Thursday, October 13, 2011
Liberty in Interpretation: How much is too much?
To make a religion run smoothly and not disintegrate or die out everyone must believe the same things right? They must have the same convictions, the same symbols that establish the same long lasting, powerful and pervasive moods and motivations that create a shared idea for a general order of existence. If people of a single religion do not believe the same things they actually cannot have the same religion. To what extent is this true though? How much leeway can be given in a religion without it turning into fifty different little spinoff religions? While Saint Augustine gives instruction in his book On Christian Teaching on how to effectively and properly approach the Bible and gives his readers the theological tools and guidance that they need to approach it in a Christian light he also does say that there is a certain amount of liberty that can be taken in the interpretations that one can come up with while reading the scriptures as long as they are not contrary to the faith. This is one of the things that makes Augustine such a cool guy. Although in some sense he is strict by giving people a framework in which to read the Bible, and he spends a lot of time warning people to be careful not to interpret figurative language literally and literal language figuratively; but at the same time he says, concerning passages that are not vital to understanding the Bible or God, that if the meaning is ambiguous and there are multiple possible meanings that could work it is acceptable to take the passage to mean something different from what other people might think it means. In this way Augustine keeps his readers happy by giving them some leash, not a lot of leash, but enough that people feel that they can use their own minds to come up with a solution and are not chained to a single way of thinking. Afterall, people like to have at least some freedom to think for themselves and make their own choices even if it is in little, inconsequential matters. Maybe, in an indirect way, this little bit of leash actually helps keep people on the same track of a religion rather than creating differences and discrepancies that might lead to splits in religions. I'm not saying that giving people a freedom to interpret a few phrases as they desire is what holds a religion together. But it may play a small role in keeping people happy and intellectually stimulated in a religious environment.
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Woah. Interesting observation. Looks like you fully except the idea underneath Geertz's definition, which is that religions are purely a social construct. Now, that's fine, but be aware that people who do not have a naturalistic worldview would see this matter completely differently.
ReplyDeleteI mean, what if we applied Augustine's rules to reading, say, the Iliad? Or Plato? Would it still be "giving leash", or would it be a desire for people to think rationally, based on a belief that there is truth in these writings that can be discerned by anyone who is not intentionally blinding themselves?
I could just turn it around. I'm not saying religion an science are the same thing... but compare this, for a moment, to "peer review" - isn't the idea of it that your thinking should more or less line up with that of others? That when evidence is ambiguous and irrelevant, you can interpret it as you wish, but that you must base your thinking on theories that are generally agreed on?
I really like the idea of a leash. It pictures perfectly the way there is lots of give in the act of interpretation, but also a certain bounded area in which those interpretations must fall. It makes interpretation seem like a game, which I don't thinks too far from the spirit of Augustine..
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