I've been reading Sam Harris' The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (I bought it during vacation and thought I'd finish, but since returning to work I've been stuck just next to the end for days, sigh). One of the things that has struck me about the book -- and it struck me fairly quickly -- was both its textual reliance and insistence on propositions. Textual reliance because Harris seems to believe that in most (if not all) religions, and especially the Western monotheistic religions, are contained nearly in their entirety in the sacred text(s) of the specific religion. Insistence on propositions because, well, he seems to believe that religions can be reduced to a set of propositional statements with which one either agrees or disagrees.
I would have left this diary until I'd finished the book, but davefromqueens recently wrote a diary that seemed to take a similar approach. It occurred to me that I've seen or heard similar arguments many, many times: "Here's a statement in (insert name of book) that isn't true as a proposition, therefore the entire book is false/fictional/not-to-be-trusted-on-anything."
Fortunately, most (again, if not all) religions with canonical or semi-canonical texts have a discipline that deals with how to interpret those texts: hermeneutics. Of course, not only religious scholars use hermeneutics; we all use it, a lot of it. We use it when interpreting literature, legal and national documents, etc. Of course, we often confine it to the question of genre when we use it in this sense (is this document fiction or nonfiction? is it a science book or an anthology of poetry? and so on).
Sometimes we use it a bit differently. Take the Constitution for a moment. There are a variety of ways to interpret the Constitution, and different methods of interpretation: strict constructionism, originalism, doctrinalism, developmentalism, contextualism, and structuralism, for example. Which method you choose will affect the ways in which you can consistently interpret the document. Moreover, which method is chosen by a judge can have far reaching consequences. More simply, we use hermeneutics any time we try to figure out what a text -- or the author(s) of a text -- is really trying to say. All that to say that hermeneutics is nothing to sneeze at.
So, let's grab a definition (this one is from The New and Enlarged Handbook of Christian Theology):
In its most general meaning, "hermeneutics" designates that discipline whose object is the theoretical clarification of the issues involving human understanding. More narrowly, hermeneutics deals with the understanding of written, most often historically distant texts.
I'll be using the second, more narrow definition.
Propositionalism as Hermeneutic
A hermeneutic that is propositional requires three things: First, that the text be broken down into a series of propositions (in the simplest form, a statement that affirms or denies the predicate of its subject, as in, "A water molecule is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom."). Second, that the propositions are easily and, for preference, literally understood (that is, they are not metaphorical, allegorical, poetic, etc.). And third, that they are either true or false (not truthful, not something like the truth, not almost true, etc.). In short, a propositional hermeneutic, as I mean the term, is propositional (obviously), literal, and digital in relation to its truth value.
We can see how this functions, if I might pick on davefromqueens, for a moment, by looking at a snippet of his diary:
"The earth is firmly established; it can not be moved." These words, found in the psalms, mean what they say they mean and are not allegorical. The writers of the bible believe the earth to be a non moving, flat place and could never imagine that later science would disprove the flat earth theory. There was a reason Galileo was placed under house arrest. This major error is again proof of the bible's fictitiousness. [The quote in question, in you're wondering, is from 1 Chronicles 16:30, though in fairness the psalm in Chronicles 16 appears to be compiled from at least three psalms found in the book of Psalms]
The assumption is that, since the Bible is propositional, the statement "The earth is firmly established; it can not be moved" is referring to a model of the solar system in which the Earth stays still and other planets move around it. The fact that this occurs in a poem is of no matter, for "These words... mean what they say they mean and are not allegorical." This is spite of the fact that they occur in a poem about God's glory, strength, and covenant. Could they be metaphorical words? Certainly one could interpret "the world" as referring to the world order. One could also say that it is unlikely that the ancient Israelites knew that much about astronomy, and a mistaken idea about the solar system in an ancient society is of no great consequence.
