作者：斐林丰Fedrigotti, Lanfranco M.
A THEORY OF CHRISTIAN AND BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS
Introduction
What is hermeneutics all about? The term "hermeneutics" has a history. It derives from a Greek word which means "interpretation". Traditionally, it has been used to designate the study of the rules regulating an adequate interpretation of Literary texts. In ecclesial circles it denoted and still denotes "the science of the methods of exegesis"(1). While the ecclesial use of this term goes back only to the 17th century, the reality for which it stands goes as far back as the very beginning of the Church. The Church, from her very birth, has been a great interpreter.
In the contemporary era, however, this term has been more and more often used by philosophers with a much larger connotation. In philosophical circles, it is now currently used to mean" a general understanding of reality obtained from a specific perspective"(2). To speak of hermeneutics today means to speak of a vision of the world conscious of its particular stand-point. So there is talk of marxist hermeneutics, psychoanalytic hermeneutics. existential hermeneutics, etc.
Given such a development in the use of the term "hermeneutics" and in the reality meant by it. it seems no longer possible at present to treat hermeneutics simply as a set of rules for good interpretation. Even Biblical hermeneutics is called today to become a "philosophy of interpretation" and a "theology of interpretation". The importance and the urgency of answering this call is clear on at least three counts: a) the uniqueness of the Word that is to be interpreted: Word of God as well as word of man; b) the universality of this unique Word, which is addressed to all people, in all places and for all times: c) the pluralism of attitudes which shape the person as an interlocutor of this unique Word. Today this pluralism is not only a matter of different social and intellectual backgrounds. Today it is a racial and cultural pluralism which runs much deeper than the discrepancies between systems of thought within any given culture. As the pluralism runs deeper, so must we also look for a deeper and wider basis of consent, or at least of dialogue.
What I shall try to do in this paper is certainly a far from adequate attempt to meet this need. In practice, I shall proceed from the newer and larger sense of hermeneutics to the older and narrower sense. That is, I shall go from hermeneutics as philosophy to hermeneutics as the science of basic principles of exegesis.
For all its inadequacy, this paper intends to be a tribute of gratitude to the participants in the seminar on "Christological Texts in the New Testament: Scripture and Tradition", held at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in the spring of 1983, under the guidance of Prof. Ignace de La Potterie, S.J. Most of the ideas expressed here are the fruit of the lively mutual "contamination" that took place during that seminar (3).
Sacra Scripura
aliquomodo
cum legenitbus crescit.
(Smaragde)
Somehow
Sacred Scripture
grows together with those who read it.
PART I: Hermeneutics as Mediation between Being and Person
1.1. An unusual encounter on the cross-roads of thoughts
The outline of hermeneutical theory that I arn going to present owes much to the hermeneutical reflection that is going on in contemporary philosophical circles. I am thinking in particular of the German philosopher H. G. Gadamer (4), the French P. Ricoeur (5), and especially the Italian L. Pareyson (6). At the same time, this theory situates itself in the stream of interpretative insights that has kept flowing throughout the exegetical tradition of the Christian church.
There is at least one thing in common between these two areas of hermeneutical reflection, namely the sense of mystery, whether in the form of the mystery of God and man or in the form of the ineffability of being, the transcendence of truth etc. Of great significance for me also is the fact that this sense of mystery is equally characteristic of much Oriental thought. This unusual encounter on the cross-roads of human thought can be seen as a sign that this hermeneutical theory is rooted in a sound common-sense philosophy, that "philosophia perennis", which is the basis of dialogue between persons, peoples and cultures.
On the other hand, I am well aware that modem people have deep-rooted misgivings about any talk of mystery and transcendence. It is a fact that contemporary philosophical and theological endeavours have been radically influenced by the "masters of suspicion"(7): Nietzsche has taught us to beware in thought and language of ideological bias; Marx of social alienation; Freud of unconscious sublimation. They have made us aware of the presence of hidden forces which tear apart the conceived thought and the expressed word from crude, unexpressed reality. This suspicion, of course, has even more far-reaching derivations. It is the daughter of Kant's "Copemican revolution" and farther back of Descartes' methodical doubt. Since then. it has gone beyond being merely simply a question of method and has made itself into a philosophy destructive of all absolute certainties.
Characteristic of thinkers like Gadamer, Ricoeur and Pareyson. instead, is the attempt to cope with this suspicion in a positive and constructive way. It is not surprising, therefore, if the coping with the suspicion surpasses the boundaries of a pragmatic science, devoted to the exposition of the meaning of a text, and becomes a philosophy in its own right.
1.2.What kind of history?
The starting point of this philosophy is an awareness which is shared by most contemporary thinkers and which can welt provide a fruitful basis for dialogue. I mean the awareness of the historical conditioning and of the radical finiteness of man. which is often also called the historical consciousness of modern man. Man is rightly seen as being constitutively signed by his being-in-history. Man is essentially a historical being (8).
Most thinkers would probably agree with these general statements. As soon as we try to qualify them. however, there takes place a dramatic parting of the ways. There are in fact two opposite ways of understanding history at this basic stage. Do we understand history as closed on itself, whether at the level of the individual or at the universal level of mankind? Or do we opt for an open view of history, as including a transcendent dimension both at the individual and at the universal level?
Since we are in the hermeneutical field, we can express this option thus: do we opt for a closed or for an open relationship of history and truth? An open relationship of history and truth entails the presupposition that history is the manifestation of a mystery greater than its controllable events; that history, at the level both of the single event and of the totality of the events, has the symbolic function of pointing to a reality deeper and greater than itself. On the opposite side, a closed relationship of history and truth entails the presupposition that history is reducible to itself: that it does not have the symbolic function of expressing a reality beyond itself, that it has no relationship to any mystery whatsoever other than the unpredictability of its own unfolding. It is clear, then, that this openness or closedness is in relationship to a mystery, the mystery of existence itself, of being itself. It consists in the acceptance or in the denial of this mystery. Now, the hermeneutical philosophy I am following, together with thirty centuries of Judaeo-Christian tradition, has opted for openness to mystery. But in doing so, it has had the merit of demonstrating the inevitability of opting for one or the other of the two alternatives, so that the denial of transcendence is shown to be no less an option that the acceptance of it. It is evident, therefore, that I have been speaking purposely of "options". This does not mean that the acceptance or denial of mystery or transcendence excludes any rational ground. Rather it means that the rational ground alone is insufficient to induce assent, without an element of openness, of dedication, ultimately, of faith.
We have left behind us very quickly the common ground on which we had started off, that is, the experience of man's historical nature. However, before doing so. we have somewhat enlarged the area of this common ground, by pointing out the necessary presence of some basic presuppositions in any kind of philosophical endeavour. "Precomprehension" is a term that expresses well the nature of these presuppositions, insofar as they are more akin to vision and intuition than to reasoning and deduction. The positive precomprehension of accepting mystery is actually based on the intuition of our historical being as finite and of Being itself as infinite. The affirmation or the denial of this intuition constitutes the parting of the ways.
1.3. Truth as the self-revelation of Being to the person
We have seen that it is precisely through the experience of our historical finiteness that we have an inkling of the infinite mystery. The person-in-history comes into touch with Being as such through the multiplicity of beings and, first of all, through the experience of one's own existence. This fact is rich with consequences for our hermeneutical theory.
