Belief and Interpretation: Meditations on Pelikan's “Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution”

Abstract

Is belief a prerequisite of interpretation? Can we interpret a document if we do not believe that it has something to say to us, if we do not anticipate that we can learn from the text? Jaroslav Pelikan's assessment of the similarities and differences in constitutional and Biblical hermeneutics does not raise this question expressly, but his eloquent description of how the faithful struggle to remain true to their guiding texts inexorably leads one to question the role of belief. In this essay, I first acknowledge the unavoidable significance of belief in the elaboration of a textual tradition. Then, I argue that rhetorical and hermeneutical principles clarify the distinction between a faithful interpretation rooted in belief and the inauthentic manipulation of a text for strategic goals.Belief fosters commitment to the text, which legitimizes and authenticates an interpreter's efforts. We readily distinguish the constitutive exegetical rhetoric that girds social life from the “mere” rhetoric employed by sophistic interpreters, characterizing the former as a vital and productive development of a tradition and the latter as a corruption of the tradition. Pelikan claims that his goal is to formulate a general methodology of faithful interpretation, but his reflections confirm that there can be no neat methodological distinction between a legitimate reading rooted in belief on one hand, and a strategic manipulation of a text designed to undermine the cause for belief on the other. Making this distinction requires a judgment that can be rhetorically defended but never methodologically justified; the faithful may prove themselves only in the “dangerous maybe” of debate and persuasion. As Gene Garver has argued, Aristotle's great advance was to show that rhetoric is an art of character and not just a matter of logic. I would add that there can be no methodology of interpretation because there can be no methodology for developing one's character.