One person wrote: It strikes me that we are vesting the idea of “objectivity” with two quite different meanings. By “objective” I meant that the text has a meaning independent of our speculations about it. I think, however, that you take “objective” to mean “universally accessible to all persons.” if one employs “objective” in the first sense, then I think that I would want to respond more critically to your comments. But there seems to be little point in raising any such critisms if I have indeed misunderstood your point.

Another responded

I’m not sure if it is our definitions that differ, or our understandings of the implications. Checking with the Macquarie Dictionary, I think I am using the word “objective” in the sense of “of or pertaining to that which can be known.”

I don’t have any objection to the theory that for any given text, a meaning existed in the mind of the writer which is quite independent of our speculations about it. Can we discern that meaning? Possibly. Can we know whether we have successfully discerned that meaning? No. The closest we can get is to know that the evidence we have found points in a certain direction and makes our hypothesis about the author’s intended meaning more probable than any of the other possible meanings we’ve thought of so far. And at that point, faith takes over. We allow God to use the text, and our study of it, to speak to us, and we commit ourselves to submitting to the will of the living God as best we can discern it.

Our obedience to the text is not dependent on the ability to know when we have arrived at the one correct original author-intended meaning. Sometimes I’m not even sure I can work out the original author-intended meaning of things I wrote myself! Ultimately, discerning what the Apostle Paul intended by something he wrote is not my main aim. I do put some serious work into trying to discern what he meant, but I do that as a step towards two more important aims: 1) helping me to understand better the heritage of faith which I am committed to receiving from Christ and the Apostles; and 2) equipping me better to discern what God is saying to me now, through this text. It is what God is saying now, that really matters to me, not what the Apostle thought he was saying then.

But neither what the Apostle meant by a text, nor what God wants to say to me through it now, are objective in the sense of being able to be known definitively. I agree that they exist independently of what I think about them, but I can only know what I think about them. I can make sure that “what I think” is as fully informed as possible by study, wise counsel, and prayer, but there is still no objective standard by which I can measure the accuracy of my discernment. I need to relate to God on the basis of faith precisely because I cannot relate to God on the basis of verifiable knowledge.

To return to my comparison between my relationship with God and my relationship with my wife: I can never know for sure that I have perceived with 100% accuracy all that my wife intended to mean by anything she says. That doesn’t mean that I thereby lack a sufficient basis for a relationship with her. Indeed, the more the relationship develops, the more confident I can become in my ability to understand her reasonably often, and so the more able I am to put my trust in my perception of what she means at any given time and act accordingly. Those acts of trust deepen the relationship, and the deepening relationship enables greater acts of faith. My ability to discern and respond to God’s will is the same. It is founded on a growing relationship, not on the ability to ascertain with any certainty what a collection of texts meant in the minds of the authors.

As the creeds say, “we believe…”, not “we know…”

Peace and hope,