Rikk Watts and Critical Realism: Reading Genesis 1

Rikk Watts' article "Making Sense of Genesis 1" for the American Scientific Affliation is a great example of critical realist biblical interpretation in the strain following Bernard Lonergan. He gives a great summary of Michael Polanyi's notion of tacit knowledge and Bernard Lonergan's understanding of the process of coming to know (moving from questions to insight and finally to judgment). He says,


"Michael Polanyi reminded us that taking a great many things on trust is the essential first step to knowledge, even and perhaps especially in that highest and holiest of all modern callings, science. All of us, Christians and scientists together, simply have to take a great deal on trust, to assume much, if we are ever to get started on the path to knowing. The saying is sure, without assuming something no one shall know anything. But having said that, it is important regularly to reassess those assumptions in the light of our growing knowledge and in doing so to recognize that truth in this kind of historical and literary endeavour is much more a matter of coherence than of certainty. Bernard Lonergan rightly understood that the first step in knowing was to pay attention to all of the data, then to apply our intelligence in seeking to understand, and finally to use our reason to judge between hypotheses."

The article itself is a great example that process in action. Check it out by following the link above.

Sotomayor and Interpretation: an Interesting Article

Check out these interesting reflections on hermeneutics and the interpretation of the constitution (something I reflected on in my previous post).

The article is by Ernesto Tinajero for Sojourners.

Interpretation, Heremeneutics and Judge Sotomayor.

Originalism vs. the Living Constitution debate... (a case study for CR?)

(Follow the link above for a story on constitutional interpretation)

I haven't developed these thoughts to any extent- but there is an interesting parallel between debates surrounding the interpretation of the U.S. constitution and those surrounding the issues of interpreting any text generally (including Scripture).

The view of originalism is that the constitution should be interpreted according to what it meant to the founders and is the typical conservative view of interpretation.

The "living constituion" view is less well defined and seems to want to account for the need for the constitution to have relevance in different historical/cultural realities than those in which it was written. There is a spectrum of course, but this view tends to be the progressive approach to the constitution.

It seems that Critical Realism (as I understand it following Lonergan, Meyer, Wright etc.) has something to offer in such a debate. Neither can the text's meaning within it's original horizon be neglected, nor can the fact that historical and social realitites are constantly in flux be disregarded in interpretation. If interpretation is truly a fusion of horizons (in Lonergan's understanding, not Gadamer's) then both the original meaning of the text and the needs of present historical reality need to be respected in the interpretive event.