Against Interpretation Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes people ask me how I can be both a Catholic and a scientist, particularly a scientist who, at least for some research, studies evolution. I tell them that they are confusing us with Evangelicals. Catholics don't have anything against evolution. A literal interpretation of the Bible, the kind that says that the earth is six thousand years old, has never been a part of our religion, at least not since the Saint Augustine warned against preaching idiocy to Pagans in 415 AD. He said that if you tell people that they have to believe in things that they know are not true and that do not matter then they will never believe you when you tell them things that are true and that do matter, things about Christ and the resurrection. The Church's friendliness towards science is not to protect science. It is to protect Christianity. — Gina DeMarco

If anyone shall set the authority of Holy Writ against clear and manifest reason, he who does this knows not what he has undertaken; for he opposes to the truth not the meaning of the Bible, which is beyond his comprehension, but rather his own interpretation; not what is in the Bible, but what he has found in himself and imagines to be there. — Augustine Of Hippo

We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers. — Saint Augustine

It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach. — Paul Ricoeur

This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job. — Susan Sontag

The secular world is the world of history as made by human beings. Human agency is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence, and judge. Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. But for that kind of wider perception we need time and patient and skeptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction. — Edward W. Said

The rejection of all homosexual acts is rooted in a desire to uphold what is understood to be the meaning of the prohibitive Scriptures and the tradition of heterosexual marriage. It is an attempt to be careful to walk in faithfulness to God. The rejection of exclusionary practices aimed at gay and lesbian people is rooted in a desire to uphold Scripture by seeking to carefully understand its meaning in the original historical context and to apply Scripture's teaching carefully. It is an attempt to uphold Scripture's caution against religious zeal that unintentionally accepts harm of the neighbor or fails to love the neighbor well. Both positions are principled positions seeking to uphold important goods. — Ken Wilson

The new Constitution will promote the "general" welfare, not welfare varying by condition or by place of residence. It will secure our liberties - against whom? There's an ambiguity here; liberty could be secured against foreign enemies and domestic subversives, or against the new government itself. The latter interpretation is soothing to American ears; but in this context, it seems far-fetched. The clause appears in a list of things government is to do, not things it is not to do; a list of powers, not of prohibitions. The new government, it would appear, is not the enemy of liberty but its chief agent and protector. The purpose then, in its most plausible reading, is to create a strong, active, national government, one whose benefits will flow directly to the people who create it. — Garrett Epps

The statistical method is required in the interpretation of figures which are at the mercy of numerous influences, and its object is to determine whether individual influences can be isolated and their effects measured. The essence of the method lies in the determination that we are really comparing like with like, and that we have not overlooked a relevant factor which is present in Group A and absent from Group B. The variability of human beings in their illnesses and in their reactions to them is a fundamental reason for the planned clinical trial and not against it. — Austin Bradford Hill

When Nietzsche praises egoism it is always in an aggressive or polemical way, against the virtues, against the virtue of disinterestedness (Z III "Of the three evil things"). But in fact egoism is a bad interpretation of the will, just as atomism is a bad interpretation of force. In order for there to be egoism it is necessary for there to be an ego. — Gilles Deleuze

From a practical angle this factor reveals itself in that an individual who follows his dreams for a considerable time will find that they are often concerned with his relationships with other people. His dreams my warn him against trusting a certain person too much, or he may dream about a favorable and agreeable meeting with someone whom he may previously have never consciously noticed. If a dream does pick up the image of another person for us in some such fashion, there are two possible interpretations. First, the figure may be a projection, which means that the dream-image of this person is a symbol for an inner aspect of the dreamer himself. One dreams, for instance of a dishonest neighbor, but the neighbor is used by the dream as a picture of one's own dishonesty. It is the task of dream interpretation to find out in which special areas one's own dishonesty comes into play. (This is called dream interpretation on the subjective level.) — C. G. Jung

The battle for our lives, and the lives and souls of our children, our husbands, our friends, our families, our neighbors, and our nation is waged on our knees. When we don't pray, it's like sitting on the sidelines watching those we love and care about scrambling through a war zone, getting shot at from every angle. When we do pray, however, we're in the battle alongside them, approaching God's power on their behalf. If we also declare the Wordog God in our prayers, then we wield a powerful weapon against which no enemy can prevail. — Stormie O'martian

And so in place of insignificant, vague, and uncertain phrases subject to arbitrary interpretation, I found in Matthew v. 21-26 the first commandment of Jesus: Live in peace with all men. Do not regard anger as justifiable under any circumstances. Never look upon a human being as worthless or as a fool. Not only refrain from anger yourself, but do not regard the anger of others toward you as vain. If any one is angry with you, even without reason, be reconciled to him, that all hostile feelings may be effaced. Agree quickly with those that have a grievance against you, lest animosity prevail to your loss. — Leo Tolstoy

