Abstract

Why does one say today that the hermeneutic problem begins with Schleiermacher? Is there not a Christian hermeneutic which from the time of the early church has sought to place the figures of the New Testament in an interpretative relation with the figures of the Old Testament? Is hermeneutical reflection also not in evidence in the Church Fathers? What of the theory of the “Four Senses of Scripture” from the medieval period, as has been so magnificently reconstructed by Henri de Lubac? And was there not an ongoing hermeneutical debate at the time of the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation linking together the theological axiom “sola fide” and the hermeneutical axiom “sola scriptura,” the Counter-Reformation opposing this with the correlating of exegesis, tradition, and the magisterium?