it is arguable that an understanding of, for instance, the Good Samaritan,
fi rst requires an appreciation of the internal dynamics of the story: the
traveler isolated from his community, the busy priest and the Levite and
then the kind-hearted Samaritan who picks up the wounded man and pays
for his hospitality. Only once this basic level of understanding has been
attained, can the bigger question of true neighborliness be addressed.
What the child at a concrete operational level may understand is simply
that we should be kind to other people in need—a lesson about empathy
that is quite independent of the religious obligations of the priest and
Levite or the ancient confl ict between Jews and Samaritans.
REFLECTION
What we have in Piaget is a sophisticated and brilliant body of work based
upon a Kantian understanding of epistemology and knowledge. Part of the
brilliance of this oeuvre is that it is derived from the responses of children
of ascending ages, thus enabling concept formation, mental operations,
changing perspectives, moral understanding, and so on, to be watched
while they emerge.
Almost all recent discussion of hermeneutics has been started either in
a biblical studies context or a philosophical context with the result that
the main hermeneutical approaches so well analyzed by Oliverio neglect
any process linked with psychological development. 15 This paper offers a
challenge to those who write about hermeneutics to address the complex
intellectual stages by which hermeneutical theories come into existence.
It asks whether a hermeneutical process that is complete ought also to
include a theory of mind and a theory of understanding in the way that
Piaget does. In short, it asks whether any of the four main approaches to
hermeneutics Oliverio has outlined could generate hypotheses testable by
psychological or social science methods.
In this regard it is noticeable that several Pentecostal hermeneuti-
cal approaches (“the contextual-Pentecostal hermeneutic,” 16 the “post-
modern contextual-Pentecostal critique,” 17 as well as “communitarian
approaches” 18 ) make specifi c reference to the role of the community in
forming meaning or determining theological norms. Yet, communities
and congregations have been empirically studied to discover how doctri-
nal norms or attitudes impact upon the interpretation of biblical texts or
liturgical sequences. Thus it is possible to envisage a spate of new empirical
studies spinning off from hermeneutical theories. Psychological studies
274 W.K. KAY