Hermeneutical Self-Awareness

Pete Enns has an interesting article on Cain and Abel on the BioLogos Science and the Sacred web site. As interesting as it is–and I commend the discussion–I was most struck by the final paragraph:

Pondering these sorts of questions leads to “hermeneutical self-awareness.” Such self-awareness may not lead to the final word about a passage, but it does lead to true humility in interpretation and an encouragement to unity among Christians where they might differ on matters of interpretation.

That’s an excellent phrase: hermenutical self-awareness. I think we are often much too little aware of how it is we come to particular interpretations. One valuable way to build such awareness is by looking at a variety of attempts to interpret a passage, as Enns does in this post.