On the one hand, truth is precisely this relationship holding between Being and the person. Without Being or without person there is no truth. On the other hand, the comprehension of Being as such is mediated by the multiplicity of beings, so the only adequate way of knowing the truth will be a hermeneuticat one. It is interpretation that makes possible the encounter of Being and person, and therefore the attainment of truth. Hermeneutics does so by explicitating the witness given by the multiplicity of beings to the presence of Being as such. When this explicitation attains its goal, then we have truth. Truth is the self-revelation of Being to the human person, who is capable of perceiving it thanks to its interpretative dynamism (9).
This dynamism unfolds between the two poles of finiteness and infinity, making the person-in-history the "organon" of the self-revelation of Being in truth. In this dynamism we may distinguish two aspects: the "original" aspect (originality), and the "originary" aspect (fidelity). The "original" aspect of interpretation is that quality of comprehension which is peculiar to each person in its individuality, marked by both space and time. The "originary" aspect, instead, is that quality of comprehension which is common to all successful interpretations, which attain to a grasp of transhistorical truth. These two aspects, though distinguishable, are not separable. Actually, the second is possible only through the first. But the second has the nature of a goal, while the first has only the nature of an instrument, valid only inasmuch as it helps to attain the goal. Authentic interpretation will, therefore, steer clear both of a narcissistic ideal of originality for its own sake and of an impossible effort of being absolutely impersonal (10).
Interpretation, thus understood, overcomes the opposition between naive realism and gnoseological scepticism. In interpretation the person is not merely a subject, but an interlocutor, and being and truth are not merely on object, but a source of meaning. Interpretation is aware that truth is not reducible to its formulations. Rather it is incarnated in them. that is, both present in and beyond them. Interpretation sees itself as the never definitively attained possession of an infinite, before which it feels both the exigency of faithfulness and gift of personal freedom. It believes neither in the absolute ineffability of the infinite nor in the total enunciation of truth. For it, neither depth without evidence, nor evidence without depth are worthy of the per-son-in-history. Instead, it knows that truth is attainable without being exhaustible. It brings human speech and thought from being merely expressive of contingency to being revelational of transcendence. And in doing so, it experiences the fundamental congeniality that links truth and the person-in-history. Truth is penetrated by means of sympathy, it is discovered by means of capturing its wave-length. Through this exercise in congeniality, the person-in-history finds itself drawn both beyond itself and deeper into itself (11).
1.4. the hermeneutical rehabilitation of time
I intend now to underline two or three aspects which have only been hinted at in the previous paragraph. It will have been noticed how history has been valued as a mediator of the self-revelation of Being in truth. History and finiteness are not seen as negative characteristics of human existence, but on the contrary as that which makes possible a dialogue with the infinity and the transcendence of truth, a dialogue which, taking place in history, is related to the past as well as to the future. The person-in-history is both given and becoming, both "object and project"(12). This is true of the individual and of mankind. In this perspective, time assumes an irreplaceable hermeneutical function. Its openness to the past and to the future provides an openness to the inexhaustibility of truth. The multiplicity of interpretations is not only produced but also tested by time. In fact, how does one distinguish between adequate and inadequate interpretations? An essential role is played in this distinction by the flow of time. The Italian poet A. Manzoni, on hearing the news of the death of Napoleon, asked himself :
Fu vera gloria?
Ai posteri l' ardua sentenza (13)
To see whether an interpretative line ends up in a cul-de-sac or not, it must be followed up to its end. But this often takes time. Consequently, temporal distance is no longer seen as an insurmountable obstacle to the attainment of truth but as an indispendable help in seeing clearly the difference between true and false interpretations of existence. On the other hand, is it necessary to point out that we are falling into the excess of historicism, if we simply consider time as the mother of truth? But if time is not the mother of truth, it is certainly "the midwife of truth"(14). If it is not the source of truth, it is certainty "the well of truth"(15). Time does not beget truth, but it assists at its birth in us. The hermeneutical interlocutor may be distant, opaque and dark, but the stream of history is a catalyst that makes it transparent and luminous. No wonder, then, that the "history of the impact" of a text (16) is an essential part of the enquiry into its meaning.
1.5. The hermeneutical rehabilitation of precomprehension
At the basis of every interpretative enterprise there is a set of presuppositions. We have seen already the most basic of them, the option for an open or a closed view of history and existence. Our past experience, both as individuals and as humankind, provides us with a whole net of such presuppositions. The belief that one could radically do away with them by means of scientific objectivity is one of the most preposterous illusions recorded in the history of thought. There is hermeneutical significance in this inevitability of some kind of pre-comprehension. This inevitability is in reality a s'9" of our finiteness and being-in-history. In order to jump out of all pre-comprehension one would have to jump out of history, which is absurd.
This is not to say, however, that all presuppositions are valid. Rather, they provide a perspective, which both makes possible, and is modified by, the self-revelation of Being in truth. This self- revelation. which is an ongoing process, will show which of the pre-suppositions cannot stand when confronted with truth. Sterile suspicion on the whole of knowledge is thus replaced by fertile "interrogation"(17) in dialogue with the totality of being which gradually (and inexhaustibly) reveals itself. Hermeneutics consists in this ongoing dialectic between one's total understanding and new particular instances of understanding, in such a way that the whole illumines the part and the part may modify the whole. This basic acceptance of pre-comprehension, together with the readiness continuously to readjust it in the light of new truth disclosures, has been called the "herrmeneutical circle"(18).
1.6. The hermeneutical rehabilitation of personal involvement
In the light of the discovery of the positivity of basic pre-comprehension, personal involvement also begins to be seen as having a positive significance for an adequate hermeneutics. Not without reason, personal encounter is often used as a valid model of the hermeneutical encounter. As a matter of fact. what is at stake in both is the genuinity of self-revelation and of perception of meaning. It may be useful, therefore, to dwell for a moment on the dynamism of personal encounter. A genuine personal encounter grows more and more intense thanks to a dialectic or ""oscillation" between involvement and detachment, familiarity and extraneousness, comprehension and non-comprehension. As D. Bonhoeffer's well-known saying goes: "Community is a danger for you, unless you know how to remain alone. And solitude is a danger for you, unless you are involved in a community"(19).
In the same way. interpretation demands both involvement and detachment. We are people of the 20th century, so there is perhaps no need to stress the aspect of detachment: the success of the scientific endeavour in all areas of life is sufficient evidence of its fruitfulness. What needs to be stressed, instead, is the interpretative value of personal involvement, which has been for too long degraded to the level of irrelevance, if not downright negativity, with regard to comprehension and knowledge. The consequences are also there for all to see.
In our context, detachment would mean my critical awareness of my presuppositions as well as of the historical conditioning of human comprehension. Involvement, on the other hand, would consist in valuing my own personal experience of life and history. This value is based on the radical "affinity" of all historical experience, which makes it possible for my personal experience to enlighten other historical experiences. This mutual interaction of present and past historical experiences is called by Gadamer "the fusion of the horizons", namely, of the present and past horizons. By fusion I think he means not identification, but an encounter which is marked both by distance and proximity: the distance of being a past experience, retraceable only by means of witnesses of various kinds, and the proximity of being just another historical experience, perfectly congenial to the person-in-history (20). The perception of this congeniality demands that the interpreter do not abstract from his being-in-history. On the contrary, the more genuinely involved he is in his own historical experiences, the more capable will he be to perceive the message that comes to him from other such experiences. In passing, let it be noted that the capacity for this "fusion of horizons" is the sign of an integrated personality, if we agree that the ingredients of such a personality are "a realistic contact with the present, a reverential continuity with the past, and a courageous responsibility for the future"(21).
