It’s a strange hermeneutical theory that doesn’t want to deal with words, but that’s the way many modern hermeneutical systems (beginning with Schleiermacher) work: The interpreter is trying to slip past the veil of language to the mind behind. Inky words on rag-and-wood-pulp pages are just too physical to communicate ethereal consciousness.

Lundin suggests that Hirsch and others would want to revise John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Mind, and the Mind was with God, and the Mind was God.”