Introduction

What is hermeneutics all about? The term "hermeneutics" has a history. It derives from a Greek word which means "interpretation". Traditionally, it has been used to designate the study of the rules regulating an adequate interpretation of Literary texts. In ecclesial circles it denoted and still denotes "the science of the methods of exegesis"(1). While the ecclesial use of this term goes back only to the 17th century, the reality for which it stands goes as far back as the very beginning of the Church. The Church, from her very birth, has been a great interpreter.

In the contemporary era, however, this term has been more and more often used by philosophers with a much larger connotation. In philosophical circles, it is now currently used to mean" a general understanding of reality obtained from a specific perspective"(2). To speak of hermeneutics today means to speak of a vision of the world conscious of its particular stand-point. So there is talk of marxist hermeneutics, psychoanalytic hermeneutics. existential hermeneutics, etc.

Given such a development in the use of the term "hermeneutics" and in the reality meant by it. it seems no longer possible at present to treat hermeneutics simply as a set of rules for good interpretation. Even Biblical hermeneutics is called today to become a "philosophy of interpretation" and a "theology of interpretation". The importance and the urgency of answering this call is clear on at least three counts: a) the uniqueness of the Word that is to be interpreted: Word of God as well as word of man; b) the universality of this unique Word, which is addressed to all people, in all places and for all times: c) the pluralism of attitudes which shape the person as an interlocutor of this unique Word. Today this pluralism is not only a matter of different social and intellectual backgrounds. Today it is a racial and cultural pluralism which runs much deeper than the discrepancies between systems of thought within any given culture. As the pluralism runs deeper, so must we also look for a deeper and wider basis of consent, or at least of dialogue.

What I shall try to do in this paper is certainly a far from adequate attempt to meet this need. In practice, I shall proceed from the newer and larger sense of hermeneutics to the older and narrower sense. That is, I shall go from hermeneutics as philosophy to hermeneutics as the science of basic principles of exegesis.

For all its inadequacy, this paper intends to be a tribute of gratitude to the participants in the seminar on "Christological Texts in the New Testament: Scripture and Tradition", held at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in the spring of 1983, under the guidance of Prof. Ignace de La Potterie, S.J. Most of the ideas expressed here are the fruit of the lively mutual "contamination" that took place during that seminar (3).

Sacra Scripura

aliquomodo

cum legenitbus crescit.

(Smaragde)

Somehow

Sacred Scripture

grows together with those who read it.

PART I: Hermeneutics as Mediation between Being and Person

1.1. An unusual encounter on the cross-roads of thoughts

The outline of hermeneutical theory that I arn going to present owes much to the hermeneutical reflection that is going on in contemporary philosophical circles. I am thinking in particular of the German philosopher H. G. Gadamer (4), the French P. Ricoeur (5), and especially the Italian L. Pareyson (6). At the same time, this theory situates itself in the stream of interpretative insights that has kept flowing throughout the exegetical tradition of the Christian church.

There is at least one thing in common between these two areas of hermeneutical reflection, namely the sense of mystery, whether in the form of the mystery of God and man or in the form of the ineffability of being, the transcendence of truth etc. Of great significance for me also is the fact that this sense of mystery is equally characteristic of much Oriental thought. This unusual encounter on the cross-roads of human thought can be seen as a sign that this hermeneutical theory is rooted in a sound common-sense philosophy, that "philosophia perennis", which is the basis of dialogue between persons, peoples and cultures.

On the other hand, I am well aware that modem people have deep-rooted misgivings about any talk of mystery and transcendence. It is a fact that contemporary philosophical and theological endeavours have been radically influenced by the "masters of suspicion"(7): Nietzsche has taught us to beware in thought and language of ideological bias; Marx of social alienation; Freud of unconscious sublimation. They have made us aware of the presence of hidden forces which tear apart the conceived thought and the expressed word from crude, unexpressed reality. This suspicion, of course, has even more far-reaching derivations. It is the daughter of Kant's "Copemican revolution" and farther back of Descartes' methodical doubt. Since then. it has gone beyond being merely simply a question of method and has made itself into a philosophy destructive of all absolute certainties.

Characteristic of thinkers like Gadamer, Ricoeur and Pareyson. instead, is the attempt to cope with this suspicion in a positive and constructive way. It is not surprising, therefore, if the coping with the suspicion surpasses the boundaries of a pragmatic science, devoted to the exposition of the meaning of a text, and becomes a philosophy in its own right.

1.2.What kind of history?

