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| Reading a Text |
Suppose I travel to Appleville, remaining there several weeks on business. Further, suppose that, while staying in Appleville, I write letters to my wife. In the letters I comment on the fine apple orchards, describe the apples, share news, and include expressions of love. I write the letters at a certain time, in a certain place, and in a certain historical/cultural context. My wife reads the letters at a certain time, in a certain place, and in a certain historical/cultural context. In such a personal letter, my purpose for writing is not formally stated. To discover my purpose for writing, one must surmise from reading the text. When my wife reads the letters, she receives news, shares my observations, acquires information, and learns of my feelings. Such is the magic of the written text. Let us suppose a hundred years pass. Someone rummaging through an attic finds the Appleville letters in a trunk. If the finder ignores the original historical context in which I wrote the letters, he/she can make the letters say anything. The finder can arbitrarily declare that "apple" was a code word for a plot to overthrow the government, maintain that Appleville was Washington D. C., and pontificate that the business mentioned was arranging the plot to overthrow the government. In reading any text, the historical setting and intention of the writer matters. The fact is that any written text meant something to the writer and to the original reader. To drain the meaning of the writer from any text is nonsense, and to pretend that any reader (past or present) reads devoid of cognitive patterns (and thus meaning) ignores reality. Only an infant scratches meaningless marks on paper, and even an infant plays with infantile purpose. Even a child playing at reading attaches some meaning to the activity. I agree with the theory that all behaviors have meaning to the individual, no matter how irrational the behavior appears to one observing. Discovering the benefit a mentally ill person derives from a behavior often helps reach a troubled mind. Thus, the historical context of the writer and original reader plus the intention of the writer remain the first consideration in interpreting any written text. Before we impose our cognitive patterns on the text, we should at least attempt to see through the lenses of past cognitive patterns. Suppose the person in the attic takes an interest in the letters. Suppose the person discovers through research my name, my occupation, my business records (including the Appleville account), my wife's name, our address, and significant details about my life. Given all that, the researcher should take the letters at face value: a man away on business wrote letters to his wife. The existential setting in which I wrote matters, for I was away from home on business. In reading any text, the simple explanation is better than a complicated explanation without overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Therefore, in approaching any text, we must keep certain facts in mind. In any text, the existential purpose of the writer and reader must be inferred, even if a purpose is formally stated in the text. The stated purpose is often not the real purpose. The stated purpose is the socially accepted purpose; the real purpose is often subtle. One would do well to keep that in mind even when reading formal academic or bureaucratic documents. The stated purpose in the most formal of documents differs from the existential purpose of the writer and reader. Also, in any text, we must assume meaning, purpose, and a given historical/ cultural context. In any text, we must assume that the writer is sharing his/her perceptions. In any text, we must assume the historical reader takes away his/her perceptions from the reading of the text. Moreover, we must allow that any writer or reader brings cognitive patterns to the writing or reading of a text. Remember that the cognitive pattern (i.e., all past learning) determines perception. Thus, reading equals interpretation. We may always ask the reader the epistemological question: How do you know? Testing the self-evident truth derived from any reading of the text is the same as testing any other self-evident truth. Keep in mind the simple illustration of two people looking at a cloud formation. One sees a ducky and the other sees Beethoven, as Charlie Brown discovered. All reality is viewed through cognitive patterns. To return to the Appleville letters, suppose a thousand years pass, and an alien discovers the letters on the abandoned planet Earth. Even if the alien deciphers the language, he/she is at a great disadvantage. The knowledge of the history and culture of Earth would be (for the purpose of the illustration) limited. The knowledge of the language would be second-hand. The historical records (for purposes of the illustration) would be non-existent. In fact, in order to make the point clear, suppose that the letters from Appleville are the only documents at first found on Earth. Holding the deciphered letters, the alien now needs more information. Exploration is in order to attempt to discover other documents and artifacts in order to form a working hypothesis of the history and culture of Earth. Without such additional pieces of information, the alien cognitive patterns will determine any perception of the text. In other words, any interpretation of the text will be alien. While my letters from Appleville may be perceived through many different lenses a hundred (or a thousand) years later, the historical context and original meaning predetermine the logical starting point in interpretation. Once we put the letters in a historical context, we can then read the letters through the economic lens, the linguistic lens, the sociological lens, or any other lens. We can state various hypotheses for testing. Nevertheless, the historical context and the original meaning predetermine the starting point in interpretation. Let us suppose that my Appleville