A Timorous Method
I’ve just begun reading Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, where he writes:
The characters of nature are legible, it is true; but they are not plain enough to enable those who run to read them. We must make use of a cautious, I had almost said, a timorous method of proceeding. We must not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In considering any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct ingredient in the composition, one by one, and reduce every thing to the utmost simplicity, since the condition of our nature binds us to a strict law and very narrow limits. We ought afterward to re-examine the principles by the effect of the composition, as well as the composition by that of the principles. We ought to compare our subject with things of a similar nature, and even with things of a contrary nature; for discoveries may be, and often are, made by the contrast, which would escape us on the single view. The greater number of the comparisons we make, the more general and the more certain our knowledge is likely to prove, as built upon a more extensive and perfect induction.
If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of discovering the truth, it may answer an end, perhaps, as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may, at least, from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end in so much uncertainty.
— “Preface”, p vi
Seems that a “hermeneutic of humility” would look very much like this, don’t you think? And in all our efforts of reading and interpreting something as complex as Scripture, we ought to be willing to let our failure to fully understand at least answer a useful end: to make us modest.
And further, I am reminded of Php 2:12-13, Prov 11:2, and Ec 12:11-12.
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