The starting point of this philosophy is an awareness which is shared by most contemporary thinkers and which can welt provide a fruitful basis for dialogue. I mean the awareness of the historical conditioning and of the radical finiteness of man. which is often also called the historical consciousness of modern man. Man is rightly seen as being constitutively signed by his being-in-history. Man is essentially a historical being (8).

Most thinkers would probably agree with these general statements. As soon as we try to qualify them. however, there takes place a dramatic parting of the ways. There are in fact two opposite ways of understanding history at this basic stage. Do we understand history as closed on itself, whether at the level of the individual or at the universal level of mankind? Or do we opt for an open view of history, as including a transcendent dimension both at the individual and at the universal level?

Since we are in the hermeneutical field, we can express this option thus: do we opt for a closed or for an open relationship of history and truth? An open relationship of history and truth entails the presupposition that history is the manifestation of a mystery greater than its controllable events; that history, at the level both of the single event and of the totality of the events, has the symbolic function of pointing to a reality deeper and greater than itself. On the opposite side, a closed relationship of history and truth entails the presupposition that history is reducible to itself: that it does not have the symbolic function of expressing a reality beyond itself, that it has no relationship to any mystery whatsoever other than the unpredictability of its own unfolding. It is clear, then, that this openness or closedness is in relationship to a mystery, the mystery of existence itself, of being itself. It consists in the acceptance or in the denial of this mystery. Now, the hermeneutical philosophy I am following, together with thirty centuries of Judaeo-Christian tradition, has opted for openness to mystery. But in doing so, it has had the merit of demonstrating the inevitability of opting for one or the other of the two alternatives, so that the denial of transcendence is shown to be no less an option that the acceptance of it. It is evident, therefore, that I have been speaking purposely of "options". This does not mean that the acceptance or denial of mystery or transcendence excludes any rational ground. Rather it means that the rational ground alone is insufficient to induce assent, without an element of openness, of dedication, ultimately, of faith.

We have left behind us very quickly the common ground on which we had started off, that is, the experience of man's historical nature. However, before doing so. we have somewhat enlarged the area of this common ground, by pointing out the necessary presence of some basic presuppositions in any kind of philosophical endeavour. "Precomprehension" is a term that expresses well the nature of these presuppositions, insofar as they are more akin to vision and intuition than to reasoning and deduction. The positive precomprehension of accepting mystery is actually based on the intuition of our historical being as finite and of Being itself as infinite. The affirmation or the denial of this intuition constitutes the parting of the ways.

1.3. Truth as the self-revelation of Being to the person

We have seen that it is precisely through the experience of our historical finiteness that we have an inkling of the infinite mystery. The person-in-history comes into touch with Being as such through the multiplicity of beings and, first of all, through the experience of one's own existence. This fact is rich with consequences for our hermeneutical theory.

On the one hand, truth is precisely this relationship holding between Being and the person. Without Being or without person there is no truth. On the other hand, the comprehension of Being as such is mediated by the multiplicity of beings, so the only adequate way of knowing the truth will be a hermeneuticat one. It is interpretation that makes possible the encounter of Being and person, and therefore the attainment of truth. Hermeneutics does so by explicitating the witness given by the multiplicity of beings to the presence of Being as such. When this explicitation attains its goal, then we have truth. Truth is the self-revelation of Being to the human person, who is capable of perceiving it thanks to its interpretative dynamism (9).

This dynamism unfolds between the two poles of finiteness and infinity, making the person-in-history the "organon" of the self-revelation of Being in truth. In this dynamism we may distinguish two aspects: the "original" aspect (originality), and the "originary" aspect (fidelity). The "original" aspect of interpretation is that quality of comprehension which is peculiar to each person in its individuality, marked by both space and time. The "originary" aspect, instead, is that quality of comprehension which is common to all successful interpretations, which attain to a grasp of transhistorical truth. These two aspects, though distinguishable, are not separable. Actually, the second is possible only through the first. But the second has the nature of a goal, while the first has only the nature of an instrument, valid only inasmuch as it helps to attain the goal. Authentic interpretation will, therefore, steer clear both of a narcissistic ideal of originality for its own sake and of an impossible effort of being absolutely impersonal (10).

