The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning : Debates on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture [1 ed.] 9780567185396, 9780567032102

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning Debates on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture

D. Christopher Spinks

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Published by T&T Clark A Continuum imprint The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Ste 704, New York, NY-10038 www.continuumbooks.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Extracts taken from Is There a Meaning in This Text? by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Copyright © 1998 by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Used by kind permission of Zondervan. Copyright © D. Christopher Spinks D. Christopher Spinks has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Free Range Book Design & Production Limited EISBN13 9780567032102

To Gail, with whom my life has meaning in every sense of the word

CONTENTS Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

ix xi

Introduction

1

Chapter 1: Scripture, Community and the Crisis of Meaning Theological Interpretation Text, Community, and Reader Perspectives on the Theological Reviewing the Characteristics of Theological Interpretation Meaning Chapter 2: From Meanings to Interests: Stephen Fowl's Critique of Concepts of Meaning and Its Implications for Theological Interpretation The Problem with Meaning Implications for Interpretation: A Plurality of Interests Implications for Theological Interpretation: Teleology, Ecclesiology and Ethics Assessment

3 5 8 17 27 32

41 42 48 51 65

Chapter 3: From Intentions to Meanings: Kevin Vanhoozer's Defence of Authorial Intention and Its Implications for Theological Interpretation Meaning, Theology and Hermeneutics: The Current Problem Meaning and Communicative Agency Meaning and Theological Interpretation Challenges and Questions

69 70 82 92 106

Chapter 4: 'Meaning' as a Triadic Term 'Meaning' as an Ordinary Term Triadic Meaning via Speech-act Theory Conclusions

113 114 116 146

Chapter 5: Mediation and Conversation Reviewing the Discussion Meaning as Mediation Theological Interpretation as Conversation

149 149 153 155

viii

Contents

The Future of Theological Interpretation The Superabundance of Meaning and Other Theological Implications

157 178

Conclusion

181

Bibliography Index

187 199

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Just as reading is never done in complete isolation, so too is writing. Indeed, I have learned over the past several years that writing is more of a community event than I had ever imagined. There are a number of communities who have influenced my ideas about interpreting a text theologically and therefore have a part in the final production of this project, though none of the responsibility for its shortcomings. I must first acknowledge the influence, love and support of my family. David and Sondra Spinks, my Daddy and Mama, have made me who I am in ways that I discover anew every day. I cannot put into words the love I have for them or the love I have received from them for the last 35 years. The friendship of my brother, Brad, is more special to me than he will ever know. The entire Spinks-Stewart-Campbell family constellation, emanating from Kilgore, Texas, has demonstrated the complex dynamics of a loving community that surely influenced the ideas in my work. The several local church communities with whom I have been privileged to sojourn have also shaped my notions of theological interpretation. During my formative years the good folks at Hickory Grove Baptist Church, and later First Baptist Church of Kilgore, gave me opportunity to explore and question my faith, as young boys are prone to do. The communities at First Baptist Church of McGregor, Texas and Calvary Baptist of Waco, Texas encouraged me as I began to develop as a more earnest reader of God's word. Currently, Pasadena Mennonite Church demonstrates for me the practices of theological interpretation better than I can describe in the following pages. I owe all of these communities a debt of gratitude. My circle of friends and mentors has had a direct impact on the nature of my work. First and foremost, I must acknowledge the incredible influence my mentor, Donald Hagner, has had on me as a person and a scholar. Both deeply engaged in the academic pursuits of biblical scholarship and fully attuned to its significance for the larger Christian community, Don models for me the sort of scholar I want to be. As well, his care and concern for students and colleagues as more than people attached to an academic institution has been demonstrated to me in very personal ways, especially when my life away from academia would sometimes get rough. Marianne Meye Thompson's careful and thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of the book made the final product a much more cohesive work. Similarly, Nancey Murphy's feedback at several places along the way helped me to think through some of the philosophical puzzles present in discussions of scriptural interpretation. The semi-regular meetings, during the early writing stages, with Jeff Phillips and James Van Slyke gave me both moral support and fresh insight into

x

Acknowledgments

several knotty hermeneutical problems. Also, if it were not for the support and encouragement of Samuel Paul, I would not have had the push to finish my project. Finally, Chad Pecknold provided encouragement and counsel that went beyond the call of a friend and forecasted the excellent teacher he has been and will be for those students who are privileged to work with him. In the end, this project would not have been completed without the love and support of my wife, partner and best friend, Gail. It is to her that I dedicate this book and my undying love.

ABBREVIATIONS Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss and Arthur Burks. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935-1958. DTIB Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005. NTPG The New Testament and the People of God. Vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of God. Written by N. T. Wright. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992. OED Oxford English Dictionary. CP

INTRODUCTION In recent years theological interpretation of Scripture has found new life in the post-Enlightenment freedom from pure objectivity and the reaction to the modernist tendency to segregate the theological disciplines. Theological interpretation wrestles with hermeneutical questions from an explicit position of faith. It seeks to guide reading practices in a way that puts the readers in a position to live with and know God and fellow believers. Among theological interpreters the task of guiding the practices of reading communities is a highly contested one, and tensions exist on a number of levels. The concept of meaning is at least implicit in this debate and thus has much to do with the outlook of theological interpretation. Chapter 1 introduces theological interpretation as a re-emerging branch of biblical studies growing out of a renewed interest in the hermeneutical significance of viewing the Bible as sacred texts and the believing community as the proper reading location. The chapter considers the shortcomings of 'modern' and 'postmodern' approaches in taking adequate account of the theological aspects of scriptural interpretation. Concepts of meaning, as well as critiques of such concepts, are seen as central to the task of theological interpretation, and the chapter displays why a study of concepts of meaning is warranted. Chapters 2 and 3 describe and analyse the concepts of meaning in two competing proposals for theological interpretation. Chapter 2 examines Stephen Fowl's suggestion that theological interpreters abandon the search for the meaning in biblical texts in favour of clear explication of interpretive aims and interests. Fowl's critique of meaning results in certain habits and practices as the defining traits of theological interpretation. In Chapter 3 I examine Kevin Vanhoozer's realist conception of meaning, especially through his understanding of authorial intention by way of speech-act theory. Chapter 4 argues that both of these competing proposals have strengths and weaknesses, and ventures to understand meaning in a way that Fowl and Vanhoozer may be seen as a dialogical pair. To this end, the chapter suggests that a more holistic conception of the term 'meaning' reflects the nature of 'happy' speech acts and the realities of the total speech situation, thus allowing the theological interpreter to maintain the necessity for authorial intention with Vanhoozer and the reading community with Fowl. Chapter 5 concludes the project by assessing the debate about meaning as one based on a false dyad. It asks about the shape of theological interpretation if practitioners were to read Scripture together as participants in a conversation where meaning is understood as mediation. The chapter establishes what

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

challenges this conversation offers for the theological interpretation of Scripture and performs a theological analysis of what such debates about meaning themselves suggest about what role the Church plays and ultimately about who God is. These exercises lead to tentative challenges for biblical scholars and theologians to begin working more closely together on issues of urgent importance for the contemporary Church and world.

Chapter 1 SCRIPTURE, COMMUNITY AND THE CRISIS OF MEANING

Luke 10:25-28 narrates a short dialogue between Jesus and a legal specialist, which can be taken as a model of interpretive enquiry for those who regard biblical texts as sacred texts. The lawyer approaches Jesus with a question of ultimate concern - Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' (v. 25). Jesus' two-question reply (v. 26) exposes a paradigmatic process for hermeneutical enquiry. He first asks about content: 'What is written in the law?' His second question, however, is more than a question about content. He asks, 'How do you read?' (Gk. TTCOS cxvocyivcoaKEtS";).1 For Christians, or those we might deem 'interested' readers, the question of reading - including both the 'what' and the 'how' - is important because it is a text that is the primary passage to knowledge of God. The person whom Christians believe is God made flesh, the history preceding him, his life, death and resurrection, and his enduring effects in the lives of believers, all become known, but not solely, by reading Christianity's sacred texts. Werner Jeanrond conveys what logically seems the case, but has not always been expressed, when he states, '[O]nly through the textual witnesses can we have access to

1. Most English translations account for the understood object (vouos) but differ on whether the second question is parallel with the first and asking further about the content of the law or whether the second question is a question of orthopraxy. The NRSV and JB, for example, translate the question in a parallel fashion - 'What do you read there?' In tune with the idea that the second question is more than a question of content, the NIV and NAB translate the second question, 'How do you read it?' and the NEB renders it, 'What is your reading of it?' There are translations that omit the object - 'How readest thou?' (KJV and Rheims) and 'How do you read?' (RSV). For different reasons Ifindthe NASB ('How does it read to you?') and Phillips ('What has your reading taught you?') disappointing. I do not intend to probe any further on the matter of these translations; I only point to the pair of questions as a heuristic model for an exploration of theological interpretation. I follow a non-parallel reading of the questions. Gary Phillips states, 'the two questions form a sentential or discursive hendiadys. Far from being merely repetitive, the pairings underscore the fact that both are the same and different: both one and other than one.' Gary A. Phillips, '"What Is Written? How Are You Reading?" Gospel, Intertextuality and Doing Lukewise: A Writerly Reading of Lk 10:25-37 (and 38-42)', in SBL Seminar Papers, 1992 (Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, 31; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1992), pp. 266-301 (269). Similarly Robert Funk writes, 'I asked you how you read, and you answered with the right words; now I ask you whether you understand - and your answer is your life.' Robert W. Funk, '"How Do You Read?": A Sermon on Luke 10:25-37', Interpretation 18, no. 1 (January 1964), pp. 56-61 (61).

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

the event and the person of Jesus Christ.'2 Textual mediation presents the interpreter with historical, cultural and conceptual distances, and once one gives to or recognizes in the texts a special status new hermeneutical layers arise. Herein lies a long-lived interpretative difficulty for interested readers of the Bible. How are readers, who are themselves a part of the community that grounds its very identity in the content of certain texts, supposed to read these texts? What is the relationship between the 'what' and the 'how'? This initial chapter looks to lay the groundwork for the rest of the work by describing the resurgence of investigations into the question of how one reads scripture, specifically how one might read theologically. At the end of the chapter I will introduce the subject that will hold our attention for the rest of the book, namely the concept of meaning. Meaning, the 'what' that relates to the 'how,' is the focus of the discussion that I hope will contribute to the emerging field of theological interpretation. First, however, the primary purpose for this opening chapter is to highlight the resurgence of theological interpretation as a sub-discipline within the larger fields of biblical, theological and hermeneutical scholarship. In doing so I note the renewed awareness of the biblical texts as sacred Scripture within the Christian community. This examination recounts the various difficulties with a scriptural designation. An explication of these difficulties leads me to ask, 'In light of a scriptural perspective, and in light of the importance of a concept of "meaning" in all interpretive endeavours, what theories of meaning are available to us as we seek to read these sacred texts theologically?' The ensuing chapters will focus attention on two contrasting concepts of meaning and approaches to theological interpretation. Stephen E. Fowl and Kevin J. Vanhoozer serve as representatives for at least three reasons: 1) they both claim the term 'theological interpretation'; 2) they both consider concepts of meaning in their argumentation and do so in often opposing ways; 3) they are both relatively young scholars, thus they exhibit the newness of the re-emerging movement in biblical interpretation. Stephen Fowl represents an approach to theological interpretation that regards the quest for meaning as itself meaningless. In Chapter 2 I will consider how his critique of meaning gives way to the development of theological interpretation in terms of practical, functional, and ethical ideals. The central role of the reading community is an evident part of Fowl's programme. Chapter 3 examines the proposal of Kevin Vanhoozer. Vanhoozer believes theological interpretation depends not on a denunciation of the pursuit of meaning, but on the proper understanding of meaning as the communicative intentions of the author. In contrast to Fowl's communal focus, Vanhoozer's concept of meaning centres around the nature of the texts as divine communicative actions, and his proposals for theological interpretation are predicated on adherence to certain theological perspectives of the texts as such. Following 2. Werner G. Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation as Categories ofTheological Thinking (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1988). Similar statements abound. For instance Francis Watson writes, 'The Word made flesh is never encountered without textual mediation', in Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997), 1.

Scripture, Community and the Crisis of Meaning

5

the description and analysis of Fowl and Vanhoozer, Chapter 4 suggests that a triadic understanding of the total speech situation offers a more holistic theory of meaning than do the concepts of Fowl or Vanhoozer. Also, together with Chapters 2 and 3, Chapter 4 implicitly demonstrates the dialogical character necessary for theological interpretation. How might we best construe meaning for theological interpretation? How might we think theologically about the concept of meaning? These are our orienting questions. Of course they cannot be answered without also giving rise to questions about meaning and Scripture, meaning and the Church, meaning and God, meaning and truth, meaning and the Spirit. The discussion of the concept of meaning as we will see is not a causing factor in the re-emergence of theological interpretation, but I believe further reflection on meaning may modestly contribute to the future shape of theological interpretation. To this end, Chapter 5 will review the debate about meaning for theological interpretation and offer a challenging synthesis that seeks to address the strengths and weaknesses of Fowl and Vanhoozer. It also returns to the notion of a triadic understanding of meaning and asks what theological implications such a notion of meaning suggests. If a triadic hermeneutical model is upheld, what images for meaning and theological interpretation concur best with the philosophical and theological resources that have given rise to the renewed interest in the theological interpretation of Scripture? But first I must address the general matter of the contemporary interest of theological interpretation itself.

Theological Interpretation I begin this project by making the following observation: increasingly, in this generation of biblical scholarship, the interest in 'theological interpretation of scripture' has resurfaced with growing vigour.3 According to Francis 3. Among the many recent publications on the general theme of theological interpretation it is interesting to note the number of edited volumes that consist of articles that arose out of various conferences and colloquia. The fact that scholars have in recent years found it necessary to convene and discuss such matters seems to indicate a growing interest in the subject. See, for example, Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (eds), The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003); Joel B. Green and Max Turner, (eds), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000); the seven volumes (and growing) of the Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, edited by Craig Bartholomew and Anthony C. Thiselton (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000-2005); Vincent Bacote, Laura C. Miguelez and Dennis L. Okholm (eds), Evangelicals and Scripture; Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 2004); David Ford and Graham N. Stanton (eds), Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom: Scripture and Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003); and The Journal of Religion 76: 2 (April 1996), which is subtitled 'The Bible and Christian Theology*, and which arose out of a conference of the same name held May 7-9, 1995 at the University of Chicago Divinity School. One should also consider the emergence of the journal Ex auditu, which came about for the very purpose of addressing questions of theological interpretation.

6

The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

Watson, theological interpretation is but one subset of 'a new paradigm for biblical interpretation [which] has begun to take shape and to establish itself.4 Whether it be the theology of the authors and component parts of the text or the theology of the interpreters and their communities, interpretative interests among a growing number have turned away from primary and exclusive interests in things historical, grammatical, sociological or literary and toward the theological.5 The greater part of this chapter describes the 'new paradigm for biblical interpretation' by looking into some of the reasons for the 'theological' renewal. Even in the opening remarks one might begin to see two foci found in the renewal of the theological. First, questions about the theological nature of the texts as a whole have resurfaced as key factors shaping interpretive approaches. The following sections will describe the revived attention given to Scripture's theological countenance. Additionally, the often unspoken viewpoint of the interpreter has been scrutinized with more deliberation. This examination has led to a heightened awareness and even acceptance of various ideological and theological stances of the interpreters, as well as the recognition that no readers can escape the history and influence of their various communities. In the same vein as Rudolf Bultmann, biblical scholars in general now widely accept that presuppositionless interpretation is an impossibility.6 This acknowledgement has brought a debate about the significance the communal placement of the interpreter has and the responsibilities of the interpreter in light of the renewed recognition of the text as Scripture. For theological interpretation, the place and view of the interpreter often go hand in hand with the nature of the text. That is, if the interpreter's vantage point is from the stance of Christianity, with all of the convictions that entails, then either an implicit or explicit acknowledgment of the theological character of the biblical texts is at work in the practice of reading and interpreting. In the current climate, theological interpretation may be said to arise from these two interrelated issues: the text's character and the interpreter's commitments. Robert Morgan comments, The character and contents of 4. Watson, Text and Truth, 95-96. 5. I must state here that this turn has not precluded the practising of or the pursuit of things historical, grammatical, literary, or sociological. Indeed, different proponents have championed each of these methods as the best way to address the theological issues. With a principal interest in things theological, these practices and pursuits have simply taken on a cooperative, pragmatic or secondary role. I also do not wish to say that it is only now that theological interests have surfaced. Theological readings have always been at the heart of many Christian biblical scholars. In the last century one need only look to early figures like Adolf Schlatter and Karl Barth, whose works prefaced much of today's resurgence in theological interpretation. 6. Rudolf Bultmann, 'Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?' in New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (ed. and trans. Schubert M. Ogden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 145-54.1 am not suggesting, however, that Bultmann is one to whom theological interpreters turn.

Scripture, Community and the Crisis of Meaning

7

the Bible have shaped the ways in which it has been interpreted. They have not exercised total control. The different aims and interests of its readers have also been influential.'7 With these two components in mind, I state summarily theological interpretations are those readings of biblical texts that consciously seek to do justice to the perceived theological nature of the texts and embrace the influence of theology (corporate and personal; past and present) upon the interpreter's enquiry, context, and method} The present chapter, thus, is a two-part description. First, I describe the renewed currency given the theological nature of the biblical texts within a Christian worldview and consider some of the implications for interpretation. Second, I depict the broad models of interpretation and meaning available to the interpreters of the sacred texts of Christianity, stressing the contributions and shortcomings for the development of theological interpretation as an established 'paradigm for biblical interpretation'. Specifically, I will survey the inability of disinterested, objective methodologies of modernity and tendentious, subjective methodologies of postmodernity to regard fully and fairly the texts3 and the interested interpreters3 theological character and setting.9 In short, this chapter will give an account of the factors behind current attempts among biblical interpreters to formulate efficacious interpretive practices that are satisfactory for an environment in which ultimate theological meaning is a primary concern. The very concept of 'meaning' will rise to the surface in this discussion and come to be the central focus of the discussion.

7. Robert Morgan, 'The Bible and Christian Theology', in John Barton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge Companion to Religion; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 114-28 (114, emphasis added). See also Kevin J. Vanhoozer, 'Body-Piercing, the Natural Sense and the Task of Theological Interpretation: A Hermeneuticai Homiiy on John 19:34', in First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (repr. from Ex Auditu 16 (2000), pp. 1-30, Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), pp. 275-308. Vanhoozer's comments about 'catholic' and 'canonical' rules, and the types of theological interpretation they engender, confirm the observation made here about the text and the interpreter as two ways of entering the discussion about theological interpretation. One might also draw a connection to the text of Luke 10:25ff. That is, interpretation may be perceived as theological due to its theological content (what?) or theological practice (how?). 8. A similar sort of reciprocity between philosophy, theology and hermeneutics is discussed in Massimo Epis, 'Teologia sistematica e testo biblico', Teologia 29, no. 3 (2004), pp. 285-93. 9. It is acknowledged that defining modernity and postmodernity with broad strokes is simpler than the complexity that they both entail. The characterization that follows is one that hopes to capture the more dominant perspectives of each Weltanschauung but realizes that it will certainly neglect more complex nuances in each.

