Can biblical interpretation change the world? It may be a moot point in light of widespread biblical illiteracy, a consequence of the decline of biblical civilization in America, and in the West in general. 1 There was a time, however, when biblical interpretation shaped civilization. The patristic period created a culture of reading that inhabited a Christian symbolic universe, a universe that is no more, thanks to the “Big Crunch” of secular modernity that flattened it. There is today an urgent need to recover Christian practices of reading the Bible theologically, for the sake of the well-being of the church, academy, and world alike.
The 2010 Cape Town Commitment, the product of the Third Lausanne Congress, issued a call to action, urging theological educators to recenter the study of the Bible “as the core discipline in Christian theology.” This is not a plea for a return to Christendom, much less for the supremacy of a single denomination, system of theology, or exegetical method. It is a call for a return to biblical Christianity, for a theological approach to reading Scripture with and for the people of God, past and present, from east, west, north, and south. It is a call to respect the heritage of literal and spiritual interpretation. It is a call to see exegesis, systematics, and church history alike as properly theological disciplines. It is, I submit, a call for a “mere Christian” hermeneutics: a principled approach to biblical interpretation that (1) asks what we are doing in reading the Bible, particularly for its literal sense, and (2) emerges from both the historic consensus on the essentials of the faith and a church-based understanding of what the Bible is primarily for.
We live on the far side of the “demise of biblical civilization,” that momentous revolutionary change when modern people no longer read the Bible as telling the true story of the world. Of the many factors behind the collapse of the Bible’s de facto authority, perhaps the most devastating was interpretive disagreement not only over what it says but, more radically, over how to read it.
Biblical Christianity matters. It therefore behooves us to ask what it means to be “biblical,” and “literal.” The suffix provides a clue. Logical means “relating to or being in accord with logic.” Comical means “relating to comedy.” Ethical means “relating or conforming to certain standards of behavior.” Similarly, being biblical means speaking, thinking, and acting in accordance with the Scriptures, and literal means reading in accordance with the letter. Sadly, many people, including confessing Christians, have lost the ability to discern (or even discuss) whether a particular idea or practice is warranted by Scripture—or to define what literal means.
It was James Barr who first alerted me to the importance of being able to say what it means to be biblical, as well as to the challenge of defining what it means to be literal. Simply holding a “high” view of Scripture is no guarantee that one’s interpretation will be sound. Nor does citing verses here and there make for a biblical theology; heretics do this too. Barr castigated so-called fundamentalists for their supposed “literal” interpretations, showing in example after example how poor their readings actually were, at times not even getting the genre right (is it I, Lord?). How, then, can we get the Bible right? There are so many ways to read, so many schools of biblical interpretation, so many “methods for Matthew,” to cite one title in the “Methods in Biblical Interpretation” series. That there is a conflict of interpretations is well known. The more intense conflict, however, is between approaches to interpretation and competing visions of what biblical interpretation is for.
The present book is about what it means to read the Bible theologically . In 2010 Miroslav Volf declared the renewed interest in theological interpretation of the Bible to be “the most significant theological development in the last two decades,” comparable to the rediscovery of the Trinitarian nature of God in the early twentieth century. Most significant, perhaps, but surely one of the most controversial and misunderstood developments. I served as general editor of the award-winning Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible , yet despite its being a dictionary , a definition of “theological interpretation of Scripture” (henceforth TIS) proved elusive. In the introduction, I confidently said what theological interpretation is not , gestured toward what it is (e.g., it pertains to God), yet concluded by acknowledging a smorgasbord of approaches operating under the general rubric. Minimally, we could say that TIS is “interpretation that keeps theological concerns primary.”
Much to my chagrin, TIS fell less like a bombshell than a lead balloon into the playground of the exegetes. Historical and systematic theologians were generally enthused, but many (not all) biblical scholars came to regard theological interpretation with a hermeneutic of suspicion. What was new about TIS was worrisome; what was good about it was old news, something biblical scholars had already been doing. The following evaluation is representative: “Theological Interpretation of Scripture is partly disparate movement, partly a call to reformation in biblical interpretation, partly a disorganized array of methodological commitments in hermeneutics, partly a serious enterprise and partly (I suspect) a fad.”
