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Do we take into consideration features of the language or the cultural context in which the text was written? Perhaps there are significant psychological characteristics of the human author that are relevant for understanding the meaning of the text; or perhaps we should just address the text as it stands and hope for divine inspiration where the text is most obscure. Of course introducing divine inspiration itself introduces a number of other problems. Religious traditions include interpretive traditions and include theories on how to read sacred texts. So should these theories guide our interpretations? Or need an interpretation be neutral with respect to these traditions to provide for the possibility of adjudicating among conflicting traditions. And if we are reading texts from within theological traditions, are there any definitive interpretations of texts? Wouldn't such contextualization invite relativism? These are the issues at the center of Jorge Gracia's book How Can We Know I hope you can see very quickly that Gracia has embarked upon a series of questions of tremendous intellectual richness and importance. These are not simply questions of theology. Take as a particularly relevant example the debate about "intentionalism"-the view that the meaning of a text is shaped if not determined by the author's intentions when writing the text. There are a number of classic arguments for and against that view, however, clearly, the debate shifts if the author of the text is understood from the start to be a divine being, or even an omniscient one. While before one might make the argument that historical hindsight puts us in a better position than the author to understand his or her text, such arguments will no longer work. There is nothing omniscient beings don't understand about a text they author. In fact, that fact-that an interpretation could never be adequate to the divine author's understanding-may present a problem for intentionalism in the case of revealed texts. (Indeed Gracia argues that it is such a problem.) So questions of divine authorship shed light on and transform standard, philosophical issues of interpretation theory. They force us to be more articulate about our interpretive projects; and on that score Gracia's work introduces a level of conceptual clarity unprecedented in the literature We have a severely tangled set of issues in front of us and I consider it my responsibility as the first respondent to lay the groundwork of Gracia's project so that in the course of further discussion today we can be sure we are more or less on the same page. Also, although any good book leaves you wanting more, as this one does, it's unfair to criticize an author for not writing a different book than he or she has written. Our focus today is on this book here and the questions the book sets out to answer. To do that, we need to first know the scope of the project. Over what range of cases does Gracia think his arguments operate? Naturally the Bible and the Koran are paradigmatic examples of divinely revealed texts, but how about the Sutras? Does it make sense to think of the teachings of the Buddha as divinely revealed? Connected to establishing the scope of the project is laying out the basic terminology of the project. What counts as a text? Certainly the Bible, but how about first hand testimony of visions? How about burning bushes? Is the interpretation of the revealed meaning in a burning bush the same as the interpretation of a text? What exactly do we mean by interpretation-does an understanding suffice, or must there be another text presented as an interpretation of the revelation. Finally what do we mean by revelation-the event, the meaning, the text-object itself? These fundamental terms need to be made clear to appreciate Gracia's arguments about how revealed texts should be interpreted. To eliminate the suspense and so you know from the start where we are headed, I'll tell you right now what Gracia's conclusion is. He writes "Divine revelation may be interpreted in various legitimate ways but the primary and essential component of a satisfactory interpretation of divine revelation is theological. ... A theological interpretation is not, as many mistakenly hold, the understanding of what the divinity wishes believers to understand, but rather what a theological tradition considers to be a divine message. (p. xii) Revealed texts are properly interpreted as contributions to an established religious tradition. In addition, a theological interpretation is what Gracia will call a relational interpretation as opposed to a meaning interpretation. It asks about the meaning of the text as it stands in relation to a theological tradition. Now since we are reading it in the light of a particular theological tradition, and there are a number of such traditions, we are immediately faced with the possibility of a plurality of equally legitimate readings. It is no wonder that the last two chapters of Gracia's book are devoted to the possibility of definitive meanings and the threat of relativism. And I suppose it's no surprise that these topics are also the focus of my colleagues' comments. There are two pragmatic constraints on Gracia's project. First, he is focusing solely on propositional content in revelation. Debates over interpretation are almost always over the content of the message. Revelation may inspire us, calm us, orient us, but rarely can it do this without propositional content. If revelation does reveal something that transcends all propositional expression, than "we are in a realm of enlightenment that transcends ordinary thought and speech and [which] therefore, is closed to conceptual analyses such as the ones provided in this book" (p. 11). So Gracia strictly limits the analysis to revelation of meanings with propositional content. Second, we are concerned texts divinely inspired-texts where a divine being either directly or indirectly intends to communicate meaning to believers. As a result some texts of religious traditions, such