Biblia jako świadectwo relatywnego Absolutu w myśli Paula Ricoeura

Abstract

In the hermeneutical philosophy of religion developed by Paul Ricoeur, he considers the original modalities of the biblical discourse to be manifold forms of confession of faith. This polyphonic language is viewed as a “poetic” discourse, i.e. one which makes a new, creative description of a certain “world” – the biblical world, revealed by means of the appropriate confgurations of the discourse itself. When the latter is recorded in writing, it becomes a text with semantic autonomy. Moreover, it becomes a canonical text as a result of the act of “closing” the scope of meaningful intertextual references. As such, it is characterised, on the one hand, by regulated pluralism of interpretation and, on the other hand, by specifc authority in relation to the community of believers. From a philosophical point of view, the biblical discourse understood in such terms can be treated as a written testimony to religious beliefs. In this case, the Bible is included in the specifc issue of the hermeneutics of testimony and placed in the pluralistic context of other expressions of diversifed beliefs. It then functions as a kind of relative absolute. Reference to the latter category allows, on the one hand, to show the values and assess the usefulness of such a model of biblical discourse in the situation of worldview pluralism. On the other hand, however, it raises questions about the completeness and limits of such an approach, especially in relation to non-textual reality – to the biblical ultimate referent.