PART II: Christ-Truth as Foundation of Christian Hermeneutics

2.1. Christ-Truth as ultimate hermeneutical ground

Here, I think, is the point of insertion of Christian hermeneutics with its unique and incredible claim (precomprehension?) that inexhaustible truth has taken body and speech in the person-event of Jesus of Nazareth. Does this claim nullify all that has been said up to now? The answer is no. In fact, while on the one hand Christian faith claims that inexhaustible truth has been posited once and for all in the person-event of Jesus Christ, on the other hand it predicates of this person-event the same inexhaustibility that we have predicated of truth itself. Hence there follows that the significance of this person-event cannot be fully exhausted by anyone in history. Jesus of Nazareth, because of his unique sharing in the mystery of God, remains for ever beyond the total reach of any method and of any human formulation.

If all this is true. then the person-event of Jesus Christ assumes an incomparable hermeneutical significance and so does his Spirit-filled social body, the Church, which is being constructed along the banks of the river of history. The unheard of claim to supreme hermeneutical significance has been made by Jesus himself: "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Mt. 11:27b). "I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). His Church has seen him from the very beginning in this function: "I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth; and he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne....... And they sang a new song, saying. 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals..." (Rev 5:6-7, 9a). His is the Spirit that is leading mankind into the fullness of truth...(cf. John 16:13a).

In these words lies a challenge of unfathomable daring to the hermeneutical intentions of man, at the same time fulfilling them and calling upon them to go beyond themselves. This is the challenge that offers an unhoped for total rehabilitation of history by making it the receptacle of the uncircumscribable mystery of God. No wonder, therefore, if in the Church which is the historical effect of- the person-event of Jesus Christ, we find a concrete realization of the hermeneutical theory sketched out above.

2.2. The hermeneutical significance of tradition as inclusive of Scripture.

The Church sees her arche in the person-event of Jesus Christ. This is an arche which enshrines a mystery of inexhaustible depth. In this mystery she is vitally involved. She is in it. she is not merely faced by it. Sacred Scripture is the expression of her self-consciousness of her own vital union with the very mystery of God thanks to the mediation of Jesus Christ.

Materia sacrae scripturae totus Christus est.

caput et membra (Glossa ordinaria) (23).

Not unnaturally, then, does she see her living tradition not as an unbridgeable abyss between her and her arche, but on the contrary as the terrain which stretches between the present and her arche, and which makes possible her access to it. On this terrain. Scripture is simply the portion of ground closest to the arche. Scripture is part and parcel of the life of the Church. In it she recognizes "bone of her bones and flesh of her flesh".

Arca testamenti ecclesia vocatur,

in qua duorum testamentorum virtus

digito Dei scripta est (Alcuin) (24).

She approaches her arche with a basic precomprehension (faith) which is the fruit of personal contact with the arche both exteriorly through the normal human communication and interiorly through the communication of the Spirit. For the first witnesses, the normal human communication meant direct contact with the person-event of Christ. For us believers of the present, this communication implies the mediation of all believers that have preceded us. This mediation (especially that of Scripture and Tradition) in a sense is certainly a barrier between us and the originary person-event of Jesus Christ. It demands in fact a not too simple effort of semantic transference (25). Nobody, moreover, denies the necessity erf being critically aware that the testimony of Scripture is charged with the temporality and personality of the inspired authors, and that tradition is also a chain of transmission almost imponderably charged with the heritage of the different ages of history. At the same time, however, the Church is not blind to the fact that this supposed barrier has a high hermeneutical value: in the case of Scripture because of the total personal involvement of the witnesses: in the case of tradition, because of the temporal distance which acts as a filter of the soundness of every new attempt at comprehension. As for the interior communication of the Spirit, this is of even greater hermeneutical significance. Only the Spirit can bear witness to the transcendent quality of the person-event of Jesus Christ. Now, this Spirit is not something detached from the Church. It is, instead, the very life and soul of the Church.

The Church's approach to her arche is based, therefore, on a twofold witness, interior and exterior. The Church's self-awareness of this reality has produced the two twin doctrines of inspiration and canonicity of her scriptures. The first embodies the Spirit's witness to the transcendent character of the person-event of Jesus Christ; the second, the testimony of the eyewitnesses of this person-event to its historical character. A consideration of these two doctrines will highlight the hermeneutical value of this twofold witness.

2.3. The hermeneutical significance of the inspiration of Scripture

Firstly, this doctrine ensures the symbolic value of the scriptural text. It testifies to the fact that a divine mystery is expressed by the human word. Without inspiration, there would be no direct link between the person-event of Jesus Christ, which is the originary “locus” of God’s revelation, and its presentation in the text.

