Read an article on hermeneutics that essentially described modernism as the objective pursuit of facts, which when gathered would represent 'truth.' One common thread of postmodernism was identified as "an attempt to undo the damage associated with the 'modern'."(Loren Wilkinson "Hermeneutics & the Postmodern Reaction Against 'Truth'"Act of Bible Reading, 116). Wilkinson summarizes the Postmodern Hermeneutic in 2 points. "1. The modern project has erred by searching for absolute, objective knowledge that is accessible through a precisely definable method. 2. We need to recognize that understanding is tentative, personal, subjective and ad hoc. . . . Knowledge is a way of coping, a kind of conversation; nothing more." (133-34)
But postmodernism leads ultimately to a diverse understanding of any single text based solely on the interpreter. This is not satisfactory. Texts do not have diverse meanings. What they do possess is the power to change the interpreter when the text becomes the speech of the interpreter.
In other words, the modern attempt to seek the 'objective' truth through the pursuit of fact erred in making this truth separate from the individual. The postmodern errs in its attempt is to make the truth only that of the individual. The true interpretation of a text is neither objective nor individualistic, rather it is the text lived out in conversation. In other words, when the text becomes part of the individual so that the individual is shaped by the text, then hermeneutic has happened.
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