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"Existentialist interpretation" may also occur on the primary level of self-understanding and life-praxis. So it is not, as I imply, a phenomenon only on the secondary level of critical reflection and proper theory.

The real difference between "existential understanding" and "existentialist understanding/interpretation" is that the first is constituted as well as oriented by an existential – -- indeed, the existential! – -- question, whereas the question that constitutes as well as proximally orients the second is an intellectual question, although it remains remotely oriented by the existential question. Therefore, on whatever level it occurs, existentialist understanding/interpretation is different from existential understanding in the way in which, in general, intellectual understanding is different from existential understanding.

This means that this entry, which in all other ways seems adequate enough, needs to have distinguished – -- as I in fact do in 'Theology and Biblical Interpretation"! – -- between "existentialist interpretation" and "critical existentialist interpretation" (Doing Theology Today: 36-51).

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(1) It is unprejudiced in that it does not presuppose its results. This means that the interpreter silences her or his own personal wishes in determining the meaning of the text – -- such wishes, say, as that a text should agree with certain beliefs held to be true or that it should provide useful guidelines for life-praxis. It also means that what the interpreter believes or does not believe, proposes or does not propose, is in no way a condition of her or his interpretation. Another way of saying this is that the interpreter respects the sole primary authority of the text itself by allowing that the only arbiter of what the text means is what the text itself says.

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This is clear, first of all, because "a theological interpretation of the Bible" in Morgan/Barton's sense of the words is not unprejudiced but prejudiced in that it presupposes its results. The sufficient evidence of this is that, if it were otherwise, Morgan/Barton could not claim, as they do, that Philip's teaching the Ethiopian eunuch to read Isaiah "through the Christian master-code" (Acts 8:3035) is "a classic case" of such interpretation (274; d. 296). For Philip's reading of Isaiah is "a classic case" of a prejudiced reading of the text that presupposes its results – -- or, as we may also say, "a classic case" of the interpreter's not respecting the sole primary authority of the text itself in determining its meaning. Philip obviously knows who the prophet is speaking about before he ever reads what the prophet actually says.

But it is also clear by the same evidence and reasoning that what Morgan/Barton mean by "a theological interpretation of the Bible" does not really presuppose the methods of historical- and literary-critical research, including the so-called hermeneutical rules. To be sure, they repeatedly protest to the contrary, insisting that "a theological interpretation" in their sense must respect the integrity of the text and that, although its interpretive aims or priorities are different from those of both historians and literary critics, it nonetheless "includes" their aims and follows their methods (170). But such protest rings hollow if we again consider what Morgan/Barton themselves represent as "a classic case" of theological interpretation. It was not by following the methods of historical- and literary-critical research, but only by ignoring them, that Philip could assure the Ethiopian eunuch that the one about whom the prophet Isaiah was speaking is the Jesus to whom Philip would bear witness. For these and many other reasons, one must conclude that what Morgan/Barton mean by "a theological interpretation of the Bible" is not really an interpretation of the Bible at all, but, at best, a "reading" of it that simply uses it and for which, ironically, not it, but something beyond it is the real primary authority for
determining its meaning, and hence is the real Bible in the sense of the auctoritas canonica.

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What is special about "a theological interpretation of the Bible" in my sense of the words, then, is completely exhausted by its special interpretandum, the biblical writings. In all other respects, it is indistinguishable from the existentialst interpretation of any other text(s). This means that, even as it satisfies the same five conditions that any proper interpretation satisfies and must satisfy, it differs from other ways of interpreting the biblical writings, insofar as it does so, only in that its objective in questioning them is provided by the existential question about the meaning of human existence. As an existentialist interpretation, however, its interpretans consists in the same concepts and terms as any other such interpretation – -- namely, those in which the existential question and, therefore, any answer that may be given to it can be understood and appropriately set forth.

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