Is hermeneutics related to Hermes? The word hermeneutics comes from the ancient Greek verb áŒÏΌηΜΔÏΔÎčÎœ (hermÄneuein) â âto interpret, explain, translateââwhich is etymologically and conceptually related to Hermes. True hermeneutics comes from Hermes.
The ancients believed that the messages of the gods were too cryptic for humans to grasp without an interpreter. HermesâMercury in Roman loreâwas seen as the god of speech. In him, the transcendent meanings were translated into human language.
Hermes was a liminal figureâsomeone âin-betweenâ worlds, times, and meanings. He embodied the idea of interpretation as a journey across a threshold. To truly understand a divine message, we must be carried from one realm into anotherâborne on winged sandals.
Without this journey, there is no understanding. Understanding is less a matter of data analysis than a passage between worlds. We must be transported across the threshold by Hermes himself. This ancient personification of understanding was, in its way, a prefiguration of âThe Word became flesh and dwelt among us.â
The Logos becomes a felt Presence so that we might understand God. Echoing the descent of the Logos to earth, C.S. Lewis describes the descent of Mercury in That Hideous Strength in terms that are almost Pentecostal:
âThere came an instant at which both men [Ransom and Merlin] braced themselves⊠All the fragmentsâneedleâpointed desires, brisk merriments, lynxâeyed thoughtsâwent rolling to and fro like glittering drops and reunited themselves. It was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry⊠For Ransom⊠it was heavenly pleasure. He found himself sitting within the very heart of language, in the whiteâhot furnace of essential speech⊠For the lord of Meaning himself, the herald, the messenger, the slayer of Argus, was with them.â That Hideous Strength, âThe Descent of the Gods.â
It was the felt presence of Mercury that brought celestial clarity to Ransom and his friends. And it was his felt presence that ultimately overthrew that hideous strength whose power chiefly came from perverting essential speech. What is essential speech? Itâs the âreunitedâ speech that slays Argusâthe giant with a hundred eyes, a fitting symbol of the ever-watchful N.I.C.E.
Unless the Word is enfleshed, it remains intangible and therefore hidden. There is no hermeneutics without an encounter with Hermes. Hermeneutics is often treated as an objective method of extracting meaning from a text, as if meaning resides solely in the words. But true meaning can only be found in the felt Presence of the Word.
During Covid, most of us met online, and for a while we thought it was no different from meeting in person. Yet after a couple of years of staring at screens, we realized how much meaning we were missing. We craved flesh-and-blood people. We longed for the eyes, the touch, the embrace. But why? All the words were conveyed just fine. The words were thereâHermes was not.
Without the descent of Hermes we canât feel the heavenly pleasure of being âin the very heart of Language,â which is true hermeneutics. We hear words through headphones, see faces on screens, yet our hearts yearn for more. For what? For embodied Meaningâfor the âWord made flesh.â And then, at last, the Covid restrictions were lifted, and we saw real human faces again.
In that moment, many of us realizedâin a flash of Platonic anamnesisâthat meaning cannot be digitized. It can only be read in the living contours of a real human face. Words without a body may denote, but they do not mean.
âWe should not forget that there is more to the world than what we can interpret. The materiality and immediacy of our experiences are just as important.â Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Presence
What is the truth behind optical illusions? âMy Wife and My Mother-in-Lawâ is a well-known optical illusion that presents two different images in one. It was created by the British cartoonist W.E. Hill in 1915. The drawing cleverly shifts between two perspectives: you can either see a young lady looking away or an older woman with a large nose and chin.
The paradox of all optical illusions is that the viewerâs mind cannot see two images simultaneously. It has to switch. This presents a huge philosophical conundrum â if people can look at the same thing but see two different pictures, how can we tell if thereâs an objective reality? It all depends on what you focus on.
The âahaâ moment comes when we discover the two pictures. Of course, we canât see them simultaneously, but we can switch between them. The very act of switching seems magical in and of itself â after all, we see that every line in every image is exactly in its place. Yet, the brain cannot perceive two things simultaneously â no matter how much we try.
So, what is objective reality? Can I look at something and definitively say, âThis isâŠâ? Unless I question how I see before I decide what I see, I donât really see. The âhow I seeâ always precedes âwhat I see.â Unless I question my semantics and see how I see, I will be under the illusion of seeing. As Jesus said, âThough seeing, they do not see.â
If I absolutize my way of seeing â my semantics â I will create an idol. I will say, âThereâs nothing else to see here besides what I see.â The absolutization of one perspective is the end of true seeing. It is semantic idolatry. An idol always arrests our gaze and does not let us see beyond.
