Authorial Intent and Christian Education

February 3, 2020

by Ian Andrews

The use of language in any context rests on a single and essential tenet: words mean. And not only that, they mean something particularly. When anyone writes or speaks, they trust utterly, even if unconsciously, that they can, to someone who speaks their language, be understood.

The next obvious question is, who decides what words mean? Here, we have two options. Both of them reveal a startling amount about one’s philosophical priorities, and in turn about one’s literary hermeneutic. The tricky part is that each perspective has an extreme iteration (which is not particularly nuanced or intellectually honest), and a more subtle, reasonable version. I want to state the extremes at the outset, to clear the deck of generalizations. Before I do so, however, hear this: despite their prevalence in our culture, I have met very few earnest intellectuals who hold one of these two positions. They are both logically and philosophically dangerous for the same, simple reason: they both insist on claiming that the root of meaning in language is within a human person, rather than holding meaning to be a fundamental property of the god-breathed world. In my mind, it is this refusal to acknowledge an external standard of universal truth that makes them inconsistent with reality, and therefore useless as hermeneutical principles.

These two ill-considered ideas are Relativism and the Intentional Fallacy. Briefly, Literary Relativism states, “Words do not mean independently, they only mean to me, therefore it matters not at all what you are saying, only what I hear.” To the literary relativist, the meaning of a text comes exclusively from the reader’s experience with it, and the author’s goals in writing the work or the observations he/she may have been attempting to make are utterly irrelevant. In this context, literature is incapable, except by chance, of functioning as a tool of communication. Both writing and reading are entirely solitary pursuits, echo chambers of the individual mind.

On the other hand, the Intentional Fallacy states that meaning in the text is limited by its author’s specific intentions, cultural environment, education, and intellectual capability while writing it. The first danger here is that every text is read as an outdated relic of its own era, written for and by a person from a particular age, and incapable of “meaning” anything to someone who isn’t in full possession of the details surrounding the author’s life and times. The second is that every text is read as an autobiographical work; a reader who is in possession of even a few biographical details about the author considers that they have comprehensively plumbed the thematic depths of the text by reading it solely in light of the author’s life. Neither of these perspectives promotes good reading.

Now, I’d like to move toward the center, to discuss the more relevant permutations of these polar opposites.

If we acknowledge that meaning is, as I put it above, a fundamental property of the world and the word, then the question with regard to literary education is one of emphasis: what starting principle with respect to the grounds of meaning will produce the best reader? In this context, we have, again, two options.

The Listener as Arbiter of Meaning – The less bald, and therefore more dangerous, version of Literary Relativism as I described it above is the idea that since each person is possessed of their own personality, life experience, and opinions, their reading of a text will be utterly unique, and that it is therefore correct. Every reader is themselves and cannot help but understand a series of words to mean something uniquely filtered through the lens of their selves. Effectively, then, the listener participates with the author or speaker in creating meaning, as, if any meaning is to be conveyed, it must be conveyed through their lens. The text itself, then, means one thing to the man who wrote it, and something else, or perhaps something more, to every reader who ever takes it up.

At first glance, this is a comfortably progressive and enlightened way to look at meaning. Gone are the days when we were speaking or writing to an insular group, intellectually, culturally, or personally – if indeed anyone ever was. We moderns are constantly aware of the sheer volume of alien (in the sense of foreign) worldviews pressing in upon us. We cannot rely upon a gentle and forgiving ear, as we are not speaking to intellectual countrymen much of the time.

In such an environment, assenting to the idea that meaning is personal or fluid can be a sort of intellectual security blanket for both writers and readers. Gone is the danger of writing something controversial, as the writer can merely assert an entirely different interpretation of their art upon meeting resistance. (Though, for this defense to hold water, the public would have to hold their relativism with consistency – in other words, they would have to acknowledge not only their own right to interpret things with no reference to the author or speaker, but also the author’s right to do so, and actually allow him to exonerate himself. I’ve yet to see this kind of consistency, hence my judgement of this idea as intellectually dishonest.) Likewise gone is the danger of misreading or misinterpretation of text – the individual perspective rules the day, and so no one is ever wrong. Was Twain writing about the gender politics of 21st century America? Nope. Can we say that he was? Mmhm. Would we be pilloried for saying he wasn’t? Not only possible, but likely.

This perspective, however, isn’t all bad to my mind. It founds itself in a logical observation: there is a distinct likelihood that there are shades of meaning in a text that the author didn’t foresee, particularly as the human experience continues down the ages, lending a constantly changing setting to our common burdens. An idea, even if it doesn’t change in principle or in expression (being immutably recorded), can mean more than its author intended, can it not? Isn’t that the actual power of art in the first place? To speak to people irrespective of whether or not the artist had them in mind while writing?

Given this line of thinking, many suggest a third option for the source or ground of meaning: the work of art itself. The author can’t possibly know what his work will mean to people reading it in some future era, nor can the reader know precisely what he wanted to say to the people of his own. So the work itself must be the ultimate standard of truth.

This distances itself from true Literary Relativism by acknowledging an external standard of meaning the reader must submit to. In that respect, I consider it much less dangerous. More on this in a moment.

The older, presently beleaguered perspective on this issue is that the speaker or author is the source of meaning in a conversation. That argument runs more or less like this:

The Author/Speaker as Origin of Meaning – The traditional view holds that the meaning of a statement or text comes directly from the person speaking or writing. The author/speaker is utilizing language to communicate something particular, else they wouldn’t have set out to say or write anything at all. Therefore, if one wants to engage with a text or have a conversation, one must acknowledge that the author or speaker has a particular idea in mind, and that they are speaking or writing to illustrate it for their listener. The listener, then, makes it their business not to decide what those words mean for them, or in their own life context, but instead to ferret out the author/speaker’s intent in writing or speaking to them at all. Put simply, the listener’s job is to understand. This is, of course, a more threatening idea to the modern mind, as there is every possibility that the listener may be wrong in their assessment of what the author or speaker has said. Mis-reading, impossible in a world where the reader/listener is arbiter of meaning, is not only possible but common in a world where the author is the arbiter of his meaning.

