Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge

Trinity Journal, Fall 2000 by Vidu, Adonis

The basic problem with postmodern hermeneutics is that it fails to free readers from themselves. A theological interpretation has two characteristics. First, it believes that readers can receive something from the text which might change them, and second, that the reader has both the duty and the ability to check his own attitude with respect to the text. The morality of literary knowledge has to do with the checks on interpretive aims and interests. Vanhoozer puts this in the form of the hermeneutical imperative: do unto others' discourses what you would have them do to yours. Such a principle is transcendental (following Habermas) because it would not be possible to deny it without pragmatic contradiction. Such a hermeneutic would not be properly Trinitarian without an account of the work of the Spirit. Vanhoozer proposes a reworking of the relation between Son and Spirit with the aid of speech-act theory. If we can only understand the Son by understanding what the Father was doing in him, then the Spirit is, as it were, the perlocutionary direction of the Word. The Spirit convinces us of both the humanity and divinity of the biblical locution; it illumines the letter by pressing the illocutionary force on the reader, and lastly it sanctifies US. Vanhoozer does not restrict the jurisdiction of the Spirit to biblical hermeneutics. Indeed, if all hermeneutics are theological (we are addressed by something transcendent), then the role of the Spirit in general hermeneutics must be investigated as well. The main contention is that the hermeneutic requirement to die to oneself in order to understand the other is not merely ethical but spiritual. The Trinitarian structure of such hermeneutics comes into focus in passages such as this: "the Word of God for today (significance) is a function of the Word of God in the text (meaning), which in turn is a witness to the living and eternal Word of God in the Trinity" (p. 423). Understanding the significance of the text is the Spirit's activity.

This is a very long and complex book, but the reader will be surprised by the simplicity of style. Although the argument is very difficult it is not impossibly dense and can be followed with relative ease. Vanhoozer's discussion has many implications, and he does not shy away from addressing them. This means that the present reviewer could not review every single argument. This should motivate others to take up the task of doing justice to this text and of wrestling with its challenge. The experience would have been all the more rewarding had the editors used a more useful form of section numbering such as outline numbering. It is very easy to get lost in the labyrinth of the book and I found myself on many occasions completely lost. Perhaps future editions of the book, which hopefully will follow, will remedy this problem. Adonis Vidu

University of Nottingham

Nottingham, England