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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(38, 38, 38);">Thanks
to Lee and Stan for additional comments. Both make interesting and challenging
points. But I think the response to both is implicit in what they say about the
phenomenon of interpretation that in fact takes place in religious circles and
theological discussions. To quote Lee, “. . . </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">the history of the
Catholic Church is a history of argument about what the Word of God, and other
things such as Tradition, actually say.” Here the revealing words are “actually
say.” The assumption is that divinely inspired texts have an “actual” or
univocal meaning, that God does not speak ambiguously. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Rhetorical scholars have seen the persuasive
reasoning for seeing the nature of texts as such that they can and should be read
in multiple ways. And here Stan is correct to say this need not imply one
interpretation is as good as another. But it should be understood to mean there
are two or more interpretations capable of being well supported (though not
necessarily equal in everyone’s eyes). Theologians argue about the meaning of a
divinely inspired text because they assume it has “a” proper, authoritative
meaning to the exclusion of other meanings. On the other hand, secular literary
critics may point to a text, a short poem for example, disclose how it may well
have multiple meanings (some perhaps even contradictory), and then be content
to leave it at that. Theologians, in my experience, are rarely if ever content
to leave a religious text undecidable. They seek and argue for an authoritative
interpretation and in doing so prop up the authoritarian ethos of religion.
Examples to the contrary do not so much defeat my argument as expose the
ongoing process of the secularization of religion—a process so slow yet
penetrating that congregations of the future will likely wake up one day and
find their sacred texts have been moved from the “religion” to the “philosophy”
shelf in bookstores and libraries (should these latter institutions survive
long enough for this future).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font size="4">Regarding Stan’s reference to my use of the
phrase “what we know about”—this is a good point. And I agree that “faith” is a key term to examine here. </font><font size="4">Even Sam Harris—he of the book titled “The End of Faith”—must have “faith”
in the power of reason and the methodology of science. The difference between
the two faiths of science and religion, for example, is the difference between
faiths in contrasting modes of evidence—the evidence of an experience that can
be repeated (the scientific test) and the evidence of tradition, sacred texts,
and transcendent personal experience (sometimes called direct divine
communication or DDC). Both forms of evidence require faith in a process and it
becomes a question of which process one finds more persuasive as a mode of
evidence.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">These lines of analysis lead to further layers
of distinctions—which take us down many related byways. What Lee proposes—an
NCA panel for 2015—is an interesting suggestion. For me, though, it would be difficult
to do because I have so many competing projects and a very limited travel
budget. Nevertheless, Lee, if you want to draft a question or questions or an
outline of the substantive issue of such a panel, we could all take a look and
discuss it further.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Greg </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p></body></html>