The implications of these ideas to one’s literary hermeneutic are pivotal. After all, a work of literature is not a lecture or an equation; it is a meditation. A truly great work touches both overarching truths, and incidental, personal, experiential ones. To know the difference, and to converse about the former and not the latter, is a very hard thing, but among all things the most important. After all, the role of a reader begins with listening carefully, but it does not end there! In all conversations, one must learn to engage a person’s ideas vehemently without attacking or wounding the person themselves. We must learn to grapple with what light their experiences have thrown on the highest things, without taking issue with those experiences themselves. But in a literary conversation, your conversational partner is not present to stand up for themselves. In many cases, they are even deceased. Engaging their ideas requires, therefore, far more care than engaging the ideas of a living person, standing before you to speak for themselves.

To sum up, then, we have two students: one who has been taught that the ultimate standard of meaning is the text itself, and one who has been taught that the ultimate standard of meaning is the author’s intent in writing the text. One has been taught to engage with an artifact, and the other with a person.

Both of the above perspectives contain elements of truth. So which, then, do we teach?

In order to answer that question, I would ask another: which of the two students is even potentially capable of such a subtle maneuver as the careful listening I describe above?

I submit that the second student is better equipped, having been introduced to an environment where everyone is both listener and speaker in turn, and where one is forced to develop a keen understanding of the duty of charity that lays heavily on both pursuits. For the speaker this means, firstly, developing an understanding of the person to whom they are speaking, and addressing themselves to their audience in a way that they are reasonably sure their audience will apprehend. Secondly, it means utter honesty; they mustn’t dissemble, for their listener, burdened with their own unique call to charity, must take them at their word. This makes the listener vulnerable, and lays a grave responsibility on the shoulders of the speaker to be brave and truthful as they speak. For the listener/reader, the call to charity is perhaps even stronger. Understanding another requires, first, that one sit humbly and devote all one’s energy to seeing the world through the other’s eyes. This requires self-control and love beyond measure; we do not entirely agree with even those we love on the best of days and the shallowest of topics. This is doubly true with authors, who are by and large making claims about the most important ideas in our world. To listen, without interrupting and without re-interpreting, is a death to self, however momentary. It is an acknowledgement that you may perhaps be wrong, and they may perhaps be right. One cannot think, read, write, or love without accepting this idea.

A troubling trend has begun in Christian educational circles. Fed up with literature preaching falsehood and feeling the need to stand up for truth, many Christian educators have surrendered to a kind of reading that is, fundamentally, un-Christian. It reads to find and correct threatening ideas, or to find and appropriate ones that, while not Christian, are profound. In so doing it erects a temple to self in the heart of the student, in the name of erecting a temple to truth. On the altar in this temple lie the remains of many great works, preserved across time to be handed to these students, beneficiaries of the culture that these great thinkers, pagan and Christian alike, created with their pens. In the best case, these corpses have been shredded, their insides scanned for pieces of “Christian” truth, and the rest tossed aside. In the worst, they have been painted with halos, and clothed in white robes. “It is not enough that Homer was profound – he must also have been, essentially, Christian, else his ideas have no place in our curricula.”

My heart is full and grieved for such well-intentioned teachers and readers. Their actions speak eloquently of a fundamental misunderstanding: “My education, and therefore my well-being, depends on my ability to get things right. If I am taken in by falsehood, I am lost. All is lost. It depends on me. Truth depends on my defending it! I am what I think, and unless I learn to think properly, I am nothing.”

The burden to accomplish a “Christian” education is crushing, as only the burden to be continually right can be.

To these weary I would offer a bittersweet reminder. The purview of art, and of literature in particular, is not, in the first place, triumph, nobility, or goodness. These are presented as medicines, antidotes and remedies to the real bailiwick of the artist: grave suffering. And all suffering comes directly from sin, of exactly the kind that suffuses our own hearts. Homer and the other noble pagans survive not inasmuch as their works champion ‘christian’ truths, but inasmuch as their works are reflective of the state of real humanity, a state which all readers must embrace if they are to participate in the Great Conversation instead of seeking to rewrite it. Christian education, if such a thing exists, cannot be about learning to be right. It must instead have to do with the character of Jesus himself.

In that respect, we are happily, gloriously in the clear.

You see, Christ was a supreme listener. Christ won the hearts of his disciples with deep understanding and compassion. Christ taught by identifying with his listeners, and taking a place beside them. And in order to do so, he fundamentally shifted the created order, and stepped into flesh next to that which He himself created, ultimately dying so that we might live. He is the single greatest author and the single greatest reader ever to exist. And we are not called to equal his merit. We are called to accept it in place of our own.

This is good, good news, as in the end, we are none of us capable of such condescension as He has committed. We cannot lay down our pursuit of personal glorification and hear the Author’s voice aright. But then, education, Christian or otherwise, is not about getting it right. It is about learning to recognize how very wrong we are. And that truth peals over our failures and our successes with equal joy, for our state before Him does not depend on our efforts. We are common debtors at the feet of a Lord whose love for us is anything but common. To the reader who has seen this powerful reality, the Great Books ring out with a hundred, or a hundred-thousand lowly voices saying to one another and to we ourselves “I hear you. I love you. You are not alone.”