The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics

The Three Differences

chap ter 10  The Three Differences 311 s. 17, S. 428 Indessen muß es uns noch mehr als auf diese Übereinstimmung auf die Unterschiede ankommen, die zwischen dem göttlichen und dem menschlichen Wort bestehen. Das ist theologisch auch ganz in Ordnung. Das Mysterium der Trinität, das durch die Analogie mit dem inneren Wort aufgehellt werden soll, muß vom menschlichen Denken her am Ende doch unverständlich bleiben. Wenn im göttlichen Wort das Ganze des göttlichen Geistes ausgesprochen ist, dann bedeutet das prozessuale Moment an diesem Wort etwas, wofür uns im Grunde jede Analogie im Stich läßt. Sofern der göttliche Geist, indem er sich selbst erkennt, zugleich alles Seiende erkennt, ist das Wort Gottes das Wort des alles in einem Anschauen (intuitus) schauenden und schaffenden Geistes. Der Hervorgang verschwindet in der Aktualität der göttlichen Allweisheit. Auch die par. 17, pp. 424‒ ‒425 And yet we ourselves want to pay attention more to the differences than the similarities between the divine and human word. This is perfectly legitimate theologically— The mystery of the Trinity, which the analogy of the inner word is meant to illuminate, must remain in the end incomprehensible to human thought. If the whole of the divine mind is expressed in this divine word, then the processual moment signifies something about this word concerning which we must, in the end, abandon any analogy. Insofar as the divine mind, while it knows itself, knows all beings, the word of God is the word of an all beholding and creating spirit in one vision (intuitus). The “process” disappears in the actuality of divine omniscience.1 The creation would also really not be a procession, but would rather only interpret the structure of the world order in 312 Exegesis, Truth and Method, Part III, 2, B Paragraph 17 begins the third and last major section of III, 2, B. In its recourse to the analogy of the inner word with incarnation, Thomism taught the corresponding differences between the human and divine word, and here Gadamer finds ample commonality with the hermeneutic theme of human finitude. To draw this out, he explicates Aquinas’s De differentia verbi divini et humani, which is itself a commentary on this theme, the first part of a lecture on John’s prologue.2 The beginning of Aquinas’s commentary is an exhaustive analysis of the phrase“In the beginning was the Word.”Aquinas looks at each of the three parts of the phrase in turn (subject, prepositional clause, and predicate), starting first with the noun “Word.” Following Augustine, Aquinas takes word to mean in its fundamental sense not the vocal sounds caused by the vibration of the air through the larynx, but the conception in our mind (conceptui animae) of which those vocalizations are a sign. This interior word (verbum interius) is something that is formed out of the mind’s coming to terms with the world. For Aquinas there are two such primary mental actions, analytic (definitionem) and Schöpfung sei kein wirklicher Prozeß, sondern lege nur das Ordnungsgefüge des Weltganzen im zeitlichen Schema aus. Wenn wir das prozessuale Moment am Wort genauer erfassen wollen, das uns für unsere Frage nach dem Zusammenhang von Sprachlichkeit und Verstehen das wichtige ist, werden wir bei der Übereinstimmung mit dem theologischen Problem nicht stehenbleiben dürfen , sondern werden bei der Unvollkommenheit des menschlichen Geistes und dem Unterschiede zum Göttlichen zu verweilen haben. Auch dabei dürfen wir Thomas folgen, der drei Unterschiede hervorhebt. a temporal schema. If we wish to grasp more precisely the processual element in the word, which is important for our inquiry into the connectedness of language and understanding, we may not stop with our points of agreement with the theological problem, but instead will have to dwell on the imperfection of the human mind, and its difference with the divine understanding. We may still follow Thomas for this purpose, who underlines three differences. synthetic (enuntiationem), sometimes translated as definition and judgment .3 The former is the marking and fixing of the boundaries of an issue, and the latter is the pronunciation on a matter under consideration . Regardless of such a division, the important point for the inner word here is that a matter has been brought to a point of settlement (terminatur). Gadamer speaks of an idea being “thought through” or “thought to the...