letters are circulated. Someone encounters God while reading my letters, and the person concludes the letters are spiritually important. Allowing (for the sake of the illustration) that the letters are spiritually important, other inferences may not follow. For example, the conclusion that the letters are spiritually important is existential: a person encountered God while reading the letters. It does not follow that everyone reading the letters will encounter God. To press the inferences further, to conclude that God inspired the Appleville letters does not follow. To conclude that the text of the letters states absolute truth (that cannot be questioned) in all areas of human understanding (all questions of physics, chemistry, history, sociology, etc.) does not follow. Such inferences add layers of meaning foreign to the primary documents (a man's letters to his wife while away on business). If we ignore the purpose of the writer and the historical context, we can make the letters say anything. Note the previous illustration of the plot to overthrow the government. The illustration intentionally highlighted the absurd, but otherwise normal people draw absurd meanings from religious documents by denying the purpose of the writer and the historical context of the documents. Granted, the letters may say more than I thought: we will not limit all meaning to my intentions. To limit meaning to the intention of the writer in a historical context is to go too far. The words may indeed strike an existential chord in the reader a thousand years later. The problem is not the meaning the text may prompt in a reader; the problem is generalized inferences that do not follow from the text. I am not quarreling with the person who reads the Appleville letters and has a religious experience. I will quarrel with the inference that the letters are thus spiritually important to all people everywhere and should be given esoteric authority based on that inference. The problem is essentially the same as the perception and the understanding of the perception, the experience and the understanding of the experience, an idea covered earlier. Therefore, even in a text purporting to have religious significance, the meaning to the writer and to the reader in a historical/cultural context must at least be addressed. Some sacred texts in some religions claim to have been dictated by God or otherwise infallibly produced. The underlying question is what sort of knowledge of God is possible, something we will deal with later. If I had written from Appleville in A.D. 800, I might have written to my wife that, when I looked out my window, I could see the edge of the flat Earth. In such a case, one might argue that the Earth is flat (in spite of modern scientific knowledge) because I said so. Furthermore, one might argue that if my letters are proven to error in any field of human understanding, then the letters are untrue. Again, the mistake lies in ignoring perceptions, which include learned cognitive patterns. My letters would be better understood first as the perceptions of a man living in A.D. 800 who shared the cosmology of his culture. Suppose some religious authority declares the Appleville letters to be infallible religious text of absolute revelation, inspiration, and authority. So accepted, one might infer absolute values and assume the social structure of Appleville in A.D. 800 is THE absolute social structure. Moreover, it would follow from such an erroneous inference that the absolute values and social structure should be imposed on all societies throughout history. Of course, all such inferences and proclamations are secondary to the text. Others, with other perceptions, might read the text differently. Let us consider the Christian scriptures in the light of the above discussion. Since I am a Christian, I address primarily the Christian religion, although some issues would apply to various religions in varying degrees. The Bible is, of course, the historical canon of orthodox Christianity, and my comments assume that historical fact. While I am aware that many writings have been discovered that are not included in the canon, the Bible is nonetheless the historical canon adopted by the Institutional Church. The insight that the winners write the history (i.e., that history is the history of the winners) is valid, but to discount the history of the winners as of no worth scarcely seems to follow. Thus, the canon of orthodox Christianity gives us a starting place for a discussion. When we turn to the Christian scriptures, we encounter the letters of Paul. In order to keep the illustration simple, I am going to limit the discussion to early, generally accepted letters of the Pauline corpus. However, the discussion can be applied to all books of the Bible. As a starting place, those letters were produced in a certain time and place by a man we know as Paul. We may assume that he wrote with some intention (however varied in different letters), although we must often infer his precise intention. Our knowledge of the history of Paul's era is advancing, but we live 2000 years later. We are the aliens reading his letters. Many problems with the Bible arise from the needs of the Institutional Church. At first, the letters of Paul (for example) were saved and shared among fellowships of believers. However, the more the institutional nature of the church developed, the greater the need for authority developed. In addition, all institutions (religious and secular) develop a survival instinct. I accept the line of thinking that considers early Christianity before the Roman Emperor Constantine of a different nature than the Christianity we encounter after Constantine (d. A.D. 337). Before Constantine, the various churches certainly experienced heresies and debates. However, the financial patronage of Constantine, the making of Christianity fashionable, and the interference of Constantine in settling doctrinal disputes all wedded the church to the state. Constantine demanded unity in the Institutional