ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how currents of thought in contemporary philosophical hermeneutics and in postmodern perspectives serve to offer positive resources and negative challenges for reformulating an approach to the question on biblical authority. Contemporary philosophical hermeneutics has diversified into a wide range of approaches, explorations and crosscurrents. Central to the guiding concepts of humanism and the hermeneutics is Bildung, "formation", or more broadly "culture" in the sense of what shapes or forms human life. Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose philosophical thought has influenced both Anglo-American philosophy and Continental European hermeneutics, constituted a watershed on the subject. The chapter argues that when Jesus Christ performed speech acts that rest upon the authority of God such acts presuppose an implicit Christology beyond what Jesus has explicitly stated. The turn to post-modernity has brought both gains and losses in relation to Christian theology and hermeneutics.
