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The Mortimer J. Adler Archive |
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Many of Dr. Adler's books are available through The Radical Academy Bookstore. Books
by Mortimer J.
Adler
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Index:
Scriptural interpretation calls for a special mode of interpretation--the kind of interpretation that the faithful give to scriptures they look upon as sacred. The assumption underlying the way in which Muslims read the Koran, Jews the Old Testament, and Christians the New Testament is that the text they are reading contains truths which they should make the most strenuous effort to discover by patient and careful exegesis. Such a reading is called "exegetical" because it tries "to lead out of" the text the truth assumed to be in it. There is a long tradition of commentary on secular writings as well, in which the approach to the text being interpreted is analogous to the approach of the faithful to sacred texts. Medieval commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle -- by Arabic Jewish, and Christian teachers -- can be cited as examples of this method of reading a text for the purpose of discovering the truth it is supposed to contain. Modern examples are to be found in the extensive commentaries on the writings of Immanuel Kant or Karl Marx. With some variation in style, what is common to all these examples of exegetical reading, whether of secular texts or of texts regarded as sacred, is a method of interpretation that concentrates on the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences, and on the relation between one element in the discourse and another, while paying little or no attention to contextual considerations or to psychological and sociological factors that may or may not have been responsible for the genesis of the texts being interpreted. An exegetical reading is concerned with philological aspects of the text, with the biography of its author, or with the historical circumstances under which it appeared only to the extent that these considerations contribute to an understanding of the text, not as affecting judgments about the truth of what is being said. In sharp contrast to the exegetical method of reading a text is another method of commentary, which was called "the higher criticism" when, in the nineteenth century, it was first applied to the Old and the New Testaments. This method of interpretation is widely prevalent today. It makes little or no effort to get at the truth that the text being commented on may contain; it may almost be said to have no concern with the truth or falsity of what is being said in the document under consideration. Instead, the truth with which it is concerned is the truth about the document in question. To this end, it concentrates on the historical circumstances, the sociological influences, and the psychological motivations that are thought to have determined its content. These two methods of interpreting and commenting on the written word are thus seen to differ radically with respect to the truth with which they are concerned -- the one with the truth in the document, the other with the truth about the document.
This word has two meanings that should never be forgotten. Most individuals use the word in common speech to refer to time without beginning or everlasting or endless time. In this meaning of the word, God cannot be said to be eternal, for God is not in time and so, is not subject to change or mutability that characterizes all things in time. The second meaning of eternal is to have being outside of time. Eternal being is beyond our capacity to imagine or conceive in terms that are positive. Our only sense of the eternal in this meaning of the term is negative -- the negation of time. Even if we think we can imagine God, we cannot imagine His eternity. The eternal is like the immaterial in that it can be grasped by us only in negative terms -- "what it is not". Most individuals use the word "spiritual" as a synonym for "immaterial" but they forget that the only meaning they can attach to that word is negative, not positive. The spiritual is simply that which is not material. So, too, the eternal is simply that which is not in time. The eternal is the "immutable."
We must ask about God's nature before we ask about God's existence. We must have some meaning for the term "God." We must use that word "God" with some definite significance before there's any way we can reasonably inquire whether the thing we are naming and signifying by the word "God" actually exists. For certainly if what God is is unknown to us and unknowable to us, then the word "God" can have no meaning and there could be no sense to the question, "Does God exist?" I want you to note something here. It is possible to give the word "God" very definite meaning in our minds without begging the question whether God exists. No matter how we conceive God, how definite our conception is, that still leaves quite open the question whether the thing we are conceiving, the object of our conception really actually exists outside our minds and independently of our thinking. Now when we ask the question, "What does the word 'God' mean," how do we think of God? What is our conception of God? Three basic possibilities occur. And I think that these three possibilities are quite exhaustive. First, it is possible for us to think of God as totally, I emphasize the word "totally", as totally unlike anything else we know, totally unlike anything else we know. But if we think of God this way then we can have no definite conception of God. For if God is totally unlike anything else we know, we have no way of going to the things we know to our understanding of God. That is, we can have no carry over. We can attach no meanings to any of our settled meanings and understanding. Hence if we take this possibility, we eliminate any further inquiry into the existence of God. Now we can go to the opposite extreme. We can go to the opposite extreme and think of God as essentially like, as essentially like everything else we know. Most of the things we know in the world, most of the things in our experience are corporeal, finite, mutable, sensible, imperfect, changing in time. Now if we say that God is essentially like all the things we know from our experience, we must be saying of God that God too is finite and corporeal and mutable and imperfect. Now what are the consequences of thinking of God this way? Well, if we think of God this way, then first of all, God's existence should be as knowable to us as any of the other things we know that are finite and corporeal and mutable and physical and sensible. But clearly this is not the case. Everyone, everyone understands no matter what else he knows or what else he thinks that God's existence is not as known to us or as knowable to us as all the things in the world that are experienced. Moreover, moreover this attribution to God of finiteness and corporeality and mutability, these characteristics that are common with all the things of our experience violates, I think, anyone's sense of the notion of divinity. And it certainly violates the conception of divinity that is to be found in any of the western religions. Now there is a third possibility, a middle ground between these extremes. I started out you know by saying at one extreme one could take the position that God is totally unlike any of the things in our experience. At the other extreme you could take the position that God is essentially like. Now then the middle ground would be to say that God is both like and unlike, both like and unlike the things we know, the things of our ordinary, everyday experience. Now when you say this you've got to ask two further questions. How is God unlike the things in our experience and how is God like the things of our experience? The answers are God is unlike the things of our experience, the things we know in our daily experience in those respects in which we recognize them to be the very opposite of divine. That is, the things we must say negatively of God are these: we must say that God is not finite as the things of our experience are, that God is not corporeal as the things of our experience are, that God is not mutable as the things of our experience are, that God is not imperfect as the things of our experience are. In other words, all of these negative attributions must be made if this is the way in which we must understand God as being unlike the things of our experience. How then is God like the things of our experience? Here we must say that God is like them only in that respect which must be common to whatever is, which must be common to whatever is. Now whatever is, has being. And therefore we must say of God if we're going to say that God is like the things of our experience in any respect, that God at least has being and whatever properties belong to a thing in so far as it has being, only in this respect are we entitled to say that God is like the things of our experience. Now this leads us, I think, to a profound understanding of how we must conceive God. For perfectly as the purpose appears if not to all of us that we must not only conceive God as a being, I don't mean an existent one yet because all I've talked about is a being, possible being or an actual being, either way; if we conceive God as a being, we are only conceiving God if we conceive of God as a supreme being. And when we say that we conceive of God as a supreme being or as the Supreme Being, some things follow almost at once from this.
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