It has been said of Boehme that his books are like a picnic to which the author brings the words and the reader the meaning. The remark may have been intended as a sneer at Boehme, but it is an exact description of all works of literary art without exception.
— Northrop Frye (1947, 427-8)
This would certainly apply to works of literary art – and to scriptures – which function as turning symbols. Do they differ in this respect from scientific works, or philosophical works, which can also work as turning symbols? That depends on the nature of the objects of these symbols, and the nature of the collateral experience of those objects which the reader brings to the act of meaning. That is always the reader’s act, although the Truth of the symbol (argument or proposition) must be, for the reader, independent of the reader’s personal belief.