Interpretation, thus understood, overcomes the opposition between naive realism and gnoseological scepticism. In interpretation the person is not merely a subject, but an interlocutor, and being and truth are not merely on object, but a source of meaning. Interpretation is aware that truth is not reducible to its formulations. Rather it is incarnated in them. that is, both present in and beyond them. Interpretation sees itself as the never definitively attained possession of an infinite, before which it feels both the exigency of faithfulness and gift of personal freedom. It believes neither in the absolute ineffability of the infinite nor in the total enunciation of truth. For it, neither depth without evidence, nor evidence without depth are worthy of the per-son-in-history. Instead, it knows that truth is attainable without being exhaustible. It brings human speech and thought from being merely expressive of contingency to being revelational of transcendence. And in doing so, it experiences the fundamental congeniality that links truth and the person-in-history. Truth is penetrated by means of sympathy, it is discovered by means of capturing its wave-length. Through this exercise in congeniality, the person-in-history finds itself drawn both beyond itself and deeper into itself (11).

1.4. the hermeneutical rehabilitation of time

I intend now to underline two or three aspects which have only been hinted at in the previous paragraph. It will have been noticed how history has been valued as a mediator of the self-revelation of Being in truth. History and finiteness are not seen as negative characteristics of human existence, but on the contrary as that which makes possible a dialogue with the infinity and the transcendence of truth, a dialogue which, taking place in history, is related to the past as well as to the future. The person-in-history is both given and becoming, both "object and project"(12). This is true of the individual and of mankind. In this perspective, time assumes an irreplaceable hermeneutical function. Its openness to the past and to the future provides an openness to the inexhaustibility of truth. The multiplicity of interpretations is not only produced but also tested by time. In fact, how does one distinguish between adequate and inadequate interpretations? An essential role is played in this distinction by the flow of time. The Italian poet A. Manzoni, on hearing the news of the death of Napoleon, asked himself :

Fu vera gloria?

Ai posteri l' ardua sentenza (13)

To see whether an interpretative line ends up in a cul-de-sac or not, it must be followed up to its end. But this often takes time. Consequently, temporal distance is no longer seen as an insurmountable obstacle to the attainment of truth but as an indispendable help in seeing clearly the difference between true and false interpretations of existence. On the other hand, is it necessary to point out that we are falling into the excess of historicism, if we simply consider time as the mother of truth? But if time is not the mother of truth, it is certainly "the midwife of truth"(14). If it is not the source of truth, it is certainty "the well of truth"(15). Time does not beget truth, but it assists at its birth in us. The hermeneutical interlocutor may be distant, opaque and dark, but the stream of history is a catalyst that makes it transparent and luminous. No wonder, then, that the "history of the impact" of a text (16) is an essential part of the enquiry into its meaning.

1.5. The hermeneutical rehabilitation of precomprehension

At the basis of every interpretative enterprise there is a set of presuppositions. We have seen already the most basic of them, the option for an open or a closed view of history and existence. Our past experience, both as individuals and as humankind, provides us with a whole net of such presuppositions. The belief that one could radically do away with them by means of scientific objectivity is one of the most preposterous illusions recorded in the history of thought. There is hermeneutical significance in this inevitability of some kind of pre-comprehension. This inevitability is in reality a s'9" of our finiteness and being-in-history. In order to jump out of all pre-comprehension one would have to jump out of history, which is absurd.

This is not to say, however, that all presuppositions are valid. Rather, they provide a perspective, which both makes possible, and is modified by, the self-revelation of Being in truth. This self- revelation. which is an ongoing process, will show which of the pre-suppositions cannot stand when confronted with truth. Sterile suspicion on the whole of knowledge is thus replaced by fertile "interrogation"(17) in dialogue with the totality of being which gradually (and inexhaustibly) reveals itself. Hermeneutics consists in this ongoing dialectic between one's total understanding and new particular instances of understanding, in such a way that the whole illumines the part and the part may modify the whole. This basic acceptance of pre-comprehension, together with the readiness continuously to readjust it in the light of new truth disclosures, has been called the "herrmeneutical circle"(18).

1.6. The hermeneutical rehabilitation of personal involvement

In the light of the discovery of the positivity of basic pre-comprehension, personal involvement also begins to be seen as having a positive significance for an adequate hermeneutics. Not without reason, personal encounter is often used as a valid model of the hermeneutical encounter. As a matter of fact. what is at stake in both is the genuinity of self-revelation and of perception of meaning. It may be useful, therefore, to dwell for a moment on the dynamism of personal encounter. A genuine personal encounter grows more and more intense thanks to a dialectic or ""oscillation" between involvement and detachment, familiarity and extraneousness, comprehension and non-comprehension. As D. Bonhoeffer's well-known saying goes: "Community is a danger for you, unless you know how to remain alone. And solitude is a danger for you, unless you are involved in a community"(19).

