Hermeneutical principles

Paul Lample's "Revelation and Social Reality" provides, amongst other things, an excellent summary of some of the hermeneutical principles (principles that deal with the interpretation of scriptural writings) presented in the Baha'i writings. I offer a short listing of these principles, along with some extracts from the book that explain these for the reader to ponder and apply as he/she engages in his/her own personal study of the many religious writings we have available to us.

1. The Book has intended meaning - "We cannot simply read into the Text any meaning we wish or use quotations out of context to justify personal opinions. Our views may be right and they may be wrong, or they may reflect a partial understanding, depending on the measure of their correspondence to Baha'u'llah's (or any of the other Manifestations') intention." Some philosophers have argued that a book has no intended meaning, and even the author often cannot know what the meaning of a book is - it is left to the reader to interpret. The Baha'i stance on this states that at least the writings of the Prophets and their authorized interpreters do not fit into this category.
2. Judgments about meaning should be made from the perspective of the Revelation - "We should not weight the Book of God with human standards and sciences, since 'the Book itself is the unerring balance established amongst men'".
   
3. There is no contradiction between authoritative passages - "It may appear that certain statements in the Book contradict one another. But a difference in context or emphasis or the exploration of a single reality from different perspectives should not be misconstrued as contradiction... If a personal interpretation of a passage contradicts the Text or its authoritative interpretation, that individual interpretation is erroneous." This provides us with one way of testing our individual interpretations of these writings.
4. Meaning is sometimes explicit and sometimes veiled - "At times we are dealing with explicit meanings and an esoteric interpretation would be inappropriate and incorrect... At other times a verse has deeper meanings, and trying to hold to the outward understanding can lead to rigidity or confusion." Some things are to be taken literally, some metaphorically. And figuring out which to use in any situation that is unclear is done on the basis of some of the other hermeneutical principles listed here.
5. The meaning of the Book cannot be exhausted - "This opens the Text to a range of individual interpretations, including instances in which an authoritative interpretation has been made. For example, after presenting an interpretation of the meaning of the story of Adam and Eve, Abdu'l Baha explains - 'This is one of the meanings of the biblical story of Adam. Reflect unti you discover the others.' However this concept does not imply relativism - personal interpretations are not all equally valid, and some are erroneous. Rather, meaning continually emerges through study and application throughout one's lifetime and over the entire course of the dispensation in a changing historical context."
6. Truth unfolds progressively within the dispensation - "The meaning of the Revelation is intentionally disclosed in a gradual manner over time. 'Consider the sun,' Baha'u'llah explains, 'How gradually its warmth and potency increase as it approaches its zenith...' He also states - 'Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded as timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered suited to the capacity of those who hear it.'" This dynamic revelation of truth is essential, as it enables people to make the transition from their established ways of thinking to a new way of viewing the world and their lives/actions.
   
7. Understanding is influenced by the stages of the Faith's organic development - This is more specifically written wrt the Baha'i Faith's development in the last 150 or so years, but can also be applied to other religions by looking at their history. "The Baha'i community evolves organically over time and certain passages may pertain to specific stages in this developmental process." The Universal House of Justice explains this through a simile - "If a farmer plants a tree, he cannot state at that moment what its exact height will be, the number of its branches or the exact time of its blossoming. He can, however, give a general impression of its size and pattern of growth and can state with confidence which fruit it will bear. The same is true of the evolution of the World Order of Baha'u'llah." In past dispensations errors arose because the believers "were overanxious to encompass the Divine Message within the framework of their limited understanding, to define doctrines where definition was beyond their power, to explain mysteries which only the wisdom and experience of a later age would make comprehensible, to argue that something was true because it appeared desirable and necessary."
8. Personal interpretations of the meaning of the Text should be weighed in the light of science and reason - This seems pretty clear to me :) Abdu'l Baha states, "If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standards of science, they are mere superstitions and imaginations...". However, there is one thing to be aware of - "it is vital to appreciate that in certain cases, rather than intending to convey a scientific truth, a passage in the Text uses scientific concepts according to the understanding of the people as a way of illustrating a spiritual theme." This is really important to understand, I think, as otherwise one might view some statement as being contradictory to the standards of science - while all it was was an analogy to explain some other more important spiritual principle. A clear example of this is Abdu'l Baha's use of the analogy of the concept of ether to illustrate the unknowability of God. In one passage he says, "The Divine Essence as it is in itself is however beyond all description. For instance, the nature of ether is unknown, but that it existeth is certain by the effects it produceth, heat, light and electricity being the waves thereof. By these waves the existence of ether is thus proven. And as we consider the outpourings of Divine Grace we are assured of the existence of God." The purpose here is to discuss human understanding of God, not prove the existence of ether. This is made clear in another passage of Abdu'l Baha's where he says that "Even ethereal matter, the forces of which are said in physics to be heat, light, electricity and magnetism, is an intellectual reality, and is not sensible." In other words, the ether is an intellectual concept used to explain certain phenomena. Over time as scientists couldn't verify its existence, they constructed other intellectual concepts to explain phenomena.
9. History and context have implications for understanding the meaning of the Text - Understanding context can be very important for grasping the meaning of a Text. However, "this does not imply that meaning of scripture is circumscribed by its particular context and that no general insights or principles can be drawn from it and applied universally... Hermeneutical practice must be concerned with both the particular and universal implications of the Writings..." We must also strive to avoid two extremes - one which is to insist that everything in the Writings can only be understood in the context of historical evidence, and the second which is to ignore the historical context or assume that all which is presented in the Text is historical fact - some statements, as was explained in the earlier point about science, are presented to people as analogies based on the particular understanding of the audience being addressed.