as Buddhist Sutras, don't fall within the scope of analysis. One wouldn't have theological interpretations of non-theological, religious texts. The main terms needing definition are "revelation", "interpretation" and "text." According to Gracia, three things must be in place for there to be a revelation. There must be "the facts revealed, actual or potential receivers, and an actual or potential act of receiving" (p. 14). In addition to these three general characteristics of all revelation, divine revelation includes "a divine agent, the intention to reveal on the part of the divinity, and the divine act of revealing" (p. 14). Among these elements, one could mean by "revelation" the divine act, the divinely intended meaning, the event of understanding the meaning, or the text itself. Since the text is the means to the others, and since Gracia's focus is on interpretation, he takes "revelation" to primarily refer to the text which conveys the meaning. In his words: "A divine revelation is a text through which members of a religion believe a divinity they worship intends to cause them to understand significant facts about which they might otherwise be A text, according to Gracia, is "a group of entities, used as signs, selected, arranged, and intended by an author to cause certain specific acts of understanding in an audience in a certain context" (p. 18). This definition includes such obvious cases as the Koran, but also less obvious cases like a burning bush. There is also the issue of individuating texts. If the text merely is the physical elements which makes meaning possible, then one runs into problems such as each Bible constitutes a different text. To try to get around this by focusing on the meaning rather than the constituents would undermine the point of speaking of texts as revelation. Gracia avoids the two problematic extremes-text as merely the meaning constituents and texts as merely meanings-by arguing that a text should be considered as "the entities that constitute it taken in relation to the meaning it is intended to In his discussion of interpretation, Gracia wants not only to further the analysis of what kind of interpretation is appropriate for revealed texts, but to make clear that there are a number of different kinds of interpretation and much of the debate over the nature of "the proper" interpretation dissolves when one realizes that there are a variety of kinds of interpretation. "Different kinds of interpretations of the same text may coexist without difficulty because the same interpretation2 may be intended to, and effectively, carry out several functions at once" (p. 38). The first distinction Gracia makes is between an interpretation as an understanding, as a mental act-Gracia will refer to this as interpretation1-and an interpretation as another text created to elucidate the meaning of the revelation-Gracia refers to this as interpretation2. Interpretations1 (understandings) are required for interpretations2 (texts) to be produced; yet often interpretations2 (texts) are necessary for the occurrence of interpretations1. So the two types of interpretation are clearly interconnected. In addition to these categories Gracia distinguishes meaning interpretations from relational interpretations. Meaning interpretations attempt to discern the meaning of the text as it stands. There are four candidates for what this might mean. We may be speaking of meaning "as what the historical author understood (authorial interpretation); as what a particular audience understood (audiencial interpretation); as independent of what the historical author understood or intended or what a particular audience understood (independent meaning interpretation); or as any one of these senses but including its implications" (p. 38). In contrast to meaning interpretations, relational interpretations attempt to interpret the work with relation to something else (for example, as an instance of male bias, as a sign of Plato's enduring influence, or as a contribution to an understanding of Christ's divinity). So the success of an interpretation depends on the function of the interpretation and a number of different interpretations can peacefully coexist as long as they have different functions. Gracia consistently considers both interpretations1 and interpretations2 in his analyses, though again since he is focused on texts, interpretation2 is his main focus. Even though he argues that the individuation of texts is given by "the entities that constitute it taken in relation to the meaning it is intended to convey" (p.28), suggesting that authorial intention belongs essentially to the interpretation of a text, he actually argues that no meaning interpretation alone could be the best way to interpret revealed texts. Only relational interpretations, and specifically theological interpretations, will work. Clearly, his arguments about authorial interpretations are absolutely crucial for his conclusion and they deserve our close Intentionalism, the view that authorial intentions are (at least in part) determinative of the meaning of the text takes on a distinctive bent when applied to revealed texts. First it is often the case that there are, in addition to the divine author, human authors acting as intermediaries. Among the multiple authors, whose intentions are relevant? Generally it's understood that the divine author is the real author and therefore that the intentions of the divine author are the significant ones for determining meaning. Let's consider that possibility first. Among the standard arguments against intentionalism, some no longer apply to revealed texts. Take the claim that there are times when interpreters understand a view better than the author ever did. This may be because of further information about the subject matter-we now understand Newton's theory as a special case of Einstein's theory-or about the effects of the work. Clearly, however these arguments no longer apply in the case of a divine author who presumably, even if not omniscient, understands the meaning contained in