Church to promote unity in the Roman Empire. As to the survival instinct, any cleric or lay person involved in the inner workings of his/her church is aware how much attendance, attracting new members, and cash flow determine the agenda. A building requires maintenance, for example, which requires financial support. Although churches spiritualize the need for new members by focusing on saving souls (or some other spiritual justification), the fact remains that without new members the institution will die. Almost all church planning takes place along the lines of gaining new (younger) members, keeping members, and taking care of cash flow. These considerations become paramount, so worship as well of programming follow marketing needs. The secular culture is baptized and incorporated into the church, justified by marketing needs (especially the reaching of younger members). The focus shifts from God to the institution. Preserving the institution and doing the will of God at best remain in tension. Often the will of God is so assumed to be the survival of the particular institution that the institution is worshipped rather than the God. The ecclesiastical reasoning runs as follows: If we do this or that, we will lose members or money. On the other hand, if we do this or that, we will reach the young and the institution will survive. Much concern for church growth amounts to no more than denominational imperialism based on marketing principles. Probably Marcion (declared a heretic in A.D. 144) triggered the formation of the canon, although that conclusion is not universally accepted. However, Marcion supplies an example of a plausible scenario in which the canon of the scriptures came to be. Marcion accepted, for example, only the gospel of Luke, and Marcion severely edited the letters of Paul. The orthodox drew up an accepted, authoritative list of books (the canon) in opposition, and the orthodox declared that special revelation ended with the death of the Apostles (those who had known Jesus personally and received special appointment by Jesus). In other words, at this point the authority was not an Institutional Church Council with the Emperor receiving daily briefings (and having a political agenda that included unity of doctrine), but the authority lay in reaching a consensus among recognized spiritual leaders (apart from coercion by the state). Given my points on perception and on epistemology in general, note that the accepted books were chosen as a consensus developed. Of course consensus does not mean that all agreed, but a reasonable consensus developed. In other words, like the problem with the psychotic patient seeing snakes on the wall, comparing perceptions resolved the problem at least among the majority. To restate the psychotic illustration, since nine “sane” people saw no snakes, the one seeing snakes had the problem. In like manner, Christians (scattered throughout the Roman Empire in local churches) came to agree which writings were accepted among them (although some books were marginal), and an accepted list developed. Marcion's perception failed to carry the day, although he was free to establish churches and promote his "heretical" views. Only later as the state became involved in forming doctrine did police power repress heresy. Also, the later official declaration that inspiration had ceased further propped up the authority of the spiritual leaders, aiding in the process of developing the church as an institution. However, the Institutional Church needed both authority and power. The power moved from spiritual power (including discipline within a local group of believers that could expel from the group a wayward member) to political power. Thanks to Constantine, once the church became important to the state, the wayward member of the religious community became a threat to the unity of the body politic. Thus, the state inflicted punishment on the heretic. The Institutional Church could pretend clean hands by turning the heretic over to civil authority for punishment (including torture and sometimes death). To be specific, consider the Inquisition as a means of combating heresy as a later logical extension of this policy. As Christianity developed, Protestants rejected the infallible Pope and substituted an infallible Bible. The emergence of the scientific method applied to the claims of the Institutional Church led to the Modernist purge in the Roman Catholic Church, accompanied by increased claims of infallibility for the Pope. Protestants reacted to the spread of the scientific method by declaring the Bible infallible. Although almost all conservative scholars will reject the dictation theory of inspiration (due to the obvious differences of styles and vocabularies in the biblical writings), the claim that the Bible is true in all matters of history and science is a de facto dictation theory. The fact is that God spoke to real people in a historical and cultural context, and they wrote about their encounters in the thought forms of their day. In other words, the application of the scientific method led to serious problems for the Institutional Church (in its various forms). For Protestants, as long as the scientific method merely established an accurate text of the original manuscripts, all was well. In general, from the beginning of the Protestant Reformation through the nineteenth century, scholarship in its various forms either dealt with interpreting the text of scripture or sought (through the study of various extant texts) to produce an accurate rendition of the original manuscripts. However, with the Brothers Grimm (d. 1863 & 1859) running around Germany collecting folk tales, with the Documentary Hypothesis being applied to the first five books of the Bible, with questions of history arising, and with Charles Darwin complicating things with the theory of evolution (On the Origin of Species, 1859), the authority of the Institutional Church (in its various forms) weakened. For example, to ask how one knows that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible is to demand an answer beyond dogmatic authority and tradition. The response of the Institutional Church was all too often “because I say so.” Fundamentalism (in the United States primarily), resorting to a de facto dictation theory, dogmatically asserts that the Bible is the authority in all areas of life, including scientific study. Any statement contradicting the Bible (i.e., their interpretation) is false. However, Fundamentalism seeks to ignore that reading the text is interpreting the text, as we have already discussed. The theory of inspiration often becomes a line of defense for the Institutional Church by seeking to exempt the Bible from critical questioning: being inspired, the Bible is of a different essence. Consider a continuum that at one extreme has the Bible inspired as any work (say Shakespeare) is inspired while at the other extreme is the dictation theory. A theory of inspiration that would remove the Bible from critical questions would be right of center, moving toward the dictation theory. However, the problem with depending on a text for authority (even an inspired text) is the problem of perception: any reading of a text passes through the mind of the reader whose cognitive patterns determine the perception of the text. To fall back on the consensus interpretation of spiritual leaders is to remove the locus of authority from the text. Therefore, the epistemological question cannot be silenced by an appeal to the text: to any perception of the text, the epistemological question can be repeated ad infinitum. When one picks this text over another, one is interpreting. I once asked a rather dogmatic man who accepted (from reading outside the Bible) a narrow interpretation (into which he forced the whole of the scripture) which text he would start with in explaining his view. He chose to start his explanation with the apocalyptic passages in Matthew. I then asked, “Why, of all the scriptures in the Bible, did you choose to start with these?” He had to admit that interpretation (which involves the mind of man) was involved. There is no knowledge without a knower, and that holds true for scripture as well as for any other text. To remove the emotional component from the discussion, let us return for a moment to the Appleville letters. One might read the letters and assume that Appleville existed, but another might rightfully ask, “How do you know?” To say you cannot ask the question, that you must take the text of the Appleville letters as historically accurate because they are authoritative religious documents (now so declared) is more clever than true (and a little desperate). If the existence of Appleville ceases to be self-evident, doubt will remain in spite of any authoritarian pronouncement. Moreover, to assert that if Appleville does not exist, the letters are erroneous is nonsense. The letters never claimed to be anything. The claims arose from the mind of the alien reader based on false inferences about the letters. Other layers of meaning added to the Appleville letters by outside sources are the problem. If I took the time to write about Appleville, I had something in mind, some intention. If Appleville does not exist, then one should reread the letters with a broader frame of reference. Whatever truth I am seeking to communicate lies in the text, but (if no Appleville exists) the simple meaning must be discarded. After all, I would not have put the words on paper without having some meaning in my mind. I am not impressed by arguments from silence. In other words, someone might argue that since no historical record of Appleville exists, then Appleville never existed. The only fact established is that no historical record exists (which could mean that no record has yet been found). While I believe the scientific method is the best way of establishing truth over time, the absence of scientific verification is still an argument from silence. Silence does not make anything a fact. Better to take authority and tradition seriously when silence is the only objection. Only if an abundance of evidence exists to the contrary should we conclude that Appleville did not exist; only then should we move beyond the simple meaning of a man's letters to his wife. However, that leads to a broader question: Why is someone reading the letters from Appleville? The intention of the reader matters. For example, if the reader is a historian attempting to establish that a town named Appleville existed, the letters become primary documents mentioning the existence of the town. If the reader is a family member who found the letters tucked away somewhere a hundred years later, the purpose will be different. For example, the family member may care nothing about the historical Appleville, but the reading of the letters may open a window into the life of an ancestor. The point is that the letters exist. The Appleville letters were written in a historical time and place where the writer intended to convey something to a reader. While different aspects of the same reality (the letters) may coexist in time (to the historian, the family member, and the wife), the different ways of reading are like viewing the same reality through different lenses (individual perceptions, cognitions). The reader's background, culture, historical context, thought-forms, assumptions, and many other factors will be brought to the reading of the letters. Christians would do well to start with the fact that the Bible exists, promote the reading of the Bible, and trust that people will have existential encounters with the God proclaimed in the Bible. Preaching at its best is proclamation of the text of the Bible, and the oral reading of the text in worship is basic. Authoritative pronouncements will do nothing to remove doubt unless the truth becomes self-evident to the individual. Nevertheless, that brings us to another question: Can a person know anything of God given our limitations of time, space, and mind? _____________________________________________ (C) 2004, Don Mize |