The doctrine of inspiration sets up this link in two stages: in the first place, it asserts the genuinity of the relationship holding between the source of revelation and the expression of this revelation in the scriptures. We are here at the stage of the production of the sacred text, say. the gospels. This text does not come from the source of revelation itself. Jesus is reported to have written not on parchment but only on the sand......The contact of the authors of the gospels with the source was itself mediated-by vision, by hearing, by understanding, in a word, by a linguistic event. Thanks to this mediation and that of the Spirit, the eyewitness receives the manifestation of the truth present in Jesus Christ. He interiorises this reception and eventually bears witness to it in word and writing. We have then a new linguistic event, already at a remove from the source of revelation. It is only the continued presence of the Spirit which establishes the continuity between the revelation and the witness borne to it.

The second stage in the hermeneutical assistance of the Spirit comes when a reader or listener enters into contact with the source of revelation (the person-event of Jesus Christ) through the mediation of the inspired text. We are at the level not of the production, but of the use of the text. We have seen that the text itself is a linguistic event already at a remove from the source of revelation. The encounter with the text, as a consequence, is situated at two removes from that same source. Hence the need of the Spirit's presence in the community presenting the text and in the individual receiving it; it is only this presence which again guarantees the continuity between the integral meaning intended by the author and its perception by the listener or reader of today. This continuity consists in the authentic symbolic value of the text, which in human words expresses a reality that is both human and divine. It is true that every human word is already symbolic of a deeper reality. But in the case of Scripture the symbolic function to which the text is summoned transcends the capacity of the human word, which therefore needs the assistance of the testimony of the Spirit.

This assistance is the ground of the Church's capacity to draw the full spiritual sense from the letter of the scriptures. Just as, on the level of history, temporality ensures the link between the present horizon and the horizon of the arche, so, on the level of transcendence, the activity of the Spirit is indispensable for establishing that affinity which is the condition sine qua non for the possibility of interpretation.

Secondly, and consequently upon this first point, the doctrine of inspiration shows how the reference to the transcendent mystery inherent in the text is beyond the reach of pure method. Method must be enlivened from within by faith, a living experience which is vitally transmitted by the historical community of the Church. The "sensus fidei" is crucial.

Thirdly, inspiration anchors the whole of Scripture to a unique source, the Spirit, present in the multiplicity of the human authors. This is the basic justification for seeing Scripture as a unified whole, whose centre is Jesus Christ. The "analogia fidei" is therefore a valid interpretative instrument.

Fourthly and lastly, this doctrine brings to perfection the view of history and truth as related in openness, that is, as allowing for the transcendence of truth over history. A closed view is incapable of doing justice to the peculiar kind of witness that the biblical text purports to be.

2.4. The hermeneutical significance of the canonicity of Scripture

In the current of historical witnesses to the self-revelation of transcendent truth in the person-event of Jesus Christ, there is a privileged sector: the apostolic witness. It is privileged because it is the witness of those who have been in direct personal contact with the person-event of Jesus Christ. The self-revelation of God resides precisely in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth in the integrity of his reality and development. This man. in this time and in this place, is the decisive revelation of the mystery of God and man. That is why the church is conscious that about him the essential could be said and has been said only by those who "from the beginning were the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (Luke 1:2b). If the historical reality of Jesus Christ is the true sign of the transcendent mystery hidden in him, then those who have been historically sharers of his experience are the primary witnesses to the significance of this sign. The New Testament is nothing but the concretization in literary form of this witness. From- then on, it is no longer possible to add any essential feature to the face of truth. Instead, there is handed on to all successive generations the task of penetrating, deepening, interiorizing the inexhaustible richness contained in the apostolic witness to Jesus-Truth. Still, the "sensus auctoris" is' normative.

This, then, is the crucial significance of canonicity for hermeneutics. Canonicity traces once for all the boundaries within which it will be fruitful to dig our wells in search of the living water of truth. Jesus Christ is a revelational person-event which exhausts all human attempts at comprehension. This person-event exhausts also all possibility of manifesting the truth.

Christus totam novitatem attulit

semetipsum afferens (Irenaeus) (26).

These canonical boundaries have been drawn by the living experience of the Church, which, as the Spirit-filled social body of Christ, is connaturally capable of recognizing the essential features of the physiognomy of her head. This living experience has run through the centuries in the "conscience collective de l'Eglise" (Blondel) (27), and it has become concretely recognizable in the declarations of the Councils and of the Magisterium. Interestingly enough, the spokesmen of this collective conscience of the Church are linked by uninterrupted succession through the gift of the Spirit with the first eyewitnesses. Is not all this a sign that history is taken terribly seriously?

Yes, canonicity stands as a bulwark for the historical character of this revelational person-event as well as for its uniqueness.

2.5. Some practical conclusions

From what has been said up to now, some practical guidelines emerge, which illumine our interpretative activity.

Firstly, while there is continuity between the interpretation of the sacred texts and the interpretation of other texts, still Sacred Scripture relates to the faithful interpreter in a specific manner. It is the same continuity-discontinuity that holds between the personal mystery of everyman and the mystery of the man-God Jesus Christ.

