition and church fathers also. That is because the Word of God for the Catholic Church, according to their latest updated Cathecism is the Canon or maximal canon which includes the apocrypha and the church tradition of the church fathers and the decisions of the councils added also the papal decrees.

For Ratzinger the Bible is important for Christian faith, for the life of the church and thirdly for the relations between Christians and believers of other religions [ecumenical tool] (Ratzinger 1994).  

A. The State of the Question Today

Interpreting the Bible is not a problem but a blessing. For the hermeneutics of suspicion of which the HCM Higher Critical Scholars are part of, the Bible is a problem to interpret, thus also for Ratzinger (1994).

Are there problems in interpreting the Bible? For 95% of the Bible, it is very clear. There is about a 5% margin that had people of the past wonder and Daniel was one of them. In Daniel 9:2 he wondered some time over the words of Jeremiah but the Bible says: he got the answer. It is wrong to assume that large portions of the Bible is shrouded in obscurity or is difficult to interpret. Regular readers of the Bible get very close if not exactly the meaning of the Bible regardless their education or scholarly abilities. When Philip ran to the chariot and heard the Ethiopian reading the book of Isaiah 53:7-8 he asked the Ethiopian whether he understood the Messianic message that he read. The Ethiopian said that he needed a guide to help him understand (Acts 8:30-35). The Spirit sent Philip and Philip became the guide for him. This is not to advertize that the Bible always needs someone else to interpret it. There is no need to discourage laymen from searching and reading the Word of God. The Word of God is self-explanatory for over 95% of its content. The Pope would like to take the Word of God and its understanding away from the people and have his Theologians or the Vatican interpret it for them as the only means. Although they encourage people in their Cathecism to read the Bible there is also enough discouragement against doing it independently from the church traditions and exegesis. Similarly, in 2 Peter 1:20 it reads that "no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of private interpretation" and that also in some letters of Paul there are "some difficult passages, the meaning of which the ignorant and untrained distort, as they do also in the case of the other Scriptures, to their own ruin" (2 Peter 3:16). Actually, this verse refers to the application of hermeneutics of suspicion. Ignorant means ignorant of the experience of faith and untrained means that they are unaccustomed to reading it. They distort the picture because they want to distort it in their mind-set. The Ethiopian above did not distort the scripture but was enjoying it and wish someone could explain it to him. The hermeneutics of suspicion scholars wish not to understand the plain reading of the Word but wish to enter into argument with the scripture and doubt it and pull it apart allocating it to different sources and authors. The hermeneutics of affirmation scholars also analyse the same data but coherently, harmonistically and effectively bring all the loose ends together in a wholesome understanding. That is why the Ethiopian accepted the Lord and was baptized by immersion. 

This is again not a problem of interpretation. The problem lies in the mind-set of the interpreter and not in the text itself. There are hapax legomena and rare words in the book of Job and the Pentateuch and elsewhere (Proverbs etc.) that cannot be properly explained now for millennia. Arabic is too late a language to explain these words and the Middle Age Rabbis' attempts to utilize Arabic to come to an understanding of these words in Job were not on target. A better option lately is to utilize Middle Egyptian for these rare words since they are loanwords from Egyptian. Moses grew up and studied in Egypt so that it is natural that certain loanwords will rub off from Egypt. These aspects are part of the 5% that we mentioned above but they do not bring the text into obscurity.

It is natural that people have to think back more than 20 or 30 centuries to correctly understand what happened. What is amazing is how the lay-people with their plain reading of the text come so close to the correct understanding of the events. Many scholars can learn from the laymen. With only a modern translation and faith and the Holy Spirit they study daily and the Lord not only informs them with the Word of God but the Word of God is also performing them and change them into fishers of men. 

The HCM or Higher Critical Method was not accepted by the Catholic church easily because it was hostile to the Christian faith (thus Ratzinger 1994). He of course is happy in the 1994 document that things have changed. As Ratzinger said: "But a more positive attitude [towards HCM] has also evolved, signaled by a whole series of pontifical documents, ranging from the encyclical Providentissimus Deus of Leo XIII (Nov. 18, 1893) to the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu of Pius XII (Sept. 30, 1943), and this has been confirmed by the declaration Sancta Mater Ecclesia of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (April 21, 1964) and above all by the dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum of the Second Vatican Council (Nov. 18, 1965)" (Ratzinger 1994). 

