Deciphering God
I gave a talk to a few high school students at a local college here in Manchester this week based on a bit of hermeneutical theory from Paul Ricoeur and Max Black. We use this kind of methodology to interpret texts like the Bible, but also, it links in with a phenomenological approach to religious traditions more generally. Religions, like texts, employ a range of symbols which relate to each other akin to a sentence. Here's a link to a pdf of the PowerPoint presentation and the Mp3 of the discussion as well. Lastly, here are the PDFs of the handouts I gave the students to practice the theory themselves: Bible, Qur'an, Upanishads.
I start off with a bit where I say "I ate a dog in the park today," and they all kind of go what? and then I explain the details so they can see the metaphorical way that langauge works. Metaphors like "Richard is a Lion" are not just dependent on the words but rather more like jokes that depend on the semantic context of a sentence and discourse more generally. Although not a metaphor, when I say I ate a dog in the park, I could be saying I ate a poodle in Piccadilly, or maybe slang for listening to hip hop rapper Snoop Dog at Wembly. But, if you knew the context (e.g. that I was an American at a baseball game) you might guess that I ate a hot dog at Safeco Field in Seattle or something. Dog has a range of possible definitions, as does park. When we encounter language, we are always cross referencing to decide which definition best fits in relation to other words and the overall context to understand what is being said. Like metaphors, all language is always a bit stretchy this way.
This is why misunderstanding is so common, and why knowing as many details about the context of the religoius text or tradition you are reading or studying is so crucial. As a result, we use this kind of methodology all the time when we try to understand what different people say about God. Academic study of religion looks at what people say about God and tries to understand the detailed contexts which inform and interrelate with that term. In most cases, when we are talking about religious phenomena, we find expressions about some kind of transcendental something, but the details differ dramatically between traditions. Academic study of religion looks carefully at the details and then, maybe, compares.
After the small group discussion of a few key texts where the students begin to use the theory itself, I have them feedback to see differences, and the kinds of problems which arise when studying religious texts. Then I conclude with a round up of it all, namely, that we have to take religious texts seriously enough not to impose an imperialistic blanket statement, "it's all the same thing." This means we suspend judgment about the reality of an actual deity and just ask what kind of phenomenon this is. Lastly, this means the religious person just as much as the radical secularist has to check a lot of baggage at the door to try and honestly and humbly understand first what is being said without trying to immediately defend particular ideological or theological positions. Academic study of religion, first and foremost, is about learning to be a good listener, precisely in order that we can then be good speakers and writers.
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