In the same way. interpretation demands both involvement and detachment. We are people of the 20th century, so there is perhaps no need to stress the aspect of detachment: the success of the scientific endeavour in all areas of life is sufficient evidence of its fruitfulness. What needs to be stressed, instead, is the interpretative value of personal involvement, which has been for too long degraded to the level of irrelevance, if not downright negativity, with regard to comprehension and knowledge. The consequences are also there for all to see.

In our context, detachment would mean my critical awareness of my presuppositions as well as of the historical conditioning of human comprehension. Involvement, on the other hand, would consist in valuing my own personal experience of life and history. This value is based on the radical "affinity" of all historical experience, which makes it possible for my personal experience to enlighten other historical experiences. This mutual interaction of present and past historical experiences is called by Gadamer "the fusion of the horizons", namely, of the present and past horizons. By fusion I think he means not identification, but an encounter which is marked both by distance and proximity: the distance of being a past experience, retraceable only by means of witnesses of various kinds, and the proximity of being just another historical experience, perfectly congenial to the person-in-history (20). The perception of this congeniality demands that the interpreter do not abstract from his being-in-history. On the contrary, the more genuinely involved he is in his own historical experiences, the more capable will he be to perceive the message that comes to him from other such experiences. In passing, let it be noted that the capacity for this "fusion of horizons" is the sign of an integrated personality, if we agree that the ingredients of such a personality are "a realistic contact with the present, a reverential continuity with the past, and a courageous responsibility for the future"(21).

1.7. Truth, neither ineffable nor reducible, but inexhaustible

Our starting point has been the experience of our historical and finite existence. Now it is time to sound a warning against a twofold danger that lurks just around the corner of our rehabilitation of time, pre-comprehension and personal involvement. In the first place there is the danger of resolving in a unilateral and extreme way the tension that exists between the finite and the infinite, between hermeneutics and ontology, between language and rationality, between person-in-history and truth. This unilateral and extreme solution is that of limiting the manifestation of truth, being and the infinite by identifying it "sic et simpliciter" with the experience of this manifestation in the language and interpretative activity of the person-in-history.

Against this aberration it must be stressed that the person-in-history receives the manifestation of the infinite precisely as such, that is, as infinite, as endlessly greater than itself. Therefore, the language which bears witness to this manifestation contains it more in the form of a seed than in that of a full explicitation.

The other danger lurking behind our hermeneutical endeavour is the claim that truth is absolutely ineffable. This second aspect of the danger can be traced back to two opposite and extreme positions with regard to the understanding of the Being-as-such which we have been talking about.

One is the position of those who conceive Being as such not as positive existence, but as nothingness. A little thought will show that this amounts to the same thing as the absolutization of finiteness.

The other extreme is the position of those who identify "tout court" Being-as-such with the Infinite Personal God. No wonder that these people are overwhelmed with such a sense of divine mystery as to opt for absolute ineffability.

By now it must be clear that we do not subscribe to the first extreme. An explanation may be in order as to why we do not subscribe to the second, either. In order to pass from Being-as-such to the Infinite Personal Being, we think that the whole enquiry of an adequate natural theology should be included in our hermeneutics. No direct identification of Being as such with Absolute Being is possible. Sound rational evidence must be provided for the fact that Being-as-such finds its ultimate explanation only in the existence of the Infinite Personal Absolute Being who is God. We make our own, therefore, the end term of such an adequate natural theology. This end term is God. who is both knowable and irreducible, immanent and transcendent, meaningful and mysterious.

To summarize and conclude, our hermeneutics does not subscribe. to any absolutization of finiteness. On the other hand, it does not subscribe to any mysticism of the ineffable, either. It holds, in fact, that in human language and rationality there takes place a true manifestation of Being in truth. The only concept of truth that does justice to this situation is that proposed by L. Pareyson. namely, the concept of inexhaustibility. Truth is present in its concrete historical formulations, but at the same time it is also beyond them. The person-in-history is more situated inside the truth than set up in front of it. The potentially infinite number of concrete formulations of truth must confront one another in an incessant dialogue which will allow the person-in-history to have a better comprehension of inexhaustible truth. Once more. the indispensable function of time and of personal dedication to the investigation of truth is vindicated. No one individual. no one historical period, can claim to have exhausted the exploration of truth, or rather to have opened itself totally to the manifestation of truth. Each individual and each period, instead, is called to make his original contribution to this opening up of truth (22). As Pope John Paul II said in his peace message for the year 1985: "Man's journey through history is like a pilgrimage of discovery".