8

The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning Text, Community and Reader

N.T. Wright makes several claims about worldviews in his New Testament and the People of God, which on the surface are without dispute. He notes, 'Wherever we find the ultimate concerns of human beings we find worldviews.'10 He later concludes that reading itself *take[s] place within particular worldviews5.11 When applied to the biblical texts and its readers, Wright's statements present some areas for reflection. Christian Scripture - a sacred text that, for many, communicates ultimate concerns - conveys a worldview(s). But, Scripture does more than convey a worldview. In its being read it plays a central role in creating worldviews, which in turn are the places within which it is read. There is thus a certain level of circularity with regard to Scripture and worldviews. According to Wright, 'worldviews normally come into sight, on a more day-to-day basis, in sets of beliefs and aims9.12 What hermeneutical function do these sets of beliefs and aims have? How does or should one's inescapable view of Scripture determine or influence one's reading of it? That is, how does the worldview of the Christian reader, which is informed in large part by his/her reading of Scripture and its interpreted worldview, affect the basis and practice of the interpretation of Scripture? In some respects this circularity makes explanation difficult, but to ask these questions marks a growing trend that has partly induced the rise of theological interpretation. In its broadest sense, theology is a term synonymous with a worldview having to do with a conception of divinity. One's (or a text's) theology, therefore, can be defined as a worldview within which divine action or inaction takes centre stage. Heightened attention to the worldview/perspective/theology held about the nature, setting, and reading of the biblical texts has contributed to the perceived need for a theological interpretation of Scripture qua Scripture. I t is true that one's beliefs about the Bible will at many points affect how one will interpret the Bible; and in this sense such beliefs have a hermeneutical function', writes D. A. Carson.13 Although Carson is wary of procuring these beliefs as 'tools or principles independent of the interpreter',14 his statement highlights a growing recognition among theological interpreters. Increasingly biblical interpreters are paying heed to the theological traits of the text itself. Acknowledgment of a theological nature of these texts is 10. N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), p. 122. Wright knowingly echoes Paul Tillich's 'ultimate concern' and draws ties to the use of 'symbolic universe' by other theorists. 11. Wright, NTFG, p. 137. 12. Wright, NTPG, p. 125. 13. D. A. Carson, 'Hermeneutics: A Brief Assessment of Some Recent Trends', Evangelical Review of Theology 5, no. 1 (1981), pp. 8-25 (22). Compare also Jeanrond's statement, 'Every theory of interpretation postulates a theory of text', in Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation, 73. 14. Carson, 'Hermeneutics', p. 22.

Scripture, Community and the Crisis of Meaning

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not new to biblical scholarship. It is, however, something that has gradually lost significance for the task of interpretation since the ascendancy of the Enlightenment project. Recently interpretive theorists have begun again to consider the hermeneutical implications of ideas such as that expressed by J. D. G. Dunn: '"The task of interpreting Scripture theologically" begins from the recognition that Scripture is theological.'15 Such a recognition may seem rather obvious to many, but in practice the scriptural texts have not always been treated by 'professional' interpreters as 'writings regarded as sacred'.16 The common academic charge to treat the Bible as any other book at first seems good enough but it is at best unfair avoidance and at worst outright dismissal of the texts as sacred scripture. Albert Outler rightly states, 'Neither Judaism nor Christianity can survive with their Holy Scriptures regarded as nothing more than the anthologies of religious literature.'17 Therefore, the first catalyst in the renewal of theological interpretation is the reinvigorated discussion surrounding the sacredness of the biblical texts. Various approaches to theological interpretation have explained the biblical texts as sacred either by proclaiming that they possess an innate theological trait or by highlighting their theological function as Scripture for a community.18 Scripture as Ontologically Theological There are at least three ways in which one may talk about the Bible's inherent theological quality: divine imprint, self-stated theological intention, and/or theological subject matter. The theological attribute of the text is something that is within the text itself. Without returning to a naive acceptance of the 'God-breathed' inspired or revealed text, many philosophers, hermeneuts and biblical interpreters are deliberating with evermore fervour and acumen the very notion that the

15. James D. G. Dunn, 'Ex Akoes Pisteos', Ex Auditu 16 (2000), pp. 35-46 (35). 16. Dunn, *Ex Akoes Pisteos', p. 35. The aim of the present work is not to defend or criticize the view of Scripture as sacred. I simply note that when one begins with that perspective, one's interpretation of the text is necessarily affected and leans toward a theological interpretation. 17. Albert C. Outler, Toward a Postliberal Hermeneutics', Theology Today 42 (October 1985), pp. 281-91 (287). 18. See, for example, the two-part discussion of the New Testament as Word of God and the Church's Book in S. M. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2nd edn, 1999). The now classic work of David Kelsey is also worth noting. See David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975). For a recent examination of the terms 'Scripture', 'Holy Scriptures' and 'Holy Book' in the context of the current 'crisis of the culture of reading' see Wolfgang Nethofei, '"Heilige Schriften" und christliche Identitat', Una Sanaa 58, no. 1 (2003), pp. 6-20.

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

biblical text is divine communication.19 Such conviction inevitably moulds methods of interpretation. 'Reading the Bible to discern what God said or is saying by way of the text is obviously different both from reading it to discern the literary qualities of the text and from reading it to discern the theology of the biblical writers ... Commitments of a quite different order are required\ writes Nicholas Wolterstorff.20 The hermeneutical and philosophical discussions surrounding this principle represent one door into the room of theological interpretation. In addition to beginning with an interpreter's conviction that the Bible is God's communication, other theological interpreters are giving notice to what the Bible proclaims or intends for itself.11 Paul Achtemeier succinctly writes, 'the intention of the material is religious rather than, say, historical or scientific'.22 Achtemeier represents for us those who focus on the idea that Scripture's 'chief task is to point away from itself to something or someone who is far more important'.23 Robert Wall, while not necessarily in opposition to the perspective of Achtemeier and others, represents a standpoint that focuses more on the formation of a faith community. He writes, the 'Bible's original intent (and aim of its interpretation) is formative of a particular faith community whose public life and faith accords with its prior confession that Jesus is Creator's Messiah and creation's Lord'.24 Whether one sees the text's (or the author's) intention as pointing to more transcendent matters or more practical matters leads to variety among theological interpreters, but it does not hinder the appeal for an approach to theological interpretation that accounts for the self-intended purpose, whether implicit or explicit, of the biblical texts. Finally, theological interpretation has had incentive by virtue of the very nature of the Bible's subject matter. Apart from the reader's conviction about 19. See especially Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Jorge J. E. Gracia, How Can We Know What God Means?: The Interpretation of Revelation (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 20. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, p. 17 (emphasis added). 21. I will forgo the much-discussed topic of textual or authorial intention. For present purposes the important feature is that there is intention in the text of a theological nature. Whether that is seen in the author, the text, or the reading community is not important at this juncture. 22. Paul J. Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority: Nature and Function of Christian Scripture (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999), p. 132 (emphasis added). Among the numerous theorists who would concur with Achtemeier, see Francis Watson, Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 230; and George Landes, 'Biblical Exegesis in Crisis: What is the Exegetical Task in a Theological Context?' Union Seminary Quarterly Review 26 (Spring 1971), pp. 273-98 (276). 23. Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority, p. 92 (emphasis added). 24. Robert W. Wall, 'Reading the Bible from within Our Traditions: The 'Rule of Faith' in Theological Hermeneutics', in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (eds), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 88-107 (100, emphasis added).

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it, or the text's self-description, the content of the Bible is primarily about theological matters. Theoretically the Bible could, and even should, be read for its literary or historical contributions, but to do so would be outside of or preliminary to an understanding of the subject matter of the Bible itself. The history of interpreting the Bible is strewn with various attempts to get at its theological subject matter, and it will not take us further to discuss them here.25 It is significant to note that despite attempts to separate theology and history in much biblical interpretation the words and accounts of the texts are infused with theological weight. An initial recognition of this truth brings interpreters into the room of theological interpretation; it does not, however, keep them there. One could take this theological subject matter and analyse it in different ways but the recognition of the Bible as words about God or beliefs about God does not necessitate a theological interpretation in the same way as the convictions that the Bible is God's word or the Bible intends to be read as God's word for God's people, unless those words about God have some functional authority. Scripture as Functionally Theological The acknowledgment of the biblical texts as somehow ontologically imbued with a theological significance, though ripe for philosophical and theological conversation, is in many ways less knotty than the acknowledgment of the texts as sacred by virtue of their function. The ontological designation eventually comes to a proclamation that the texts just are theological. The issues of the texts' functionally theological character require some parsing. Max Turner claims, 'believers come to the letters [and all of scripture] in the hope of learning from them, and experiencing them as the locus of transformative relational grace'.26 Christians regard the Bible at once both a private and public text. That is, it is 'their' book and means something, which it cannot be expected to mean to others; it is also at the same time a message to the world and is expected to communicate that message to all.27 In each instance, however, the Bible is normative only in the eyes of 25. The history of biblical theology well attests to the various ways to handle the subject matter(s) of the Bible. See especially D. A. Carson, 'New Testament Theology', in Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids (eds), Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Development (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 1997), pp. 796-814; (Dan O. Via, Jr. (ed.), Guides to Biblical Scholarship: New Testament Series (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979); Gerhard Hasel, New Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978); and Heikki Raisanen, Beyond New Testament Theology: A Story and a Programme (London: S.C.M. Press, 2nd edn, 2000). 26. Max Turner, 'Historical Criticism and Theological Hermeneutics of the New Testament', in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (eds), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 44-70 (58, emphasis added). 27. See especially Schneiders, The Revelatory Text, pp. 57-9.

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

those who consider it to be Holy Scripture.28 Thus, as far as its function as a sacred text, the Bible must be seen from within the catholic ecclesial context. Indeed, as Schneiders has pointed out, one of the major factors in the development of current hermeneutical enquiry has been 'an increasing concern on the part of believers in general with the role of scripture in their spiritual lives'.29 Questions about the Bible's ongoing role in the believing communities and its genre as 'holy scripture' have opened up avenues for the theological interpreter. In many respects these perspectives of the texts pose sets of questions that have not normally been asked in the professional guild. Apart from the unique prominence given to the Bible for individual and communal worship, devotion and spiritual growth, the history of biblical interpretation also shows that the interpretive approaches resulting from the operative character of the texts within interested communities have been most fruitfully addressed in at least two integrated ways. Canonical context The coherence of the biblical texts with each other has long been a topic for biblical scholars. The last third of the twentieth century saw increased reflection on the theological implications of the Bible as canon for interpretation. At the same time the notion of a regula fidei or Rule of Faith has gained currency in the emergence of theological interpretation.30 Jorge Gracia writes, 'Indeed, the fact that believers frequently treat them differently than non-believers confirms their especial status.'31 Renewed interest in how the text is (and was) used by the community, how and why it was composed and collected, and what, in part, governs its communal interpretation, all contribute to the perception of the text as Scripture and in turn to the rise of theological interpretation. The biblical texts are in some sense unique by their placement within a canon.32 Canonization implies theological attributes at opposite ends of the overall textual process. In both compilation and interpretation, the Bible as

28. See Watson's discussion of the genre of the biblical texts as 'holy scripture' in Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 227. 29. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text, p. 23. See also Paul H. Ballard, 'The Bible and Christian Spirituality Today', Expository Times 114, no. 11 (August 2003), pp. 363-6. 30. I acknowledge that separating Canon and Rule of Faith is difficult, if not impossible. The discussion will proceed with the understanding that there will be considerable overlap. 31. Gracia, How Can We Know?, p. 137. See also, among many others, Luke T. Johnson, 'The Authority of the New Testament in the Church: A Theological Reflection', in Charles R. Blaisdell (ed.), Conservative, Moderate, Liberal: The Biblical Authority Debate (St Louis: CBP Press, 1990), pp. 87-99 (90). 32. The literature on the canon and canonical criticism is legion. See especially the initial groundbreaking work of two OT scholars, Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970); and James Sanders, Torah and Canon (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972).

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canon obtains theological import. J. T. K. Lim develops a theological reading strategy by beginning with the 'obvious observation that the Bible is first and foremost a theological book'.33 He grounds this observation in a statement on canon: 'In the formation of the Canon, some books were included while others were excluded. This involves some kind of theological judgment.934 The very word 'canon' implies a confessional stance.35 Indeed, as Watson posits, canon converts the text into 'holy scripture'.36 The existence of a collection of certain books, over against other books, demonstrates the theological underpinnings of a community that believed and still believes these texts have 'the capacity to mediate God's word to its current interpreters, who faithfully seek after theological understanding'.37 In a related way the texts' meaning(s) and effects are changed when their textual context is changed. Gracia explains, 'When these texts are put together into a set, the Bible, they become something different than they were, and their interpretation necessarily changes, for the latter must take into account the new textual context.'38 For those forming theological approaches to the biblical texts, the entire process of use, reception and collection is being given full theological consideration,39 but a growing trend is the treatment of the final/ecclesial/canonical form of the text. Taking cues from literary and narrative methods of criticism which focus attention on 'in-the-text' questions, many theological interpreters concur with Watson who writes, 'It is only in their final, canonical form that the biblical texts have functioned as communally authoritative within synagogue and church . . . this is the form of the text most suitable for theological use . . . the subject matter or content of the biblical texts is inseparable from their form.'40 Rule of faith Closely tied to the concept of canon, and influencing the canonization process itself, is the notion of a Christian rule of faith. 'Though formally distinct from Scripture', writes Robert Wall, 'the Rule of Faith formulates the Church's attempts to demarcate the significance of what the Jesus of history said and did and also to make sense of the church's ongoing experience with the living Jesus.'41 The idea of a rule of faith, along with the process of 33. J. T. K. Lim, 'Theological Hermeneutics: A Reading Strategy', Asia Journal of Theology 15, no. 1 (2001), p. 2. 34. Lim, Theological Hermeneutics', p. 2 (emphasis added). 35. Turner, 'Historical Criticism and Theological Hermeneutics of the New Testament', p. 54. 36. Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 4. 37. Wall, 'Reading the Bible', p. 97, n. 99. 38. Gracia, How Can We Know?, p. 138. 39. See Outler's reminder that attention to canon should be more than just on its closure, but rather on the whole canonical process, 'its dynamic and distinctive logic', ('Toward a Postliberal Hermeneutics', p. 288.) 40. Watson, Text, Church and World, pp. 16-17 (emphasis added). 41. Wall, 'Reading the Bible', p. 89.

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

canonization, reminds the theological interpreter that it was within a belief system, a particular Christian worldview, that the texts arose, were used and eventually collected. Indeed, one cannot adequately broach the topic of a rule of faith without moving from a discussion of the texts as ontologically or functionally sacred into a discussion of a second general factor leading to the emergence of theological interpretation - the setting of the sacred biblical texts and the reading of this Scripture in the Christian community. A Rule of Faith is, in many ways, the grammar of the Christian language.42 It is the articulation of the governing convictions for Christian life, practice and scriptural interpretation. As Wall states, the Rule of Faith constrains 'what can properly be designated as 'Christian' readings of the biblical texts'.43 One can see the inevitable overlap between a Rule of Faith and the concept of canon. Achtemeier, in his discussion of canon, echoes much of what Wall claims for the Rule of Faith. Achtemeier writes that the canon 'functions in a sense as a boundary marker, displaying at which points an interpretation of the Christian faith has abandoned a legitimate understanding of the faith's foundational events'.44 In short, canon and a Rule of Faith harness what can rightly be called Christian. This limitation is integral to a proper Christian theological reading because it is devoted to both the nature of the text and the believing reader. In addition, without some set of governing criteria any interpretation may be regarded as a Christian interpretation if it so designates itself. One must be careful not to confuse the boundaries of canon and Rule of Faith with an authoritative ecclesial

42. Since George Lindbeck's introduction to a 'cultural-linguistic' approach to interpreting church doctrine, talk of a Christian 'grammar' has become more commonplace. I pick up on that vocabulary here, borrowing especially from Wall, 'Reading the Bible', p. 98. I must, however, sidestep a thorough discussion of Lindbeck's work. See George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984). See also a discussion of how Lindbeck fits into 'an emergent tendency among Jewish and Christian text scholars and theologians to give rabbinic and ecclesial traditions of interpretation both the benefit of the doubt and the benefit of doubt', in Peter Ochs, 'An Introduction to Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation', in Peter Ochs (ed.), The Return to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993), pp. 3-51 (3). For Ochs, Lindbeck's 'benefit of the doubt' assumes 'that there are dimensions of scriptural meaning which are disclosed only by way of the hermeneutical practices of believing communities and believing traditions of Jews or Christians' (emphasis added). 'The benefit of doubt' assumes 'that these dimensions may be clarified through the disciplined practice of philological, historical and textual/rhetorical criticism'. 43. Wall, 'Reading the Bible', p. 107. See also Daniel J. Treier, 'The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis? Sic et Non\ Trinity Journal 24, no. 1 (2003), pp. 77-103. 44. Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authorityr, p. 153, (emphasis added). See the broader discussion on pp. 151-5. Also see Gracia, How Can We Know?, pp. 133-5. Gracia speaks of the limiting effects of the interpreter's theology in much the same way that Wall speaks of a Rule of Faith, and Achtemeier speaks of canon. Gracia writes, 'the theology the interpreter brings into the interpretation of revelation establishes parameters for it to such an extent that it even rules out some possible interpretations' (135).

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mandate or with a homogeneous set of rules and confessions. Indeed, Wall asserts that the reciprocal relationship of the Rule of Faith with Scripture not only designates what is truly 'Christian', it also 'reminds Christians of the heterogeneity of those narrative and confessional formulations that reside not only in Scripture but often also within the "rules"'. 45 Thus, discussion about a rule of faith necessarily brings to the surface the overlapping contexts of the various reading communities, with their various theologies, and the catholic community from which all Christian interpreters come. Communal context As a member of the Christian community, the interpreter's vantage point will unavoidably be influenced by the history of the community. This would include the implicit and explicit confessions of faith, interpretive practices, and ways of being in the world. '[T]his larger context of Christian faith-responses to the revelation of God in Christ', writes Robert Morgan, 'is the key to the use of the Bible in theology.'46 Max Turner echoes this sentiment but recalls the certain variety that is sure to arise; 'Our creeds, confessions, traditions, heroes, and hymns have all provided us with different frameworks from which to read the letters, and inevitably lead us to prioritize different aspects of the theology and ethics of the writings.'47 In addition to the participation in the ongoing history of the Church 'the faithful interpreter's personal experience of the risen Lord' will influence his/ her biblical interpretation.48 Yet, it is only within the Christian community that understanding personal experiences with the risen Lord is possible. Furthermore, it is this community's ongoing interpretation of their texts that allows them to develop frameworks for understanding these experiences. The point is that integrating the factors of Church and Scripture is more complex than accepting a sacred view of the texts and admitting to a communal location of reading those texts.49 As Achtemeier has written, 'Church and Scripture grew up alongside each other - the tradition shaping the life of the church, and the church interpreting and reshaping the traditions in the light of its own proclamation of those traditions.'50 From the developing position of theological interpretation, the entire interrelationship of the community, personal experience, the sacred texts and the rule of faith is important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the complexity of defining what is a Christian theological reading.

45. Wall, 'Reading the Bible', p. 107. 46. Morgan, 'The Bible and Christian Theology', p. 116. 47. Turner, 'Historical Criticism and Theological Hermeneutics of the New Testament', p. 57. See also Wall, 'Reading the Bible', p. 92. 48. Wall, 'Reading the Bible', p. 92. 49. See Joseph Moingt, 'Le Livre et l'Evenement', Etudes 401, no. 4 (2004), pp. 355-64. 50. Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority, p. 78.

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

Declaring one's interpretation to be a theological interpretation is more than just cohering to either the Church's historical stance or the supposed biblical testimony. The very separation of these ideas is difficult. Turner recalls, 'the canonical witness and the church's confessions are mutually interpretive'.51 Taking a stance that the Bible is indeed sacred and locating oneself in the Christian community do not in and of themselves make one's interpretation theological, but they do provide the beginnings of a framework that will in all likelihood shape the interpretation in a theologically interested way. Ultimately, locating the text and the reader in the Christian community affects presuppositions and worldviews, which 'suggests a particular kind of questioning of the text and is open to a particular kind of pattern of things - though this pre-understanding itself arises out of prolonged engagement with the biblical text, and the learning of the appropriate intellectual and moral disciplines of interpretation'.52 In other words it suggests that how one reads influences what one discovers one 'must do to inherit eternal life' (Lk 10:25-26). Francis Watson insists that interpretations also take into account one other layer of contextual influence, that of the Church in the world. He states, I t is crucially important to emphasize not only the hermeneutical significance of the Christian community as the primary location of the biblical texts, but also the world as the primary location of the Christian community.'53 The worldly context of the Church recalls 'the public nature of the claims made by the church on the basis of the biblical text'.54 Secular discourse is the unavoidable medium through which God's words, the message of the church's sacred texts, must be proclaimed. Turner notes the canon creates 'a narrative "world" in which we are called to live, and which we use to interpret our world9.55 Indeed, a community's scripture is sacred, at the very least, for the view of the world it engenders. The location of the Church and its text in the world exposes Scripture 'to critical testing in order to determine whether it is a truthful and appropriate expression of the church's vocation within the world'.56 The channel of communication between Church and world is of considerable significance to an emerging approach that looks to bridge schools of thought in each. Theological interpreters working with this outlook do so, on the one hand, by putting 51. Turner, 'Historical Criticism and Theological Hermeneutics of the New Testament', p. 61. 52. R. W. L. Moberly, The Bible, Theology, and Faith: A Study of Abraham and Jesus (ed. Colin Gunton and Daniel W. Hardy; Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine, 5; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 235 (emphasis added). 53. watson, Text, Church and World, p. 11. Watson's idea of text in Church and Church in the world evokes the image of three concentric circles, with Scripture in the middle, the Church as the second layer and the world as the outer layer. 54. Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 10. 55. Turner, 'Historical Criticism and Theological Hermeneutics of the New Testament', p. 61 (emphasis added). 56. Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 8.

