The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Horizon of Expectations

Featured Writers Dr Richard Beck
#1

Richard,

Are you at all familiar with the literary term ‘horizon of expectations’? If you or others are unfamiliar, it’s the idea that when a reader of a certain time period approaches a text she/he will have a certain expectation of what will be encountered in it (whether thematic, topical, etc.). How large a role do you think the popular manifestations of Christianity (whether it be a local church or perceived Christian culture) play in constructing such a horizon?

When I’m introduced to concepts like Universal Reconciliation I realize that every time I’ve opened the Bible heretofore, I read it with a certain tacit expectation of what I would find in there. When I read about god’s judgment, I assumed that meant people who didn’t believe in Jesus and that it would be forever. It’s not that I thought it was the best option, I thought it was the only option! Considering how differently I read things now, I only wonder how my reading of the Bible might (and probably should) continue to change as I develop spiritually/intellectually.

My second question, then, is how might this process affect our view of the Bible as the word of god? Does this tie in with your arguments about Biblicism?

#2

I’ve not heard of the term “horizon of expectations.” But I do think something like that is very much involved in how we make meaning of the biblical text. I think ideas like this, and a lot of the ideas from reader-response theory, are important to pay attention to when reading the bible (or any text).

And, of course, we could go hard in this direction and suggest that the bible has no meaning in and of itself other than the meaning we create. That it’s all hermeneutics. Obviously, as your second question points out, going in this direction challenges biblicism. Radically so.

Personally, I’m somewhere in the middle. I don’t think all texts are radically open to interpretation. I think texts in being texts do create some constraints. That said, the interpretive degrees of freedom are enormous and, as you point out, so much relies upon the worldview and expectations of the reader.

So what are we to do?

I’m not sure. But I tend to default to a hermeneutic of love. The bible can be extraordinarily confusing. In light of that I interpret it in a way that produces loving readings. And UR is one of the fruits of that process.