The fruits of the HCM or Higher Critical Method is all but positive despite cardinal Ratzinger's optimism. Ratzinger felt that some of the positive fruits that HCM had for the Catholic church is that many valuable studies were done. Furthermore, "this [HCM or Higher Critical Method] has greatly smoothed the path of ecumenical dialogue" (Ratzinger 1994). Catholics became more interested in the study of the Bible because it could help to enhance the splintering of the Word of God into obscure units which disallows any prophetic connection between them and the Little Horn of Daniel 7.

Ratzinger says that people who have tasted the HCM Higher Critical Method finds it impossible to return to a precritical level of interpretation (1994). Those who made the transition from the hermeneutics of affirmation to the hermeneutics of suspicion finds it difficult to return to the hermeneutics of affirmation. These deserters of the faithful methods of interpretation finds it inadequate to work with after they left faith behind.

The HCM or Higher Critical Method is widely used in Catholic circles but some of them has questioned it, like the example mentioned supra of Dain Cohenel Dolino Ruotolo but there is a study in 1998 indicating that there are two views in Catholicism on this topic (see John F. McCarthy, "Two views of Historical Criticism," Roman Theological Forum 77 [September 1998] http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt77.html). McCarthy also rejects HCM or Higher Critical Method, contra cardinal Ratzinger in 1994.

Already in a conference of Catholic bishops in 1985, questions were raised concerning HCM or the Higher Critical Method:

"Today a new problem is being raised: that of determining the limits of historical-critical method. We often hear accusations that scientific exegesis has become closed in on itself, becoming autonomous and torn away from the faith. There is a rupture between Bible and Church, between Scripture and Tradition. Frequently the work of exegetes is purely critical - dealing with the original formation of the text - and makes little effort to penetrate its inner meaning. Bowing before the exigencies of "science," exegetes are no longer disposed to interpret Scripture in the light of faith, and hence they end up calling in question essential truths of faith, such as the divinity of Christ, the Virginal conception, the salvific and redeeming value of Christ's death, the reality of the Resurrection, and the institution of the Church by Christ" (Brian Harrison, "Catholic Bishops of the 1980s: Attitudes to Scripture and Theology,"  Roman Theological Forum 20 [November 1988]).

Despite these voices of dissent, cardinal Ratzinger pushed for the HCM Higher Critical Method to be viewed positively.

Ratzinger acknowledge that many members in the Catholic church judged the HCM Higher Critical Method "deficient from the point of view of faith" (Ratzinger 1994).

Diachronic and Synchronic angles

a) Diachronic

Gerhard Hasel in his book Biblical Interpretation Today (Hasel 1985: 115-117), discussed these two angles of interpretation. The dominant methods of the HCM or Higher Critical Method over two centuries are source (literary) criticism, form criticism, tradition criticism, and redaction criticism. "These methods focus on genetic relationships and historical growth of the biblical tradition as viewed by its practitioners. Accordingly, they are described as being 'diachronic' in nature".

"This method separates the divine from the human and treats the human as any human production in isolation from the divine" (Hasel 1985: 115). It will be seen that in the 1994 Pontificial Biblical Commission, pope Ratzinger actually encourage this approach and scorn the biblicist fundamentalists that they are too "naive".

b) Synchronic

In 1970 a new method originated which Hasel identifies with the synchronic method (Hasel 1985: 116). It was structuralism. While diachronic investigations focussed on the historical-evolutionary sequence with a linear horizontal interest, the synchronic (achronic) approach emphasized the internal relationships of that system, that the various elements within a text has mutual and simultaneous interdependence (ibid). The synchronic investigation does not want to be limited to a specific time span (ibid). Hasel indicated that this approach since 1970 may be also called an aesthetic literary criticism. We now know that this method is called the relecturing method and this trend spans 1970-2008 and is still ongoing.

Relecturing method

The Seventh Day Adventist graduate, Sookyoung Kim indicated in the appendix of her doctoral dissertation on the role of the relecturing method that its proponents are B. S. Childs [1970], J. Vereylen [1977] and a host of other scholars (also Randall Heskett 2001) who argue that there is no final way to understand their meanings in this paradigm. Holistic relecturing scholars were inspired by Childs: Chris Franke (1991); Marvin Sweeney (1988); Christopher Seitz (1996); Ronald Clements (1981); Paul Wegner (1992); Gerald T. Sheppard (1985); Eugeneee Lovering (1996); Rolf Rendtdorff (1984); Patricia Tull Willey (1996); and H. G. M. Williamson (1994) (Sookyoung Kim, "The Trajectory of the 'Warrior Messiah' Motif in Scripture and Intertestamental Writings" phd [Michigan: Andrews University Seminary 2008]: 339-400 Appendix A).

