Locke and Biblical Hermeneutics by Luisa Simonutti

Author:Luisa Simonutti
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030199036
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

7.5 “Every Decoding Is Another Encoding”65

Now we can go back to the questions we posed at the outset: what was Locke’s intention in this last work of such remarkable theoretical and practical depth? What did he think he would be able to find in Paul’s epistles? As we have seen above, what Locke expected to find in St. Paul, in spite of all the difficulties expounded in the preceding paragraphs, was an intelligible, reasonable exposition. It goes without saying that he did not seek to find a rational religion, that is one that was deducible by reason alone, without recurring to revelation. Already in his Essay, Locke had accepted Boyle’s distinctions between truths “according to Reason,” “above Reason,” and “against Reason,” and again in his Paraphrase he states that for St. Paul revelation consists in the special revelation reserved to human kind. For St. Paul this consists in the special revelation of truths “above Reason,” such that reason alone was unable to attain. The point is, though, that even in the Paraphrase revelation is never against Reason nor ever communicates anything that is openly self-contradictory (as is obvious) but not even anything that is incomprehensible for man’s practical and theoretical reason. In particular, it does not contain any Antinomian doctrines, which would have had the effect of transforming the order of the universe into an ethically anarchic and incomprehensible aggregate.

On the contrary, Locke’s Paul is a strict, coherent, and reasonable writer, who argues effectively without ever losing sight of the objective he has in mind. To expound Paul’s crystalline argumentative structure clearly, Locke uses the device of paraphrase, a technique already in fashion in the theological literature of his time. This allows him to translate the Apostle’s words of long ago into a more perspicuous language, suiting them to the understanding of the common English reader of his time. Popularising in this way, Locke is doing no more than coherently applying the anti-hermeneutic conception of interpretation that he had already practiced in his youthful writings. In 1661 he wrote these words: “Cum enim interpretari nihil aliud sit, quam obscurarum vocum sensus eruere, sermonemque minus obvium, verbis quotidiani usus dilucide explicare.”66

But paraphrase in itself was not enough in Locke’s view; the structure of his hermeneutic work is much more complex. Locke opens the analysis of each epistle with a Synopsis, a brief summary, in which he identifies the main purpose for which the epistle had been written and the contextual elements needed to understand its construction and procedure. Often an epistle has more than one aim in mind, in which case the synopsis brings out the relationships among the different purposes, which can be either hierarchical or complementary. If they are hierarchical, Locke’s intent is first to reach end “a” in order to consequently reach end “b,” the main objective. If they are complementary, the purposes are independent of one another, and Locke aims merely to precisely identify the breaks in the epistle, at the same time bringing out clearly that

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