The opposite of semantic idolatry is semantic transcendence. The moment I realize there are at least two pictures to see, I stop absolutizing my own. I start switching between the two. But I donât absolutize the second one either. Both are but shadows of reality, not reality itself.
When I realize that the âreal switchingâ is not between the two pictures (or two cultural semantics) but between shadows and Truth, I start seeing. My eyes open. Itâs not just a young lady or just an old woman. These are but shadows of reality. They are symbols that must be transcended. When I realize that my way of seeing is symbolic, I realize that all the symbols are real inasmuch as I see through them, not at them.
âGod is the coincidence of opposites.â Nicholas of Cusa
In God, all contradictions converge and are reconciled. Now we see partially, as in a mirror. Then, we will see face to face. In God, we see two (or more) pictures at the same time without having to switch between them because we see with the heart, not the mind. The heart perceives an old woman in every young lady and a young lady in every old woman. It doesnât mistake a symbol for reality. It transcends the shadows and becomes sane.
âThe ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic⊠He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland⊠If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.â G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
In God, we see two things simultaneously. The mind cannot grasp the Whole â it has to switch. The heart can. Mystical vision is stereoscopic. It allows me to see the Whole without sacrificing either part. The moment I see God, I start seeing The Face behind every face.
What is Satan’s plan for deceiving people? I remember watching a lecture on YouTube by a KGB professor who taught a class on how world elites rule over societies.
He said, âImagine there is a truth and a lie. Itâs a huge mistake to place common people between the truth and a lie and let them decide which is which. The truth will always prevail. It is too self-evident. The way to rule the masses is to always keep people between two lies.â
When you keep people between two lies, they will be distracted enough not to see the truth. They will split into two groups and start fighting each other. Each group will clearly see the lie of the other. Neither will see their own. Human nature is such that people never see problems with their own position but always find fault with the opposite one.
When I heard that, I thought, âHow viciously insightful! If it isnât the very definition of diabolos, I donât know what is.â In Greek, diabolos means âthe one who throws apart.â The devil invents two lies and places people in between them. The more we stare at the lies (which always contain some truth), the more we are drawn apart.
The devil keeps fanning into the flame and polarizing people until they start demonizing each other. When people fight, they are too distracted to see the truth. All they think about is how wrong the other side is. This is the best scenario for ruling over the masses. They will want a ruler.
St. Augustine said,
âThe truth is like a lion; you donât have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.â
According to the KGB professor, it is a grave mistake to place people between the truth and a lie. The truthfulness of the truth is too obvious to miss. It doesnât need any defending. When you see it, you know it. Seeing is enough. Thatâs why the devilâs goal is never to let people see it.
Truth is too obvious to miss. When you see it, you know it. Itâs not propositional â it doesnât require proof. Itâs experiential â you simply encounter it. When you encounter it, you can either embrace it or turn away. But you canât help recognizing it. Thatâs why when the devil tries to trap Jesus into taking sides, he always refuses. Truth doesnât get polarized.
When people encounter Jesus, they forget about their differences and see the truth about themselves. âIs it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?â If Jesus had taken sides, he would have lost. He answered in such a way that everyone was lost. He left them dumbfounded, âHm⊠what belongs to Caesar and what to God?â
The issue of whether to pay taxes to Caesar or not was not the real issue. These were the two lies people were placed between. Neither was right. The real issue was that they couldnât see in their hearts what belonged to Caesar and what to God. If they could, they wouldnât have been polarized.
When we encounter the Truth, we quickly realize,
âLet God be true, but every man a liar.â
As John of the Cross said,
âIn the divine union, all contraries are reconciled, and the soul experiences the peace that comes from the resolution of all opposites.â
The devil creates a strong illusion of seeming contradictions. He places us between two opposites, and we think they are absolute. We donât see the Absolute. When we encounter the Absolute, all opposites are resolved instantly. We know it by the peace we feel.
âLove⊠binds all things together in perfect unity.â
Why is Göbekli Tepe mysterious? Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, the archeologist Klaus Schmidt made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time â a temple complex Göbekli Tepe datingabout 11,000 years old.