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much of their work at odds with the prevailing positions of contemporary modern and postmodern interpretive theorists in both ecclesial and academic settings. On the other hand, theological interpreters often propose models of theological interpretation that acquiesce to various modern and/ or postmodern forces. An examination of these positions is necessary for the present description of the rise of theological interpretation. Perspectives on the Theological The rise of theological interpretation is in some respects an acknowledgment of the biblical texts as sacred, but more than this, it is also an acknowledgment that scriptural status affects one's interpretive approach. If one also acknowledges, with Schneiders, that method can frequently determine the object of investigation, then one might begin to question how the prevailing and competing stances of modernism and postmodernism consistently fail to determine an object of investigation that accounts for the theological nature of the biblical texts with complete integrity.57 The task of fully characterizing these perspectives is beyond the scope of this chapter. It is, however, the more generalized appearances of these positions to which theological interpreters are responding and often acquiescing. As my aim is to account for the factors giving rise to theological interpretation, I proceed with often incomplete depictions.58 I will show the significant and generally primary role the excessive perspectives have in the development of interpretive strategies. One will begin to see the notion of 'meaning' come into sharper focus in the ensuing discussion. The 'Modern3 Worldview It would prove difficult to describe the distinctly 'modern' method of biblical criticism as a standardized historical approach. It may be best to use the plural in discussing historical criticisms.59 Nevertheless, one can agree with Craig Bartholomew who, though aware of all sorts of developments within

57. See Schneiders, The Revelatory Text, pp. 23-4. 58. There is a bit of asymmetry when one looks back at what it is possible to say. It is possible to have well-justified statements about generalities in modern thought, but what counts as postmodern is still highly contested. See especially Nancey Murphy and James Wm. McClendon, Jr., 'Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies', Modern Theology 5, no. 3 (1989), pp. 191-214. 59. This claim has been made by a number of observers. The idea of variety within the historical-critical method(s) is already well noted in Martin Hengel, 'Historische Methoden und theologische Auslegung des neuen Testaments', Kerygma und Dogma 19 (1973), pp. 85-90. See also Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 7.

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

the modern period, discovers 'a commonality within that variety under the umbrella of what might be called the modern worldview'.60 In often over-simplistic ways, modern critical methods have been traced back to Cartesian principles of reason which dominated the Enlightenment period, Reformation convictions of sola scriptura that separated Scripture from ecclesiastical dogma, and Romantic curiosities which devoted attention to the original authors of texts and the historical and cultural influences on them.61 The combined influence of these 'developments', which were valid reactions to abused pre-modern perspectives, resulted in convictions and practices that moved 'toward a single preoccupation with historical method'.62 The 'cardinal convictions of modernism', namely rationalism and individualism, squelched the theological contours of biblical interpretation.63 Indeed Moberly states, 'It is common knowledge that modern biblical criticism only became a recognizable discipline through the process of explicit severing of the classic theological formulations.'64 Further still, Christopher Seitz claims 'that the central theological questions receded as the discipline, historically oriented as it has been, simply never ceased to find new historical questions to occupy itself with, and chose to focus on them as though the theological matters would somehow fall into place when all was said and done'.65 60. Craig G. Bartholomew, 'Philosophy, Theology and the Crisis in Biblical Interpretation', in Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene and Karl Moller (eds), Renewing Biblical Interpretation (Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, 1; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000), pp. 1-39 (4 ) (emphasis added). 61. The factors giving rise to historical criticism have been widely discussed in the literature. For an example of one who associates the influences of the Enlightenment, Reformation, and Romanticism see Roger Lundin, 'Interpreting Orphans: Hermeneutics in the Cartesian Tradition', in Roger Lundin, Clarence Walhout and Anthony C. Thiselton (eds), The Promise of Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 1-64. Lundin gives pride of place to Cartesian rationality but does touch on the influence of the Reformers (11-14) and Romanticists (throughout). 62. Anthony C. Thiselton, 'New Testament Interpretation in Historical Perspective', in Joel B. Green (ed.), Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation (Grand

Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 10-36 (10). 63. See B. W. Anderson, 'The Bible in a Postmodern Age', Horizons in Biblical Theology 22, no. 1 (2000), pp. 1-16 (2). Anderson claims rationalism and individualism are modernism 'in a nutshell'. See also J. T. K. Lim, 'Historical Critical Paradigm: The Beginning of an End', Asia Journal of Theology 14, no. 2 (2000), pp. 252-71 (253). Lim states that 'human reason not only became autonomous but it also reigned supreme'. 64. Moberly, Bible, Theology, and Faith, 5. 65. Christopher R. Seitz, 'Scripture Becomes Religion(s), The Theological Crisis of Serious Biblical Interpretation in the Twentieth Century', in Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene and Karl Moller (eds), Renewing Biblical Interpretation (ed. Craig Bartholomew; Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, 1; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000), pp. 40-65 (42). For a philosophical questioning of the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the historical-critical method, see R. Kerbs, 'El Metodo Historico-Crftico en Teologia; En Busca de su Estructura Basica y de las Interpretaciones Filosoficas Subyacentes (Parte II)', DavarLogos 2, no. 1 (2003), pp. 1-27.

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The extreme rationality initiated with the Enlightenment re-shaped the dominant view of the texts by an a priori exclusion of any possibility that they could be divine communication.66 Instead they were seen exclusively as religious texts or 'an ancient charter for human hopes of divine aid in the adventures of life'.67 This rather extreme perspective hinders 'Godtalk', ossifies the texts in a dormant history and treats the biblical texts no differently than any other text. Questions about God get transformed into questions about the history of religious ideas or views of God and thus, matters 'behind the text'. In line with the rationalistic position, theologically interested modern interpreters ground the theological weight of the biblical texts in the intent of their authors or the perspectives of their original audience. To make the views of the original authors or the original communities the primary questions of interpretation too easily neglects the ongoing theological significance and meaning the biblical texts themselves have for the reading communities today. By limiting interpretation to questions about the past, pure historical criticism hedges theological interpretation from influence by current readers and their communities. Theological interpretation, however, is a distinctly contemporary activity involving things past, present and future. The foundational texts of Christianity, the New Testament, are themselves theological interpretations of the life, death, enduring belief in and awaited return of Jesus.68 While the reign of rationalism presented obstacles for theological interpretation regarding the nature of the texts, the exploitation of the Reformation principle of Scripture alone gave rise to the eventual separation of the academy and the Church. Influence of tradition was set aside during the objective, academic work of scientific criticism.69 The desire for pure objectivity would not allow for interpretations that bear the influence of the traditions of Christianity. Ultimately the modern ideal of pure objectivity, 66. I realize that a huge amount of intellectual development is reduced to just a few sentences here, and I would like to be able to give a more narrative account, but in order to conserve space and move on to the matter in hand, I trust that the curious readers will consult the sources quoted in the discussion. One can also find good narrative accounts in Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Baruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2nd edn, 2002); William Baird, History of New Testament Research (2 vols; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992, 2002); Mark A. Noli, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarships, and the Bible in America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 2nd edn, 1991); and Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament: 1861-1986 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1988). 67. Outler, 'Toward a Postliberal Hermeneutics', p. 284. 68. See especially Werner G. Jeanrond, 'After Hermeneutics: The Relationship Between Theology and Biblical Studies', in Francis Watson (ed.), The Open Text: New Directions for Biblical Studies (London: SCM Press, 1993), pp. 95-101. 69. See Charles M. Wood, 'The Task of Theological Hermeneutics', Perkins Journal 33 (Spring 1980), pp. 1-8. Wood characterizes the historical critic as one whose aims and methods are identified 'in such a way that the question of one's agreement or disagreement with the text simply does not arise as a factor in that inquiry' (1).

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

with its rationalistic and sola scriptura components, keeps theological issues, both of the texts and of the interpretative process, on the margins. More importantly, however, it fails to be critical of itself. In an attempt 'to free the Bible from the stranglehold of the dogmatic theology that determined in advance exegetical outcomes, it failed to understand how it had located the legitimate interpretation of Scripture in its own modern ideology'.70 As well, modern methods tend to isolate the interpretive task from the communities that believe the text to be sacred. Instead, critical interpretation is performed apart from theological interests and before any sort of theological application could be made. Moberly expresses confusion about the situation to which modernity leads: 'To be Christian means, at least in part, the acceptance and appropriation of certain theological doctrines and patterns of living. Yet the task of reading the Bible "critically" has regularly been defined precisely in terms of the exclusion of these doctrines and patterns of living from the interpretative process.'71 The meaning of a text in the eyes of uncompromising modernists is a matter for historians to uncover, free from the naive assumption that the texts are somehow divine and from any personal faith convictions the historians themselves might hold. The location of a text's meaning in this paradigm has most often been found at 'the point of a text's formation'.72 The focus for the biblical interpreter is placed on the author, the author's community, or getting back to the author's original words through the layers of redaction and replication. While these pursuits are necessary, the historical-critical paradigm from which they arise 'seems to condition its practitioners to believe that the biblical texts are unable to bear very much theological weight', and whatever theological significance is derived from the text comes 'directly from its literal, historical meaning without any need for an additional disciplinary framework'.73 Theology itself is not to be a part of the process of deriving meaning. In most cases it is left to the theologian to confirm what may be clearly perceived after thorough exegetical work has been performed by the biblical scholar. The modern outlook, thus, extracts the theological-ness both from the text, by limiting the appropriate interpretive questions to those of a grammatical-historical nature alone, and from the interpretive community, by setting the appropriate interpretive context away from the theologically interested readers. On a theoretical level the absence of theological influence in the interpretive process signifies a view of the texts as 'an archive of dead treasured memories of the past', instead of 'the record of living traditions which because of their origins continue to provide guidance, and the basis 70. Joel B. Green, 'Scripture and Theology: Uniting the Two So Long Divided', in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (eds), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 23-43 (28). 71. Moberly, Bible, Theology, and Faith, p. 5. 72. Green, 'Scripture and Theology: Uniting the Two So Long Divided', p. 29. 73. Watson, Text, Church and World, pp. 12-13.

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of ever-new interpretations for the community of faith right to the present day'.74 It is difficult to begin with the conviction that the texts are sacred and not also believe 'that the word of God is a dynamic reality which does new things in new times and which is therefore not bound to the past'.75 The prevailing modern perspectives often fail to see or simply do not treat the primary character of the text as theological. A growing number of biblical interpreters are convinced that 'the texts are abused when they are subjected to a type of question they were never intended to answer'.76 N. T. Wright aptly explains that the biblical texts 'may quite properly be used to reconstruct the life, language, religion and beliefs of the early Christians, provided we remember that it was not written for that purpose, but rather as something more like a play to be staged, that is, as a charter for a community, a set of books designed (in their very different ways) to fuel worship and witness'.77 On a more practical level the modernism in interpretive theory developed several dichotomous relationships between things once perceived inseparable. Although there are a number of factors at play in these separations, the modernists' perceptions of the biblical texts are at the centre. On the largest plane the Church is severed from the academy in part because of the divergent views and uses each has of the Bible. 'In biblical scholarship', writes Watson, 'the secular world defends itself against the church and asserts itself as the primary location for biblical interpretation.'78 The Church is seen as a threat in the quest for truth. If the influence of one's communal setting and personal history is an inevitable part of one's view of biblical texts and one's interpretation of those texts, the question of Karlfried Froehlich is most appropriate. He asks, 'how can this commitment [to the church] be carried out effectively if the primary interest of the exegete remains tied to the world of professional scholarship which has its own agenda and its own social dynamics?'79 There are, however, many enclaves in the academic world where the scholastic and ecclesiastical interests are conjoined. A different resulting separation of modernity is often found here on a smaller level. The common mode of operation in this setting has been a two-pronged questioning. The questions of who, what, when and where are first asked. Then, and only then, may one ask the questions of what does the biblical text say about God, what does this mean for today, and how can this be used for the ongoing life of the believer and the believing community. Brevard Childs, whose work in canonical criticism informs a great deal of the reflection in theological interpretation, describes a commonly held view among biblical interpreters 74. 75. 76. 77. 7$. 79. (Spring

Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority, p. 115 (emphasis added). Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority, p. 74. Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 226. Wright, NTPG, p. 470. Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 7. Karlfried Froehlich, 'Biblical Hermeneutics on the Move', Word and World 1 1981), pp. 140-52 (147).

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that exegesis 'is an independent historical, philological, and literary exercise which follows the established rational rules of critical inquiry', and theology 'is a dependent, largely subjective construct of a speculative nature'.80 Theological interpreters are beginning to question the absurdity of such a split. Wright, for example, expresses a common sentiment when he states, 'In order to address either set of questions we must integrate it with the other.'81 Theological interpretation, therefore, not only eschews the modernistic separation of history and theology, or the academy and the Church, but also the conventional separation of biblical exegesis and theological reflection. Already, in 1970, George Landes expressed a growing concern for the place and role of the exegetical task in a theological context.82 With his concern for the dichotomous relationship between biblical studies and theology in the seminary, Landes rightfully sees context as a determining factor for theological interpretation. He does not, however, go so far as to perceive exegesis as itself a theological task. Rather, he wants to make exegesis more relevant to theology, integrating the two but not combining them in a dialectical association. Landes' recommendations are quite helpful and move the discussion forward but they fail to acknowledge the role theology plays in the reading and exegesis of texts. It is true that the biblical exegete in 'using essentially only those exegetical tools which enable the text to speak in the form in which it stands',83 and allowing 'his theological associates to help him work out the full range of implications from his theological interpretation of the text, and to examine the various underpinnings to his theological conclusions'*4 has begun to bridge the divide between biblical studies and theology. However, theology only enters in at the point of drawing out implications and conclusions, and seems all but lost in the process of reading itself. The sort of theological interpretation under investigation throughout the book also looks to foster cooperation between biblical studies and theology by focusing on those proposals that 'stand in the gap', but this cooperation comes about because interpretation is theological, not because it leads to the theological. A further separation brought on by modernism takes place within the text itself. Diverging perspectives on the nature of biblical texts fuels this debate. Watson's words are indicative of those with theological concerns in biblical studies, and they hearken back to the previous discussion about the theological view of canonicity. He writes: The notion of a dialectical unity between two bodies of writing, constituted as 'old' and 'new' by their relation to the foundational event that they together enclose and attest, only makes sense from a theological standpoint. Where theological concerns are marginalized, the two Testaments fall apart almost automatically. The 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

Pro Ecclesia 6 (Winter 1997), pp. 7-26 (16). Wright, NTPG, p. 91. Landes, 'Biblical Exegesis in Crisis'. Landes, 'Biblical Exegesis in Crisis', p. 287. Landes, 'Biblical Exegesis in Crisis', p. 293 (emphasis added).

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Old Testament ceases to be Christian scripture at all, at least if the term 'Christian' implies a reference to Christ, and the New Testament's relation to the Old comes to seem hardly more significant than its relation to other elements in its 'background' such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Where that is the case, however, the New Testament too has ceased to be Christian scripture. In their dialectical interdependence, Old and New Testaments stand or fall together.85

The widening separations of OT and NT, biblical studies and systematic theology, and university and Church has led some theorists to be very careful about how they label their own theologically motivated interpretive approaches. It has become important for them to differentiate between biblical or New Testament theology, which they see as springing from the principles of modernity and theological interpretation of scripture.86 Others, however, are more concerned either to redefine biblical theology or integrate the practice of biblical theology in a larger project.87 Whether it is the development of a completely distinct approach or the renewal of a longstanding one, the inability of strict modern methods to consider the full theological nature of the texts and their reading is, nevertheless, the overriding concern. One must not get the impression that theologically motivated interpretations summarily dismiss historical work or other fruits from the modern era.88 Even a view of the Bible as God's word for today would have to admit the fact that the texts are 'linguistic artifacts produced by human beings in particular historical and cultural circumstances, and knowledge of all sorts of things beyond theology is necessary for the understanding of these texts'.89 'In so far as the Christian use of a text involves historical knowledge', states Wood, 'those concerned with the Christian use have more than a passing interest in the fortunes of historical scholarship.'90 If a theological interpretation informs and is informed by theology, it must contend with the historical, cultural and literary strangeness of the text, which itself informed and was informed by the theological situation out of which, and for which, the text was written, collected and used. History and other aims of modernity are, however, only part of the goal of interpretation. By 85. Watson, Text and Truth, pp. 5-6 (emphasis added). 86. See especially the distinction between biblical theology and theological interpretation in Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation (ed. Gareth Jones and Lewis Ayres; Challenges in Contemporary Theology; Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 13-21. For a concise history of the development of New Testament Theology in the modern setting see Wright, NTPG, pp. 18-25. For a helpful, well-written, thorough history of New Testament Theology with a distinctly modernist viewpoint, see Raisanen, Beyond New Testament Theology: A Story and a Programme. 87. For the former see Watson, Text and Truth. For the latter see Part I of Wright, NTPG. 88. See Wood, 'The Task of Theological Hermeneutics', p. 7. 89. Gracia, How Can We Know?, p. 143. 90. Wood, 'The Task of Theological Hermeneutics', p. 5. See also Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority, pp. 138-9.

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itself historical description is incomplete. But, without historical description theological interpretation of scripture is a migrant discipline, moving where the interpreter wills and wants. Watson summarizes the conclusion of many theological interpreters: 'Yet in the last resort historical understanding is a very minor component in the more comprehensive understanding that is desirable.'91 It is important to remember that Watson's judgment and those like it reflect their own point in history. It is easy to look back now and deem parts of the historical work of the past 300 years as insufficient for the theological task. These sorts of reflections do, however, note a shifting emphasis within biblical studies, especially biblical study that comes from and hopes to contribute to the larger Christian theological worldview. With this air of analytical reflection, the current emergence of theological interpretation shares the critical eye toward modernism with the various postmodernist perspectives. 'Postmodern5 Perspectives Postmodernism, like the modernist stance it supposedly moves beyond, is not a uniform movement.92 In general, the various types of postmodernism share a reactionary attitude toward the supremacy of rationality and objectivity that characterizes modernism on at least two levels. First, though not necessarily advocating an unreasonable stance it does insist, 'that reason cannot be abstracted from the totality of life'.93 Trevor Hart captures this postmodern critique when he writes, 4[w]e are not capable of ceasing to be the particular readers that we are', and, '[w]hen we read a text, therefore, we do so as those who bring to it a particular set of assumptions, questions, expectations, most of which will be wholly subconscious and therefore all the more influential upon our reading'.94 Second, the postmodern mood is not only sensitive to the contexts of current readers, it is also attuned to the fact that the original writing, editing, reading and gathering of the texts occurred in particular settings which would affect their transmission and interpretation. Therefore, postmodernists variously question the objective purity of the biblical texts and/or reading communities. If the failure of modernism to handle theological texts is found in its insistence on objectivity, then the shortcoming of postmodernism is its tendencies toward relativism. The postmodern recognition of plurality and ideological objectives within the text and within readers has led some 91. Watson, Text, Church and World, pp. 227-8. 92. See the preferred plural language of Stanley J. Grenz in A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996), passim. See also Archie L. Nations, 'Historical Criticism and the Current Methodological Crisis', Ex Auditu 1 (1985), pp. 125-32 (127). 93. Moberly, Bible, Theology, and Faith, p. 3. 94. Trevor A. Hart, Faith Thinking: The Dynamics of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 1996), p. 125.