1.7. Truth, neither ineffable nor reducible, but inexhaustible
Our starting point has been the experience of our historical and finite existence. Now it is time to sound a warning against a twofold danger that lurks just around the corner of our rehabilitation of time, pre-comprehension and personal involvement. In the first place there is the danger of resolving in a unilateral and extreme way the tension that exists between the finite and the infinite, between hermeneutics and ontology, between language and rationality, between person-in-history and truth. This unilateral and extreme solution is that of limiting the manifestation of truth, being and the infinite by identifying it "sic et simpliciter" with the experience of this manifestation in the language and interpretative activity of the person-in-history.
Against this aberration it must be stressed that the person-in-history receives the manifestation of the infinite precisely as such, that is, as infinite, as endlessly greater than itself. Therefore, the language which bears witness to this manifestation contains it more in the form of a seed than in that of a full explicitation.
The other danger lurking behind our hermeneutical endeavour is the claim that truth is absolutely ineffable. This second aspect of the danger can be traced back to two opposite and extreme positions with regard to the understanding of the Being-as-such which we have been talking about.
One is the position of those who conceive Being as such not as positive existence, but as nothingness. A little thought will show that this amounts to the same thing as the absolutization of finiteness.
The other extreme is the position of those who identify "tout court" Being-as-such with the Infinite Personal God. No wonder that these people are overwhelmed with such a sense of divine mystery as to opt for absolute ineffability.
By now it must be clear that we do not subscribe to the first extreme. An explanation may be in order as to why we do not subscribe to the second, either. In order to pass from Being-as-such to the Infinite Personal Being, we think that the whole enquiry of an adequate natural theology should be included in our hermeneutics. No direct identification of Being as such with Absolute Being is possible. Sound rational evidence must be provided for the fact that Being-as-such finds its ultimate explanation only in the existence of the Infinite Personal Absolute Being who is God. We make our own, therefore, the end term of such an adequate natural theology. This end term is God. who is both knowable and irreducible, immanent and transcendent, meaningful and mysterious.
To summarize and conclude, our hermeneutics does not subscribe. to any absolutization of finiteness. On the other hand, it does not subscribe to any mysticism of the ineffable, either. It holds, in fact, that in human language and rationality there takes place a true manifestation of Being in truth. The only concept of truth that does justice to this situation is that proposed by L. Pareyson. namely, the concept of inexhaustibility. Truth is present in its concrete historical formulations, but at the same time it is also beyond them. The person-in-history is more situated inside the truth than set up in front of it. The potentially infinite number of concrete formulations of truth must confront one another in an incessant dialogue which will allow the person-in-history to have a better comprehension of inexhaustible truth. Once more. the indispensable function of time and of personal dedication to the investigation of truth is vindicated. No one individual. no one historical period, can claim to have exhausted the exploration of truth, or rather to have opened itself totally to the manifestation of truth. Each individual and each period, instead, is called to make his original contribution to this opening up of truth (22). As Pope John Paul II said in his peace message for the year 1985: "Man's journey through history is like a pilgrimage of discovery".
NOTE: The more general philosophical terms I shall be using, (such as being, existence, reality, history, person, time, truth, mystery, finite, infinite, unity, multiplicity, etc.), will be used with the connotation that is current in the "common sense philosophy" or "perennial philosophy" that I speak of in this article. The "common sense philosophy" connotation of these terms is close to, though not identical with, the connotation of the implicitly metaphysical terms of the language of the man-in-the-street. So, for example, like the man-in-the-street, I consider the terms "being", "reality". "existence" as synonymous. I am well aware, of course, that this is not the case in some types of contemporary philosophy.
Unless otherwise stated, references by author's name are to the works listed in the bibliography.
1. F. L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (eds). The Oxford Dictonary of the Christian Church. 1974, 1985, 2nd edition revised, P.641, "Hermeneutics".
2. Mondin, p. 13. Unless otherwise stated, the translations from other languages into English are mine.
3. The other members of the seminar were: Nicola Di Tolve, Marco Frisina, Joseph Sama, Giuseppe Sciorio, Fabrizio Tosolini. Pierantonio Tremolada. Michael Waldstein. I would like to thank also Rev. Fr. Theobald Diederich O.F.M., of the Studium Biblicum, Hong Kong, for reading my paper and giving some valuable comments.
4. By putting these three thinkers together. I do not mean that they form a school. On the contrary, they reveal widely divergent sensitivities. It is precisely this fact, however, that renders all the more significant their convergence on some basic hermeneutical insights. Some of these insights can be traced back to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. I have become acquainted with the philosophy of Gadamer thanks to the presentation made of it by Prof. l. de La Potterie. I would recommend reading Gadamer's Le probleme de ja conscience historique, (cf. Bibliography, no. 8).
5. I have become acquainted with Ricoeur especially through the presentation of his insights in the work of C. Helou, a book worth reading.
6. Introduced to him by Prof. l de La Potterie. I recommend reading at least part of his Verita e interpretazione, pp. 53-90, and the presentation of his hermeneuticat thought in Modica, esp. pp. 87-159.
7. The expression must be Ricoeur's Cf. Helou. p. 12. Ricoeur has probably derived it from Nietzsche's expressions "Kunst des Misstrauens" and "Schule des Verdachtes": cf Pareyson, p.116, and the note on pp. 247-248.
8. Cf. Gadamer, II problema, pp.27-28.
9. Cf. Modica. pp. 90-91.
10. For the distinction original-originary, cf. Modica, pp.91-93. But there is a tension in Pareyson's thought between seeing originality as instrument (pp.98-101) and as effect (p.93). For the expression "organon of self-revelation", cf. p.95. For the last sentence of the paragraph, cf. p.103.
11. This paragraph is a digest of Pareysonian expressions: Modica, subject-object, cf. p. 104; irreducibility to formulations, cf. p. 105; never definitively attained possession of an infinite, cf. p. 106; faithfulness and freedom, cf. p.117; expressive and revelational, cf. pp. 129-136.
12. Cf. Gadamer, II problema, p.54.
13. Ode 5 Maggio: "Was it true glory? Let posterity pass this arduous judgement".
14. "Veritas filia temporis" (Truth is a daughter of time) is an adage of Aulus Gellius in his Notitiae Atticae, quoted by de La Potterie in class (henceforth cited as de La Potterie, Course). "Time is not the mother, but the midwife of truth" is a saying of John Milton, quoted by Pareyson. p.85. The reference is given on p.224 as Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Complete Works, Vol. II. p.225, Yale 1959.
15. The expression is Gadamer's. quoted by de La Potterie, Course.
16. My translation of Gadamer's "Wirkungsgeschichte".
17. Gadamer, II problema, pp.90-91. He calls the "discovery" of pre-comprehension "revolutionary", ibid., p.81.
18. Gadamer, ibid., pp.78-79.
19. I have been unable to find the exact reference.
20. Cf. Gadamer, II problema, p.78 for the concept of affinity. "Fusion of horizons" quoted in de La Potterie. La nozione, p.111.
21. D. Maruca, Caring Relationships and a Pastoral Spirituality, Some Aids, Rome 1983, ad usum privatum. Cf. Gadamer. II problema, p.28.
