The politics of interpretation: Carter, Dunn and Mao Tse Tung

November 2, 8:59 PMSt. Louis Presbyterian ExaminerAlicia Donathan

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Thou shalt not interpret?
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Discernment is the virtue of the hour for Christians in this day and age.  The political, cultural, and religious environment demands it. The following are some thoughts on how we can be more discerning in the midst of public debate and mass media sensationalism.

St. Peter famously observed that the writings of St. Paul contained "some things that are hard to understand." (2 Peter 3:16) Twenty centuries of Christians struggling to interpret Paul's letters have resoundingly agreed. Yet twenty centuries of Christians have also agreed that it is our responsibility to interpret them, and that, by God's grace, we have a measure of competence to interpret them. Peter went on to remind us that due to the difficulty of interpreting Paul's writings, certain "ignorant and unstable people distort" their meaning, to their own destruction. This, too, has been borne out in Christian history as heresies and damaging errors have arisen from people doing bad interpretation of Scripture. Yet the possibility of interpreting badly did not, and has never, removed the basic competence of ordinary Christians (as well clergy) to interpret Paul and the rest of Scripture for themselves. In fact, we are not only able to understand Paul's meaning, but we are required to. We are not Paul, but God clearly expects us to behave as though we have access to Paul's meaning.

If this were not so, we could neither benefit from his instruction, heed his warnings, nor obey his commands (given as a representative of Christ). Paul's meaning is not something private to Paul, which only he has authority over. It is something mutual, something that happens between us and him, something that belongs as much to his audience as it does to him. That's communication.

Even in this situation, where we acknowledge the infallibility of the Word from God through Paul, there is nevertheless a mutuality, a shared competence for interpretation, a meaning that is not the private, exclusive property of the speaker, no matter how great that speaker's authority. If this is so in our receipt of divine communication, then how much more so when we listen to much less authoritative speakers.

The question of hermeneutical competence (competence to interpret) has come to the fore in an emphatic way over the last nine months. In the ideologically and emotionally charged atmosphere that has prevailed since President Obama's inauguration, there has been a continual supply of exposés, accusations, and the dragging of dirty laundry out into the open. During that time, too, we've seen public figures and their defenders respond to such challenges.

The selection of Sonya Sotomayor for a Supreme Court seat brought out quotations from her own past speeches, inciting criticisms of racism and undermining the rule of law. Ezekiel Emanuel, Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration, has drawn fire for words he spoke regarding the relative unimportance of the Hippocratic oath in medicine. Former president Jimmy Carter was lampooned over his comments to the effect that persons strongly opposed to President Obama and his agenda were racists. And Obama himself came under fire during the initiation of the health care debate this past summer for his own words expressing his desire for a single-payer health care system.

In several of the foregoing cases, the persons in question (or their defenders) responded by claiming the quotes in question were taken "out of context." It's become the usual response any time a public figure is attacked on the basis of his own words: "That was taken out of context." The debate thus becomes a matter of hermeneutics: who gets to interpret a figure's words, and how, and why. When a person is held responsible for his own words and for the views he himself has expressed, the most common (and commonly accepted) defense is to undermine the credibility of the interpretation. In fact, this tactic is so well-worn that sometimes no further explanation is offered. The damning phrase, "out of context," is uttered, and this is thought to be enough to dismiss the challenger's interpretation.

This was President Carter's tactic when confronted by an interviewer for his racist attribution regarding Obama's opponents; this was the tactic of some defenders of Sonya Sotomayor when she was attacked for her comments regarding the relative fitness of Latina women to be judges; this was the tactic of the White House when President Obama was attacked for advocating a single-payer health care system both at an AFL-CIO meeting and during a campaign interview. But it is time for this tactic to be questioned.

When the interpretation of a public figure's words is in debate, context does play a role. But it does not play the only role, and sometimes not even the primary role, in interpretation. When someone responds to criticism with the "out of context" card, the question must be pressed. So you're claiming there's something in the original context that mitigates or contradicts this particular interpretation of Mr. B's words? That's possible. Would you care to show us what, exactly? And where? Too often "out of context" is shouted by the defense, and this cry is supposed to end the debate. Yet often no reference is ever actually made to the original context. The burden of proof is on the individual or his defenders in this case to establish that there is, in fact, something in the original context that invalidates the challenger's interpretation. If your words don't mean what it sounds like they mean, you need to be able to prove it.

Too often "out of context" is used as a trump card. Yet using this defense without providing an explanation that shows that the context requires a different interpretation than the one given by your opponent constitutes a glaring use of the old debate tactic: "Nuh-uh!"

This is not to say that all the responsibility for being understood correctly is on the speaker. Readers and hearers have the responsibility (and journalists even more so) to interpret responsibly, and part of this is to check original context when appropriate. But the key modifier is "when appropriate." Appropriate times would include when a quote is short enough or ambiguous enough to cause a fair-minded person to wonder whether that's actually what Mr. B meant. Appropriate times would include when a quote apparently deals with unusually complex or obscure concepts, events, themes, or people, or when a quote obviously assumes familiarity with people or events in the original context. It is not always appropriate or reasonable for hearers and readers to check the original context of a quote. The relevance of the quote to the purposes of the hearer; the relative impact variations of interpretation might have on the reader's purposes; the relative range of conceivable meanings for the quote in question and their importance (or not) to the conversation at hand; the reader's knowledge of the speaker of the quote or of historical events surrounding the quote...All these and more considerations may mitigate against checking the original context in any especially thorough way.

This is all to say that more is involved in interpretation than merely investigating the original context of an utterance. That "more" is vast and varied, and may or may not suggest to the responsible hearer a need to look into the original context of a saying. To simply rely on context as the single most important consideration in interpretation is narrow and misleading.

Surely, some of the "ignorant and unstable" people who distorted Paul's meaning must have taken Paul out of context.  That's true.  But through history, many obfuscators of Paul's meaning have propagated their own distortions by claiming to take Paul in context.  So we must be careful.  Those who wish to twist the meaning of words can do so by claiming to have context on their side, as well as by ignoring context.

To be continued...

For more info: Thomas Sowell's "Out of Context," series of three articles written this summer.