e Special Interpretive Status of Revealed Texts: On Jorge Gracia's How Can We Know What God Means? Given the variety of approaches one could take when interpreting a text, should special interpretive treatment be given to texts believed to be divinely inspired? What approach is most appropriate when interpreting revealed texts? Do we take into consideration features of the language or the cultural context in which the text was written? Perhaps there are significant psychological characteristics of the human author that are relevant for understanding the meaning of the text; or perhaps we should just address the text as it stands and hope for divine inspiration where the text is most obscure. Of course introducing divine inspiration itself introduces anumber of other problems. Religious traditions include interpretive traditions and include theories on how to readsacred texts. So should these theories guide our interpretations? Or need an interpretation be neutral withrespect to these traditions to provide for the possibility of adjudicating among conflicting traditions. And if we arereading texts from within theological traditions, are there any definitive interpretations of texts? Wouldn't suchcontextualization invite relativism? These are the issues at the center of Jorge Gracia's book How Can We KnowWhat God Means?I hope you can see very quickly that Gracia has embarked upon a series of questions of tremendous intellectualrichness and importance. These are not simply questions of theology. Take as a particularly relevant example thedebate about "intentionalism"-the view that the meaning of a text is shaped if not determined by the author'sintentions when writing the text. There are a number of classic arguments for and against that view, however,clearly, the debate shifts if the author of the text is understood from the start to be a divine being, or even anomniscient one. While before one might make the argument that historical hi...
