Pragmaticism and biblical hermeneutics: Some comments on the work of Peter Ochs

This article considers the tension between Peter Ochs' commitment not to apply external standards to scripture and his view that rules of meaning must continually be adjusted to new conditions. In this context, the article rejects Ochs' claim that “the ‘isms’ of modernity [have] exhausted their positive contribution to the betterment of humanity,” arguing instead, on the basis of Ochs' work itself, that we remain “children of the epoch of great dyads”—between the logic of scripture and consciousness of our historicity, between the children of Abraham and the children of Adam, between Abraham's tent and the desert outside of it.