From text to Event

the Word as performative revelation in Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics

Abstract

This article investigates the current relevance of divine revelation from the perspective of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical-theological hermeneutics, highlighting the Word of God as an interpretative event that occurs in the intertwining of text, symbol, and historical experience. Based on Ricoeur’s symbolic-narrative epistemology, particularly the concepts of “text-world”, “distancing”, and “appropriation”, it argues that Scripture should not be reduced to its literal meaning, but rather understood as a symphonic, polyphonic, and ever-mediated revelation. From this perspective, biblical interpretation is seen as a dialogical process that summons the reader to a hermeneutic shift, opening them to listening to a meaning that transcends the text’s past and bursts into the present as kairós, an opportune and convening time. The Word, then, emerges as a performative discourse that integrates spirituality, ethics, and praxis, establishing an encounter between the human and the divine within history. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, by affirming the symbolic mediation of revelation and its openness to meaning, offers a fruitful epistemological key for considering Scripture as a theological place of conversion, communion, and pastoral discernment in contemporary times.