22. The danger of an "absolutization of finiteness", paradoxically combined with a "mysticism of the ineffable" seems to have been incurred by Heidegger. Cf. Gadamer, II problema, pp.27. 87. Together with the distinctions between original and originary, between expressive and revelational, this seems to be the third distinctive contribution made by Pareyson. For this concept of inexhaustibility, cf. Modica, pp. 119-126; inside the truth, rather than in front of it, cf. p. 105: dialogue between interpretations, cf. pp. 153-156.
PART II: Christ-Truth as Foundation of Christian Hermeneutics
2.1. Christ-Truth as ultimate hermeneutical ground
Here, I think, is the point of insertion of Christian hermeneutics with its unique and incredible claim (precomprehension?) that inexhaustible truth has taken body and speech in the person-event of Jesus of Nazareth. Does this claim nullify all that has been said up to now? The answer is no. In fact, while on the one hand Christian faith claims that inexhaustible truth has been posited once and for all in the person-event of Jesus Christ, on the other hand it predicates of this person-event the same inexhaustibility that we have predicated of truth itself. Hence there follows that the significance of this person-event cannot be fully exhausted by anyone in history. Jesus of Nazareth, because of his unique sharing in the mystery of God, remains for ever beyond the total reach of any method and of any human formulation.
If all this is true. then the person-event of Jesus Christ assumes an incomparable hermeneutical significance and so does his Spirit-filled social body, the Church, which is being constructed along the banks of the river of history. The unheard of claim to supreme hermeneutical significance has been made by Jesus himself: "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Mt. 11:27b). "I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). His Church has seen him from the very beginning in this function: "I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth; and he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne....... And they sang a new song, saying. 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals..." (Rev 5:6-7, 9a). His is the Spirit that is leading mankind into the fullness of truth...(cf. John 16:13a).
In these words lies a challenge of unfathomable daring to the hermeneutical intentions of man, at the same time fulfilling them and calling upon them to go beyond themselves. This is the challenge that offers an unhoped for total rehabilitation of history by making it the receptacle of the uncircumscribable mystery of God. No wonder, therefore, if in the Church which is the historical effect of- the person-event of Jesus Christ, we find a concrete realization of the hermeneutical theory sketched out above.
2.2. The hermeneutical significance of tradition as inclusive of Scripture.
The Church sees her arche in the person-event of Jesus Christ. This is an arche which enshrines a mystery of inexhaustible depth. In this mystery she is vitally involved. She is in it. she is not merely faced by it. Sacred Scripture is the expression of her self-consciousness of her own vital union with the very mystery of God thanks to the mediation of Jesus Christ.
Materia sacrae scripturae totus Christus est.
caput et membra (Glossa ordinaria) (23).
Not unnaturally, then, does she see her living tradition not as an unbridgeable abyss between her and her arche, but on the contrary as the terrain which stretches between the present and her arche, and which makes possible her access to it. On this terrain. Scripture is simply the portion of ground closest to the arche. Scripture is part and parcel of the life of the Church. In it she recognizes "bone of her bones and flesh of her flesh".
Arca testamenti ecclesia vocatur,
in qua duorum testamentorum virtus
digito Dei scripta est (Alcuin) (24).
She approaches her arche with a basic precomprehension (faith) which is the fruit of personal contact with the arche both exteriorly through the normal human communication and interiorly through the communication of the Spirit. For the first witnesses, the normal human communication meant direct contact with the person-event of Christ. For us believers of the present, this communication implies the mediation of all believers that have preceded us. This mediation (especially that of Scripture and Tradition) in a sense is certainly a barrier between us and the originary person-event of Jesus Christ. It demands in fact a not too simple effort of semantic transference (25). Nobody, moreover, denies the necessity erf being critically aware that the testimony of Scripture is charged with the temporality and personality of the inspired authors, and that tradition is also a chain of transmission almost imponderably charged with the heritage of the different ages of history. At the same time, however, the Church is not blind to the fact that this supposed barrier has a high hermeneutical value: in the case of Scripture because of the total personal involvement of the witnesses: in the case of tradition, because of the temporal distance which acts as a filter of the soundness of every new attempt at comprehension. As for the interior communication of the Spirit, this is of even greater hermeneutical significance. Only the Spirit can bear witness to the transcendent quality of the person-event of Jesus Christ. Now, this Spirit is not something detached from the Church. It is, instead, the very life and soul of the Church.
The Church's approach to her arche is based, therefore, on a twofold witness, interior and exterior. The Church's self-awareness of this reality has produced the two twin doctrines of inspiration and canonicity of her scriptures. The first embodies the Spirit's witness to the transcendent character of the person-event of Jesus Christ; the second, the testimony of the eyewitnesses of this person-event to its historical character. A consideration of these two doctrines will highlight the hermeneutical value of this twofold witness.
2.3. The hermeneutical significance of the inspiration of Scripture
Firstly, this doctrine ensures the symbolic value of the scriptural text. It testifies to the fact that a divine mystery is expressed by the human word. Without inspiration, there would be no direct link between the person-event of Jesus Christ, which is the originary “locus” of God’s revelation, and its presentation in the text.
The doctrine of inspiration sets up this link in two stages: in the first place, it asserts the genuinity of the relationship holding between the source of revelation and the expression of this revelation in the scriptures. We are here at the stage of the production of the sacred text, say. the gospels. This text does not come from the source of revelation itself. Jesus is reported to have written not on parchment but only on the sand......The contact of the authors of the gospels with the source was itself mediated-by vision, by hearing, by understanding, in a word, by a linguistic event. Thanks to this mediation and that of the Spirit, the eyewitness receives the manifestation of the truth present in Jesus Christ. He interiorises this reception and eventually bears witness to it in word and writing. We have then a new linguistic event, already at a remove from the source of revelation. It is only the continued presence of the Spirit which establishes the continuity between the revelation and the witness borne to it.
The second stage in the hermeneutical assistance of the Spirit comes when a reader or listener enters into contact with the source of revelation (the person-event of Jesus Christ) through the mediation of the inspired text. We are at the level not of the production, but of the use of the text. We have seen that the text itself is a linguistic event already at a remove from the source of revelation. The encounter with the text, as a consequence, is situated at two removes from that same source. Hence the need of the Spirit's presence in the community presenting the text and in the individual receiving it; it is only this presence which again guarantees the continuity between the integral meaning intended by the author and its perception by the listener or reader of today. This continuity consists in the authentic symbolic value of the text, which in human words expresses a reality that is both human and divine. It is true that every human word is already symbolic of a deeper reality. But in the case of Scripture the symbolic function to which the text is summoned transcends the capacity of the human word, which therefore needs the assistance of the testimony of the Spirit.
This assistance is the ground of the Church's capacity to draw the full spiritual sense from the letter of the scriptures. Just as, on the level of history, temporality ensures the link between the present horizon and the horizon of the arche, so, on the level of transcendence, the activity of the Spirit is indispensable for establishing that affinity which is the condition sine qua non for the possibility of interpretation.
Secondly, and consequently upon this first point, the doctrine of inspiration shows how the reference to the transcendent mystery inherent in the text is beyond the reach of pure method. Method must be enlivened from within by faith, a living experience which is vitally transmitted by the historical community of the Church. The "sensus fidei" is crucial.
Thirdly, inspiration anchors the whole of Scripture to a unique source, the Spirit, present in the multiplicity of the human authors. This is the basic justification for seeing Scripture as a unified whole, whose centre is Jesus Christ. The "analogia fidei" is therefore a valid interpretative instrument.
Fourthly and lastly, this doctrine brings to perfection the view of history and truth as related in openness, that is, as allowing for the transcendence of truth over history. A closed view is incapable of doing justice to the peculiar kind of witness that the biblical text purports to be.