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postmoderns to rest a text's meaning solely with today's readers.95 This type of reader-response methodology common among (self-) proclaimed postmodernists capitulates to a dangerous level of relativism that looks past the significance of the full matrix of the text, author and reader. Despite the extreme perspectives, postmodernism's acknowledgment of readers' participation in the production of a text's meaning has contributed to a re-evaluation of just what is meaning in general and what textual meaning is in particular.96 Hart writes, '[t]he meaning we retrieve from it will be in substantial part a product of the pre-understanding which we bring to bear upon it'.97 Considering the abundant aims and interests of readers and reading communities, it is no surprise that postmodernism accounts for 'a plethora of ideological and theological readings'. 98 Many theological interpreters of scripture have taken the lead from postmodernists and now pursue intentional plurality in their interpretive methods.99 In addition the variety of meaning itself is in many ways a result of what at least one leading postmodern scholar has termed 'the incredulity toward metanarratives'.100 The impact on biblical theologians has led to an avoidance of either a 'grand synthesis'101 or 'the doctrinal obsession 95. This is a major criticism of Stanley Fish's work on interpretive theory, but Nancey Murphy rightly draws attention to the distinction between the early and later Fish. See Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1997). Murphy helps one to see that while the early Fish may be susceptible to the critique against radical postmodern positions, the later Fish (see especially Is There a Text in This Class? Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980)) is more in step with the current forms of theological interpretation under examination here, especially as these forms of theological interpretation call attention to the community's role in reading its sacred texts and the understanding of meaning. 96. See the now classic text Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). See more recently in biblical studies Jeremy Punt, 'The Priority of Readers among Meaning and Methods in New Testament Interpretation', Scriptura 86 (2004), pp. 271-91. 97. Hart, Faith Thinking, p. 125. 98. Joel B. Green and Max Turner, 'New Testament Commentary and Systematic Theology: Strangers or Friends?' in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (eds), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 1-22 (9). 99. See, for example, the foreword in a publication that is an early by-product of the renewal of theological interpretation, Walter Brueggemann and John R. Donahue, Series Foreword to Overtures to Biblical Theology, in Paul D. Hanson, The Diversity of Scripture: A Theological Interpretation, (ed. Walter Brueggemann and John R. Donahue; Overtures to Biblical Theology, 11; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), pp. ix-xiii (x). 100. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. xxiv. David Penchansky voices a more current echo ('no ruling metaphor') of Lyotard's statement in The Politics of Biblical Theology: A Postmodern Reading (ed. Charles Madbee; Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics, 10; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995), p. 9. 101. Watson, Text and Truth, p. 17.

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning

to systematize everything'.102 In today's hermeneutical climate, however, theological interpreters find that many of their reactions to modernity are echoes of some of these postmodern voices. It may not be unfair to say that the current emergence of theological interpretation has found fertile ground in the climate created by postmodern enquiries. On the one hand the postmodern turn can be seen as an 'immense opportunity' because '[i]t has loosened up the regnant paradigms and provides an opportunity to reassess the foundations of biblical interpretation in the academy'.103 Yet, on the other hand, postmodernism must avoid converting 'a genuine and valuable hermeneutical insight . . . into a more questionable hermeneutical dogma'.104 Those who would be involved in the theological renewal, however, should heed at least two words of warning. First, Graham Stanton advises against confusing the impossibility of certainty in understanding with the impossibility of understanding itself.105 Second, Watson states, contra the celebrated postmodern, Jacques Derrida, that one 'must oppose deconstructive readings of gospel texts in which the very concept of determinate meaning is rejected on principle5.106 Radical relativism mirrors the constraints of radical objectivity. Relativists place all meaning with the current reader, while modern objectivists locate meaning solely within the intentions of the authors. In the end both approaches are unable to articulate any normative function for the ongoing Christian community because they confine meaning to one place - either with a reader or an author - a result that Joel Green says 'runs against the grain of how Scripture actually communicates'.107 It becomes the task of a theological interpreter to identify Scripture's meaning in ways that avoid the shortcomings of modernism and postmodernism. Either that or the theological interpreter must defend an objective or relativistic perspective of meaning as more theologically astute than the other. Too often theological interpreters have spent energy doing the latter. Theological interpretation finds its most profitable resource in the hem and the haw between modernists and postmodernists, transcending the finer points of the debate while benefiting from the dialogue created.

102. Jeanrond, 'After Hermeneutics', p. 97. See also Werner G. Jeanrond, 'Criteria for Biblical Theologies', Journal of Religion 76, no 2. (April 1996), pp. 233-49 (247). 103. Craig G. Bartholomew, Introduction to Renewing Biblical Interpretation (ed. Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene and Karl Moller; Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, 1; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000), p. xxv. 104. Watson, Text and Truth, p. 96. 105. Graham N. Stanton, 'Interpreting the New Testament Today', Ex Auditu 1 (1985), pp. 63-73 (69). 106. Watson, Text and Truth, p. 11. 107. Green, 'Scripture and Theology: Uniting the Two So Long Divided*, p. 40.

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Reviewing the Characteristics of Theological Interpretation Theological interpretation, in its account of the biblical texts as Scripture and its assessment of the Christian community in the interpretative process, is becoming identified by certain conversations. These conversations have not fully settled the debatable matters, but they have given theological interpretation some distinctive hues. In addition to the tensions of coming to terms with the Bible as a sacred text, accounting for the role of faith and recalling the historical practices of interpretation, one of the most distinctive characteristics of theological interpretation has been its conversational method. A brief review of these traits will help give identity to theological interpretation and lay the groundwork for the current conversation. The Tension of a Sacred Text Max Turner and Joel Green list seven features that 'have provoked a renewed interest in such theological approaches'.108 I have been arguing that something similar to their fourth factor - recognition of the theological and religious nature of the texts and readership - is the primary factor leading to all the others. The argument is that theological interpretation as a developing form of biblical interpretation begins with the conviction that the texts of the Bible are somehow uniquely sacred Scripture. Charles Wood similarly acknowledges such a notion: 'It would be inconsistent to affirm or assume the scriptural status of the texts and to deny that the status has hermeneutical implications.'109 Sacredness, however, is not a 108. Green and Turner, 'New Testament Commentary and Systematic Theology: Strangers or Friends?', p. 8. The complete list consists of 1) the collapse of objectivity; 2) the recognition that 'theological study need not compromise academic integrity'; 3) the conviction that study of NT writings needs to relate 'to broader and contemporary concerns and truth claims'; 4) 'the recognition that the subject matter and implied readership of the NT are overtly theological and religious'; 5) the understanding that the texts were read canonically; 6) the perception that reading 'has been in constantly shifting dialogue with theology'; and 7) the emphasis on the reader 'has opened up the (postmodern) way to a plethora of ideological and theological readings' (8-9). One should also consider a similar list found in Davis and Hays, The Art of Reading Scripture (1-8). I should also note that discussions of meaning are not among the factors giving rise to the renewed interest in theological interpretation. Later, however, I will highlight the ways in which one's embedded notions of meaning affect how one describes theological interpretation. 109. Charles M. Wood, 'Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture', in Garrett Green (ed.), Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress,

1987), pp. 3-20 (9-10). Wood, of course, is not a lone voice, nor is he proffering anything terribly new. The fact that he has to make such a statement, however, illustrates the need for more thoughtful reflection on these hermeneutical implications. Though I will highlight the contribution of some of its contributors, one should see the complete Festschrift to Hans Frei (Green, Garrett (ed.), Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation (Philadelphia:

Augsburg Fortress, 1987.))

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straightforward concept and resulting matters of interpretation are not without influence from the competing perspectives in today's hermeneutical discussion. Among theological interpreters there is a certain tension that appears when one speaks of the texts as sacred. For many who adhere to the biblical texts as inherently sacred, the effects of tradition and community are eschewed.110 For many others the sacredness of the texts are found only in a community's reverence for them. Theological interpreters are faced with an ontological/functional dilemma that reflects the chasm between modernism and postmodernism. They must 'show how this book, read in appropriate ways, might function with the authority which it has been deemed to have by the great majority of its readers down the years'.111 The Role of Faith When one accounts for the context of a community of faith, one must contend with the very question of faith itself. One might say that the issue of faith, which influences one's perspective on the biblical text, is at the very centre of the emergence of theological interpretation. In generations past faith was often viewed as a hindrance to dialogue. It 'is understood as a subjective, private orientation unfit to enter into public discourse, and, having been compelled by the structure of the discipline to internalize this view, it is difficult to enter into dialogue with a discipline such as systematic theology which decisively rejects it'.112 But, in conjunction with the renewed perspective of the biblical texts as sacred Scripture, interpreters are beginning to contend that '[t]he assumption that faith is incompatible with proper academic standards or with openness to alternative viewpoints is ultimately a mere prejudice, whatever the practical grounds for caution over the issue'.113 Achtemeier states, 'In the end, therefore, the final demonstration of the authority of the scriptural witness is an article of faith', and '... the affirmation of the authority of the biblical witness is a matter of faith and needs to be debated and discussed on that basis'.nA A Christian approach, Karl Moller claims, is 'one that does not only spring into action once the 110. See Roger Lundin, Introduction to Disciplining Hermeneutics: Interpretation in Christian Perspective (ed. Roger Lundin; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 1-21 (8). 111. Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority, p. 121. 112. Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 12. See also Ben F. Meyer, Reality and Illusion in New Testament Scholarship; A Primer in Critical Realist Hermeneutics (A Michael Glazier Book; Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1994), pp. 174-96. Meyer lists three ways in which faith has been dismissed or devalued in reading the NT: 1) The NT simply is not the Word of God; 2) faith is not a factor at all in the reading process; and 3) even if faith were a factor, it is separable from any 'governing religious judgment', (176). 113. Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 9. 114. Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority, p. 150 (emphasis added).

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interpreter has fulfilled his historical-critical duties . . . but one that informs the interpretive process throughout 115 Presupposing the postmodern move of explicit acknowledgment of the interpreters' aims and intentions, Watson maintains that 'Christian faith, in a more or less definite form, actually has a right to exist; that it still has recognizable communal location; and that these facts have implications for the ways in which biblical interpretation is practised. ... Christian faith has its own distinctive reasons for concern with the Bible.'116 On a whole, the emergence of theological interpretation is an attempt by scholars from within 'to validate the role of faith in the interpretive endeavor, or, to put it another way, to make faith an explicit player in the public sphere of academic discoursed117 As a corollary, I suggest that a part of bringing faith into the public sphere of academic discourse is treating the sacred texts of faith as such and handling all the necessary associations that come with this acknowledgement. J. D. G. Dunn, in a discussion of the term 'Scripture', sums up this very point and suggests some responsibilities theological interpreters will need to accept as they wrestle with the issues of sacred texts and experiences of faith: The very term 'Scripture' makes the same point: we are talking not simply about 'writings' (graphai), which is the primary sense of the term in Greek; we are talking about writings regarded as sacred, which is always how the term graphe/ graphai is used in the NT. The implications which follows immediately is that such writings cannot be adequately appreciated and understood unless they are treated theologically. That in turn means that the interpreter must have a sensitivity to the character of the texts being interpreted as theological, as Scripture, a capacity to appreciate the fundamental theological convictions which have shaped the whole, and an empathy with the experiences of faith from which the texts emerged and which they express.118

fre-modern Renewal The issues of Scripture and faith in the interpretive process have given rise to a renewed interest in pre-modern perspectives, which for the most part infrequently questioned the nature of the biblical texts or the role of faith 115. Karl Molier, 'Renewing Historical Criticism', in Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene and Karl Molier (ed.), Renewing Biblical Interpretation (ed. Craig Bartholomew; Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, 1; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000), pp. 14371 (163, emphasis added). See also among the many exemplars of this stance Al Wolters, 'Confessional Criticism and the Night Visions of Zechariah', in Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene and Karl Molier (ed.), Renewing Biblical Interpretation (ed. Craig Bartholomew; Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, 1; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000), pp, 90117(91). 116. Watson, Text and Truth, pp. vii-viii. 117. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text, p. xxxvi. See the broader context of Schneiders' discussion on pp. xxxiv-xxxviii. 118. Dunn, 'Ex Akoes Pisteos', p. 35.

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in interpretation.119 Although few are suggesting that these sorts of concerns should be accepted without reservation, the return to an investigation of pre-modern forms of interpretation is a postmodern reaction to the modern concept of development. It is no longer assumed that the evolution of interpretive theories is necessarily always an improvement.120 But Wood rightly voices a typical outlook of theological interpretation when he states that *[t]he older exegetical tradition of the church contained a number of directives to the interpreter seeking a Christian understanding of the text of scripture'.121 Three of the most important directives include several of the same issues at work in the present discussion of theological interpretation: (1) the interpreter's subjective disposition toward the texts, (2) the proper context of interpretation, namely the church and (3) effective ways of listening to the text.122 Theological Interpretation as Dialogical Theological interpretation has a distinct dependence on certain postmodern perspectives. This is due in large part to the fact that the theological interpretation now emerging is finding its bearings in a world that has overturned many of the modernist ideals. The recognition of components such as theology, faith, community and interpretive history in the formation of reading practices calls into question the confidence one may have in reading the biblical texts. Outler describes the current climate as one where 'there is a widespread sense of a great reversal, marked more by undertones of irony than confidence'.123 His description has some credibility when one 119. See especially David S. Yeago, 'The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis', in Stephen E. Fowl (ed.), The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings (ed. L. Gregory Jones and James J. Buckley; Blackwell Readings in Modern Theology; rev. repr. from Pro Ecclesia 3, no. 2 (1993), pp. 152-64, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 87100. The increasing interest in pre-modern exegesis is also evidenced in Thomas C. Oden (ed.), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 1998-2006). 120. Watson, Text, Church and World, p. 264. There is little doubt that certain modern developments were advances on pre-modern models. For example, it is hard to deny that textual criticism is far superior to that of the pre-critical period or that the current understanding of Judaism and its relation to the early church has moved beyond much of the anti-Judaic rhetoric of the early biblical interpreters. 121. Wood, 'The Task of Theological Hermeneutics', p. 6. 122. Wood, 'The Task of Theological Hermeneutics', pp. 6-7. For further discussion of what we can learn from 'our pre-Enlightenment forebears', see also Schneiders, The Revelatory Text, p. 69; and P. Enns, 'Apostolic Hermeneutics and an Evangelical Doctrine of Scripture: Moving Beyond a Modernist Impasse', Westminster Theological Journal 65, no. 2 (2003), pp. 263-87. For similar statements about medieval exegesis see Childs, 'Toward Recovering Theological Exegesis', p. 22. 123. Outler, 'Toward a Postliberal Hermeneutics', p. 282.

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begins to ask whose theology, whose faith, which community and what part of interpretive history is the 'right' one. Such questions provide fruitful discussion for advocates of theological interpretation. They also point at the recognition for theological interpreters that the interpretive process works toward provisional and contextual conclusions. Disagreements between interpreters of the Christian Scriptures, writes Jorge Gracia, 'most often do not arise from the texts under interpretation, but rather from the theological assumptions that interpreters bring into their interpretations and according to which they understand the texts'.124 Theological interpretation, as I have featured it - dealing with the sacredness of the biblical texts, the role of faith in the process of interpretation and the appeal to pre-modern positions - does not, however, wholly rely on postmodernism. It still maintains certain ties to traditionally modern styles of reading. From the view of epistemology, interpretation must engage questions of history, grammar, culture and the like because of the conviction that at every stage, from writing to collecting to reading, humans and their history are involved. Christian readers, from a theological perspective, are obliged to encounter these same questions because of the belief that God acted and acts by God's Word coming and God's Spirit residing in history. Of course the epistemological and theological necessity of modern methods is explained with varying levels of force. It is difficult, nevertheless, for the theological interpreter to deny the inevitability of the historical-critical methods long associated with post-Enlightenment, 'modern' approaches to the text.125 To jettison modern methods completely would be as destructive to the development of theological interpretation as wholesale reliance on them. The exchange between Jesus and the lawyer in Luke, I suggest, demonstrates a paradigmatic encounter with biblical texts that has come to occupy the reflections of an emerging trend in scriptural interpretation. The episode also hints at the characterization thus far reached concerning theological interpretation. Theological interpretation is dialogical^ or better yet, conversational. It is not academic or ecclesial; it is not history or theology; it is not reason or faith; it is not modern or postmodern. Theological interpretation must find a way to embrace both sides of these dyads, remain in conversation with the often opposing perspectives, and form a position that transcends both. A category-defying position will rely in large part on a modification of the concept of meaning at play in the interpretive process.

124. Gracia, How Can We Know?, p. 140. 125. Turner, 'Historical Criticism and Theological Hermeneutics of the New Testament', pp. 49-50.

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning Meaning

The purpose of this chapter so far has been to call attention to what is implied for biblical interpretation by the antecedent convictions that the biblical texts are Scripture and that the Church is the ideal location for their reading. These observations, however, do not yet answer what is happening when one interprets theologically. The question that has been situated in the background is one of 'meaning'. Anthony Thiselton keenly observes that 'questions about the nature of texts not only remain entirely open and in need of further debate, but also interact closely with issues about the nature of meaning and also about the hermeneutical goals of the interpreter'.126 A glimpse at the etymology of 'interpretation' displays already its connection to meaning, and it anticipates the debate about whether interpretation is supposed to discover meaning or create it. According to the Oxford English Dictionary 'to interpret' is, among other things, 'to expound', 'to make out', or 'to bring out the meaning of something'. In previous generations 'to interpret' was in fact synonymous with 'to mean'. 'Interpretation' was in this way another name for 'meaning'. It seems reasonable, therefore, when discussing interpretation to ask what is the meaning of meaning. Adding the modifier 'theological' to the term 'interpretation' attaches an extra layer of complexity to the matter. An interpretation that influences and is influenced by theology is concerned not just with the association between the reader and the text, but also with the relationship between God, author, reader and text. Interpretation, to be theological, must speak to these relationships. Since in many ways 'theological interpretation', in its various formations, reacts to and draws from the current fascination with models of meaning, discussion of meaning is significant to its definition as a 'new paradigm' within biblical studies. One may begin an investigation with an examination of perceptions of Scripture or views of the community's involvement in interpretation, but both of those sets of questions are contingent on the answers to the following sorts of questions: What is meaning for theological interpretation? What is scriptural meaning? Theories of Meaning 'Meaning', writes Graham Hughes, 'is a very slippery commodity.'127 The history of philosophical reflections on 'meaning' attests to the convolution. William G. Lycan in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy lists no less 126. Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992), p. 62. 127. Graham Hughes, Worship as Meaning: A Liturgical Theology for Late Modernity (ed. Colin Gunton and Daniel W. Hardy; Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine, 10; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 15. See also John K. Sheriff, The Fate of Meaning: Charles Peirce, Structuralism, and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 3. Here Sheriff begins his work with the following lines: 'Presumably the

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than eight 'sharply competing hypotheses as to the nature of meaning'.128 Brian Loar in the same volume notes, 'A fundamental element of a theory of meaning is where it locates the basis of meaning, in thought, in individual speech, or in social practices.'129 I will use Loar's three bases as points of departure for a brief examination of the 'slipperiness' of the term 'meaning'. It will quickly become apparent that much of the problem with meaning is the equivocation in the way the term 'meaning' is being used. At times the development of the term is clearly centred on the notion of textual meaning. At other times the discussion moves to the broader notion of meaning in general. In this early stage I have no intention to provide a clear definition of the term. My reluctance to do so stems largely from the conviction that in theological interpretation, where scriptural meaning is derived, notions of textual meaning and notions of meaning in general are not two different issues. For the moment I only want to survey the broad categories of meaning as a way to highlight the complicated nature of the term, especially as it is utilized in projects of theological interpretation.

Meaning in thought Meaning at the beginning of the modern era was most often associated with the mind of the author.130 In 1698 John Locke wrote the classic thesis first step in considering the fate of meaning in literary theory would be to define meaning. However, it is the persistent inability of linguists, philosophers, and hermeneutical and literary theorists to give satisfactory definition of meaning that is the impetus for this study.' 128. William G. Lycan, 'Philosophy of Language', in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 1999), pp. 673-6 (673-4). The list of eight hypotheses includes 1) the referential view; 2) ideational or mentalist theories; 3) 'use' theories; 4) theories of the audience response intended by the author; 5) inferential role theories; 6) veriflcationism; 7) truth-conditional theories; and 8) the eliminativist view. See also John Lyons, Semantics (1; 2 vols; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Lyons notes ten types of 'meaning*. One should also note that the difficulty in coming to terms with 'meaning' is due in no small part to the highly specialized language of philosophical reflection. My purpose in this section is neither to present a comprehensive summary of theories of meaning nor to make plain complex discussions. The section modestly presents a broad outline of theories of meaning that contribute to the concepts of meaning influencing models of interpretation under question later in the book. 129. Brian Loar, 'Meaning', in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 1999) pp. 545-50 (546). 130. The pre-modern era, in so much that it is identified with Platonic modes of reading, is characterized by a theory of meaning as imitation of the world. Names of things disclose the nature of things. In the Antiochean school of biblical interpretation, represented by Theodore of Mopsuestia and John Chrysostom, the literal meaning of a text took precedence over the analogical interpretations more commonly found among the Alexandrians. Thiselton describes this perspective as one demanding 'that meaning be understood in the customarily acknowledged sense that it would normally bear in its proper linguistic context'. See Anthony C. Thiselton, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heideggen Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980), p. 115.

