Against Methodism

Not Wesleyan Methodism, but against the methodism attacked by Gadamer. As Anthony Thiselton notes (in his essay in The Promise of Hermeneutics ), Gadamer’s life work is summed up in this sentence from a late essay: “It is the Other who breaks into my ego-centredness and gives me something to understand. This . . . motif has guided me from the beginning.”

Thiselton explains “the historical finitude of fallen humanness characterizes every ‘Other’ with a givenness that calls into question all notions of unconstrained autonomy found in liberal optimism. More to the point, interpreters conditioned by their own embeddedness in specific times, cultures, and theological or secular traditions need to listen , rather than seeking to ‘master’ the Other by netting it within their own prior system of concepts and categories. This premature assimilation of the Other into one’s own prior grooves of habituated thought constitutes the ‘control’ and advance commandeering that Gadamer calls ‘Method.’ In a theistic context, listening to the God who is Other remains dependent on the priority of the Other as Giving and Given. Unless God chooses to give himself as One who is given, we listen in vain, and can ‘master’ nothing by constructing a prior ‘method’ in advance of understanding who it is who addresses us.”