y information to believer, the literary featuresof the text are secondary to the propositional content of the text. Therefore they have little role to play in theinterpretations of revealed texts where the focus of the interpretation is the propositional content of therevelation. Note that the inefficacy of literary interpretations is the case for any text with the function of producingunderstanding in the interpreter, and it explains the dissatisfaction with literary interpretations of philosophicaltexts. In contrast, sociological interpretations generally play a crucial role in interpreting a text. Gracia acknowledgesthat even in developing a meaning interpretation, one may be required to introduce sociological or historicalinformation to make the meanings transparent. For example, when Descartes says that the human body workslike a machine, we need to have some understand about how machines were conceptualized at the time ofDescartes. This knowledge may or may not be available from the text itself and we may need to interrogateoutside sources to fully understand the text. Yet this is not enough to legitimate sociological interpretations overtheological interpretations. It is one thing to use sociological information to inform our interpretation of the text, itis another thing to seek a sociological understanding through the text. Sociological interpretations are useful forunderstanding the author, or the times in which the author was writing, or the meanings of some of the conceptsemployed by the author, but they don't comprise a full understanding of the text. This is especially the case withrevealed texts. Since theological views always claim validity beyond the social context of their expression, theycannot be reduced to merely features of the society in which they were written. At any rate, a sociologicalinterpretation could only be an interpretation of revelation if included in the sociological analyses were the viewsof the theo...