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of much early modern philosophy, 'Words in their primary or immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the mind of him that uses them.'131 That is, meaning is what the author had in mind in speaking or writing certain words to certain people at a certain time. The relationship between ideas of the author and the world is uncomplicated. Communication and thus meaning are understood 'in terms of one party having an idea then using language as a medium for transmitting it to others'.132 In more recent years the supposedly uncomplicated relationship between the ideas of an author and the reality of the world has been held under closer scrutiny. For instance, the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the lifelong project of Bertrand Russell represent a mode of thinking in the twentieth century where meaning is the propositional content of the belief or thought that a sentence expresses.133 Alternatively, the author can intend certain effects in hearers. Meaning consequently is this intention of effect. This conception of meaning has in recent history been held by certain exponents of speech act theory, most especially that variety proposed by John Searle, H. P. Grice and utilized by the theological interpreter Kevin J. Vanhoozer to whom my attention will turn in chapter three.134 In addition to the ways an author's ideas may be understood, the notions of meaning and thought are confused further by the focus placed in the word-world relationship. Graham Hughes, in a philosophically astute book on meaning and worship, describes the relationship between word and world founded in two dominant philosophical models for meaning.135 He argues that analytic philosophy, broadly described and beginning as early as Gottlob Frege's 1892 essay 'On Sense and Reference',136 characterized meaning in at 131. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ed. P. Nidditch; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 3.2.2. It is customary to give reference to section rather than page number. 132. Simon Blackburn, 'Meaning and Communication', in Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (vol. 6.; 10 vols; London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 212-14 (213). In biblical studies this concept of meaning corresponds to the historical dimension of Krister StendahPs 'meant/means' distinction. Although, Stendahl's distinction was supposed to give attention to the past and present meanings, the biblical theologian is encouraged to pursue the descriptive side of the task and Biblical Theology becomes simply descriptive history. See Krister Stendahl, 'Biblical Theology: A Program', Meanings: The Bible as Document and as Guide (repr. of 'Biblical Theology, Contemporary', in George Arthur Buttrick (ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (1; 4 vols; Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), pp. 418-32, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 11-44. 133. Loar, 'Meaning', p. 546. 134. Speech-act theory will play a more prominent role in the remaining chapters, so we will forgo further discussion here. Suffice it to say, however, that there are a variety of speech act philosophers. Broadly classifying speech-act theory as a theory of intentional effect is not completely representative of the various uses of J. L. Austin's original thoughts. 135. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, pp. 18-25. 136. Gottlob Frege, 'On Sense and Reference', Philosophical Studies (ed. and trans. P. T. Geach and M. Black; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960), pp. 56-78. I will not take up the argument as to whether Hughes has rightly characterized Frege. What is important for

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least three ways: 1) meanings of words or other linguistic constructions are tested on their ability to attach to the objectivity of the world; 2) meanings are seen as ideal entities and are thus supposed to transcend space, time and locality; and 3) in order to establish a 'true fit' between meanings and extra-linguistic reality 6A God's Eye View of the Universe' is needed.137 The phenomenological model of Continental philosophy as initiated with Edmund Husserl questioned the objectivist tendencies of analytic philosophy. Hughes compares the phenomenological move to 'a kind of radicalization of the Cartesian doubt'.138 He describes this perspective as 'to attend to the fact that what one encounters are not things, objectively present, but rather the phenomena (appearances) which present themselves in one's mind'.139 The world has no objectivity. It is ever-changing. For the phenomenologist, generally speaking, meaning could never be attached to the world out there, but could only be discovered in 'absolute mental processes'.140 The problem in both the analytic and phenomenological models, as Hughes describes them, is the conflict between the ideality of mental events and the materiality of the world. For the analytic philosopher characterized by Hughes there remains the question of how to reconcile the notion of timeless meanings as ideal conceptual entities and the real, changing entities in the world. How can one aspire to a divine vantage point? Hughes notes, 'It is that the language through which, or in which, we encounter the world has as much to do with shaping reality so encountered as whatever "objectivity" that reality may carry in itself.'141 This analytic model assumes purity in the 'fitting' process between meaning and reality. The move from word to world is without hindrance. Likewise, the phenomenological position Hughes describes assumes a purity of the reality-constitutive nature of human consciousness. The move from word to world is unimpeded because it is a 'subjective world of one's innermost apprehensions of reality'.142 Hughes, contrary to both models, questions the ability for unimpeded interaction the present discussion is to note the broad descriptions Hughes provides. Hughes' work is indicative of the current mire the term 'meaning' has created for philosophy, theology and biblical studies. 137. Hughes borrows the phrase 'A God's Eye View of the Universe' from Hilary Putnam. See Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). Again, as well, Hughes is painting with broad strokes with these three traits of analytic philosophy. Particular analytic philosophers might not be at home with all of the descriptions. Indeed, a God's eye view is quite foreign to Frege, though it generally characterizes the type of reflection on meaning in question here. Frege's three broad categories of meaning once again demonstrate the permeable lines between textual meaning and meaning in general. 138. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 22. 139. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 22. 140. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (trans. Fred Kersten; Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), p. 114. 141. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 20. 142. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 22.

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between mental meaning and material reality. He states, 'We cannot think outside of this human, which is to say embodied, form of existence.'143 With ideas like Hughes' in view, theological interpreters proposing an approach that aims to locate theological meaning squarely in the thought of either the authors or the readers face the questions of their own embodied-ness. These are in many ways the same questions faced with the issue of the role of faith, that most embodied of notions, in the interpretive project. Meaning in language Whether it was by imitation or representation of the world and worldly objects, or by reference to the authors' thoughts and reflections on the world or their experiences of the world, language was thought, for a long time, to correspond to something extra-textual. A second strand of continental philosophy addressed this issue.144 The publication of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics in 1915 set in motion 'a revolutionary change in our perceptions of the world and of ourselves'.145 Richard Rorty describes the 'linguistic turn' that was initiated with Saussure's structuralism as 'the view that philosophical problems are problems which may be solved (or dissolved) either by reforming language, or by understanding more about the language we presently use'.146 'The "linguistic turn" in twentiethcentury thought that sees language as the medium of all human experience and knowledge', in the view of John Sheriff, 'makes a theory of language fundamental to an investigation of meanings and of anything else for that matter.'147 Saussure, a Swiss linguist, 'saw a word as a sign that means what it means not because it represents an object, but because it differs from other signs'.148 Basic to Saussure's theory of language were several sets of binary opposites. The first of these dyads had to do with the definition of language itself. La langue referred to the system of signs, the structure of institutional rules and conventions. La parole, on the other hand, was the actual use of language in speaking. In this structuralist thinking langue had to be assimilated, the rules 143. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 25. 144. For the idea that continental philosophy 'consisted in two quite different approaches', see Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 21. 145. Sheriff, Fate of Meaning, p. 5. See also Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger; trans. Wade Baskin; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966). 146. Richard Rorty, 'Metaphilosophical Difficulties of Linguistic Philosophy', in Richard Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 1-39 (3). 147. Sheriff, Fate of Meaning, p. xiii (emphasis added). 148. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, 'Language, Literature, Hermeneutics, and Biblical Theology: What's Theological About a Theological Dictionary?', in Willem A. VanGemeren (ed.), New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (1; 5 vols; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1997), pp. 15-50 (24).

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and conventions learned, before speaking could occur. The shift of emphasis is crucial for the philosophy that lies beneath interpretive theories. It implies that meaning is feasible only within a system of signs that allows it, but the data of parole was all that a linguist had to go on. Thus', Sheriff writes, 'linguistics has its mission to study parole in order to understand the langue that makes parole possible.'149 One had to examine uses of language to get at the system of signs that made the uses possible. Though in many ways circular, Saussure's first dyad called attention to the need for examination of the 'embodied' use of language and pointed away from the pursuit of authors' or readers' internal cognitions. Moving from the larger concepts of language systems and uses, Saussure proposed a second dyad with his definition of a literary sign. A sign, he claimed, comprises a concept, the signified^ and a sound-image, the signifier. These terms 'have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole [the sign] of which they are parts'.150 When one speaks of a sign in a Saussurean manner, one speaks of the signified-signifier whole. The relationship, however, between the signified and signifier is at once wholly arbitrary and characteristically immutable. Only in the life of the language, through the use over a period of time, can a shift between the signifier and signified occur. Like the analytic and phenomenological models described by Hughes, Sausurean structuralism is beholden to the gap between sensible reality and conceptual reality. Unlike the earlier models, structuralists often assume a purity of the text itself and not a purity of the connection between the mental and material. Meaning is explained in terms of the internal relations of the text, or possibly the relation of the text to the language system of which it is a part. When carried too far, however, such a view leaves the text without a context and thus without an author. In that structuralism proposed that words acquire meaning by their differing from other words in the language system, it gave rise to the impulse in poststructuralism and deconstruction that meaning is a matter of absence, of what it is not. Deconstruction exploits the observation that 'Parole could have no meaning if there were no langue to make parole and meaning possible; yet there is no langue except as manifested in parole.'151 According to deconstruction theories all is parole, one cannot escape the use of language. As Terence Hawkes states, '[Langue] has no concrete existence of its own, except in the piecemeal manifestations that speech affords.'152 So while deconstruction models may sidestep the ideality/materiality difficulty that Hughes saw plaguing analytic and phenomenological models, and now too typical of structuralist models, still 'meaning' is understood as a hidden 149. Sheriff, Fate of Meaning, p. 7. 150. Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, p. 14. 151. Sheriff, Fate of Meaning, p. 7. 152. Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 20-1.

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article one impossibly strives to discover. It may be unattainable, quests for it may be misguided and ideologically loaded, but, even in the hostility towards it, deconstructionists view meaning as a thing to be exposed. Of course they spend a good deal of energy arguing that such attempts at exposition are always futile. Theories of meaning in speech or language call attention to the analysable structures of texts and also to the materially contingent nature of meaning, but they have not moved far beyond the notion of meaning as an entity.153 In this, structuralism and deconstruction share something with analytic and phenomenological philosophies, but deconstruction 'reflects (perhaps causes) a swing in modern scholarship from a stance of theoretical certainty to theoretical uncertainty'.154 Meaning in social practice Reflections on meaning within social practices have tempered some of the extremism of deconstructive ideas. The turn to social practices is an attempt to understand a text's meaning as socially embodied, thus providing material context to it. Some interpretations of the later Wittgenstein hold that social rules are the only way to 'explain the fact that an expression's meaning determines that some uses are correct or others incorrect'.155 Similarly, what a word or linguistic unit 'means' is 'determined, not by his (sic) individual usage, but by the usage of some social group to which he semantically defers'.156 The difficulty, however, is determining whose social context is the most significant. What one is often left with in some social theories of meaning is 'meanings for' different groups. As 'products of rulegoverned behaviour' meanings are still understood as objects.157 Meaning is discernible only to those on the inside of the social group in question. Assuming the existence of various social groups who use the same texts, meaning is no longer considered an entity but many entities.

153. I am using 'entity' in a rather ordinary way, shunning the philosophical baggage it often carries. 'Entity', 'thing' and 'object' are all used interchangeably to speak of that idea of meaning as something upon which authors and readers may act. One might consider the various verbs often used to discuss meaning as hinting at the idea of meaning as an entity being used here. (The author places meaning in a text. Meaning exists in a text, waiting to be discovered.) 154. Sheriff, Fate of Meaning, p. 50. 155. Loar, 'Meaning', p. 546. 156. Loar, 'Meaning', p. 547. 157. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 66. Jonathan Cohen labels the rule-governed approaches de jure theories of meaning in The Diversity of Meaning (London: Methuen and Co., 1962), p. 24. The term is used in comparison to de facto ('pattern of events') theories.

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Meaning, God and Advancing Theological Interpretation In rather broad terms, meaning as understood in the three preceding areas - thought, language and social practices - is an object whose relation to reality is straightforward, an object that is forever out of reach, or an object whose definition depends on the social group that is examining it. It has not gone unnoticed, however, that a search for meaning is in many ways a quest for (an understanding of) God.158 The notion of meaning as an object thus becomes even more crucial to the development of theological interpretation. It behoves the theological interpreter to consider Hughes' emphasis on the fact that in English the term 'meaning' is a gerund with both nominal and verbal dimensions.159 The persistent difficulties with theories of meaning for theological interpretation have centred on the defence or critique of meaning as a noun, as a thing, and thus arguments that meaning is unattainable or a non-entity call into question certain ideas about God. I believe theological interpretation must examine both the nominal and verbal qualities of the concept of meaning and consider more fruitful relationships between God and meaning that might result from such an examination. In the description and analysis of two modes of theological interpretation, which follow in the proceeding chapters, I will be particularly interested in how theological interpretation is able to capture both the nominal and verbal qualities of meaning and how theological interpretation might reconcile the fascination and proven difficulty of 'meaning' with the 'theistic reference'160 of the Christian community and its sacred text. A guiding principle is derived by adapting Hughes' ideas of meaning in worship: 'There will be requirement of any concept of meaning to give an account of the ways in which some sense of the divine, that which is quite Other, can be generated from within this assemblage of significations which is theological interpretation of Scripture.'161 In the acceptance of the Bible as sacred, I am standing against both modern and postmodern tendencies, which disallow religious convictions as sources for meaning - because they are too subjective to modernists and too authoritarian for postmodernists. I also return to a pre-modern frame of mind, yet being always aware of the 'entanglement of values' I have as modern/postmodern person.162

158. Gerhard Sauter, The Question of Meaning: A Theological and Philosophical Orientation, trans, and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 15. 159. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 66. 160. This term belongs to Graham Hughes. See especially Hughes, Worship as Meaning, pp. 40-2. 161. See Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 40. The original sentence reads, 'There will be requirement of it [a putative theory of meaning for worship] to give an account of the ways in which some sense of "the divine*9, "that which is quite Other", can be generated from within this assemblage of significations which is a worship service.' 162. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 55.

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The dyadic modes of thought briefly described above and most systematically represented by Saussurean structuralism and unravelled by Derridean post-structuralism have in fact dominated discussions of meaning for some time. The residue left by the dyadic models needs to be cleared. It too often produces a Cartesian anxiety about 'possessing' an idea or a text that is fundamentally idolatrous because it seeks a certainty that only God can have. Without a developed idea of scriptural meaning as transcending, even transforming, the either/or categories we risk falling into the same dyadic, idolatrous snares.

Chapter 2 FROM MEANINGS TO INTERESTS: STEPHEN FOWL'S CRITIQUE OF CONCEPTS OF MEANING AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION

For over a decade Stephen Fowl, professor of theology at Loyola College in Maryland, has been a leading innovative voice in the re-emergence of theological interpretation. His growing list of publications on the subject demonstrates an interesting interplay between a communally authoritative and normative text, and an ethically formative approach to scriptural interpretation. Fowl encapsulates this interplay in his aphoristic definition of 'theological interpretation' as a 'Christian interpretation of scripture [which] needs to involve a complex interaction in which Christian convictions, practices, and concerns are brought to bear on scriptural interpretation in ways that both shape that interpretation and are shaped by if,1 Understanding and describing the concept of meaning that motivates Fowl's style of theological interpretation is the purpose of this chapter. Fowl himself is aware of the significance of models of meaning for interpretive systems. He remarks that in the rigorous application of interpretative practices and methods, biblical scholars are utilizing 'some theory about what meaning is and how it is to be attained'.2 Given the current state of confusion, however,

1. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 8 (emphasis added). Fowl elsewhere writes more succinctly, 'a theological reading of scripture is one designed to shape and be shaped by the faith, worship, and practices of Christian communities'. See Stephen E. Fowl, 'The New Testament, Theology, and Ethics', in Joel B. Green (ed.), Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 394-410 (398, emphasis added). Also, in an appeal to a broader audience he writes that the theological interpretation of Scripture is 'that practice whereby theological concerns and interests inform and are informed by a reading of scripture'. See Stephen E. Fowl, Introduction to Stephen Fowl (ed.), The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Blackwell Readings in Modern Theology; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997), pp. xii-xxx (xiii, emphasis added). 2. Stephen E. Fowl, 'The Ethics of Interpretation or What's Left Over After the Elimination of Meaning', in David J. A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl and Stanley E. Porter (ed.), The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series, 87; repr. from David J. Lull (ed.) SBL Seminar Papers, 1988 (Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Paper Series, 27; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), pp. 69-81, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), pp. 379-98 (379).

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Fowl believes that 'meaning' may be too obscure and uncertain to be helpful in the interpretation of Scripture. As a purely pragmatic move, Fowl follows the philosopher Jeffrey Stout in advocating the elimination of meaning as the goal of interpretation and adopts instead a focus on the interests and purposes of reading. If a theory of meaning lies behind all interpretive methods and practices, as Fowl himself testifies, what methods and practices are grounded in a theory that eliminates the discussion and reflection about meaning altogether? More specifically, how does such an 'eliminativist' view affect Fowl's description of theological interpretation?3 What does it imply about the relationships between the text, God and community? To get at the answer to these questions I will examine more thoroughly Fowl's appraisal of concepts of meaning and his critique of the pursuits they generate. An analysis of his critique will offer more insight into his proposal 'of dissolving disputes about meaning by explicating these disputes in terms of interpretive interests'.4 I will then examine the implications of Fowl's critique of theories of meaning and how his alternative focus on readerly interests impacts the practice of theological interpretation. The chapter will end by raising questions about Fowl's underlying concept of meaning and his programme of theological interpretation in anticipation of the discussions in Chapters 4 and 5. The Problem tvith Meaning Although Fowl's proposal suggests that one set aside the pursuit of meaning for the practice of theological interpretation, he does not suggest the word 'meaning' cannot be useful.5 He rather dislikes the course followed by biblical interpreters who are wedded to certain objective notions of meaning. Fowl's rejection of the pursuit of meaning is predicated on the conviction that current theories of meaning are theoretically and theologically unsound. Likewise, adjustments in interpretive methodology cannot rescue any theory of meaning for the purposes and interests Christians bring to the interpretation of their Scripture. Fowl seeks to correct the mistaken idea that the right concept of meaning, together with the right method for establishing meaning, will repair the interpretive disputes that plague both the Church and the academy. At the heart of his programme are an 'underdetermined' notion of interpretation and a bi-directional movement between the biblical texts and Christian doctrine and practice.

3. For a list of theories of meaning that includes the eliminativist view see Lycan, 'Philosophy of Language', p. 673. 4. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 380. 5. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 35, n. 7.

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Determinate and Anti-determinate Concepts of Meaning Fowl views the customary relationship between meaning and doctrine as founded on the prevailing notion that meaning is 'a sort of property with which the text has been endued'.6 He writes, The text is viewed as a relatively stable element into which an author inserts, hides or dissolves (choose your metaphor) ideologies and meanings, and the task of the critic or reader is to dig out, uncover or distill these properties from it.'7 In an effort to avoid lapsing 'into either vicious or silly relativism' interpreters have traditionally fostered a theory of meaning that is bound to 'something relatively stable and determinable'.8 The principal objective of biblical criticism is the pursuit of meaning in the authors' original intentions and the historical circumstances that gave rise to the authors' words. Such a view, Fowl notes, is based on the assumption 'that authors are fully autonomous and aware of themselves and their intentions'.9 It also holds to the conviction that the authors' texts 'are suitable for mediating those intentions from one autonomous selfaware mind to another'.10 One of the results of understanding meaning as an author's intention is an awareness of the vast historical gap between the time of the text's production and the current era of the text's interpretation. If meaning is reduced to the original intention of the author, Christian (or all responsible) interpreters must employ a number of historical-critical methods to uncover the sure meaning of their Scripture. Fowl expresses a growing dissatisfaction with the idea 'that a text's meaning is coextensive with, or primarily determined by, the author's intentions'.11 For the most part, however, those deconstructive styles of reading that violently react to such determinate modes of meaning, what Fowl calls 'antideterminate', are largely parasitic on those very determinate concepts of meaning to which they are reacting. Anti-determinate interpretation, Fowl asserts, 'sets out to undermine systems of wholeness, clarity, and closure with the aim of manifesting what is excluded or reduced or obscured within those systems. This subversion is not offered in order to make the system better, but to undermine the very practice of system-making.'12 Fowl is equally critical of the totalizing notions of historical criticism, but he also believes '[systematic anti-determinacy in interpretation will result in paralysis and instability in practice'.13 Since the anti-determinate view is a reactionary .

6. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 33. 7. Stephen E. Fowl, 'Texts Don't Have Ideologies', Biblical Interpretation 3, no. 1 (1995), pp. 15-34 (16). See also Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 34. 8. Stephen E. Fowl, 'The Role of Authorial Intention in the Theological Interpretation of Scripture', in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (ed.), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdrnans, 2000), pp. 71-87 (77). 9. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 73. 10. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 73. 11. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 77. 12. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, pp. 41-2. 13. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 56.

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perspective one is justified in focusing on the dominant, determinate theory of meaning when exploring Fowl's model of theological interpretation. Anti-determinate theories have nothing to feed from if determinate views are destabilized. I will have opportunity to comment on the ways in which Fowl's critique of this dominant model parallels and also calls into question aspects of anti-determinate interpretations, but for the most part Fowl's criticism is directed to the determinate models. Theological Difficulties Fowl's critical evaluation of the determinate notion of meaning is divided into theological and theoretical comments. I first look at the theological difficulties Fowl has with the notion that meaning is a property of the text. Fowl most vehemently questions whether authorial intention may be equated with this supposed textual property. Problematic notions of selfhood The view that meaning is authorial intention, Fowl maintains, relies on the related idea that the author is an autonomous and self-aware individual. Fowl believes this picture of meaning and authors misconstrues the Christian notions of selfhood in both descriptions of the individual. On the one hand, he writes, 'this account of human selfhood simply does not fit with a view that humans are created in the image of the triune God whose inner life is characterized by its relationships rather than autonomy, a God who creates us for lives of peaceable fellowship with God and each other'.14 On the other hand, Fowl questions the presumption that humans can be fully present to themselves. 'Short of the consummation of God's reign', he says, 'we shall not know as fully as we are known by God.'15 Thus he seeks to develop a chastened notion of authorial intention through the use of communicative theory, especially in the distinction of communicative intention and motive. However, while he finds in speech act theory ways to talk about the authorial intention without 'psychologizing' authors, he does not concede that the helpful tools of speech act theory can yield a theory of authorial intention as meaning.16

14. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 73, 15. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 74. 16. See especially Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', pp. 74-7. Speech-act theory will not figure as prominently in the discussion of Fowl as it will in that of Vanhoozer. For one, speech-act theory does notfigureinto his critique of meaning nor does it play much of a role outside of his chastened ideas of authors. In the next chapter I will consider speechact theory more fully and in Chapters 4 and 5 I will have room to draw Fowl into the speech-act conversation.

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Separation of meaning and application The determinate perspective further implies a direction of movement that is one way, moving in turn from meaning placed in the text, meaning recovered by interpretation, meaning developed into doctrine. Fowl finds it problematic that with this understanding of meaning, doctrine is never able to influence interpretation. One must first lay bare meaning through right interpretation before developing doctrine. This theory provides not only a stable and determinable meaning of the text, but also leads to Christian doctrines and practices that are equally well established. The operating assumption here', Fowl writes', is that matters of doctrine and practice are straightforwardly determined by biblical interpretation and never the other way around.'17 Such a formula necessarily assumes a separation of meaning and theological application. This separation, while preserving 'the clarity and stability of the biblical text', does not comport well with Fowl's definition of theological interpretation nor does it hold true for the practice of biblical interpretation which is unable to avoid the influence of doctrinal convictions.18 In light of the historical gap between biblical times and the time of interpretation, the separation of meaning and application forces one to view 'the overwhelming majority of the history of Christian biblical interpretation as a series of errors, failed attempts to display the meaning of the text'.19 Despite the many appalling things Christians have used the biblical texts to support, Fowl rightly notes that 'there is much in the history of Christian biblical interpretation which speaks truthfully about God, enables faithful living and inspires Spirit-directed worship, all of which was either done in the absence of a determinate theory of interpretation or under the direction of competing theories of meaning'.20 Fowl furthermore suggests, '[r]ather than work to collapse the gap between Jesus and ourselves, Christian communities ought to find in their past rich resources for reading Scripture theologically in the present'.21 Various uses of Scripture In addition to the problematic notions of selfhood and the separation of meaning and application, Fowl claims, 'Any attempt to tie a single stable account of meaning to authorial intention will put Christians in an awkward relationship to the OT.'22 How does one reconcile the authorial intention of the text as the sole meaning with the promises of God to Israel in light of the promises to Christians? Or, what are we to make of the Christological readings of Old Testament texts? How do Christians maintain the OT 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 34. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 35. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 36. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 36. Fowl, 'The New Testament, Theology, and Ethics', p. 402. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 80.

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as their Scripture and affirm the intention of the biblical authors as the single determined meaning? Fowl suggests, if one must adhere to a single determined meaning by authorial interpretation, she will force 'rather implausible arguments about the communicative intention' of the Old Testament author, or 'reduce the Christological aspect of these passages into a subsidiary or parasitic role'.323 In addition, Christians are put in an awkward position of 'subordinating or abandoning scripture's liturgical and ascetical roles in favor of a determinate theory of meaning', when they try to limit the meaning of a text that is variously used in prayer, teaching, proclamation and art.24 What are Christian interpreters to do with the multiple uses of Scripture? Fowl dismisses two related answers to this question. He briefly rejects the attempt to utilize sensus plenior as a way to revise the meaning/significance of E. D. Hirsch, as if 'meaning' was that thing deposited by the author and made more significant and fuller by the Holy Spirit.25 The idea that sensus literalis can serve as the determinate meaning of biblical texts receives more of Fowl's attention. Most scholars, Fowl notes, appeal to St Thomas Aquinas as an example of the correlation between the literal sense and authorial intention. Using the arguments of Eugene Rogers, Fowl calls attention to the fact 'that Thomas' reflection on the literal sense leaves matters surprisingly underdetermined and that the author's intention functions in his hands more to promote diversity than to contain it'.26 Fowl concludes that a Thomistic perspective which maintains 'a plurality of readings is found within the literal sense'.27 Appealing to it in support of authorial intention as the determinate meaning of a text is too restrictive. 'Rather than using authorial intention to limit interpretation', Fowl maintains, 'a Thomistic account of the literal sense fosters ongoing interpretation within the community of believers.'28 In sum, Fowl notes the theological difficulties the interpreter is left with when a determinate theory of meaning is at work. Such a theory, in practice, poses problems for the notions of the self. In addition, one must suppress doctrinal convictions and the influence of tradition if one adheres to the implied movement from biblical texts to theological application. A final theological obstacle arises when one considers the implications for Christian communities of a strict adherence to authorial intention as meaning for Old Testament texts. Appealing to sensus literalis only shifts the problems from 'meaning' to 'literal sense'.

23. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 81. 24. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 37. 25. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 81, n. 18. 26. Eugene Rogers, 'How the Virtues of the Interpreter Presuppose and Perfect Hermeneutics: The Case of Thomas Aquinas', Journal of Religion 76, no. 1 (1996), pp. 64-81 (65), quoted in Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 83. 27. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 83. 28. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 84.

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Theoretical Difficulties Fowl's theological misgivings are complexly related to a set of theoretical problems. On these issues Fowl follows Jeffrey Stout's conclusions in 'What is the Meaning of a Text?'29 It would be a mistake, however, to completely separate the theoretical from the theological difficulties. There always seems to be something theological at stake with every theoretical or practical move. Nonetheless, a cursory overview of the theoretical difficulties will help bring Fowl's proposals into clearer focus. Theoretical confusion The prevailing theory of meaning 'presupposes a definitive account of what the meaning of a text is (or ought to be)'.30 The difficulty, according to Fowl, is that what counts as meaning varies from reading location to reading location. Indeed Jeffrey Stout, who provides much of Fowl's philosophical support, asks, 'What is a theory of meaning a theory of?'31 In the past, authorial intention has been the answer to Stout's question, and as long as everyone agreed to think and talk about meaning in this way 'an illusory plausibility to the notion that interpretation is determinate' persisted.32 'Problems, however, arise', as Fowl observes, when someone questions the very definition of meaning, thus throwing the object of any textual mining expedition into question. As the history of literary criticism over the past 50 years has shown, someone has only to ask for example, 'Why should something like the author's intention count as the meaning of a text?' to make both the contingency and the fragility of those interpretive agreements clear.33

Though theorists might try to refine methods or impose institutional power, Fowl concludes 'A notion of authorial intention, no matter how coherent in and of itself, cannot provide us with the "meaning" of a text without begging the question of what textual meaning might be.'34 Adjudication of competing concepts of meaning In addition to this uncertainty about meaning, Fowl claims, 'we really have no way of adjudicating between competing conceptions of textual meaning'.35 To 29. See Jeffrey Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?' New Literary History 14 (1982), pp. 1-12. 30. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 78. 31. Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', p. 3. See also the discussion of the difficulty of meaning in Part I of Hughes, Worship as Meaning. 'Meaning, as it turns out, is a very slippery commodity' (15). 32. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 35. 33. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 35. 34. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', pp. 79-80. 35. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 380. Fowl's reliance on Stout is noted and quite evident.

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dwell on the question of the meaning of the text opens the door to substantial verbal disagreement; it becomes a semantic argument about what one is pursuing. Again Stout's reflections provide support for Fowl's arguments. Stout notes that the more disagreement we have 'the less we have for thinking that we are discussing the same topic after all'.36 Furthermore, he writes, 'Identification of a common subject matter for divergent theories requires numerous shared beliefs about the nature of the subject matter. Too much divergence ceases to be divergence altogether: it merely changes the subject.'37 Therefore, for Stout and Fowl, the theoretical problems one faces when pursuing a single determined meaning are more generally significant than the theological difficulties. The current and seemingly intractable confusion about what meaning is, along with difficulty in adjudicating between any of the various options, leaves one who is intent on discovering the meaning of a text perplexed. Implications for Interpretation: A Plurality of Interests Stephen Toulmin offers a helpful perspective on the current divide between those who argue for a certainty of meaning and those who argue that meaning is an uncertain concept. Toulmin's ideas remind us that neither the theological nor the theoretical disorder is new to hermeneutical discussion. They also help us place the proponents of determinate meaning, as well as Fowl, into a larger historical context. The current modernistic impulse to argue for a determinate concept of meaning in the current quagmire echoes its rationalistic predecessors' desire for solid foundations of knowledge in a pluralistic world. In many ways they are both reactionary. Toulmin argues that rationalists like Descartes, instead of producing a foundationalist understanding of the world ex nihilo, were actually reacting to the more pluralistic, and short-lived age of humanism in which '[t]he multiplicity of people in the world, with idiosyncratic viewpoints and life stories, was not a threat'.38 In recent days, Toulmin believes these humanistic tendencies have come full circle: The rationalists hoped to evaluate questions of epistemology, natural philosophy, and metaphysics out of reach of contextual analysis, but their attempt to decontextualize philosophy and natural science had its own social and historical context, which demands examination here. The call for 'certain foundations' to our beliefs has lost 36. Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', p. 5. 37. Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', pp. 5-6, quoted in Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 385. 38. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 42. Toulmin is insistent on seeing the period of the 16th century humanists as the more proper ground from which modernity was born. Or better, he writes, 'Modernity had two distinct starting points, a humanistic one grounded in classical literature, and a scientific one rooted in 17th-century natural philosophy' (43).

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its original appeal in the 20th century, if only because more was at stake in the rationalist Quest for Certainty than is acknowledged in standard histories of science and philosophy, or than is at stake in philosophy, now that we find ourselves back where the humanists left us?9

Furthermore, Toulmin states the 'humanists' readiness to live with uncertainty, ambiguity, and difference of opinion had done nothing... to prevent religious conflict from getting out of hand'.40 In fact, it had only exacerbated the situation. Thus, the rationalist predecessors of today's modernists worked with the notion that despite the fact '[i]t might not be obvious what one was supposed to be certain about', it was clear to them in order to avoid ambiguity 'wwcertainty had become unacceptable'.41 Fowl, in the spirit of the humanists of generations past, demonstrates a certain level of comfort with the inevitable plurality of meanings and interpretations. His critique of determinate notions of meaning is founded less on the implausibility of modern methods than on the 'fundamental systemic error within determinate approaches'.42 This fundamental error is associating meaning with a property of the text. Fowl concludes 'that the aim of this type of interpretation is to render interpretation redundant by making the meaning of the biblical text clear to all reasonable people of good will'.43 In a way that recalls the earlier humanists, Fowl fights against the tendency to want to make 'uncertainty unacceptable'. Fowl and Gregory Jones believe interpretive turmoil erupts when one defends against the orderliness that the term 'meaning' typically implies and calls into question the very term itself.44 When asked to explicate 'meaning' most interpreters replace the question of meaning with other questions.45 For example, the general practice among interpreters who seek a determinate meaning has been to equate meaning with the intention of the original author. But, Fowl is sceptical about whether or not this practice can, as Stout says, 'deliver the goods'.46 '[T]he notion of texts having properties that can be mined by anyone using the appropriate method is deeply problematic on philosophical grounds', writes Fowl. 'Moreover', he adds, 'it fails to account for the very different contexts in which interpreters 39. Toulmin, Cosmopolis, p. 44, (emphasis added). 40. Toulmin, Cosmopolis, p. 55. 41. Toulmin, Cosmopolis, p. 55. 42. Scott David Foutz, 'On Determinate Meaning in Texts: A Comparison of the Hermeneutic Theories of Kevin Vanhoozer and Stephen Fowl', Quodlibet Journal 1, no. 6 (September-October 1999), no page numbers; cited 28 July 2003. Online: http://www. quodlibet.net/foutz-vanhoozer.shtml 43. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 32. 44. See Stephen E. Fowl and L. Gregory Jones, Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life (ed. James D. G. Dunn and James P. Mackey; Biblical Foundations in Theology; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 15; Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 57; Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 79. 45. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 382; Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 58. 46. This is a phrase taken from Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', p. 1.

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operate and the diverse interests they bring to interpretation.'47 Fowl finds no way in which limiting meaning to authorial intention or the literal sense will get one past interpretive disagreement.48 He rejects 'the claim that an author's intention is "the meaning" of a text.'49 When faced with interpretive disputes, determinate meanings, authorial intentions and literal senses are not conciliatory; they are question begging. Interpretive disputes, with which biblical scholarship is plagued, on the surface seem to be about the meaning of texts, but are more often than not disputes about completely different interests in the text, be they authorial intention, historical provenance, or ideological concerns. Stout suggests disputes about the text are not about the meaning of the text at all but about the pursuits of different aims in the use of the text: ... to highlight whatever interests and purposes make us ask questions about meaning in thefirstplace, and to reformulate our questions, if need be, by eliminating reference to meaning. Reduction would be beside the point. We want to serve our interests and purposes, not reduce them.50

Because of this, Fowl suggests following Stout and eliminating the pursuit of meaning because the concept 'serves no essential purpose'.51 When people say they are pursuing meaning, they typically have in mind the pursuit of something more specific and interesting. Therefore, Fowl argues for replacing the pursuit of meaning with an explication of interests for the purposes of arbitrating interpretive disputes. Determinate meanings of the text become less of a priority when one adheres to the matter of 'a reading [that] tells us something interesting about the text under scrutiny'.52 Without determinate meaning, interpreters might 'have to do without a hermeneutical method3, and blur 'the line between the theory and practice of interpretation', but they do not necessarily make interpretation 'merely subjective in any worrisome sense'.53 Stout explains, most readings are offered within traditions, communities, and institutions that set limits to the interests and purposes an interpretation may serve. Most readings, 47. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 19. 48. See Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 78. Indeed, Fowl claims that 'linking authorial intention to a text's meaning, fails' (85). For a brief discussion of literal sense see Fowl, Engaging Scripture, pp. 37-40; Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', pp. 82-5. 49. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 73. 50. Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', p. 4 (emphasis added). The emphasized text serves as a nice foothold for the argument against Fowl that runs throughout the current project. Ultimately I want to argue that there is not a need to eliminate meaning from theological interpretation. 51. Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', p. 10. The idea of replacing pursuits of meaning with questions about use comes in large part from the thought of the later Wittgenstein, whose now famous admonition - 'Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use' - has become a standard dictum among interpreters of a pragmatic persuasion. 52. Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', p. 7. 53. Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?5, pp. 7-S.

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therefore, can and should be judged according to relatively determinate intersubjective criteria - criteria that follow straightforwardly from the collective adoption of interests and purposes of a certain kind.54

Fowl confirms Stout's conclusions but clarifies the 'kind' of collective adoption of interests and purposes most suitable for theological interpretation. Interpreters could, for example, claim an interest in authorial intention. There is nothing to prevent them from doing this, but there is also nothing preventing them from being interested in something else. Fowl claims, however, that there is 'no need to cloud the issue further by calling the result of this interest "meaning", particularly when it is done at the expense of other interpretative interests'.55 Fowl's programme of theological interpretation calls Christian readers 'to read, interpret, and embody Scripture in the light of larger ends of the Christian life ... in the light of their call to live and worship faithfully, thus deepening their communion with the triune God and with others'.56 Theological interpretation is to be carried out from within a specific context in which 'theological convictions should shape and be shaped by biblical interpretation'.57 Fowl concludes that 'one can stop talking about texts having meanings and recognize that there are a number of critical interests one can bring to a text, but that no one interest can lay claim to producing the meaning of a text'.58 The larger overriding interests for theological interpretation are those that serve the historical and continuing Christian community. Since the definition of meaning is forever open to debate and therefore ill-equipped to resolve disagreements about text, Fowl suggests an underdetermined interpretive strategy as opposed to the determinate and antideterminate strategies currently holding sway among biblical interpreters. Fowl describes underdetermined interpretation as 'underdetermined only in the sense that it avoids using a theory of meaning to determine interpretation. Underdetermined interpretation recognizes a plurality of interpretive practices and results without necessarily granting epistemological priority to any one of these.'59 Implications for Theological Interpretation; Teleology, Ecclesiology and Ethics Fowl's underdetermined approach rejects the idea that 'meaning' is that thing an interpreter pursues or the theory of which regulates interpretive practices. Instead he challenges interpreters to give better consideration 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', p. 8 (emphasis added). Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', pp. 382-3. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 86 (emphasis added). Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 60. Fowl, 'Texts Don't Have Ideologies', p. 16 (emphasis added). Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 10 (emphasis added).

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to what is already at work in all readings of texts - the interpretive aims and interests of the community - and to recognize the regulative function of the reading community. Fowl contends that interpretation is neither the determined exercise of locating a text's meaning, nor is it the anti-determinate game of creating whatever fancy strikes the reader. Furthermore, while Fowl acknowledges a focus on interpretive interests and an underdetermined approach to interpretation cannot resolve the inevitable interpretive disagreement, he suggests that they will allow one 'to deal with a much more manageable set of disagreements of a much more substantive nature'. 60 There are at least three areas where disagreements continue to arise and in which theological interpretation may find its most rewarding reflection.61 First, one can expect to find difference of opinion concerning the formulation of the stated interpretive interest. For example, if parties were to agree that they shared an interest in authorial intention, they still must come to terms with whether this idea is the author's communicative aims, the internal motives of the writer, or some other notion of authorial intention. Second, even when the interpretive interest is clearly defined, disagreement may emerge regarding the readings generated by the interest. What evidence is to be assessed? What method is to be followed to meet the stated interests? The only way to resolve these disputes, says Fowl, is to 'rely on rhetorical argumentation, the ability to narrate an account that makes comprehensive sense of the recognized evidence while at the same time accounting for the strengths and weaknesses of alternative views'.62 The final area of disagreement concerns the choice of interpretative strategy in particular situations. Given the elimination of the pursuit of determinate meaning and the focus on interests in interpretive practices, Fowl supports a Christian model of theological interpretation that is an explication and defence of interpretative interests and strategies for the ongoing life in Christian community. Fowl's line of reasoning can be traced as follows: 1) pursuing the meaning of a text is impossible and fruitless; 2) explicating interpretative interests is both more precise and more substantive; 3) Christian interests in interpreting the texts are primary for theological interpretation; 4) theological interpretation will, thus, be influenced by Christian interests, but given the role of Scripture in the Christian community, theological interpretation will also influence Christian interests. The ways in which this mutual influence is felt comprises the third area of possible disagreement. The idea of Christian interests regulating theological interpretation raises a host of questions, but first I call attention to the way Fowl's critique of theories of meaning and the turn to interpretive interests highlights the 60. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 385. 61. What follows is a summary of the fuller discussion in Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', pp. 385-9. 62. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 387. Fowl notes the similarities to the argument of Alasdair Maclntyre found in 'Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Science', The Monist 60 (1977), pp. 453-72.

