Harris: [00:46:57]
I think he is really being general in the sense that meaning is not a fixed phenomenon. His subtitle is essentially the title of the lecture [and book], The Surplus of Meaning. And I think that that is exactly what Ricoeur is trying to do, not only in interpretation theory, but probably in most of his writings. He is suggesting that meaning is not fixed, but there are more meanings. Meaning is layered. There is a surplus of meaning in every text. And embedded in this notion is freedom, in my view. Ricoeur had written earlier about Freedom in Nature. But I'm thinking that the notion of the surplus of meaning is from my experience; it is the locus of liberation and it is the locus of freedom. There are other meanings out there that are as pragmatic or even as theoretical.
Hawkins: [00:49:32]
I think of the surplus. I think maybe an overflow of associative kinds of information. It comes to you as you're reading; you may not even know yourself that you're going to have such associations, because that's part of the mind. We don't know what we're going to think. We think we think something. It's just there, you know, like we're daydreaming and you don't have any control of that. It's like a freedom of the mind to sort of go with this information that you consider for a while on process. And maybe it gets uttered in the public, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just gets goes back to the river and that same thing happens as you are reading a text. John Steinbeck or somebody, 25 or 30 years later, you read the same text again. And the experience in vocabulary is different than it was when you first read it and it changes the way you've experienced it. And all of that plays into it as well. You know, the surplus is always going to be there because you're always changing yourself. You know, it's sort of like that Heraclitan thing, you know, where you can't step into the same river twice. You probably really can't step in the same text twice. Would you say that's true?
Harris: [00:50:45]
I think you're absolutely correct. And I think that, you know, particularly for the preacher. The preacher often visits a text more than once. We have a tendency to migrate to a text that speaks to our hearts and minds and souls and. And I think that you can you can read a text, a scriptural text, for example, and you can preach a sermon from this text today. And then, if you have, you can speak from the same text tomorrow and you can speak from the same text next week, because there is this surplus of meaning. And I think there is an element of mystery. Also in the text as well as, for example, in the preacher. Larry [Bouchard] talks about that in his foreword about the mysterious nature of preaching, as well as correlating that to the whole notion of music.
Hawkins: [00:52:42]
In your book, you state that the purpose of writing Beyond the Tyranny of the Text. You write: Some may ask why this book? What's the motivation to write another book on preaching and interpretation? I decided to write this book because I wanted to move beyond traditional straitjacket exegesis to action, which is what philosopher Paul Ricoeur helps us do. How do Ricoeur's insights incite action?
Harris: [00:53:10]
Yeah. I think preaching is also about doing something. It is about action. And it is about acting. It is about demonstrating. I think that one of the best analogies I can draw is when Paul writes in First Corinthians, I believe that he is preaching in demonstration of the spirit and of power. I take that to mean that's a type of action, but I also extend this [to mean] that [we] have to, as preachers of the gospel, actually get out there in the community and do something. We have to get out there and actually try to bring about some change or some transformation in the lives of people. And so, you know, I think that sermon discourse should really move us to act, even if it's a minimal act. And that's one of the things that concerned me about the white church and about the white preacher. I don't see any broad-based understanding of preaching that is determined to bring down the walls of racism and injustice, and so forth.
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