Hermeneutical Charity

Or... Why we should read a sacred text as sacred

Origen of Alexandria

“Here, too, the gods are present.”

- Heraclitus

I learned pretty early on about the plasticity of theological language, and the elasticity of its philosophical apparatus. This was the more subtle lesson of the Platonists I read then and read now. I learned to see language and writing less like propositions and more like symbols towards Noesis (intuitive knowledge beyond words). I learned this from David Bentley Hart in his descriptions of what interpreting the Bible should be like. I took this a step further with Schuon, who actually wrote like his words were symbols. He cared less for the perceived precision of contemporary philosophical discourse and more for the polyvalence of his meanings. I read Schuon like he wrote, for the symbols rather than the words as such.

The conviction for this approach comes from our view of the first principle, that it pervades all things, and that seen according to this principle, we see things as they truly are, in their divinity, and their corresponding infinity. We see (or practice to see) the truth of things. To be a bit more clear about the principles of this hermeneutic, we strive to see the ways in which each and everything can be true.

Of course, in practical life, the provisional distinction between true and false is necessary. We cannot live without it. However, on the scale of universal divinity, we see things insofar as they have being, insofar they exist. In the Hermeneutic of unity, “everything exists, it’s just a question of how”. Given unity as divinity, and the hermeneutic previously mentioned, we can see the mystics’ vision of all things as the manifestation of divinity, of all things as “full of Gods”. This is the highest divine stance towards the world, and it is the stance that should apply to the sacred text. In fact, it should grant any text divinity, if we accept enough of this divine charity. To read a text as sacred in this particularly devotional manner is to subject it to the same hermeneutic of unity, to find the ways in which it is true and good in the most sublime sense. This is the impulse behind the “non-literal” readings of ordinarily troubling texts. It is also the logic behind their infinity of possible interpretation. Of course, in practice, because of context, history, and plain human limitations, it is not possible to read every book like this; but it is possible for those books we already have who lend themselves to this. Hermeneutical Charity in this sense is this a reflection of the Gods' own charity, for they give each thing to itself, to each its existence as its truth, and to each its existence as its good, the root that is the fruit that is the seed only temporarily obscured by the failures of intellectual classification. By doing this, we become it; we become the integral soul by performing integration for the things our souls encounter. As my teacher quipped in one of his notes, “save the myth so that it will save you”.