Canonical Relecturing Method (CRM)

Pope Ratzinger said about the canonical relecturing method that "the aim of this exegesis is to read individual texts within the totality of the one Scripture, which then sheds new light on all the individual texts".

Pope Ratzinger further said in 2007 that "'Canonical exegesis' -reading the individual texts of the Bible in the context of the whole - is an essential dimension of exegesis. It does not contradict historical-critical [HCM] interpretation, but carries it forward in an organic way toward becoming theology in proper sense" (Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth 2007]: xix).

A matter of terms but also a matter of faith or suspicion

Although the word "whole" and "holistic" sounds beautiful and is close at home in the SDA approach to interpretation, there is a marked difference to the use of that word by Ratzinger or the scholars of the HCM method or its hybrid manifestation, the canonical relecturing method (CRM).

Relecturing scholar compared to hermeneutics of affirmation scholar

A relecturing scholar (hermeneutics of suspicion scholar) R. Heskett (2001:39) compared his own approach with that of Walter Kaiser (hermeneutics of affirmation scholar):

a. While Kaiser reads it as an inerrant source, Heskett does not;

b. While Kaiser sees it as a work of the eighth century BCE prophet Isaiah, he does not;

c. While Kaiser sees Isaiah as the author of the whole book, the relecturing scholar Heskett does not;

d. While Kaiser is reading the history to which he refers, the relecturing scholar does not;

e. While Kaiser's norms for messianism derive from later Christian interpretation, his does not;

f. While for Kaiser the end of the monarchy is not important for messianism, for the relecturing scholar Heskett, it is (Kim 2008: 401 in Appendix A). 

Deceptive claims by the HCM and CRM scholars about Fundamentalists

The trend in interpretation that is called the CRM or Canonical Relecturing Method is wholeheartedly devoted to the hermeneutics of suspicion. What is suprising by the claims of Ratzinger and many of the HCM and CRM scholars, is that the biblicistic Fundamentalists are not doing "Canonical readings". We will indicate below that all the elements that are studied and data that are used by the HCM and CRM methods are used by Seventh Day Adventists with a hermeneutics of affirmation, which means, careful attention is paid to the detail of the text, are there editors, are there sources consulted like in the book of Kings which mention the history of the kings of Israel source, is the text saying that Moses wrote or Jeremiah wrote, is the text in the first or third person, what time zone or chronological markers are there in the text, what is the linguistic properties of the text and its relation to these issues. All these points are important for the scholar of the hermeneutics of affirmation and there is just as much a systematics involved as Ratzinger claims only for the HCM contra the Fundamentalist approach.

It is a fallacy to think that scholars of the hermeneutics of affirmation does not study the data horizontally (diachronic) or vertically (synchronic). They do but they accept the data of the text to speak for itself and do not manipulate the textual data to fit their own reconstruction or models from the outside as the hermeneutics of suspicion or HCM and CRM is doing.

The way the text developed over time is the angle of the diachronic method. On the other hand, the focus on the language, composition, narrative structures and capacity to persuasion is the study of the synchronic method since 1970.

Ratzinger indicates that the plurality of methods are for some an indication of confusion but for others a source of richness.

Again we have to insist that it is not only the hermeneutics of suspicion that is involved in using these aspects for study, the hermeneutics of affirmation asks very similar questions throughout the textual analysis but is allocating the various aspects to phases in the same author: a) writing as a youth, b) writing as a middle age man c) writing as a geronti. Stylistic changes can explain these variations. This aspect is not considered at all by the HCM and CRM methods.

The dilemmas listed by those in the catholic church against the Higher Critical Method are the same as one finds listed by John Hurst in 1864 in his book on the History of Rationalism. The miracles of Jesus is doubted or rejected, the virgin conception is rejected, the authority and veracity of the Scriptures are doubted. No wonder we may classify these phenomena in methods under the umbrella of the hermeneutics of suspicion.