The most striking thing about this discovery was that the temple complex dated before the advent of agriculture and a settled way of life. In other words, several tribes of nomadic hunter-gatherers decided that they needed a temple and settled. Why?
In the traditional view of societal development (influenced by Marxism), economic factors always precede and predate culture and religion. Economy is the basis, the structure; culture is secondary â it is the superstructure. Culture and religion always flow out of the economy, not the other way around.
Schmidt came to the opposite conclusion. The main motivation for building Göbekli Tepe was not economy but religion â which was a huge blow to the traditional understanding of societal development. The hunter-gatherers settled because they had acquired some strong religious belief which substantiated building a temple.
This gave rise to the development of agriculture â they needed to feed all those people involved in the construction. And ultimately, this led to the creation of a âsettledâ way of life. How we live always flows from what we believe, not the other way around. We create an economy around our strongest beliefs, which are usually metaphors.
Metaphor is the structure; how we live it out is the superstructure. The further back we go in history, the more we find vestiges of metaphor-driven consciousness. Thatâs what Owen Barfield discovered in studying languages: the further back we go in history, the more metaphorical the language gets. Ancient consciousness was metaphoric. Modern consciousness is literal.
Man himself is a metaphor. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were acutely conscious of being vessels of the Divine â images of God. They were icons (âimageâ in Greek). Looking at each other, they saw God. They were walking metaphors â microcosms reflecting the macrocosm. After the fall, this metaphor-consciousness started disintegrating. Adam and Eve started taking themselves âliterally.â
Over time, they started seeing themselves as separate beings â not as icons but as idols. An icon is a metaphor of God. An idol is a metaphor of nothing. It doesnât show anything beyond the visible. Idolatry is the loss of metaphor-consciousness. Our gaze no longer penetrates the images; it is arrested by the images at the level of the visible and literal. This marks the rise of literalness-consciousness.
Why is Göbekli Tepe mysterious? The children of Adam and Eve always vacillate between metaphor and literalness. When we forget about God, we take ourselves literally. We idealize our earthly existence (economy) over the metaphor (religion). When we get fed up with the meaninglessness of the âliteral,â we wake up to our true nature â we are metaphors of God. We experience a shift from an idol to an icon.
The moment we realize we are icons, we start building temples. We see everything as sacred. We take off our sandals for even the ground we are standing on is holy. We reconnect with God and ourselves as The Metaphor.
How do we understand what a text means? How do we know what Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, C.S. Lewis, or Tolkien meant? Is it enough to read their books? How do we elicit meaning?
Isnât it curious that God didnât come to humanity with a book? He came with a body. The ultimate knowledge of God is enfleshed in the Son of God. He walked among us, and we saw his glory. The Logos became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen, touched, smelled, and heard, and tasted Meaning. It affected us bodily. We dwelt in its Presence.
Apart from the body, Meaning is impervious. It is ungraspable at the level of the mind.
As Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht says:
âWhat we need is a form of thinking that is based on the possibility of presence and on the possibility of presence being related to meaning.â
Is meaning related to presence? It is. And our ability to perceive meaning arises from our contact with the Form. Meaning is read off of that Form in which it is embodied.
âThat which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touchedâthis we proclaim concerning the Word of life.â
The Logos must be incarnate to be perceivable. Knowledge without a body is misleading at best. We donât arrive at Meaning through interpretation; we arrive at meaning through coming in contact with its embodied Presence.
Interpretation is misleading without Presence. It is a form of narcissism â we tend to reduce the Meaning to the lens through which we choose to see the world. When we see, touch, and taste the Presence, we donât need to interpret. We grasp the Whole.
Interpretation is necessary when thereâs no Presence. Interpretation is the child of absence. In the absence of the body, texts require interpretation. In the presence of the body, they come alive. They walk, talk, and dwell among us.
We see the text, talk with it, laugh with it, eat with it â we have a relationship with it. Meaning is what happens to us as we engage in that relationship. We know without interpreting. If we have to interpret, we donât know.
âBy this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.â
To know God means to touch his flesh. When we touch the Body, we know, and all texts come alive. When we interpret the text without touching the Body, it is a dead letter.
The Spirit loves forms. It loves being in the body. It creates âfelt presences.â Whatever we encounter in a text, whether itâs Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, or the Bible, already exists in this world as a Presence. Something that we can touch, see, and experience.