2.4. The hermeneutical significance of the canonicity of Scripture
In the current of historical witnesses to the self-revelation of transcendent truth in the person-event of Jesus Christ, there is a privileged sector: the apostolic witness. It is privileged because it is the witness of those who have been in direct personal contact with the person-event of Jesus Christ. The self-revelation of God resides precisely in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth in the integrity of his reality and development. This man. in this time and in this place, is the decisive revelation of the mystery of God and man. That is why the church is conscious that about him the essential could be said and has been said only by those who "from the beginning were the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (Luke 1:2b). If the historical reality of Jesus Christ is the true sign of the transcendent mystery hidden in him, then those who have been historically sharers of his experience are the primary witnesses to the significance of this sign. The New Testament is nothing but the concretization in literary form of this witness. From- then on, it is no longer possible to add any essential feature to the face of truth. Instead, there is handed on to all successive generations the task of penetrating, deepening, interiorizing the inexhaustible richness contained in the apostolic witness to Jesus-Truth. Still, the "sensus auctoris" is' normative.
This, then, is the crucial significance of canonicity for hermeneutics. Canonicity traces once for all the boundaries within which it will be fruitful to dig our wells in search of the living water of truth. Jesus Christ is a revelational person-event which exhausts all human attempts at comprehension. This person-event exhausts also all possibility of manifesting the truth.
Christus totam novitatem attulit
semetipsum afferens (Irenaeus) (26).
These canonical boundaries have been drawn by the living experience of the Church, which, as the Spirit-filled social body of Christ, is connaturally capable of recognizing the essential features of the physiognomy of her head. This living experience has run through the centuries in the "conscience collective de l'Eglise" (Blondel) (27), and it has become concretely recognizable in the declarations of the Councils and of the Magisterium. Interestingly enough, the spokesmen of this collective conscience of the Church are linked by uninterrupted succession through the gift of the Spirit with the first eyewitnesses. Is not all this a sign that history is taken terribly seriously?
Yes, canonicity stands as a bulwark for the historical character of this revelational person-event as well as for its uniqueness.
2.5. Some practical conclusions
From what has been said up to now, some practical guidelines emerge, which illumine our interpretative activity.
Firstly, while there is continuity between the interpretation of the sacred texts and the interpretation of other texts, still Sacred Scripture relates to the faithful interpreter in a specific manner. It is the same continuity-discontinuity that holds between the personal mystery of everyman and the mystery of the man-God Jesus Christ.
Secondly, the interpreter of the word of God is not an outsider with respect to the sacred text. The text is part of his life, and so he approaches the text with a vital concern. To express this fact in as sharp a way as possible, we could say: the interpreter knows that if the text lives or dies, he is going to live or die with it. Interpretation is a question of life or death for the meaning of one's existence.
Thirdly, the faithful interpreter's concept of truth goes a little farther than the classical concept of truth as conformity of intellect and reality. The classical concept seems to make personal freedom and experience external accessories of truth. It easily leads those who react to it negatively into relativism, and those who react to it positively into dogmatism or tolerance (28). The Christian interpreter shares the personalistic concept of truth as the self-revelation of reality to the human person through the hermeneutical mediation of the intellect, a self-revelation which appeals for recognition but is ready to put up with a refusal. In this way every linguistic event is seen as including an intention of self-communication. Relativism, dogmatism, and tolerance are thus replaced by dialogue and mission, respecting, but also challenging, the free response of the person-in-history. Witness is an essential consequence of this concept of truth (29).
Fourthly, the language used by the Christian interpreter results from a triangular reference to the language of Scripture, the language of the believing community, and the language of the contemporary historical reality (30). Only in this way will it be possible to achieve an adequate explicitation of the truth.
Fifthly, in correspondence with the second paragraph, it may be said that not only is the text part of the interpreter's life, but the interpreter's life is part of the text. The life of the faithful community provides somes kind of contemporaneity with the events and the per-sons presented by the text. This experience has been beautifully expressed by St. Leo the Great:
Omnia igitur quae Dei Filius ad reconciliationern mundi et fecit et docuit,
non in historia tantum praeteritorum novimus.
sed etiam in praesentium operum virtute sentimus (31).
The hermeneutical rejevance of such an experience is evident.
Sixthly and lastly, since the Spirit is given to all and the apostolic witness is offered to all, the work of interpretion of the word of God is everybody's job. The boundaries of the field to be tilled have been canonically drawn, the energy and the tight for the work are assured by the Spirit, the cultivation of the field of truth is the exclusive privilege of no one. It follows that the reflection on the biblical word in an academic institution is only secondarily different from this same reflection in a seminary room or a family Bible group or a Sunday sermon or a novel or a play. Primarily, all these forms of reflection are one. The primacy of this unity calls for a great openness on the part of all towards all. The word of truth lives and develops in every faithful heart and mind. Again I borrow the words of a Father of the church. St. Augustine:(...)
omnibus sanctis,
propter vitae illius secretissimae quietissimum sinum,
super pectus Christi Joannes evangelista discubuit.
(...) nec ille (...) de fonte dominici pectoris solus bibit:
sed ipse Dominus ipsum evangelium.
pro sua cuiusque capacitate omnibus suis bibendum,
toto terrarum orbe diffudit (32).
Christ-Truth is recognized all the less inadequately the more extensive is the openness to the contribution of others who live or who have lived this experience: the saint and the scholar, the poet and the peasant, the historian and the theologian, the black and the white, the ancient and the modern…
But now it is time to take a closer look at Christ-Truth
23. Quoted by de La Potterie, Course. "The subject-matter of Sacred Scripture is the whole Christ, head and members". One fruit of the Seminar was also the awareness of the hermeneutical suggestiveness of the concept of arche. In this concept is also included the whole of the OT revelation. Hence, when I speak of Christ-Truth, I mean to include also the OT Scriptures.
24. PL 100, 1152B. "The Church is called the ark of the covenant, because, in her. the power of Old and the New Covenants has been inscribed by the finger of God".
25. Barr, pp.3-4.
26. Quoted by de la Potterie. Course. "With Christ's coming, the totality of new reality has come".
27. This phrase expresses well Blondel's description of tradition, in Blondel, pp.213-216. Another fine phrase is: "une experience toujours en acte". p.204.
28. Cf. Modica. p.24. Tolerance is only a modified form of dogmatism. It is in fact based on the view that truth is totally contained in its formulations. Hence, there is no point, on the one hand, in proposing one's formulation to anyone who has a different formulation, and. on the other hand, in lending an ear to anyone holding a different view.
29. Interpretation and witness are the two essential features of revelational thought, cf. Modica, pp. 157-159.
30. cf. Helou, p.223.
31. Sermo 12 de Passione, 3, 6-7 : PL 54, 356. "It is not only the history of past events that acquaints us with all that the Son of God did and taught for the reconciliation of the world. Of all this we also have a personal experience throught the power of the (sacramental) acts present in our own life".
32. Tractatus in loannern, 124. 7. CorpChr. SeLat, Vol 36, 687. "John the Evangelist rested his head on the heart of Christ on behalf of all the saints, as a symbolic anticipation of that most quiet haven in which that most secret life is lived. John was not the only one to drink from this source, which is the Lord's heart. In fact. The Lord himself has spread the Gospel itself throughout the world so that all his own could drink of it, each according to his capacity".