Secondly, the interpreter of the word of God is not an outsider with respect to the sacred text. The text is part of his life, and so he approaches the text with a vital concern. To express this fact in as sharp a way as possible, we could say: the interpreter knows that if the text lives or dies, he is going to live or die with it. Interpretation is a question of life or death for the meaning of one's existence.

Thirdly, the faithful interpreter's concept of truth goes a little farther than the classical concept of truth as conformity of intellect and reality. The classical concept seems to make personal freedom and experience external accessories of truth. It easily leads those who react to it negatively into relativism, and those who react to it positively into dogmatism or tolerance (28). The Christian interpreter shares the personalistic concept of truth as the self-revelation of reality to the human person through the hermeneutical mediation of the intellect, a self-revelation which appeals for recognition but is ready to put up with a refusal. In this way every linguistic event is seen as including an intention of self-communication. Relativism, dogmatism, and tolerance are thus replaced by dialogue and mission, respecting, but also challenging, the free response of the person-in-history. Witness is an essential consequence of this concept of truth (29).

Fourthly, the language used by the Christian interpreter results from a triangular reference to the language of Scripture, the language of the believing community, and the language of the contemporary historical reality (30). Only in this way will it be possible to achieve an adequate explicitation of the truth.

Fifthly, in correspondence with the second paragraph, it may be said that not only is the text part of the interpreter's life, but the interpreter's life is part of the text. The life of the faithful community provides somes kind of contemporaneity with the events and the per-sons presented by the text. This experience has been beautifully expressed by St. Leo the Great:

Omnia igitur quae Dei Filius ad reconciliationern mundi et fecit et docuit,

non in historia tantum praeteritorum novimus.

sed etiam in praesentium operum virtute sentimus (31).

The hermeneutical rejevance of such an experience is evident.

Sixthly and lastly, since the Spirit is given to all and the apostolic witness is offered to all, the work of interpretion of the word of God is everybody's job. The boundaries of the field to be tilled have been canonically drawn, the energy and the tight for the work are assured by the Spirit, the cultivation of the field of truth is the exclusive privilege of no one. It follows that the reflection on the biblical word in an academic institution is only secondarily different from this same reflection in a seminary room or a family Bible group or a Sunday sermon or a novel or a play. Primarily, all these forms of reflection are one. The primacy of this unity calls for a great openness on the part of all towards all. The word of truth lives and develops in every faithful heart and mind. Again I borrow the words of a Father of the church. St. Augustine:(...)

omnibus sanctis,

propter vitae illius secretissimae quietissimum sinum,

super pectus Christi Joannes evangelista discubuit.

(...) nec ille (...) de fonte dominici pectoris solus bibit:

sed ipse Dominus ipsum evangelium.

pro sua cuiusque capacitate omnibus suis bibendum,

toto terrarum orbe diffudit (32).

Christ-Truth is recognized all the less inadequately the more extensive is the openness to the contribution of others who live or who have lived this experience: the saint and the scholar, the poet and the peasant, the historian and the theologian, the black and the white, the ancient and the modern…

But now it is time to take a closer look at Christ-Truth

23. Quoted by de La Potterie, Course. "The subject-matter of Sacred Scripture is the whole Christ, head and members". One fruit of the Seminar was also the awareness of the hermeneutical suggestiveness of the concept of arche. In this concept is also included the whole of the OT revelation. Hence, when I speak of Christ-Truth, I mean to include also the OT Scriptures.

24. PL 100, 1152B. "The Church is called the ark of the covenant, because, in her. the power of Old and the New Covenants has been inscribed by the finger of God".

25. Barr, pp.3-4.

26. Quoted by de la Potterie. Course. "With Christ's coming, the totality of new reality has come".

27. This phrase expresses well Blondel's description of tradition, in Blondel, pp.213-216. Another fine phrase is: "une experience toujours en acte". p.204.

28. Cf. Modica. p.24. Tolerance is only a modified form of dogmatism. It is in fact based on the view that truth is totally contained in its formulations. Hence, there is no point, on the one hand, in proposing one's formulation to anyone who has a different formulation, and. on the other hand, in lending an ear to anyone holding a different view.

29. Interpretation and witness are the two essential features of revelational thought, cf. Modica, pp. 157-159.

30. cf. Helou, p.223.

31. Sermo 12 de Passione, 3, 6-7 : PL 54, 356. "It is not only the history of past events that acquaints us with all that the Son of God did and taught for the reconciliation of the world. Of all this we also have a personal experience throught the power of the (sacramental) acts present in our own life".

32. Tractatus in loannern, 124. 7. CorpChr. SeLat, Vol 36, 687. "John the Evangelist rested his head on the heart of Christ on behalf of all the saints, as a symbolic anticipation of that most quiet haven in which that most secret life is lived. John was not the only one to drink from this source, which is the Lord's heart. In fact. The Lord himself has spread the Gospel itself throughout the world so that all his own could drink of it, each according to his capacity".