<scp>J</scp>ohn <scp>M</scp>ilbank and Biblical Hermeneutics: the End of the Historical‐Critical Method?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
It is perhaps ironic that a methodology still convinced of its radical iconoclasm and progressive nature should at the same time be regarded as critically backward, a by‐product of a disappearing philosophy. Such a view of the historical‐critical method is held by John Milbank who argues that because of its dependence upon heretical philosophies that affirm the ontological autonomy of a world without reference to or participation in God, it should be confined to theological history. This essay will argue that Milbank's challenge ought to be taken seriously by Christian biblical interpreters and suggests that historical‐critical study, in the form criticised by Milbank, needs to be rejected. Milbank exposes the philosophical bankruptcy of the method from a Christian perspective; nevertheless, Milbank overstretches himself. His rejection of the historical‐critical method results in a hermeneutic that has no place for a biblical text's historical particularity and sense. Because of this, he is left subsuming historic texts into the regula fidei of his philosophical meta‐narrative, whether they fit such a move or not. This is particularly the case with Milbank's treatment of biblical texts, which, it shall be argued, operates as a refusal of history and a refusal of the particularity and alterity of the text. This highlights the need for an historical hermeneutic for Christian biblical interpretation, based on theological presuppositions, which takes the theological value of both historical particularity and the text seriously.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.026 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".