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Common Sense Biblical Hermeneutics Studia Gilsoniana 3:supplement (2014): 547–562 | ISSN 2300–0066 Michael B. Mangini, Esq. Adler–Aquinas Institute Manitou Springs, CO, USA COMMON SENSE BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS The chief aim, the final cause, of this study is to foster a better un- derstanding of how noetic, metaphysical, and semiotic preconditions rooted in the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas contribute to a common sense biblical hermeneutic. The efficient cause is wonder over the divergent opinions of the meaning and significance of one perfect reve- latory unit and the possibility of discovering how many revelatory acts constitute one unified revelatory act. The material cause is composed of (a) the noetic aspects of moderate realism; (b) the actions of sign relations in communication and interpretation; (c) the problem of the one and the many; and (d) God’s revealed word. The formal cause is movement from a nominalistic method of biblical interpretation toward a method that finds truth as revealed in God’s Word, the proper object of Christian faith, and becomes, in fact, the object of our faith. This study finds a metaphysical justification for a theologically derived principle of scriptural unity; thus showing how reason serves faith. The interpretive principles of nominalism are the interpreter’s ideas that the interpreter combines and divides at will and which terminate in the interpreter’s mind. The interpretive principles identified in this paper are: (a) the noetics of moderate realism ground the hope of successfully discerning the meaning of Scripture; (b) the nature and activity of sign relations ground the hope of successfully discovering and communicating the significance of Scripture, beyond its meaning; (c) sign relations also make possible error and deceit; and (d) respect for the metaphysics of the relationship between and among a multitude and to a chief aim encourages correct interpretation by minimizing errors in dis- cerning meaning and significance. Before exploring this further, an expla- nation of the compound term ‘common sense hermeneutics’ is appropriate, but first a brief note on nominalism and principles. 548 Michael B. Mangini For the nominalist a sign relation is a mind-dependent being of pure objectivity with no actual counterpart in what is signified.1 One who en- gages in a nominalistic reading of the Bible expressly or implicitly tends to take liberties with the text by associating the wrong signified being with a sign vehicle. Respecting the sign relation’s grounding in mind- independent reality will tend to inhibit the personal musings of the inter- preter. A principle is a point of beginning of being, change, or knowledge.2 Hermeneutics3 is the speculative science4 of biblical interpretation, the chief aim of which is to know how to interpret God’s word. Its subject- matter5 is composed of three species: (1) Scripture; (2) the art6 of interpre- tation; and (3) human cognition. The three species are inextricably related, but they can stand on their own, so it is reasonable to view each of them as a distinct genus composed of species ordered to a chief aim and chief act, 7 but within the genus of hermeneutics they are species ordered to a chief aim. Scripture as a revelatory species is the proximate principle of the sci- ence, and the science is the proximate principle of the art. The species of human cognition, comprising the active and passive powers of the human soul that unequally contribute to the chief aim of knowing God’s word, enables human beings to study the Bible and study how we study the Bible. The speculative genus studies how the cognitive species unites with the 1 John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 389. 2 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. V, 1012b34–1013a23, in Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” trans. John P. Rowan (Notre Dame: Dumb Ox Books, 1995), 276; Peter A. Redpath, A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Manitou Springs: Adler– Aquinas Institute, Socratic Press, 2012), 138; Bernard Wuellner, Summary of Scholastic Principles (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1956), 1–9. 3 See D.G. Burke, “Interpret; Interpretation,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclo- pedia, vol. 2, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmanns Publishing Company, 1982), 863. But there is also a practical aspect that falls into the category of art. Milton S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983), 20. 4 Wuellner defines science in its strict philosophical sense as “certain intellectual knowledge of something in its causes” under “Science” in Wuellner, Dictionary of Scholastic Philoso- phy, 112. 5 “Subject-matter” refers to what a science studies or considers. Redpath, 137–138. 6 Wuellner primarily defines art as “correct knowledge joined to skill in making things” under “Art” in Wuellner, Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy, 9. 7 The analogical predication of genus and species to the same unit is dependent on the unit’s relations to other units. Scripture in se is a genus, but as a subject of study it is a species of the science or art. Common Sense Biblical Hermeneutics 549 revelatory species in the interpretive species. The speculative genus is where the reflexive aspect of the cognitive species considers the relation of the revelatory, interpretive, and cognitive species. Stated another way, the art of interpretation is the activity that joins the knower to the known through sign relations, and the science is the study of the activity’s causes so that the knower and known truly unite. Hermeneutics is necessary, be- cause one cannot interpret well absent the knowledge of the conditions necessary for correct interpretation. Common sense is more difficult to define. Étienne Gilson observes that the ambiguity of the term ‘common sense’ has caused grievous phi- losophical harm. Cicero used the term to refer to the sensibilities of an audience of which an orator must be aware in order to move the audience. It may refer to human moral intuition. One may attribute the sanctity of his pet postulate to common sense to defend against further inquiry.8 According to Thomas, the common sense, one of the interior senses, is the common root or principle of the five exterior, proper senses.9 Each of the five exterior senses has an object proper to it. Sight senses white, taste senses sweetness, but neither sight nor taste can distinguish white from sweet. The common sense perceives the intentions of the proper senses and judges them.10 The common sense can know all sensations and distinguish them.11 The common sense is reflexive; it permits one to perceive that he is using his external senses. It is aware of the external sense impressions themselves and of the differences between the objects of each proper sense. “It is by the common sense that we are aware of our own life, and that we can distinguish between the objects of different senses, e.g., the white and the sweet.”12 The external senses feed the internal senses (common sense, imagination, and memory), which cooperate to unify, preserve, and recall the image of the object of sense experience. The three acts of the intellect (apprehension, judgment, and reason)13 work with these images to give us knowledge. The common sense is a necessary condition precedent to ap- prehension, judging, and reasoning, without which we would not have 8 This treatment of common sense relies on the first chapter of Étienne Gilson, Thomist Realism And The Critique of Knowledge (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 27–53. 9 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 78, 4, ad. 1. 10 Id., ad. 2. 11 Aristotle, De Anima, III, 2 (426b8–427a15). 12 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s “De Anima,” II, lect. 13, para. 390; III, lect. 2, para. 584. 13 Peter Kreeft, Socratic Logic (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2004), 28. 550 Michael B. Mangini concepts, judgments, and arguments.14 Even so, the common sense does not assure that human beings will (1) rightly understand what they receive through the external senses; (2) correctly judge what they do understand; and (3) build sound arguments with their correct judgments. The common sense merely makes good hermeneutics and revealed knowledge possible. In this paper the denotation of common sense is synecdochic; the in- ternal common sense, a part of the noetic process, represents the whole noetic process, which begins in the external sense impressions and ends in the conclusions of arguments. It should also connote the commonality of specific noetic potential among human beings as well as self-evident propositions that proceed from the right use of human noetic powers (the denial of which would result in self-refutation). Into this category of propositions I put the law of con-contradiction and its corollaries; funda- mental statements about the organizational structure of composed being; and averments concerning the action of signs as the foundation of commu- nication and error. Common sense hermeneutics respects the primacy of being and the inter-subjective and supra-subjective relations among beings that permit communication. The noetics of moderate realism provide a firm foundation upon which to build a hermeneutic of common sense, so in the first part of this paper I shall adopt Thomas Howe’s argument that the noetical aspect of moderate realism is a necessary condition for correct, universally valid biblical interpretation, but I will add, “insofar as it gives us hope in discov- ering the true meaning of a given passage.” In the second part, I’ll rely on John Deely’s work to show how semiotics may help interpreters go beyond meaning and seek the significance of the persons, places, events, ideas, etc.
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