NOTE: The more general philosophical terms I shall be using, (such as being, existence, reality, history, person, time, truth, mystery, finite, infinite, unity, multiplicity, etc.), will be used with the connotation that is current in the "common sense philosophy" or "perennial philosophy" that I speak of in this article. The "common sense philosophy" connotation of these terms is close to, though not identical with, the connotation of the implicitly metaphysical terms of the language of the man-in-the-street. So, for example, like the man-in-the-street, I consider the terms "being", "reality". "existence" as synonymous. I am well aware, of course, that this is not the case in some types of contemporary philosophy.

Unless otherwise stated, references by author's name are to the works listed in the bibliography.

1. F. L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (eds). The Oxford Dictonary of the Christian Church. 1974, 1985, 2nd edition revised, P.641, "Hermeneutics".

2. Mondin, p. 13. Unless otherwise stated, the translations from other languages into English are mine.

3. The other members of the seminar were: Nicola Di Tolve, Marco Frisina, Joseph Sama, Giuseppe Sciorio, Fabrizio Tosolini. Pierantonio Tremolada. Michael Waldstein. I would like to thank also Rev. Fr. Theobald Diederich O.F.M., of the Studium Biblicum, Hong Kong, for reading my paper and giving some valuable comments.

4. By putting these three thinkers together. I do not mean that they form a school. On the contrary, they reveal widely divergent sensitivities. It is precisely this fact, however, that renders all the more significant their convergence on some basic hermeneutical insights. Some of these insights can be traced back to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. I have become acquainted with the philosophy of Gadamer thanks to the presentation made of it by Prof. l. de La Potterie. I would recommend reading Gadamer's Le probleme de ja conscience historique, (cf. Bibliography, no. 8).

5. I have become acquainted with Ricoeur especially through the presentation of his insights in the work of C. Helou, a book worth reading.

6. Introduced to him by Prof. l de La Potterie. I recommend reading at least part of his Verita e interpretazione, pp. 53-90, and the presentation of his hermeneuticat thought in Modica, esp. pp. 87-159.

7. The expression must be Ricoeur's Cf. Helou. p. 12. Ricoeur has probably derived it from Nietzsche's expressions "Kunst des Misstrauens" and "Schule des Verdachtes": cf Pareyson, p.116, and the note on pp. 247-248.

8. Cf. Gadamer, II problema, pp.27-28.

9. Cf. Modica. pp. 90-91.

10. For the distinction original-originary, cf. Modica, pp.91-93. But there is a tension in Pareyson's thought between seeing originality as instrument (pp.98-101) and as effect (p.93). For the expression "organon of self-revelation", cf. p.95. For the last sentence of the paragraph, cf. p.103.

11. This paragraph is a digest of Pareysonian expressions: Modica, subject-object, cf. p. 104; irreducibility to formulations, cf. p. 105; never definitively attained possession of an infinite, cf. p. 106; faithfulness and freedom, cf. p.117; expressive and revelational, cf. pp. 129-136.

12. Cf. Gadamer, II problema, p.54.

13. Ode 5 Maggio: "Was it true glory? Let posterity pass this arduous judgement".

14. "Veritas filia temporis" (Truth is a daughter of time) is an adage of Aulus Gellius in his Notitiae Atticae, quoted by de La Potterie in class (henceforth cited as de La Potterie, Course). "Time is not the mother, but the midwife of truth" is a saying of John Milton, quoted by Pareyson. p.85. The reference is given on p.224 as Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Complete Works, Vol. II. p.225, Yale 1959.

15. The expression is Gadamer's. quoted by de La Potterie, Course.

16. My translation of Gadamer's "Wirkungsgeschichte".

17. Gadamer, II problema, pp.90-91. He calls the "discovery" of pre-comprehension "revolutionary", ibid., p.81.

18. Gadamer, ibid., pp.78-79.

19. I have been unable to find the exact reference.

20. Cf. Gadamer, II problema, p.78 for the concept of affinity. "Fusion of horizons" quoted in de La Potterie. La nozione, p.111.

21. D. Maruca, Caring Relationships and a Pastoral Spirituality, Some Aids, Rome 1983, ad usum privatum. Cf. Gadamer. II problema, p.28.

22. The danger of an "absolutization of finiteness", paradoxically combined with a "mysticism of the ineffable" seems to have been incurred by Heidegger. Cf. Gadamer, II problema, pp.27. 87. Together with the distinctions between original and originary, between expressive and revelational, this seems to be the third distinctive contribution made by Pareyson. For this concept of inexhaustibility, cf. Modica, pp. 119-126; inside the truth, rather than in front of it, cf. p. 105: dialogue between interpretations, cf. pp. 153-156.