the revelation. Also the argument against intentionalism that the intent of the author could be to deceive us, in which case we no longer have a responsibility to interpret the text according to the deception, wouldn't apply as long as the divine being is understood as benevolent. Finally, the idea that the human author simply makes a mistake, perhaps misspells a word and ends up writing something different from what they intended to say, wouldn't seem to be an objection as long as the divinity is omnipotent. Seeing the divinity as all knowing, benevolent and all-powerful forecloses some arguments, though it inspires other problems, above all how to explain factual inaccuracies in Still, some arguments against intentionalism are even stronger when applied to the case of revealed texts. For example, some claim it's naive to simply speak of "the author" of a text. Not only do we sometimes misunderstand who the actual author was, Gracia's example is the common Medieval belief that Fons Vitae was written by the Christian Avicebron when in fact it was written by the Jew, Ibn Gabirol, but in the case of revealed texts we sometimes have no information of the human author and we usual have only limited information about the nature of the divine author. In addition, it is generally taken to be the case that a human could not understand anything in the same way a divine being could, so that would rule out the view that a proper interpretation is one where one understands the text as the author did. One way to try to avoid these problems would be to take advantage of the dual author status of revealed texts. The meaning of a revealed text could be determined by the intentions of the human author. It is by understanding, for example, what Paul intended to convey to the Corinthians that we understand the meaning of Paul's letter to the Corinthians and therefore the meaning of a text considered as revealed. This, then, becomes a version of the standard question of intentionalism. Gracia provides two arguments for why, in fact, this version of intentionalism is unsatisfactory. First, there is the fact that the author also functions as an audience after writing the text and may decide that the text means something quite different than what he/she thought it did. To avoid having to say that the author misunderstands their previous view we need to acknowledge that the meaning isn't established by the intentions at the time of writing. Secondly, since a revealed text is supposed to speak to people far beyond the context of its writing, we can't expect the intentions of the historical author, which will certainly be affected by contingencies of his/her time and culture, to provide an adequate guide for understanding the meaning of the text. Finally there's the possibility that we are not to understand the text as the divine author understands it, or as the intermediary author understands it, but as the divine author intends us to understand the text. Gracia argues that this is how we should understand the role of divine intentions for interpretation; the problem, of course, is discovering the intentions of the author. Discerning intentions is a difficult, some think impossible project. moreover, in the end the best evidence we have for the intentions the author had for the meaning of a text is the text itself. Gracia calls this situation "hermeneutical limbo" and as long as we remain focused only on meaning interpretation we cannot break free from this circularity. "[I]n short in order to understand a revealed text we can not refer back to the text or the intention of the divinity; we must refer to something else that gives us the key as to how to understand the text" (p. 68). Gracia adds that this something else needs to pick out the fact that some people, the intended recipients of the revelation, are in a better position to understand the revelation than others. What puts them in a better position, and what ultimately allows us to "escape the hermeneutics circle" is the theological context to which the reveled text contributes. The text is recognized as a revealed text from within a theological context and that context provides the background for understanding the meanings of the terms and Gracia's conclusion, then, is that we should think about interpreting a revealed text as providing us with the meaning intended by the divine author, however that cannot function as a criterion for a proper interpretation. As a criterion it is empty. To complete Gracia's case we need to look at his arguments that theological interpretations are the appropriate form of relational interpretation. Gracia's develops his points through criticizing the practice of relying on literary and/or sociological interpretations to the exclusion of theological interpretations. Literary interpretations focus on interpreting the literary features of the text, or if the literary features belong to the identity conditions of the text, on interpreting the text through interpreting its literary devices. Only, however, if the literary features of the text are essential to the meaning of a text is literary interpretation necessary. In fact, since in cases of revealed texts the purpose of the text is to convey information to believer, the literary features of the text are secondary to the propositional content of the text. Therefore they have little role to play in the interpretations of revealed texts where the focus of the interpretation is the propositional content of the revelation. Note that the inefficacy of literary interpretations is the case for any text with the function of producing understanding in the interpreter, and it explains the dissatisfaction with literary interpretations of philosophical In contrast, sociological interpretations generally play a crucial role in interpreting a text. Gracia acknowledges that even in developing a meaning interpretation, one may be required to introduce sociological or historical information to make the meanings transparent. For example, when Descartes says that the human body works like a machine, we need