PART III: The Structure of Christ-Truth and the Structure of Hermeneutics
3.1. The fourfold structure of Christ-Truth
The uniqueness of Jesus Christ lies in his being both God and man: uniqueness, therefore, which is a totality. In the superemely unified person of Jesus Christ lies the totality of being as in its centre. That is why his person-event is of ultimate hermeneutical significance. This coincidence of uniqueness and totality in a historically finite, concrete subject is the essence of the mystery of Christ. The scandal is perhaps only slightly alleviated by considering that the sense of mystery is also at the heart of all the "human sciences" insofar as they aim at comprehending the irreducible unique concrete existence, and not only the general and the abstract (33).
As we have seen already, in John's gospel Jesus presents himself as the truth, that is, as the absolute revelation of God to man and of man to man in the light of God. This is the same as claiming that his person and his event are the ultimate ground of meaning. I think I am justified, therefore, in analysing the structure of hermeneutics in terms of the structure of Christ-Truth.
In this part I am following very closely the insights of 1. de La Potterie (34). The person-event of Christ-Truth reveals a fourfold structure, in which the coordinates of God and man, of time and eternity meet.
a. Christ-Truth is historical: he is a true member of our history. (Cf. 1 John 4:2-3).
b. Christ-Truth is transcendent: in him is hidden and revealed the mystery of God. (Cf. John 1:18: 20:31).
c. Christ-Truth is personal: the "locus" of his actualization is primarily the human person. (Cf. John 17:26).
d. Christ-Truth is eschatological: his total significance is realized only at the end of history. (Cf. John 16:13)
Through this fourfold structure Christ-Truth fulfills and redeems all the human searches for meaning, liberating the truth that is in them. and denouncing the falsity that all too often is mixed with the best intuitions. This is a big statement and so I would like to specify it a little, first with reference to the Western tradition of thought and then. tentatively, with reference also to oriental tradition as represented especially by Chinese philosophers.
a. Christ-Truth as historical fulfills and redeems historicism: Christ is a fully historical person-event, truly immersed in the flow of human history. but not reducible to history.
b. Christ-Truth as transcendent fulfills and redeems Platonism: Christ is a transcendent mystery which relativizes history, and yet he is rooted in history and does not escape from history, but on the contrary assumes history into his own mystery.
c. Christ-Truth as personal fulfills and redeems existentiatistic personalism: the revelation given by Jesus realizes itself in a supreme way in the self-transcending human person, and yet it is greater than all human persons in their individuality as well as in their totality.
d. Christ-Truth as eschatological fulfills and redeems Hegelianism: Jesus Christ as Truth shall be totally fulfilled only at the end of history when God wilt be "all in all", "everything to every one" (cf. 1 Cor 15:28b). However, this "delay" is not due to any inadequacy on his part but is due to God's will of making us all sharers in his fullness.
Applying this specification to the oriental context. I would attempt this confrontation between Christ-Truth and Oriental thought:
a. Christ-Truth as historical redeems and fulfills the positivistic Confucianism of Hsun Tzu and many modern Chinese thinkers.b. Christ-Truth as transcendent fulfills and redeems Hinduism. Buddhism, Taoism. with their acute sense of the contingency of material and historical reality.c. Christ-Truth as personal redeems and fulfills the great traditions of Confucianism. Moism. Neo-Confucianism, with their stress of personal cultivation.
d. Christ-Truth as eschatological fulfills and redeems the dynamic idealism of Wang Yang Ming and the "Da Tong" ideal that has inspired so many modern Chinese revolutionaries.
Partially, and sometimes distortedly, this fourfold structure of Jesus-Truth can be seen reflected in the multiplicity of human attempts at grasping the totality of meaning. Now I would like to show that this fourfold structure has always been present to Christian consciousness from its birth to this day.
St. Paul was perhaps the first to give it expression, even though in a figurative and implicit way. in Eph 3:18, staling that the mystery of Christ has the dimensions of (historical) breadth, (eschatological) length, (transcendent) height, and (personal) depth.
Patristic tradition wavers between a threefold and a fourfold structure of meaning. But the former is mainly due to the fact that the discussion often turned upon the meaning of the text of Scripture, and not on meaning as such. Thus Origen gives a threefold structure (35)Augustine a fourfold (36), but not in the sense intended here. However, when the eye is raised from the text and set on the person-event to which the text testifies, the fourfold structure appears neatly.
In libris autem omnibus sanctis intueri oportet
quae ibi aeterna intimentur,
quae facta narrentur,
quae futura praenuntientur,
quae agenda praecipiantur vel admoneantur (37).
Mediaeval hermeneutics systematized the suggestions of the Fathers, demonstrating that the fourfold structure presented here underlies their twofold, threefold, or even fourfold presentations (38). The result was the famous quatrain:
Littera gesta docet,
Quid credas allegoria,
Moralis quid agas.
Quo tendas anagogia (39).
Once obtained, such a neat systematization incurred the danger of being applied not only to the person-event of Jesus-Truth to which Scripture testifies, but also to the text itself, and to every single text, at that. This, of course, may be seen as an abuse of the fourfold structure, but only insofar as the structure is forced upon a single sentence, without reference to the whole biblical context. So, for example, however charming, it is excessive to see in the word "Jerusalem" the presence of the fourfold structure in each and all of its occurrences (Jerusalem as "urbs historica. Corpus Christi, anima christiana, urbs coelestis"). However, it may well be that, throughout the Bible, Jerusalem appears in one or the other of these meanings.
The mediaeval systematization has been always influential, overtly or silently, in all hermeneuticat probings. Even today, it is probably more alive than may at first sight appear. As Urs von Balthasar has pointed out:
The four senses of Scripture have been secretly brought back to life by the more recent Protestant theology: the ‘literal sense’ is that which results from historico-critical enquiries; the 'spiritual sense' shows up in the kerygmatic meaning; the 'tropological (or moral) sense' corresponds to the existential meaning; the 'anagogical sense' re-lives in the eschatotogical meaning (40).
After all, what is Christian hermeneutics if not simply a function of that "staying in the truth" (cf. John 8:44) which is the Christian life? And what is faith if not a) memory of the historical person-event of Jesus Christ and b) openness to the transcendent mystery revealed in it? What is hope if not the expectation of the eschatological fulfilment? What is charity if not the existential assimilation to, and personal identification with. the person-event of Christ-Truth?
Have we fallen into pan-hermeneuticism? No. As human life has an essentially hermeneutical character, so we have done nothing but underline the essentially hermeneutical character of Christian life. And just as Christian life is under the sign of the cross, so Christian hermeneutics is under the sign of the cross. As Schlier in his commentary on Ephesians has pointed out, breadth, length, height and depth are the dimensions of the cross. In Christian hermeneutics we see transpiring the age-old crucifixion of orthodox faithfulness to the word of God, this titanic effort of the reconciliation of opposites, of the "comprehension" of all dimensions of truth. Needless to say, this effort does not imply violating the principle of non-contradiction. Opposites are not contradictories, and the Holy Spirit is the first great respecter of the principle of non-contradiction (pace all dialectical metaphysicians and theologians).