Esoteric and applicational interpretation

Approaching the Bible with a scholastic approach stands mostly under the danger of writing an esoteric product. An esoteric product of interpretation, is a work that is meant to be read only by a few informed scholars in that particular field. Tools of study and esoteric works are not to be confused. A dictionary is a tool helping a laymen understand difficult words which he or she lacks in their experiences. An esoteric book is a book that deals in detail with the Wind-directions in the Bible. A short article of three or four pages is not a problem but when a whole dissertation of nearly 500 pages are devoted to this aspect, it is fit only for a dissertation and not for laymen consumption.

Applicational interpretation is of the kind that one can see in the book of Jo-Ann Davidson of Andrews University, especially her book on Jonah and her Sabbath-school lesson series on that book. The depth and the beauty of God that she was able to present carefully to the reader in simple English, was very touching and moving. Such a work makes the Bible not only informational but also perfomational. The book of Jonah not only gives us information of the history of Jonah but enters our history and Jonah becomes in us an event of change, admiration of God, of praise, of salvation seeking, of forgiveness seeking, of prayer. She does not write with philosophical or ideological seesaws like this researcher is doing here. This appeals to everyone.

Another example of an applicational commentator on the Bible is Tremper Longman III. He is not a Seventh Day Adventist.

The hermeneutics of affirmation laymen in the Catholic church impressed correctly on Ratzinger's mind that "such negative positions, scientific exegesis, they claim, is notable for its sterility in what concerns progress in the Christian life. Instead of making for easier and more secure access to the living sources of God's word, it makes of the Bible a closed book. Interpretation may always have been something of a problem, but now it requires such technical refinements as to render it a domain reserved for a few specialists alone" (Ratzinger 1994). Ratzinger chose in this 1994 document to support the hermeneutics of suspicion.

Responses to esoteric studies

Laymen and also pastors and some scholars reacted against this overly scholastic approach of the HCM Higher Critical Method or the CRM or Canoncial Relecturing Method by attempting to be guided personally by a spiritual reading of the text. Despite Ratzinger's negative remarks concerning this aspect, it is actually the way the Bible was written. The Bible is meant for the man in the street and to be read at a very simple level. The Word of God is meant to inform them and to perform salvation for them.

The Hermeneutics of Suspicion has worn out their readers in the laymen benches. Many laymen of other denominations are studying at Seventh Day Adventist campuses claiming that they are tired of the confusion about the Word of God that is promoted in affiliation with the conventional HCM and CRM methods. Various reactions can be seen in the Hermeneutics of Suspicion churches:

a. Bible is a closed book.

b. Bible is just for professors.

c. Bible is for those days not for me today.

d. Bible is too difficult to understand.

e. Unless there is a cleric to interpret the Bible, I will not read it.

f. The HCM and CRM are sometimes substituted for subjective methods by the laymen but that is not wrong.

g. Substitution of methods of interpretation can sometimes take on superstitious and charismatic searches for prooftexts fitting an occasion method. God do speak sometimes to some people this way in an emergency but the normal way is by reading quietly with reflection and attention.

The HCM Higher Critical Method and its sister method, the Canonical Relecturing Method are ways Satan has designed by using doubt to create doubt and to put the Bible in a cage inaccessable to the laymen even if it is right in front of him or next to him at his bed.

Delay of the coming of the Lord and shifting interpretational methods

The Millerite movement and Seventh Day Adventist strongly believed the Lord to come shortly after 1844. Understanding the proper analysis of the event to happen as the Investigative Judgment in Heaven, SDA's began to adjust their thinking in that line. There are various models of interpretation or hybrids from the main models:

a. traditional Adventist historicist model for the prophetic parts of Daniel and Revelation.

b. hybrid model of preteristic "day of the author" applications with here and there still historicistic hints.

c. hybrid model of idealistic "suitable for every generation everywhere anytime" applications.

d. hybrid model of aesthetic structuralism with "nicely balanced chiasms and parallelisms" applications.

Dangerous trendy inroads in Adventist interpretation

a. Substituting Traditional Historicistic interpretation with other models, be it preteristic or idealistic or allegorical.

b. Trying to hint or assert or claim that the end of historicism has arrived.

c. Trying to doubt certain claims by historicistic interpretation and substitute it with explanations that removes cardinal aspects of the historicistic interpretational method: e.g. the starting date of the 1260 years or the year day principle.

d. Attempting to play over barriers and adopt a pluralistic attitude trying to amalgamate two different religions or churches interpretational methods.

e. Actively encouraging interfaith dialogue in order to quiet the demarcation of borders interpreters and in the process help the ecumenical spirit of Hans Küng, Vatican II and the United Nations to be achieved.

(still in progress)