To be fair to davefromqueens, let's look at a short passage from Harris, one that reduces not only textual interpretation but all of religion to propositions:
There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life. But we will find that it requires no faith in untestable propositions - Jesus was born of a virgin; the Koran is the word of God - for us to do this. [p. 16 of the softcover; emphasis mine]
Let's suppose that Harris is asserting that the phrase "Jesus was born of a virgin" is a proposition that is supported by Biblical texts. That miraculous births were and are common in Judaism, from which Christianity sprang, is no news. Nor is the fact that miraculous births - yes, even virgin births - are recorded in the annals of many religions. Nor should we find that even Caesar Augustus was thought to have been born by miraculous circumstances (his mother, Atia impregnated by Apollo - indeed, it doesn't take much work to find many similarities between the titles of Jesus and those of Augustus). We might even come to the conclusion that miraculous birth might be a statement that moves backwards in time - that is, an amazing figure must have had a miraculous birth in the eyes of a mythological mind; it more a statement about the character of the adult than the biology of the mother. To the propositionalist, however, that is not a valid line of thought.
Lest I seem to be picking on those who either don't believe the Bible or don't believe any religious claims, let me hasten to point out that many, many religious people also treat their religious texts as being full of propositions. However, it must also be pointed out that this is not the only way of reading a religious text.
Other Hermeneutic Options
I will try to be brief, for two reasons: First, I think I've already begun to illustrate some other hermeneutic concerns; second, because I realize this is getting long, and I don't want to have to split it into two or three diaries. Allow me, please, to outline.
Other hermeneutic methods recognize a variety of concerns about how we read and interpret ancient texts: What is the genre of the text? What is the social and historical situation in which it was written or compiled? What is the social location of the author, and of the reader? What assumption did the author (and do the reader) have about the divine - in terms of both character and will? This list can, in fact, get very long, but you get the picture.
In asking these questions, a variety of hermeneutics have been proposed. None are necessarily the 'right' one, but each offer advantages and disadvantages, and different viewpoints, to the interpreter. A metaphorical hermeneutic asks what the surplus of meaning is in the text; a feminist hermeneutic asks how such-and-such a text might be interpreted in favor of the liberation of women; various liberation hermeneutics ask how texts might be interpreted to favor the liberation of oppressed ethnic groups around the world, and, increasingly, other oppressed groups; an ecological hermeneutic asks how a text speaks about the interplay between the divine, humanity, and the environment. There are, of course, many more, and each plays a role in a variety of theological systems. Each brings assumptions and normative values (and, as a theologian let me say: preferably named assumptions and normative values) to the text in question as well as to the theology being considered or constructed. All of them ask: what sort of meaning do I - ought I - bring to the text? Is my interpretation consistent with itself? Is it consistent with what I know of the world?
Of course, I'm being incredibly brief here. My only point is that there are many, many methods by which to read a text, and many methods are employed by religious people around the world in a variety of different traditions.
Why does this Matter?
As I've already said, we all use hermeneutic methods when reading a text - any text, even the Constitution. Being aware of what methods we are using, why we use those methods, and the advantages and disadvantages of the method(s) we use gives us a better understanding of what we are doing when we read and interpret.
At the moment, though, there is a larger reason that this is important looming in my mind. That conservatives, fundamentalists, and extremists use propositional hermeneutics as their method of choice is no secret. The fundamentalist Christian and the Muslim extremist both want to say that their texts and their theologies are full of clear statements that are absolutely, literally true, and that any other belief about those statements is in error. This is the very danger that Harris gestures towards in his book - indeed, not only gestures, but hits repeatedly. However, I am increasingly convinced that too many people who are not believers in any text (or at least not in, ugh, that text, whatever that text might be) are engaging in the same hermeneutic method and, on occasion, defining all believers in relation to an adherence to that method.
Being aware that we are using a hermeneutic, of what sort of hermeneutic we are using, and what other hermeneutics exist in the world can, I think, lead to a much better and fuller understanding of the religious or non-religious beliefs of others (among other things). We cannot understand one another when we fail to ask the most basic questions, and in the realm of religions - or, at least those with specific canonical texts - that includes not the assumption of how one in interprets but the question, "How do you read this?"