The Hermeneutics of Fundamentalism

The Hermeneutics of Fundamentalism James Mensch, Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada B2G 2W5 jmensch@stfx No one can turn on the news these days without hearing of fundamentalism. Christian fundamentalists form the fastest growing sect in the United States and are arguably the most politically potent. Both the president and vice-president, as well as prominent members of the Cabinet call themselves “fundamentalists.” In the Islamic world, fundamentalism has an equal currency. Everywhere ascendant, it has, since September 11th, become linked to terrorist attacks and the actions of suicide bombers. Among the Jews of Israel, it also has a growing influence. The fundamentalist “settlers” of the West Bank, most observers agree, hold the political process hostage. What, then, is fundamentalism? What do Christian, Islamic, and Jewish “fundamentalists” have in common that makes them worthy of this name? One answer is that all three religions are “religions of the book.” They all define themselves in terms of a religious text. I here ignore the question of fundamentalism in other great world-religions, e.g., Hinduism and Buddhism There is here a certain reciprocal constitution. What makes a person a believer in one of these faiths is that he holds a certain text sacred—be this the Christian Bible, the Koran, or the Torah. Reciprocally, what makes these texts sacred is just such belief. It forms the context, the constitutive medium which allows the sacred character of these texts to appear. When the belief goes, so does this character. No one, for example, takes the ancient hymns to the Latin Gods seriously. We use the names of Jupiter (or Mars or Venus) neither to swear nor to blaspheme. Lacking the ancients’ belief, such actions would be pointless. Of course, not every believer in the sacred character of a text is a fundamentalist. Something else must be added. The thesis I am going to defend is that fundamentalism is a way of reading a religious text. Those who engage in it maximize the “staying power” of this text. The price they pay, however, is that of denying the transcendence that the religions of the book claim for their texts. Fundamentalism and the Staying Power of Texts By the “staying power” of a text I mean its ability to keep its distinctive character. This definition can best be understood by considering four basic types of text: the religious, the legal, the informational and the literary. The staying power of the religions of the book obviously involves belief. Without believers, there is no one to whom the sacred character of the text can appear. But, what do such believers believe in? What characterizes their belief? Each of their religious texts contains a promise. For the Jews, this involves their undisturbed possession of the land of Israel; for the Christians and followers of Islam, the promise is that of some form of eternal life. As believers, they expect to enjoy “paradise.” The staying power of their religious texts is, then, that of the promise each contains. As long as people believe in it—i.e., have faith that it will be fulfilled—these texts keep their sacred (or religious) character. Legal texts have a prescriptive or commanding character. They keep this through a community’s obedient acceptance of the laws they promulgate. When this acceptance ceases, so does this character. Thus, a law that no one obeys has no force. Lacking this, it ceases to act as a law, i.e., to command or proscribe. There is here the same reciprocal relationship we observed in a religious text. Just as believers define themselves in terms of the text—taking the text as determinative of the content of their belief—so their belief is constitutive of the sacred character of this text. Similarly, just as members of a political community define themselves in terms their obedience to its laws, so their obedience gives these laws their prescriptive character. As the name implies, “informational” texts convey information. Items in the daily newspaper, flyers from the grocery store, letters and emails from friends and colleagues are all examples of this type of text. As informational, its character is that of reporting. Once again, we can speak of a kind of reciprocal relationship. On the one hand, the text itself determines the information it reports. On the other, it gains its character by people accepting and (if necessary) acting on what it reports. Thus, its character is lost when what it conveys is taken to be false or out of date. No one, for example, uses last week’s flyer for this week’s shopping. Its staying power is limited to the dates of the sale. Now, no such time limitation exists for a literary text. Such texts neither promise nor command. They are not informative in any straightforward way. We do not read Homer’s poems for their informational character. They keep their literary value whether or not they depict actual events. When we read an letter of Horace as literature, its relation to the particular person it addresses is not relevant. Whatever information it might have conveyed about the existing world has long since lost the possibility of being acted on. The best way to describe the special character of a literary text is in terms of the relation of intention and fulfillment. Indeed, this relation characterizes all the types of text I mentioned. A religious text intends to excite belief in its promise. It thus, fulfills itself in the acts and practices that show acceptance of the promise—acts of trust (or faith) that it will be kept. The intention of a legal text is that people obey the law it promulgates. Acceptance and obedience fulfill its intention. Texts that convey information are fulfilled when we understand and (if necessary) act on them. Such fulfillment occurs in the context of the actual world. By contrast, the literary text gains its fulfillment through a linguistic context. Its fundamental intention is simply to be read again. When we do return to read it, we fulfill this intention. Thus, this type of text keeps its staying power by continually being reread. It loses its literary character when we do not read it for itself—when for example, we treat it as an artifact, as a “dead” historical document. Such documents are read not for themselves but for the information they indirectly covey of the world of the writer. In terms of historical documents, their timeliness seems to have a double quality. On the one hand, the possibility of acting on the information they convey has long past. On the other, the historical information they do convey, does not expire. Thus, from a historical perspective, last week’s flyers—taken as reporting on last week’s prices—keep their historical character. To put this in terms of the reciprocal relationship that characterizes the other types of text, we can say that its literary character is what draws us to return to read it, while this very return is what allows it to keep its character as a literary text. Fundamentalism, taken as a way of reading a religious text, conflates all these characteristics. It does so to maximize