to have some understand about how machines were conceptualized at the time of Descartes. This knowledge may or may not be available from the text itself and we may need to interrogate outside sources to fully understand the text. Yet this is not enough to legitimate sociological interpretations over theological interpretations. It is one thing to use sociological information to inform our interpretation of the text, it is another thing to seek a sociological understanding through the text. Sociological interpretations are useful for understanding the author, or the times in which the author was writing, or the meanings of some of the concepts employed by the author, but they don't comprise a full understanding of the text. This is especially the case with revealed texts. Since theological views always claim validity beyond the social context of their expression, they cannot be reduced to merely features of the society in which they were written. At any rate, a sociological interpretation could only be an interpretation of revelation if included in the sociological analyses were the views of the theological community at the time of production of the text. Since the sociological analysis would need to take seriously the theological context of the text, a sociological interpretation could never simply supplant a theological interpretation. Sociological interpretations can help, but above all we need theological interpretations to properly understand revealed texts. Here's how Gracia sums up his conclusions: "Revealed texts by themselves offer no guidance as to how they are to be interpreted. Indeed, the very notions of revealed text and revelation are theological, and so are the notions of the revealing divinities, instrumental authors and believers. Theology also determines the canon of revelation, the actual interpretation of certain texts, the relative value of these texts, and their interpretations, and even the very hermeneutical principles used in interpreting. Theology governs, both epistemologically and ontologically, the interpretation of revealed texts, and only through it can the Hermeneutical Circle be broken in the interpretation of revelation. It is only through theology, moreover, that divine intentions can be gleaned and interpreters can effectively respond to the problem of textual errors. In short, only in the theological approach to the interpretation of revelation can one find solutions to the difficulties faced by other kinds of interpretations." (p. 144) That then is a quick, outline sketch of Gracia's project. The scope of inquiry is limited to propositional meaning and revelation is understood as a text. An attempt to simply capture the meaning of the text through an interpretation-whether that meaning be as intended by the author or received by the audience-fails or, at best, is trivial and we need a relational interpretation. Specifically we need an interpretation that interprets the text in terms of its place in a theological tradition. About Prof. Gracia's views, I have one clarifying question and one more general query. First, from Prof. Gracia's arguments it is not clear how he would address cases of recent or new religious organizations, specifically when there is no established theological tradition. I have an example in mind. There is an "organization" of people who call themselves "readers of the Urantia Book." This group is based on, they claim, the revealed teachings of many deities to two individuals between 1911 and 1934. The book itself, published in 1955, is the largest published text claiming to be divinely revealed; it easily exceeds two thousand pages of "information." What's interesting about the Urantia Readers for our purpose is that there is an extensive revealed text with no established theological tradition to adjudicate interpretation and, remarkably enough given its only been in existence for 50 years or so, there is a long history of schisms and interpretive conflict. So I would wonder how such cases where the theological tradition has not yet developed would be My more general query is this. As the scope of the argument is limited to propositional meaning, and as Prof. Gracia wants to not constrain himself to omnipotent, omniscient deities, I suspect that his arguments for the necessity of relational interpretations goes beyond the limits of revealed texts. As it turns out, I believe there is only one place where the fact the text is divinely revealed turns out to be absolutely crucial for his argument, and that is in the argument for theological interpretations. I would expect many of his arguments to apply to the importance of philosophical interpretations of philosophical texts. A number of his arguments against intentionalism-for example that the text is supposed to be presenting results true beyond their cultural context-apply to philosophical texts, as do his arguments against literary and sociological interpretations. So my suspicion is that although the project was established to see how revealed texts should be interpreted, because of the way the project was structured, the results hold for any text where the aim is to communicate propositions. To properly interpret Descartes we have to understand how his writings form a contribution to an ongoing philosophical tradition of inquiry where certain questions are understood as significant and requiring answer, where certain theoretical tools are considered useful for that purpose, and where certain terms and definitions are taken for granted. Sociological interpretations may help, but they can't replace philosophical interpretations-interpretations that interpret the text as a contribution to a philosophical tradition. In the end then, I suspect that the modesty of Gracia's project actually, extends his results beyond their intended scope and leaves the question of the interpretation of revealed texts as a corollary of a more general theory of the interpretation of texts written to convey prepositional content. Bibliography: Word Count: 3922
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