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teleological nature of theological interpretation. Interpretation becomes the practices employed to meet stated goals and aims. This idea of interpretation, which Fowl refers to as underdetermined interpretation, however, is not simply a matter of clarifying the 'theological, ecclesiological, social, and institutional determinants'.63 Fowl explains: The options are not either to make conceptually questionable claims about certain properties of the biblical text or simply to reduce the text to its contexts. Rather, for Christians, at least, biblical interpretation will be the occasion of a complex interaction between the biblical text and the varieties of theological, moral, material, political, and ecclesial concerns that are part of the day-to-day lives of Christians struggling to live faithfully before God in the contexts in which they find themselves. What I cannot do is provide a method for specifying in advance how these interactions will work.64

Instead of developing a method of theological interpretation, Fowl's turn to interpretative interests forces him to make clear the implications of the elimination of a single, objective pursuit of meaning. One must ask, therefore, how is it that his proposal avoids the sinful practices fostered by the 'Christian' interests found throughout the history of interpretation in the Church. And, though there may not be a method for specifying how the complex interactions will work, what is there to govern the interactions at all? How does one discontinue the pursuit of meaning and at the same time avoid the modernists' fear of lapsing into 'silly relativism'? Fowl's answers to these types of questions begin in the identity of the reading community and involve the development of virtuous readers. Communal Collectivism In one of his earliest articles on the subject of interpretation Fowl introduces three responses one might make to the elimination of meaning: Pluralism, Social Responsibility and Communal Collectivism. The pluralist response is one that celebrates the diversity of interpretation for diversity's sake.65 Interpretive practices are obligated only to be interesting to a sufficient number of people and conform to pluralist convictions. An individual or institution adhering to the pluralist response may not, however, be able to answer why one should pursue any one interest over another. 'In fact', Fowl concludes, 'the continued interest of an institution committed to interpretative pluralism may depend on this question never being asked.'66 63. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 60. 64. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 60. 65. See Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 389. Fowl quotes Stout, who says 'Let us then celebrate the diversity of interpretations as a sign that our texts are interesting in more ways than one. The only alternative would be to have texts that weren't' (Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?', p. 8). 66. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 390.

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The second and third responses to the elimination of meaning share the conviction that one can defend the adoption of one set of interpretive interests over another. The perspective of social responsibility claims that interpreters 'play some relevant role in society at large*.67 Therefore, rather than pursuing an interest for the simple sake of interest, interpreters should heed the calls of social justice and well-being. The quest for many interests, 'while epistemologically as sound as the pursuit of any other interest, will be seen as ethically or politically irresponsible and not worthy of our attention'.68 This view, however, depends on two prior commitments in order to defend the calls to justice and well-being. One must first agree that there is a 'global polis' or 'supercommunity' to which all interpreters belong and with which pure pluralist interests might conflict.69 Correspondingly, justice would need to be understood 'as an ahistorical trans-cultural virtue recognizable by all rational people'.70 Neither the notion of a supercommunity nor an ahistorical concept of justice is securely accepted. The communal response to the elimination of meaning shares with the social responsibility view the conviction that no one interpretive interest has epistemological privilege. However, those holding the communal position refuse to accept the ideas of supercommunity and transcendent justice on which the perspective of social responsibility is predicated. 'Rather than continue the quest for universal foundations for moral reasoning', Fowl states, 'the communal view would suggest that the reasons for adopting one interpretative interest over another lie in particular historical communities.'71 'Such a community', Fowl writes, 'will have a provisionally specified telos to which its life and practices are directed, to which its members are responsible by virtue of their communal commitments.'72 Fowl's own model for interpretation, specifically his design for theological interpretation, demonstrates an adoption of a form of the communal stance, especially as it relates to the sacred text of the Christian community. Kathryn Tanner states, 'Questions of faithfulness to one's communal identity become questions of textual interpretation, broadly construed.'73 67. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 391. 68. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 393. 69. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', pp. 393-4. Fowl attributes the idea of a supercommunity to Richard Rorty. See Richard Rorty, 'Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism', Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), pp. 583-9 (583). 70. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 394. Fowl attributes this idea to John Rawls. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, rev. edn, 1999). 71. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 396. Fowl is here echoing the work of Alasdair Maclntyre. See Alasdair Maclntyre, 'Moral Arguments and Social Contexts', Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), pp. 590-1; After Virtue (Notre Dame: Univeristy of Notre Dame Press, 2nd edn, 1984); Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). 72. Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 396. 73. Kathryn E. Tanner, 'Theology and the Plain Sense', in Garrett Green (ed.), Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress, 1987), pp. 59-78 (69).

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For Fowl the elimination of meaning and the turn to Christian interests draws him into the enduring bond between the scriptural identity of the texts and the larger conceptions of Christian identity and community. In introducing his project, Fowl states, 'I have tried to tie my account of scripture to fairly straightforward notions of Christian identity. From this, I will develop, argue for, and display a type of theological interpretation.'74 This communally identified conception of the biblical texts as Scripture knowingly or unknowingly echoes the latter part of David Kelsey's near classic Uses of Scripture.75 Kelsey writes some 22 years before Fowl, 'No more systematic or logically compelling reasons can be given for taking scripture as authority than for becoming a Christian.'76 Fowl similarly notes, 'To identify oneself as a Christian is, at the same time to bring oneself into a particular sort of relationship to the Bible in which the Bible functions as a normative standard for faith and practice.'77 Fowl's conclusions are echoed as well in Trevor Hart's rather candid remarks regarding Scripture's authority: 'That Scripture is authoritative for the church is not a point for which I wish (or feel I have) to argue. I simply observe that it is so, and has always been so.*7* With this sort of posture Fowl shores up his stance with the straightforward conviction that the Bible serves as the normative standard for faith, practice, and worship of Christian communities.79 The biblical texts for Fowl acquire authority by their use in the Christian Church(es). Thus the scriptural starting point for Fowl's sort of theological interpretation is not a renewed sense of sola scriptura apart from the Church. Instead, he begins with the scriptural texts within the Christian community. For Fowl, 'location is everything'.80 It is within the Christian community that the biblical texts are read, used and embodied. Fowl sets out to develop a type of theological interpretation grounded on the communally authorized feature that these texts are Scripture for the Christian Church, and therefore Christians necessarily stand in a different relationship to the them than do

74. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 1. 75. See especially Chapters 7-10. Oddly enough, Kelsey is conspicuously absent from much of Fowl's discussion. I wonder if Kelsey's now standard essay has so much influenced this generation of biblical interpreters that explicit mention of it is not necessary or if Fowl simply overlooked this influential work. 76. Kelsey, Uses of Scripture, p. 165. 77. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 3. 78. Trevor Hart, 'Tradition, Authority, and a Christian Approach to the Bible as Scripture', in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (ed.), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 183-204 (193, emphasis added). See Fowl's similar remark in Engaging Scripture, pp. 2-3. 79. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 2. See also, Fowl and Jones, Reading in Communion, p. 2. Here Fowl and Jones begin with a reference to Christians as 'people of the Book'. As well, one should see Fowl, 'The New Testament, Theology, and Ethics', p. 396. 80. Fowl, 'The New Testament, Theology, and Ethics', p. 399.

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other communities.81 'Christians by virtue of their identity, are required to read scripture theologically. Others may wish to do so', he writes.82 One might also hear again Kelsey: 'Logically, the concept "Christian scripture" and certain concepts of "Christian church" are dialectically related.'83 Kelsey, in fact, defines the concepts in terms of each other.84 As Trevor Hart also recognizes, the phrase 'Scripture is authoritative for the Church' is tautology.85 In other words the location of the texts within the church and the functional validity of the texts for members of the community shape the text as the community's Scripture. Such a conviction is tied to an individual's identity as a Christian. To be a Christian, in fairly broad terms, is to be a part of a community, which reads this set of texts as Scripture, as the words of God. An outsider to the community could surely dispute the claims that the biblical texts are God's words, but they could not deny the indissoluble link between Christian community and Christian Scripture. Fowl, however, is not writing as one outside the community making such sociological observations. In this regard he is much concerned with getting beyond the impasses that confront the various factions of the Church who appeal to some innate authority of the texts to support various schismatic convictions. Fowl proposes, as a step toward a resolution of interpretive differences, a renewed understanding of the authority of Scripture as a rationale of the worshipping community not an invariant property of the text. Fowl frequently attests to the governing principle of an authoritative set of texts: 'scripture is the standard for [a Christian's] faith, practice, and worship';86 'Christians have generally read their Scripture to guide, correct, and edify their faith, worship, and practice as part of their ongoing struggle to live faithfully before the triune God';87 'these texts are the norm or rule to which we will conform our faith, practice and worship'.88 These general descriptions of the biblical texts and thus the particular activity of theological interpretation are impossible outside of the community. He writes, 'As I have defined it9 a theological reading of Scripture will take place primarily 81. Fowl is here reminiscent again of Kelsey and also of the postliberal strain of theological reflection. The literature by and about those linked to postliberalism or what has been called the New Yale Theology is abundant. For a brief introduction to some of the more prominent members, see Mark I. Wallace, The Second Naivete: Barth, Ricouer, and the New Yale Theology (ed. Charles Mabee; Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics, 6; Macon, Ga.: Mercer, 2nd edn, 1995). For a brief introduction to some of the New Yale theologians' own idea see their articles in Garrett Green, ed. Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress, 1987). 82. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 30. 83. Kelsey, Uses of Scripture, p. 92. 84. Kelsey, Uses of Scripture, p. 94. 85. Hart, 'Tradition', p. 193. 86. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 2 (emphasis added). 87. Fowl, 'The New Testament, Theology, and Ethics', p. 396 (emphasis added). 88. Fowl and Jones, Reading in Communion, p. 37 (emphasis added).

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within the context of those Christian communities that seek to order their common life in accord with their interpretation of Scripture.'89 Like Kelsey's 'conceptual home'90 for the doctrine of Scripture in sanctification and ecclesiology, Fowl determines a proper ecclesiology is the governing doctrine for the community's perception of Scripture's authority. Robert Johnston's comments about Kelsey are instructive for assessing Fowl: Kelsey comments, given the multiple uses of Scripture to authorize a theological proposal, we must conclude that Scripture is only indirectly the authorizing agent. The real validation comes from the worshipping community. That is, Scripture's authority according to Kelsey must be viewed as flowing from the body of believers. Scripture is what the church accepts as definitive for its faith and life.91

Charles Wood, in like manner, deems a community's acknowledgment of particular texts as Scripture hermeneutically important mainly in that it provides context for interpretation. He concludes, 'If it is true that the authority of scripture is not established but rather only acknowledged by the church and that this acknowledgment must be continually renewed, then clearly a doctrine of scripture's authority can play at best only a secondary and instrumental role - principally by suggesting some hermeneutical principles whereby the church's engagement with the scriptural texts might be guided.'92 Wood highlights what is true for him, Fowl, and Kelsey: a doctrine of Scripture does not stand alone, and indeed must centre on the community as the authorizing agent. Fowl's definition of theological interpretation thus works with the concept that Scripture is Scripture because it is so used in community. Scripture is, therefore, a relational term. Community is both the starting point and the goal of theological interpretation; it is the location and the destination. Ecclesiology is teleology. The modernist separation of the establishment of textual meaning from theological application has failed to realize the proper context of theology both influencing and being influenced by interpretation. By forgoing the pursuit of meaning in the text Fowl hopes to bring the interpretation of the biblical text back into its rightful setting for Christian readers. Networks of relationships Fowl's proposals about meaning, Scripture and community have a way of reordering traditional interactions between the interpreter and the biblical text. Fowl writes, 'Rather than making an assertion about a property of the 89. Fowl, 'The New Testament, Theology, and Ethics', p. 399. Fowl also makes this point rather strongly and frequently in 'Introduction', passim. 90. Kelsey, Uses of Scripture, p. 208. 91. Robert K. Johnston, 'Introduction: Unity and Diversity in Evangelical Theology', in Robert K. Johnston (ed.), The Use of the Bible in Theology: Evangelical Options (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985), pp. 1-17 (2, emphasis added). 92. Wood, 'Hermeneutics', pp. 18-19 (emphasis added).

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text, however, Christians should best understand claims about scripture's authority as establishing and governing certain networks of relationships'93 He extends this conviction when he states, The authority of scripture, then, is not so much an invariant property of the biblical texts, as a way of ordering a set of textual relationships.'94 Fowl provides a framework with an ecclesiological telos for these networks of relationships. Christian identity and the subsequent authorization of Scripture makes, for Fowl, certain assumptions about the text's pre-history. When the Christian community views and utilizes the biblical texts in scriptural ways it is the final form of the text that is being used. 'Canon', in fact, is in many ways synonymous with the term 'Scripture' in Fowl's presentation. Fowl and Jones state unmistakably in their co-authored book Reading in Communion that 'the biblical texts, as Scripture, provide a canon for the Church. The canon provides the normative standard for the faith, practice and worship of Christian communities.'95 It is the final form of the canon and not reconstructed stages of transmission or histories behind the text that function as the community's standard. Fowl does not dismiss the pursuit of such interests. He is quite clear, though, that these pursuits are not the functioning authority for Christian communities.96 In this way Fowl echoes the ongoing work of canonical critics like Brevard Childs who have sought ways of interpreting the biblical texts beginning with the concept of canon.97 When Christian interpreters begin with the concepts of Scripture and canon they also necessarily place the texts in a network of relationships with other writings. Theoretically Christian readers could more easily ignore or diverge from the views of the non-canonical texts, but, by virtue of their identity, they cannot so easily do so with their Scripture.98 History demonstrates several factors that played a role in the decision to exclude certain texts from the canon. Fowl, however, believes that it is not possible or profitable to attempt to remake these decisions today. For one, he notes that there is 'little chance of actually getting a significant number of Christians to agree to this'.99 In addition, the high level of speculation prevents one from ever realizing scholarly consensus. 'Christians would have to be prepared to re-make decisions about the content and contours of scripture on a regular basis in the light of changing scholarly views.'100 Fowl also points to the conviction that part of Christian identity is the affirmation that God has

93. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 3 (emphasis added). 94. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 6. 95. Fowl and Jones, Reading in Communion, p. 19. 96. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 3. 97. See especially Childs' magnum opus, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments; Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). 98. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 4. 99. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 5. 100. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 6.

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'providentially provided ... what Christians require in order to live and worship faithfully before God'.101 The Christian conceptions of Scripture also govern the ways in which interpreters perceive previous and contemporary Christian communities and their engagement with their sacred texts. Fowl states, 'In the absence of a community or communities of people who are struggling to order their lives in accord with that scripture, claims about the authority of scripture begin to look rather abstract and vague'.102 Christians engage scripture for the purposes of establishing and maintaining 'particular sorts of communities'.103 Such has been the case throughout the history of the Christian Church. These formed communities are thus the primary contexts for subsequent readings of Scripture. Fowl quotes Kenneth Surin's conclusion that '[t]he saints are the true interpreters of scripture'.104 Pre-modern forms of reading therefore take on a significant role in Fowl's development of theological interpretation. As 'part of an ongoing tradition' Christian interpreters are encouraged to see 'premodern scriptural interpretation ... as a conversation partner'.105 The past provides 'rich resources for reading Scripture theologically in the present'.106 The result of this conviction is one wherein the conceptions of Scripture as functionally/relationally authoritative bring the interpreters into a larger, more complex context than the immediate Christian community in which they find themselves. It presupposes an ongoing relationship with past communities and their interpretations. It also conceives of the practice of interpretation as a critical part of one's overall theological work.107 Additionally, such a perspective opens the interpreter up to the range of voices present in the contemporary Christian community. The networks of relationships between Christians, their texts, their histories and their settings highlight an important aspect of theological interpretation and it demonstrates the underlying concept of meaning at work in Fowl's proposals. Theological interpretation and its active notion of meaning are historical and contextual. Christians have a relationship to their past that need not be overcome to properly interpret the biblical texts. The historical gap seems an impediment in interpretation when meaning is understood as an objective entity that one must traverse time and space to recover. But, Fowl's ideas about the network of relationships calls to mind the conventional understanding of Quine and Ullian's 'web of belief',108 101. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 6. 102. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 6. 103. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 6. 104. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 7. See Kenneth Surin, The Turnings of Darkness and Light (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 219. 105. Fowl, 'Introduction', p. xvii. 106. Fowl, 'The New Testament, Theology, and Ethics', p. 402. 107. One should see especially Fowl's inclusion of two articles in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (David C. Steinmetz, 'The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis', pp. 26-38, and David S. Yeago, 'The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma', 87-100). 108. W. V. O. Quine and J. S. Ullian, The Web of Belief (New York: Random House, 2nd edn, 1978).

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which Nancey Murphy demonstrates, once accepted, does away with the need for foundationalism and its notion of meaning as a fixed object.109 The primacy of community ethics: forming virtuous readers If theological interpretation, according to Fowl, is governed by Christian interests and is shaped within a network of relationships, how are Christian readers to read Scripture 'in the light of the larger ends of the Christian life?'110 Fowl frequently maintains that theological interpretation is an ongoing process that is best maintained when 'interpretive charity ... shapes the ecclesial contexts in which we might then expect interpretive disputes to result in faithful living and truthful worship'.111 This sort of conviction opens itself to questions about how to shape ecclesial contexts, or how to demonstrate interpretive charity.112 Fowl delicately balances communal context and scriptural interpretation. He at once speaks of the oneness of the Christian community and a diversity within that community. The general narrative of God's economy of salvation holds Christians together, but they participate in that narrative in different ways, resulting in various interpretations of both Scripture and contexts. Rather than propose a method or theory to resolve intra-communal disagreements Fowl entreats his readers to develop certain habits, skills and practices, which will allow ecclesial authority to 'shape and sustain (an inevitable and characteristic level of) interpretive discussion, argument, and debate'.113 In other words the strain of diverse yet unified communities who interpret the biblical texts as Scripture is held together more by habits and practices of interpretation than by devotion to theories or methodologies. These ideas again echo Kelsey, who notes, 'the church's reality lies in her engaging in certain activities ordered to a certain end'.114 Just as 'interest' has replaced 'meaning' as the focus of interpretation, so now embodiment of the text through the exercise of Christian habits replaces the exploration for meaning in determinate models and the playful creation of meaning in anti-determinate models. In this way embodiment/interpretation becomes an ongoing part of being Christian readers, 'Christians will always need to debate with each other over how to interpret and embody scripture in the various contexts in which they find themselves', Fowl writes.115 An

109. Nancey Murphy, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (ed. William P. Alston; Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). 110. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 60. 111. Fowl, Engaging Scripture', p. 96. 112. On interpretive charity see also C. W. Allen, 'Discerning the Body: Theology, Scripture, and Participating in the Shape of a Fully Embodied Life', Encounter 65, no. 3 (2004), pp. 223-42. 113. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 204. 114. Kelsey, Uses of Scripture, p. 92. 115. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 97.