3.2. The basic duality underlying the fourfold structure of Jesus Truth
The four dimensions of truth can be grouped in two different ways, each of which is of crucial hermeneutical significance:
a) St. Thomas Aquinas classifies "historia" or "gesta" as literal sense, and the other three dimensions (allegoria, moralis, anagogia) as spiritual sense (41). The hermeneutical significance of this grouping (which is widespread also in patristic tradition) is that the binomial symbol-reality is the substratum of the fourfold structure. History is the visible sign of the invisible reality of the other three dimensions (transcendence, personality and eschatology). These three latter dimensions are rooted in history and cannot be uprooted from it without being pulverized, that is. without destroying their reference to Christ-Truth. The historical reality of the person-event of Jesus-Truth cannot be dispensed With. Christian hermeneutics, therefore, welcomes any light that can be thrown on the historical character of the person and the event of Jesus Christ. Hence it values highly the contribution of the historico-critical method. And it uses this method with the pre-comprehension that it is important, and that it is possible, to ground convincingly the historicity of the revelation of Christ-Truth.
On the other hand. the Christian interpreter is aware that what can be obtained with the historico-critical method is only half of the picture. And it would be to mortify the inner dynamism of even this half, not to let it develop into its other dimensions.
b) There is a second way of grouping the four dimensions of Christ-Truth: historical character and transcendence are attritutes of Christ-Truth in himself, while personal interiority and eschatotogical fulfilment are attributes of Christ-Truth-for-us-and-in-us:
The hermeneutical significance of this second grouping is even more far-reaching than the first. In it we come close to realizing what hermeneutics essentially is. In fact, we have the encounter of two persons: the person-event of Jesus Christ becomes hermeneutically relevant (and therefore Truth) when it meets another person-event, when it meets us. Truth is the revelation of a person to another person.
For Jesus-Truth this means that his person-event has no other raison d'etre than his relationship to us. Christ-Truth is a reality totally oriented to the other, a reality graciously but wholly determined by the search for the encounter with the other. Jesus Christ is what he is, not because he needs us, but because we need him. That is what we mean, I think, when we say that Christ is the revealer and the redeemer.
For us, this means that the person-event of Jesus Christ in his historical and transcendent reality is a constitutive element of our own meaning as' human persons. Human fulfilment is grounded in the relationship of the human person with the person of Jesus Christ. On this vantage point, one thinks of the many persons who have no controllable relationship to Christ. It is immediately apparent that this relationship goes well beyond the boundaries of empirical controllable facts.
Let us return to the hermeneutical significance of this underlying duality in itself: it is the duality of personal encounter. Why, then. should it grow into a fourfold structure? Because, of these two persons who meet, the first is both transcending history and rooted in history (in the image of man), while the second is both a person in the making and is gifted with personal inferiority and depth (in the image of God). In other words, we could say that the duality becomes fourfold because vertically, it involves both a human-divine reality (being the encounter of God and man), and horizontally, a process from beginning to end (being an encounter that takes place in history).
Moreover, the two persons involved in the encounter are looked upon in this duality from the point of view of their hermeneutical significance, and therefore differently, since Christ and we have a different hermeneutical import. In the dimensions of history and transcendence. the person-event of Jesus Christ is seen its uniqueness as human symbol of the mystery of God. In the dimensions of personaljty and eschatology. instead, man is seen in his universal nature as man-in-history, and therefore man-in-the-making, fulfilled only at the end; as well as in his universal nature as self-transcending person in the mystery of his interior depths. Speaking more simply, it can be said that Jesus Christ is seen in his unique role as authoritative giver of meaning, while we are seen in our general capacity of receivers of meaning.
We have tried to characterize this basic duality, with the danger of losing sight of the fact that the duality itself is actually situated in the perfectly unified person of Jesus-Truth. The perfect unity in plurality of the two or four dimensions must be emphasized. This, in fact, is the "unicum Christianum". the peculiarly Christian feature of it all. In the "totum corpus, caput et membra" (the whole body. head and members) unity reigns. Thanks to his historical character, Jesus is God made in the image of man; thanks to his self transcending dynamism, man is made in the image of God. In Christ-Truth. God and man are reconciled in one.
That is why I would refrain from describing the basic duality of the hermeneutical encounter in terms of subject and object (42), the object being the person-event of Jesus-Truth encountered by me, the subject. This seems to me a most inadequate expression of what actually happens in the hermeneutical face-to-face. This is always a meeting of two persons, even if before our eyes there is only a piece of paper with a few signs in ink. This piece of paper is truly an object, but an object which points beyond itself to a subject, to a person. As an object, the paper or the book (even the book of Scripture) has only :a mediating function. The end term of the encounter is the person-event revealed by the meaning of the text.
In an unfathomable way this founding encounter has happened between the "subject" of man and the "subject" of God in the incarnation of the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. Ultimately, the incarnation with its duality in perfect unity is the true ground of every hermeneutical encounter. This is what I have been trying to express throughout by using the perhaps awkward expression Christ-Truth or Jesus-Truth. Jesus Christ, the "verbum abbreviatum" is the first and last theological and hermeneutical model for the interpretation of Scripture (43). In the last analysis, he is the model of all interpretation as such.
3.3. The threefold structure of biblical hermeneutics
If Christ-Truth has four or, more fundamentally, two dimensions does it mean that also the structure of hermeneutics is twofold or fourfold? No. The structure of hermeneutics is threefold. In fact, the I encounter between the two persons of which we have been speaking, does not take place without a "tertium quid", without an intermediary. The encounter itself is of an interpretative nature just because it is a mediated encounter. In general, this function of mediation is performed by language, understood in the sense usual today of anything that allows a communication to take place (words, gestures, symbols, events, etc.). In our case this mediator is the language event of the biblical text. The text mediates the encounter between Jesus Christ and us. It is important to realize that the text is a mediator and only a mediator. Its function is essentially that of bearing witness. It "presents" the revelational event and the person of the revealer. It does so in at least two different ways: a) by making the revelational person-event present to ever new audiences in new spatial and temporal situations; b) by allowing for the ever renewed discovery of the deep sense of the revelational person-event (44).
Hence the tripartite structure of hermeneutics
Person A Language/Text Person B
In this formulation the different function of the two subjects or persons involved in the encounter mediated by the text is not sufficiently highlighted. This difference is, instead, apparent in many of the formulations that I have found in discussions about hermeneutical problems. I shall list them here, without altering their own specific perspective.
Luther (45)
Res Verba Sensus
Heidegger (46)
The Unexpressed The Expressed The Comprehended
Gadamer (47)
Ontology Aesthetics Historicality
Cazelles (48)
Word Scripture Spirit
Lapointe (49)
Revelation Inspiration Canonicity
Grech (50)
Constitutive Revelation Sacred Scripture Interpretative Revelation
Already in the New Testament we can find, in germ, as it were, the awareness of this tripartite structure of interpretation. The prologue of Luke is a good example, or the first conclusion of John's gospel. A sketch will make this clear.
Luke 1:1-4
The things which have been accomplished among us
Write an orderly account (based on) the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word That you may kn the truth
John 20:30-31
Jesus did many signs in the presence of the disciples
These are written in this book That you may believe
My own formulation of the hermeneutical structure of the sciptures would be as follows:
SUBJECT A
LANGUAGE/TEXT SUBJECT B
Person-event of Jesus-Truth
Apostolic memory and interpretation of Jesus-Truth Personal and ecclesial realization of Jesus-Truth
It remains clear that both Subject A and Subject B subtend the same complexity we have examined in dealing with the fourfold structure of truth. That is: Subject A retains its composite structure of historicity and transcendence. Subject B that of inferiority and temporality. A consequence of this is that the text must function in all these four directions, if it is to undergo an integral hermeneutical treatment. Concretely, it means that the exegete, who does not want to be hermeneutically irrelevant, will bring to bear upon the text all these four hermeneutical instruments: the historico-critical investigation (historical dimension), theological reflection (transcendent dimension), personal faith experience (personal dimension), confrontation with Church tradition and world development (temporal-eschatological dimension).
