First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics

Kevin Vanhoozer. First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002. 384 pp. $25.00.

Although Kevin Vanhoozer has been harvesting the insights of communicative theory for theology since 1986, my introduction was Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Zondervan, 1998), which I read entirely too late, just as I was completing my own attempt at linking covenant and speech acts (Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002.) Embarrassment turns to gratitude, however, when I consider how rewarding it has been to fill in this lacuna in my bibliography.

On one hand, there has been too much "prolegomena" (theological method) and too little theology. In fact, this may be said to have been the only locus that post-Enlightenment theology has actually relished. But with the passing of modern foundationalism and the obsession with epistemology in favor of a more hermeneutical approach, there is renewed interest in seeing the message as the method (and vice versa). In that vein, Vanhoozer refuses to choose Scripture or God as the ground of "first philosophy," but chooses instead to see both in their dialectical unity as the source for theology. This sounds unusual to modern ears, but was in fact the policy pursued by the Post-Reformation Reformed scholastics, refusing to make methodological considerations pre-dogmatic. In thinking through theology's own rich resources for epistemology and hermeneutics, Vanhoozer revises philosophical categories as well in the bargain.

Making appearances throughout the work are the themes of covenant, Trinity, the theology of the cross, pneumatology, and the important contributions of speech act theory and hermeneutics more generally. Unlike a number of evangelical treatments that either lionize or demonize postmodern thought in sweeping terms, one quickly ascertains that Vanhoozer has mastered an impressive bibliography and is able to remain faithful to a classical evangelical theology without simply repristinating its well-developed formulations. He enriches and advances Reformed theological method and possesses a knack for adapting the insights of contemporary thinkers (especially philosophers of language, but also modern and postmodern theologians) to his own creative uses. I have not found a better example of evangelical theology that is both critically and constructively engaged with so many important voices.

The volume is divided into three sections: God, Scripture, and hermeneutics, although all three are in play with each presentation. The first chapter introduces the theme of "first philosophy," which has moved from metaphysics (classical/medieval) to epistemology (modern) and finally to hermeneutics, ethics, and aesthetics. Appealing to C. S. Lewis's analogy of the tool-shed, Vanhoozer urges us to exchange the metaphor of seeing for that of tasting. While he might have added the contrast between seeing and hearing (theologies of manifestation vs. proclamation, a la the Reformers and Ricoeur), and the eschatological "already" of vision-oriented epistemologies as opposed to the "not-yet" aspect of promise-oriented approaches, he nevertheless does bring to bear early on the weaknesses of the so-called "mirror" version of the knowledge-reality relationship.

After showing briefly the inadequacy of starring with God apart from Scripture or Scripture apart from God, Vanhoozer concurs with David Kelsey's point that different doctrines of Scripture are caught up in different understandings of how God relates to and interacts in the world (different construals: Scripture as doctrine, as myth, as history, as story). Yet Vanhoozer recognizes in Kelsey's own approach a certain reductive tendency-viz., to read all of Scripture as one thing rather than as many things. Appealing to Wittgenstein's plurality of language games, he refuses the false choice between doctrine or story.

On his way to the linguistic tool-shed, Vanhoozer scouts his own terrain for a communicative approach to "first philosophy." Good theology is a species of wisdom, Vanhoozer argues, a "living along the text," a form of "performance knowledge," standing in the light and not merely looking at it. After all, "If we consult not Aristotle but the Scriptures, we see that the most important right preliminary question is how to become right with God" (p. 40). While this definition of theology as a practical wisdom (sapientia/phronesis) is hardly new, having been adopted by the Franciscan line of theology that leads through the reformers and at least most of the Reformed scholastics, it is a refreshing detour from the theory-praxis dilemma posed by modernity. "Indeed," Vanhoozer says, "first theology matters precisely because it is tied up with our first love" (p. 41).

Chapters 2 and 3 take up theology proper: the Trinity and God's love, respectively. In particular, Vanhoozer discusses the Trinity in connection with religious pluralism. He joins his voice to those who have accused the typical modern approach to religious pluralism, including Rahner's "anonymous Christian," of being imperialistic. (After hearing a lecture at Oxford from this well-worn perspective, a number of us, including a Moslem and a Jewish person, camped out at a pub for a few hours to express frustration about the arrogance of the claim that only the professor's "enlightened" religion could be true, while our own concrete religions were only partial. The professor's attempt to encourage inter-religious dialogue succeeded, but perhaps not along the lines he had hoped.). Genuine respect for "otherness" entails much more than modern religious pluralism can deliver. Vanhoozer draws on Ricoeur's notion of narrative self-identity, contrasting the God of idem-identity (sameness; "pure being") with the God of ipse-identity (constancy through time; covenantal narrative). While this is of great use in understanding God's economic relations (pro nos), it has at least been used in recent theologies (including Robert Jenson's, which he cites) to deny the distinction between ontological and economic trinities and to reduce God's being to becoming. Vanhoozer shows that he does not intend to make these moves (as in his affirmation of divine aseity, p. 66 n. 92), but he does not sufficiently show where his path and theirs separate. Having said that, Ricoeur's narrative identity enriches the concept of selfhood and helps us to challenge the typical forms of religious pluralism that begin with some version of the "perfect being" ontology and end up in some form of monism/modalism. In place of this vague religious experience Vanhoozer suggests a "trinitarian theology of religions," including the conviction that "covenantal, not causal, relations" are constitutive of the Godhead (p. 67). The Trinity therefore underwrites a true respect for otherness. "Perhaps it is time to reclaim the Reformed emphasis on the inseparability of Word and Spirit . . . for a theology of religions" (p. 69).