… meaning?

I am reading a book that considers the hermeneutic of the Desert Christians. The author muses on the movement from “text to meaning”. I wonder if this movement is not another example of the Ugly Ditch:

That, then, is the ugly, broad ditch which I cannot get across, however earnestly I have tried to make the leap. If anyone can help me over it, let him do it, I beg him, I adjure him. He will deserve a divine reward from me.

G. E. Lessing

Also, I have been thinking about the meaning that we (I?) assign to contingent “truth”?! In the end (so to say), the abstract wins over the individual and conformity is the only virtue (moral) left.

Anyway …