Under the name historico-critical investigation I intend to include also all other possible methods of explicitating the "bodiliness" of the text in all its superficial and deeper levels. The more the concrete reality of the text is understood, the more it can fulfill its symbolic function of pointing to the other dimensions. If it can be discussed whether the exegete's first concern should be with this first dimension, I think that on the other hand it is essential that the exegete be concerned also with the other three dimensions, because only thus will he open up the text to them. It must never be forgotten that the text we are dealing with is the word of God. Without a certain amount of theological reflection, the meaning of the text will be lost by at least half. Without a certain reference to personal and communal experience, no help will be offered for the interiorization of the word. And without acquaintance with the development of the historical appropriation of the Word, it will be impossible to do justice to its eschatological dimension. And by eschaton I mean the fulfilment of God's project for man, a fulfilment which is gradually being brought about by the commitment of every man and woman in response to God's offer in truth and love: the interiorization and consummation of the mystery of Christ in the personal and communal history of man.
3.4. The mediator is not a dead but a living word
It may be useful now to consider for a moment this question: what kind of word or text is this which claims to be able to mediate between Christ-Truth and us? The answer to this question will enable us to summarise much that has been said up to here.
Is this word-text a fossil of what the person-event of Jesus-Truth was? Or is it more like a living organism, alone capable of bearing witness to a truth that is at the same time life? The answer is clear aid fundamental: the apparently dead letter of Sacred Scripture reaches us carried by the living stream of tradition, which is constituted by the Spirit-filled perennial life of the Church, social and mystical body of Christ-Truth. The context in which this text reaches me is not the dead context of a dusty library, but the very human and very much alive ecclesiat faith experience of Jesus Christ as truth and as life.
Now, this context corresponds perfectly to the very nature of the text, which claims to be both a report and a witness. As a report it claims to be able to ground the historical solidity of facts and words. As a witness, it claims to be able to ground the perception of the mystery of which these historical facts and words are signs.
Only now perhaps does the hermeneutical value of tradition become unmistakably evident as well as the soundness of the hermeneutical reflections outlined in this paper. Tradition makes the difference between a living and a dead word (51).
By going through the history of exegesis of any Biblical text, it would be possible to provide a kind of experimental confirmation of the essential hermeneutical function of tradition, conceived as the Spirit-inspired progressive explicitation of the word on the way to the eschatological fulfilment.
Tradition guided by the Spirit is the bridge that allows the text to speak to us as a living witness. This bridge is not made of stones nor of books, but of the faith experience of people like you and me, of people like our fathers and our mothers, who before you and before me have comprehended the person-event of Jesus-Truth and have borne witness to him.
The text of Scripture, therefore, can claim to be able to mediate the encounter between us and Jesus-Truth, not because it is a text, but because it is a text produced and interpreted by a living witness. More important than the fact that it is written, is the fact that it bears witness. This witness is still alive today. And from the very beginning this witness has been borne often even unto death.
We ourselves, called to be witnesses, how do we fulfill our responsibility toward future generations?
34. Cf. especially his Course and class notes. La nozione biblica di verita, etc.
35. Cf. Bibliography, no.1.
36. Cf. Bibliography, no. 2. Augustine is property dealing here with the problem of the Christian reading of the OT.
37. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram Libri Duodecim, (ed. J. Zycha, CSEL, Pragae Vindobonae Lipsiae, 1894. "In all the sacred books, we must be able to perceive intimations of eternity, narrations of (historical) events, predictions of the future, precepts or admonitions for (personal) behaviour".
38. Cf. Bibliography, no. 3.
39. It is cited three times by Nicholas de Lyra in his Prologus to the Glossa Ordinaria (PL 113. 25-68). Henri de Lubac, in his Exegese Medievale (Paris) 1, p.23, affirms its real author to have been a certain Augustine de Dacie in his Rotulus pugillus, written around the year 1260. "The letter teaches what has happened, allegory what you must believe, morality what you ought to do, anagogy where you must arrive".
40. H. Urs von Balthasar. Con occhi semplici. Verso una nuova coscienza cristiana (Brescia 1970), p.19. De La Potterie quotes it, correcting the Italian translation in his article "Esegesi storico-critica e interpretazione cristiana: 'L'esegesi cattolica oggi'". Parola e Spirito (Studi in onore de S. Cipriani, ed. C.C. Marcheselli, Brescia 1982).
41. Cf. Bibliography, no. 3. The basic distinction literal-spiritual or, equivalently, historical-mystical, runs through the whole of Patristic exegesis. See. for example, the phrase that Augustine tirelessly repeats in his Tractatus in loannem: "Factum audivimus, mysterium requiramus": "We have heard the fact, let us probe into the mystery". Cf. also Greogory the Great and his Moralia in job, e.g. 35, 15-41 (PL 76. 779).
42. Cf. Pareyson's same concern, but applied to truth in general, in Modica, pp. 101-105.
43. Cf. de La Potterie. La nozione, p. 106.
44. Cf. de La Potterie, ibid., p.96, and Gadamer, II problema, p.49.
45. Weimar ed., Dr Martin Luthers Werke, (Tischreden, Vol. 1-6. 1912-1921) V. 26 (September 1540). Quoted by de La Potterie, Course.
46. Cf. Gazelles, pp.24. 27-28.
47. Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, First Part, Sections I and II; Second Part. Section II.
48. This is the very title of his book (cf. Bibliography, no. 7).
49. Cf. Lapointe, pp.57-71. 147-150.
50. Cf. P. Grech. Corso di Ermeneutica: Ispirazione ed Ermeneutica. Spring term. Academic Year 1982-83, at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome, (class notes).
51. See Appendix for a sketch of the hermeneutical theory here propounded.
APPENDIX
Sketch of the hermeneutical theory outlined in this paper.
Man = Man-in-history
\ /
History open to the Transcendent
\ /
The Transcendent reveals itself to Person in history = Truth
\ /
As a process in time
\ /
Through a dialectic between whole and part
\ /
Challenging personal freedom
\ /
With inexhaustible richness
\ /
/ \
JESUS CHRIST = THE TRANSCENDENT IN HISTORY
\ /
The fruit of the Paschal Event : The mystical body of Christ
\ /
The Holy Spirit as its soul
\ /
The apostolic witnesses as its foundations
\ /
The scriptures in tradition
/ \
Jesus Christ
Rdeemer
Revealer
Man-in-history
Redeemed
Faith-ful
\ /
Hermeneutical encounter = Mediated personal encounter
\ /
Hermeneutical encounter = Mediated personal encounter
/ \
“Christus totus caput et mwmbra”
/ \
Historical-Transcendent Personal-Eschatological
\ /
CHRIST-TRUTH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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(2)AUGUSTINUS. De Utilitate Credendi ad Honoratum liber unus, 3. PL 42. 68-72; Historia, Aetiologia, Analogia, Allegoria.
(3)THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa Theologica, Pars I, Quaest. 1, Art. 10. Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Opera Omnia IV, iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P.M. edita Romae 1889.
(4)MAURICE BLONDEL, Histoire et Dogme: Les Lacunes Philosophiques de l'exegese moderne, in Les Premier ecrites de Maurice Blondel, Paris 1956.
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