[On the New Testament:] I ... must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the men who did that work, and against the perverted interpretation by the men who undertook to write commentaries thereon. I am inclined to think, when we [women] are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Arlen Specter is the man who voted in favor of Bill Clinton during impeachment, voted against Robert Bork for the Supreme Court, voted against school choice for the District of Columbia, endorses an absolutist interpretation of abortion rights. He is bright and he is tough and he belongs elsewhere. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The clearest argument against Plato's authorship is probably that Plato never wrote a work whose interpretation was as simple and straightforward as that of Alcibiades. — Plato

Some modern theologians have, quite rightly, protested against an excessively moralistic interpretation of Christianity. The Holiness of God is something more and other than moral perfection: His claim upon us is something more and other than the claims of moral duty. I do not deny it: But this conception, like that of corporate guilt, is very easily used as an evasion of the real issue. God may be more than moral goodness: He is not less. The road to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended, but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely face the fact of their failure. — C.S. Lewis

There is a historic strain of dominion theology which says, taking its references from the Psalms, that man is made just a little lower than God, and that we are the crown of creation. That interpretation has come at the expense of the one that says when God, in the story of Noah, intervened to save human life against the flood, against the acts of nature, He did not stop with human beings. He made sure that every kind of animal was represented twice on that ark. — Bill Moyers

Satanism advocates practicing a modified form of the Golden Rule. Our interpretation of this rule is: "Do unto others as they do unto you"; because if you "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and they, in turn, treat you badly, it goes against human nature to continue to treat them with consideration. You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but if your courtesy is not returned, they should be treated with the wrath they deserve. — Anton Szandor LaVey

When I was older, I found Iqbal's work hugely inspirational. He argued against an unquestioning acceptance of Western democracy as the self-governing model, and instead suggested that by following the rules of Islam a society would tend naturally towards social justice, tolerance, peace and equality. Iqbal's interpretation of Islam differs very widely from the narrow meaning that is sometimes given to it. For Iqbal, Islam is not just the name for certain beliefs and forms of worship. The difference between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is not merely a theological one - it is a difference of a fundamental attitude towards life. — Imran Khan

Prayer is in essence rebellion - rebellion against the world in its fallenness. Prayer is the undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. It is the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God. — David G. Wells

Neither Peter in his work to include Gentiles in the church nor the abolitionists in their campaign against slavery argued that their experience should take precedence over Scripture. But they both made the case that their experience should cause Christians to reconsider long-held interpretations of Scripture. Today, we are still responsible for testing our beliefs in light of their outcomes - a duty in line with Jesus's teaching about trees and their fruit. — Matthew Vines

Because the union of a man and woman deserves an honored place in our society, I support the protection of marriage against activist judges. And I will continue to appoint federal judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law. — George W. Bush

Interpretation that aims at, or thrives on, uniqueness can usually be attributed to pride (an attempt to "outclever" the rest of the world), a false understanding of spirituality (wherein the Bible is full of deeply buried truths waiting to be mined by the spiritually sensitive person with special insight), or vested interests (the need to support a theological bias, especially in dealing with texts that seem to go against that bias). — Gordon D. Fee

No matter what we may think and say of Germany, by singular paradox the race-religion which Germany has suddenly thrust to the front, is but an interpretation of what America and Europe have practiced against the colored peoples of the world. No matter who wins this war it is going to end with the question of the equal humanity of black, brown, yellow and white people, thrust firmly to the front. Is this a world where its peoples in mutual helpfulness and mutual respect can live and work; or will it be a world in the future as in the past, where white Europe and white America must rule "niggers"? The problem of the reconstruction of the United States, 1876, is the problem of the reconstruction of the world in 1943. — W.E.B. Du Bois

I told them we're tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we're for, I said, not just what we're against. We don't want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff - biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice - but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask. — Rachel Held Evans

The colonial films of the golden age of Hollywood were a clear proclamation of the Consensus historians' interpretation of the facts. These motion pictures encouraged audiences to believe that our nation could overcome all obstacles to its growth and defend itself against any future foreign aggression. — John P. Harty Jr.

Some devout Christians are among the most fervent advocates of the death penalty, contradicting Jesus Christ and justifying their belief on an erroneous interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," their most likely response, overlooks the fact that this was promulgated by Moses as a limitation- a prohibition against taking both eyes or all of an offender's teeth in retribution. — Jimmy Carter

I argue against literal interpretation of religious doctrines. Religions make progress when they emancipate themselves from literalism, and take their doctrinal statements to be metaphors or allegories. — Philip Kitcher

The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing
and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality. — Soren Kierkegaard