Kevin J. Vanhoozer – Mere Christian Hermeneutics – Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2024
ISBN 978-0-3101-1451-2
Kevin J. Vanhoozer – Mere Christian Hermeneutics – Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Experiment in Biblical-Theological Criticism
- The Experiment: From Methods of Criticism to Criticism of Methods
- Divine Address: “Today, If You Hear His Voice . . .”
- Human Answerability: “. . . Do Not Harden Your Hearts”
- Ascending the Mountain: The Plan of the Book
Part 1: Reading the Bible in and out of Church
- The Divided Domain of the Word
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1. Forming Reading Cultures: From Biblical Literacy to Gospel Citizenship
- Interpretive Communities, Constitutions, and Covenants
- Biblical Interpretation and the Formation of Christian Culture
- On the Making of Reading Cultures: Three Historical Examples
- Toward What Kind of Reading Culture?
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2. Exegesis in a Toolshed: A Conflict of Reading Cultures
- C. S. Lewis: Taking Biblical Interpreters to the Toolshed
- C. P. Snow: The Two Cultures
- Crosscurrents of Biblical Interpretation: A Brief History of a Recurring Tension
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3. Biblical Studies and Theology as Polarized Reading Cultures: The State of the Question
- Epochal Polarization: When Modern Biblical Interpreters Lost Interest in Theology
- Disciplinary Polarization: The Divided Domain of Biblical Interpretation
- Beyond Polarization: Taking Biblical Studies and Theology Back to Church
Part 2: Figuring Out Literal Interpretation
- The Letter of the Text
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4. Defining Sensus Literalis (Part 1): From Grammatical Sense to Eschatological Reference
- Philology: Reading the Letter with Loving Attention
- Literality (Part 1): Construing the Sense of the Letter
- Literality (Part 2): Toward Which Frame of Reference?
- Framing Literal Interpretation: Of Secular and Sacred Imaginaries
- Framing Isaiah; Framing Hebrews: Is the Literal Always Earth-Bound?
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5. Defining Sensus Literalis (Part 2): From the Figural to the Trans-figural
- Tactics vs. Strategy: Where the Conflict Really Lies
- Mere Christian Figuration: Beyond Typology and Allegory
- Grammatical-Eschatological Exegesis and the “Trans-figural” Literal Sense
- A Reformed Catholic Paradigm: Christoscopic Interpretive Vision
Part 3: Transfiguring Literal Interpretation
- The Light of Christ
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6. Shedding Light on Literality: Light Wrought
- Framing Creation: On Reading Genesis 1:3 Literally
- “What Light through Yonder Cosmos Breaks?” Genesis 1:3 in the History of Exegesis
- Making Known: A God-Bespoke Economy of Light
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7. The Transfiguration of Christ: Light Revealed
- The Meaning of Transfiguration and the Transfiguration of Meaning
- The Transfiguration in the Synoptic Gospels
- The Transfiguration in the History of Exegesis
- Transfiguration Transposed: The Glory of Christ in the Fourth Gospel
- The Transfiguration as Interpretive Framework: Five Theses
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8. Transfiguring the Literal: Light Refracted
- “The Prophetic Word Made More Sure”: Does Transfiguring Mean Reading Backward?
- A Tale of Two Mountains: Sinai and Tabor
- Letter and Spirit: Paul’s Reading of Moses’ Veiled Glory
- The Letter Unveiled: Transfiguring Interpretation Glorifies the Literal Sense
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9. Transfiguring the Reader: Light Reflected
- Wrestling with Texts (and Other Readers): The Struggle for Understanding
- Wrestling with God? Reading Jacob at Jabbok
- Varieties of Spiritual Interpretation
- With Unveiled Faces: Reading by Lamb-Light
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Conclusion: Beatific Lection: Transfiguring Christian Reading Cultures
- The Experiment’s Results: A Summary Mountaintop Report
- “Listen to Him”: Attending to (and Answering) Light
- Whose Song Is It? On Seeking (and Finding) Christ in the “Wrong” Places
- An Ongoing Ascent: Mere Christian Hermeneutics as Witness and Worship
Select Bibliography
Glossary
Scripture Index
Proper-Name Index
Subject Index
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