the text’s staying power. Thus, the text continues to be regarded as containing a promise, e.g., that of the coming of the messiah or his return. As a promise, it will last as long as people believe that the promise will be fulfilled. The religious text is also taken as a legal text: one that commands and forbids various actions. The two are combined since, for the fundamentalist, to accept the commandments is to accept (and be worthy of) the promise, and vice versa. The fundamentalist, in other words, is a member not just of a community of believers, but also of a political and moral community. This holds whether or not the sacred text’s code has been made into state law—as is the case in various Islamic republics. Even where this is not politically possible, the believer feels himself bound by his text’s commandments. Fundamentalists also read their text in an informational way. The information it gives them about the world is taken as both timely and nonexpiring. The Bible’s assertion that the world was created in seven days is taken with the same face value ( as possessing the same historical, existential truth) as an account in the newspaper. The predictions of the revelation—the “rapture”—ideally have the same level of credence as a grocery flyer’s account of next week’s sales. One reason for this is that every word of the sacred text is considered to be inspired by God. As such, it picks up the nonexpiring quality of the promise and the commandments. Another reason is that the fundamentalist also gives the text the lasting quality of a literary text. In all of the religions of the book, the reader is continually urged to return and reread the sacred text. The intention of a literary text is fulfilled by itself. After the process of analysis and description is complete, its ultimate interpretation must be given by its own words. Thus, we fulfill its intention by returning to reread it. The same return happens here. The sacred text’s information is not open to the world, exhausting itself in it like a daily news report. Rather, caught in this continual return, the informational quality of the sacred text seals itself from the world and, hence, fails to expire. Limitations of Fundamentalism The psychological benefits conveyed by fundamentalism are obvious to all. Who has not admired the certainty and confidence that fundamentalists exhibit? Through their faith, they enjoy a fixity of life and social relations that seems immune to the pressures of our changing world. Associated with this, there are, of course, psychological drawbacks. There is a certain closeness of mind and, in some instances, an intolerance for the nonbeliever that can spill over into the political domain. Because of their conflation of the religious and the legal character of the sacred text, fundamentalists tend to blur the boundary between politics and religion. Such psychological advantages and drawbacks can, of course, be disputed. In considering them, each person can draw his own, individual balance. In any case, from the fundamentalist’s perspective, they are irrelevant. What counts for this person are the objective “facts” of faith—in the first instance the fact of God’s existence. It is here, however, that the limitation of this reading of scripture shows itself. In the scripture accepted by all three religions of the book—the Torah—God characterizes his existence to Moses by telling him his name. It is, he says, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh” (Exodus 3:14). This phrase can mean either “I am what I am” or “I shall be what I shall be.” His name, God repeats to Moses is “Ehyeh”—”I am” or “I shall be.” Both translations are given by The Torah, The Five Books of Moses, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, p. 102. The implication is that he is what he will be. He will not be pinned down. In other words, his being is such that he will exceed our expectations and understanding. He cannot be reduced to what we know and what we expect. This exceeding is both his transcendence and his freedom. Thus, neither Moses nor the Israelites nor any individual or group of people can know what the future holds with regard to their relationship with God. Still less can they confine him within the limits of a literal reading of a text. This point can be put in terms of the paradoxical attempt that the religions of the book make to describe a God who creates the world from nothing. Such a God acts and, indeed, exists independently of the world. Given this, we cannot confine him within the categories that we use to understand the world. As St. Anselm puts this, God is not just “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” God is “also something greater than can be thought.” “Therefore, Lord, not only are you that than which nothing greater can be thought, but you are also something greater than can be thought (quiddam maius quam cognitari possit). For since it is possible to think that there is such a one, then, if you are not this same being, something greater than you could be thought—which cannot be” (St. Anselm’s Proslogion, trans. M. J. Charlesworth, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1965, p. 137). If we accept this, how do we understand the accounts scripture gives of God? In the Torah, for example, God appears as a character who continually intervenes in human history. Like any character from literature, his initial sense or meaning is given by the descriptions and incidents related. These tell us who and what he is. Yet this very sense is undermined by what the Torah tells us, namely that God, having created the world from nothing, is not determined by it. His sense, in other words, is that of an author who transcends the text of the world. For a sacred text to present such a sense, it must exhibit it something as transcendent, something that exceeds even the text’s own sense giving context. The text, in other words, must include the disruption of this context. A fundamentalist reading that focuses on the “objective fact” of God’s existence would, accordingly, be attentive not just to the sense the text conveys, but also to how it presents the breakdown of this sense. For an account of such a reading with regard to the Christian Bible see Mensch, The Beginning of the Gospel of St. John: Philosophical Perspectives, New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1992, pp. 6-10, 205-11. Just such a breakdown is contained in God’s description of himself as “I will be what I will be.” This description points to the openness of the future. This is the openness of another person, who having his own interpretative categories of himself and his world, refuses to be confined by the imposition on him of our categories. When we accept this openness, we accept the other’s freedom—his freedom to transcend the sense we impose on him. A genuine fundamentalism would extend this privilege also to God. Doing so, it would see the staying power of sacred text in this openness. It would see the essence of its promise in the Biblical words, “I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). ENDNOTES PAGE 1