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underdetermined strategy is never quite complete, because the Christian community is always in motion. Fowl's proposals for theological interpretation thus become suggestions for certain postures and habits of reading and life. First and most obvious, Fowl advocates that 'Christian interpretation of scripture needs to involve a complex interaction in which Christian convictions, practices, and concerns are brought to bear on scriptural interpretation in ways that both shape that interpretation and are shaped by it.'116 Fowl's Christian conviction regarding the text as Scripture plays a primary role in the way he proposes interpreting the text, or better, ways in which the text need not be interpreted. His own interpretive programme divulges his opinion that 'Christians will find that interpretations of scripture have already shaped convictions, practices, and dispositions which have, in turn, shaped the ways in which scripture is interpreted.'117 'Unless Christian communities are committed to embodying their scriptural interpretation', notes Fowl, 'the Bible loses its character as Scripture.'118 Second, therefore, 'Christians need to manifest a certain form of common life if this interaction is to serve faithful life and worship.'119 That is, if it is true that interpretation shapes and is shaped by convictions, practices and dispositions, and it is true that it is within the Christian community that the biblical texts hold authority, then some reasonable harmony concerning the interests for interpretation must be expected. Although Fowl does not champion any one interpretive interest, he and Jones do declare for Christian readers that the 'aim of faithful living before the Triune God becomes the standard to which all interpretive interests must measure up'.120 The various 'ends for which Christians are called to interpret, debate, and embody Scripture', Fowl himself claims, 'are to be found in such manifestations as faithful life and worship and ever deeper communion with the triune God and with others.' 'Faithful interpretation and performance of Scripture are not simply factors of having the most refined and sophisticated reading strategy', write Fowl and Jones. 'Our character also plays a central role in our ability to interpret and perform Scripture faithfully. It would, however, be impossible to specify in detail how character and interpretation will be interrelated in any particular context', they explain.121 Faithful living, reading virtue and communion with the triune God are worthy goals, but they do not describe yet what one is to do as an interpreter of biblical texts. Fowl is keenly aware that his proposal for an underdetermined reading strategy could be seen to open the door for Christian readings to be used and possibly authorized toward malevolent ends. In much the same way that he eliminates discussion of meaning, Fowl sets aside the notion that the 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 8 (emphasis added). Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 7. Fowl and Jones, Reading in Communion, p. 20. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 8. Fowl and Jones, Reading in Communion, p. 20 (emphasis added). Fowl and Jones, Reading in Communion, p. 86.

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texts themselves have ideologies that when uncovered can be used to combat sinful reading practices.122 Underdetermined interpretations will not refute Christians' own 'sinful beliefs and practices' by revealing the oppressive ideologies of the texts and/or their authors, instead underdetermined interpretations must be performed by 'vigilant communities' and 'virtuous readers'.123 It becomes the responsibility of the community to take the necessary steps to avoid such misuse of the texts, for 'failed interpretation, bad theology, and sinful practices do not need an (ultimately questionbegging) interpretive theory to regulate them. Instead Christians need to be more intentional about forming their members to be certain types of readers, readers who, by virtue of their single-minded attention to God, are well versed in the practice of forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation.'124 As well, vigilant communities nurture a critical self-reflection that is directed to both the community and the individual. 'In terms of biblical interpretation', Fowl writes, 'being able to identify oneself as a sinner injects a crucial element of provisionality into one's interpretive practices.'125 The spirit and community In addition to the primary role the community plays, Fowl also argues 'that Christians have every reason to expect the Spirit to play a role in scriptural interpretation', yet 'in practice it is probably difficult, if not impossible, to separate and determine clearly whether a community's scriptural interpretation is prior to or dependent upon a community's experience of the Spirit'.126 He proposes practices he calls 'reading with the Spirit' and 'reading the Spirit' in a way that is reminiscent of the bi-directional influence of Scripture and community. These notions of the Spirit are essential for theological interpretation for at least one significant reason: Changing historical circumstances will change the significance, meaning, and effects of traditional words and practices whether we like it or not. Christians have no choice but to struggle, argue, and debate with one another over how best to extend our faith, worship, and practice in the present and into the future while remaining true to our past. In this struggle, testimony about the Spirit's work in the lives of others must become as central to contemporary Christians as it was to the characters in Acts.127 122. See Fowl, Texts Don't Have Ideologies'. Also see the reworking of this article in Fowl, Engaging Scripture, pp. 63-75. Fowl has in this way distanced himself from determinate and anti-determinate readings. Eschewing meaning separates him from those who adhere to meaning as an objective entity. Refuting the idea of texts having ideologies sets him apart from those whose sole interpretive goal is uncovering such (i.e. feminist and liberation theologians). 123. See ch. 3 of Fowl, Engaging Scripture. 124. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 26-7. 125. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 82. 126. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 114. 127. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 117.

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Again, however, Fowl's focus remains on the communal context. He relates his discussion of reading the Spirit to his whole idea of the vigilant community shaping virtuous readers, concluding that it 'is only within communities that both sustain and nurture certain types of friendship and exhibit patience in discernment that we will find the sort of consensus emerging that is narrated in Acts'.128 Reading Proficiencies The dominant theme in Fowl's development of theological interpretation without the pursuit of meaning is clearly 'community'. It is impossible to extract meaning, or Scripture, or interpretation from the reading community that employs them. The web of interactions is itself theological interpretation. Interpreters cannot state a priori what method must be followed or what object must be pursued. They can, nonetheless, acknowledge the context of and the interests in the interpretative process. Doing so will place the interpreters in a network of relationships. These explicit prior claims do not disqualify the development of reading proficiencies. In conjunction with the Christian posture implied by the interests of the present and historical Christian reading community, certain reading skills are necessary or at least beneficial for theological interpretation. Fowl calls attention to one essential proficiency and another set of proficiencies that might be usefully employed as interpreters navigate their interpretive interactions. Fowl writes, 'because there is no theoretical way to determine how these interactions must work in any particular context, Christians will need to manifest a form of practical reasoning9,129 Because of one's Christian identity and community, the practical reasoning Fowl implores is a Christ-focused practical reasoning, which 'must begin from an accepted Christological standard'.130 The prior ideas of common life and character formation apply to Fowl's understanding of practical reasoning as well in that Christians should expect there to be diversity within the contemporary communities' accounting for God's work in Christ. Additionally, cultural and historical changes guarantee certain variety from generation to generation. Even with this variety 'subsequent alternative formulations would have to demonstrate that they maintain continuity with prior Christological standards'.131 Furthermore, 'Christian practical reasoning relies on human exemplars'.132 In a way reminiscent of his earlier challenge to incorporate pre-modern postures toward Scripture and his challenge to shape virtuous readers, Fowl writes, 128. 129. 130. 131. 132.

Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p.

119. 8. 197. 198. 198.

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning [T]he interpretive views and conclusions of these past and present masters of scriptural interpretation will become a part of the conventional ways in which Christians come to read particular texts. This is not to say Christians will always accede to and replicate those views and conclusions. There may be good reasons for countering the conventions in certain cases. Nevertheless, as Christians are formed to be practically wise readers, the judgments of those wise readers cannot help but become crucial elements in current debates and discussion.133

The influence of past and present exemplars goes beyond the single Christian reading of texts. Formation takes place as well in the traditional Christian practices of baptism, eucharist, catechesis, liturgy, prayer and corporate Bible study.134 In other words full participation in the life of the Christian community, as it has extended and will extend through time, is essential for developing practical reasoning in virtuous readers and therefore it is indispensably a part of theological interpretation. Because no reading of Scripture is ahistorical, Fowl claims, 'one must avail oneself of the best resources one can'.135 An ad hoc use of critical methods is therefore probable, but 'not necessary for Christians to interpret scripture in the ways they are called to do'.136 Fowl calls for the use of such methods on a case-by-case basis, but he is aware that '[w]e cannot avoid giving historical interpretations'.137 Indeed, Fowl himself is not averse to using language familiar to historical critics like 'aims of the epistle',138 or 'the charitable interpreter will begin the slow, often tedious process of learning the presumptions, conventions, and idioms needed to make others' views intelligible',139 or even 'I allow that critics might make serious claims to explicate an author's intention.'140 Historical interpretations, however, cannot provide meaning, nor can they lay claim to some sort of theological necessity for their existence.141 The significance of historical work for the reading of Scripture cannot be disputed, but the segregation of the historical model from the larger concerns of the community of believers is not only incongruous but unfavourable for the theological interpreter. Fowl challenges interpreters to 'avoid a sort of schizophrenia, common in many

133. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 199. 134. See Fowl, Engaging Scripture, pp. 200-2. 135. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 179. 136. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 179. See also Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 75. 137. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 184. 138. Stephen E. Fowl, 'Believing Forms Seeing: Formation for Martyrdom in Philippians', in William P. Brown (ed.), Character and Scripture: Moral Formation, Community, and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 31730(318). 139. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 89. 140. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 73. 141. See especially Fowl, Engaging Scripture, pp. 185-6; and Lewis Ayres and Stephen E. Fowl, '(Mis)Reading the Face of God: The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church', Theological Studies 60, no. 3 (September 1999), pp. 513-28.

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Christians, in which one's professional life is hermetically sealed off from one's confessional commitments'.142 Assessment Fowl's programme for theological interpretation is characterized by the broad practices of the complex interaction of Christian convictions and scriptural reading, nurturing common life, formation of character, and practical reasoning. Resulting measures include a return to pre-modern dispositions, an embrace of plurality, an avoidance of fragmentation and ad hoc use of historical-critical methods. Despite his insistence to the contrary, one is still left with the question of Fowl's own operational concept of meaning. In his work it is rarely explicit and often intentionally avoided. It is going against the very conclusions of Fowl to articulate the idea of meaning in his work but he seemingly agrees that notions of meaning are at work in the modern and anti-modern practices of textual interpretation and we must be allowed the opportunity to state the same for his model of theological interpretation. Therefore, in the concluding sections of this chapter, I begin with a return to my original question - what theory of meaning operates in Fowl's model of theological interpretation? An explication of his theory is drawn from the way in which he discusses Scripture and community. The chapter will end with questions and criticisms that arise in anticipation of a return to Fowl's model in conversation with a conflicting proposal and in light of a fuller, triadic notion of meaning. Fowl's Concept of Meaning Fowl's significant contribution to this project is his critique of determinate (dyadic?) concepts of meaning. If one followed Fowl in criticizing the notion of meaning as authorial intention, one might concur that interests in authorial intentions derive from an incomplete understanding of Christian anthropology. The Christian view of selfhood and identity will always mean participation in God's life, which is always 'more than' one can imagine, and certainly more than one can imagine about his/her own reasons for doing, thinking, saying, writing anything. In this sense, the drive for authorial intention is itself a theological. It leads to determinate readings that are incapable of acknowledging the mystery of God, let alone the mystery of human authors and readers. With this revised notion of selfhood, Fowl turns his attention to the communal-centric nature of theological interpretation. Scriptural meaning - if I choose to continue using the term in spite of Fowl's aversion to it - for theologically interpretive purposes, is always and already tied up with the 142. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 187.

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community's use and application. It would be a mistake, however, to limit Fowl's implicit notions of the meaning of Scripture simply to the whims of the reading community. The depth and complexity of the meaning of Scripture is found in the comprehensive history of the Christian community. Scriptural meaning is bound to this history, this comprehensive narrative with Christ at the centre. Thus, meaning for theological interpretation is not limited to the original author's intention and neither is it able to elude the Church's history with its Scripture. Meaning, if one dares to venture a description for Fowl, is characterized by its ongoing, growing, always provisional nature. This concept is difficult for adherents of a determinative view, but it is less of a problem if one is able, at the very least, to let go of an understanding of meaning as an objective 'thing5. At the end of the day Fowl's concept of meaning may leave us wondering what it is we are doing in biblical interpretation. But the doing is the very activity where meaning is manifested and where it plays a part in making Christian readers of Scripture. The meaning of Scripture is the living Christian narrative. It is not so much found or discovered as it comprises the ongoing dialogue between community, author and text. Questions and Criticisms It may be helpful at the close of this chapter to look back at the observations made in the previous chapter in order to place Fowl in the larger conversation about the meaning of meaning for theological interpretation. I noted throughout the previous chapter that the re-emergence of theological interpretation is due in large part to the renewed interests in the biblical texts as Scripture and the role of the Christian community in interpretation. Fowl's proposals touch on both of these interests but focus mostly on the role of the reading community; so much, in fact, that community can be seen to govern interpretation and meaning. Fowl describes theological interpretation as the mutual influence of the readers' reading of Scripture and the readers' interpretative interests. In practice, however, it is not clear how the reader is influenced by the text itself.143 This leaves Fowl open to the charge that an 'underdetermined approach invites manipulation of the text to affirm whatever the community wants to affirm'.144 Fowl disputes this claim but his 143. See similar comments in Schuyler Brown, 'Review of Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation', Theological Studies 60, no. 3 (September 1999), pp. 538-9 (538). 144. Klyne Snodgrass, 'Reading to Hear: A Hermeneutics of Hearing', Horizons in Biblical Theology 24, no. 1 (June 2002), pp. 1-32 (6). Snodgrass's words about those types of reading that focus on the rule of faith are similar to the criticism laid against Fowl. Snodgrass writes, 'they say meaning cannot be found until one is in the community and reads the way the community directs. One must presuppose both the church's theology and its character in order to find meaning' (6). While Snodgrass raises many good questions, some of which we will return to in later chapters, it seems that he is most upset that the

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argument against it is based on the bi-directional notion that I have noted is often lacking.145 The need of precision in the dialogical movement between community and text leads to several further questions. For example, what is the difference between interpretation and embodiment, and how can one avoid having either of them become a strict adherence to community standards? Is a virtuous reader one who assents to the community's conclusions? How can one stand outside the community and be critical of it? From where does one derive the theological convictions and ecclesial practices that provide the interests and aims? As I anticipate future discussions, I contend that many of the questions Fowl faces could be addressed if he were to develop a richer conception of meaning rather than eschewing it entirely. Interpretive dissension and definitional ambiguity are not means enough to set aside the notion of meaning.146 The arguments against a limited notion of meaning are well received, but they do not necessitate ruling meaning out of court. God, too, is difficult and ambiguous, and divine concepts have been known to cause severe dissension. Also, if community is as significant as Fowl justly confirms, cannot the meaning of Scripture be viewed in some ways as constitutive of community? Fowl is still captured by a dyadic model of meaning and when he cannot find a way out of it he abandons the notion of meaning altogether. It is my contention that Fowl could bolster his arguments and better defend his critique of the pursuit of meaning as authorial intention not by removing meaning from the discussion but by developing a more comprehensive account of meaning. A more careful definition of meaning - one that is mediating and conversational - might better allow him to contest the pursuit of meaning as the single activity of interpretation. When he discusses 'community' or 4a network of relationships' he is, in triadic terms, still talking about meaning. logic of Fowl's proposals will take one from meaning as authorial intention to meaning as the intentions of the present believing community. One might argue that some of that shift is needed, especially if we agree that it is the believing community that esteems these texts in ways other readers do not. Fowl, of course, would argue that the whole notion of meaning is the unhelpful point he is trying to avoid. Snodgrass also asks, 'Why not some other community and sacred text?' This is a good question, but may be irrelevant in a discussion of a theological interpretation of Christian Scripture. I am here only talking about the Christian community and the Christian texts. Fowl's arguments are best seen as an intra-communal discussion. Snodgrass's critique may have more weight if the discussion were to become inter-communal. 145. See Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 60. Fowl offers his interpretations of biblical texts as the primary case against a critique such as Snodgrass's. For Fowl's various engagements with biblical texts see Engaging Scripture', chs 4-6; 'Ethics of Interpretation'; 'Believing Forms Seeing'; and 'Know Your Context: Giving and Receiving Money in Philippians', Interpretation 56> no. 1 (January 2002), pp. 45-58. While these interpretations are attuned to the programme of theological interpretation he has in mind, they seem to take for granted the influence the texts have on the readers. 146. Snodgrass also rightly criticizes Fowl for too easily setting aside difficult concepts. See Snodgrass, 'Reading to Hear', pp. 19-20.

Chapter 3 FROM INTENTIONS TO MEANINGS: KEVIN VANHOOZER'S DEFENCE OF AUTHORIAL INTENTION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION In the previous chapter I noted that for Stephen Fowl there is no one privileged object or property that could be denoted the meaning of any text, especially the variously used texts of Christian Scripture. The pursuit of determinate, objective meaning is a misguided exercise that has restrained biblical studies for several generations. Nevertheless, I argued, despite his claims to the contrary, Fowl works with an implicit theory of meaning that views meaning as varied and communally governed. The more primary questions about context and goals focus the question of meaning on to questions about interpretive intentions. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, defends a concept of meaning that is in many ways akin to those determinate notions Fowl rejects. One of the primary goals in Vanhoozer's Is There Meaning in This Textf is to reinvigorate 'author oriented interpretation through a creative retrieval of Reformed theology and speech-act philosophy'.1 Vanhoozer takes up Fowl's earlier question, 'Why should authorial intention be seen as the meaning of a text?' Whereas Fowl dismissed the question as misguided, Vanhoozer defends the connection of meaning and authorial intention. For theoretical, philosophical and theological reasons, Vanhoozer believes there is a meaning in a text and one can and should pursue it. In this chapter I will outline Vanhoozer's defence of authorial intention as the object of that pursuit. His is not, however, a rehearsal of the dominant modes of an older historicalcritical approach, which somehow supposes meaning is found in the original author's mind; nor is it the process of uncovering authorial intention for the subsequent practices of theology. He concludes that a theological hermeneutic is the proper guide for hermeneutics in general. Like Fowl, though in vastly different ways, Vanhoozer's concept of meaning is theologically informed. What differentiates Vanhoozer from Fowl and makes him an appropriate counterpoint is that he confirms that all texts as acts of communication and vessels of meaning are imbued with an unavoidable theological tint. 1. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1998), p. 10 (emphasis added). In the rest of the chapter, page numbers for this book will be given in parentheses following the citation.

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Vanhoozer's proposals for theological interpretation stem in large part from his arguments against the 'postmodern' detractors of meaning and intention. His project of theological interpretation stands or falls on the proper construal of meaning within a realist communicative model. Vanhoozer builds a case against anti-theological postmodernists and non-theological modernists by proposing a focus on the principles of communicative action rather than the interests of the reader or the mental consciousness of the author. His proposals for theological interpretation result in the view that God's communicative action is bound together and mediated through the textually preserved communicative actions of the human authors as the home for the meaning of Scripture. Meaning, Theology and Hertneneutics: The Current Problem Early in his principal work on the subject of theological interpretation, Vanhoozer writes, 'Odd though it may sound, many interpreters today find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to believe in "meaning"' (16, emphasis added). The very language of 'belief discloses an important element at work in Vanhoozer's concept of meaning. He explicitly states, 'To believe that there is meaning in texts is, as we shall see, an act of faith' (30-31). 'The issue', he says, 'is whether there is an abiding 'truth' about things to which our interpretations might correspond' (18, emphasis added). The prevailing view that language, interpretation and especially meaning are in constant states of flux poses certain problems for belief in this sense. It is difficult to maintain belief in something that is always changing, so it would seem. Thus, at the outset, Vanhoozer begins to hint at the connections between meaning and God, the divine object of reality to which Christian belief is directed. Indeed, one begins to notice the significance of a proper concept of meaning for Vanhoozer's perception of God. Like God, meaning must exist independent of readings of the text. Vanhoozer describes the realist position to which he subscribes as the perception 'that there is something prior to interpretation, something "there" in the text, which can be known and to which the interpreter is accountable' (26, emphasis added). He, therefore, has vested interest in arguing against those concepts of meaning and practices of interpretation that imply, or explicitly state, that meaning - and, by extension, God - is either nonexistent, impossible to obtain, or wholly created by the interpreter(s). What then is the steady, discoverable thing in texts that one might call 'meaning', against which interpretations can be judged, and to which the readers are responsible? To what does the term 'meaning' refer? Authorial intention. 'Those who invoke authorial intentions', writes Vanhoozer, 'usually do so in order to provide a base for a stable, determinate, and decidable textual meaning' (26, emphasis added). He follows the literary critic E. D. Hirsch in taking the author's intention to be 'the object (e.g., message) of which the author was conscious. The meaning of a text is not to be mistaken with a

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subjective mental act, either of the author or of the interpreter, but with the object of that act' (76, emphasis added). Interpretation, then, becomes the pursuit of this object, the author's intended meaning. 'The aim of the reader is to "think" the same "object" as the author' (76). Further, 'An interpreter grasps the meaning of a text when he or she experiences sameness of content (or object) despite differences of context' (76, emphasis added). This content also becomes the 'reliable means for discriminating between valid and invalid interpretations' (77). Authorial intention is therefore the ground, goal and guide for interpretation, and meaning is conceptualized as the content of the texts placed there by the author's act of communication. The most obvious problem, therefore, in contemporary non-realist theories of interpretation, according to Vanhoozer, is the loss of authorial intention as meaning of a text. In Is There Meaning in This Text? Vanhoozer spends nearly half the book describing and refuting 'an emerging consensus that sees meaning as relative to the encounter of text and reader' (10).2 He describes this perspective as evincing 'a common distrust of modernity's faith in scientific objectivity, reason, and morality' (38). The implications for interpretative practice are apparent, but Vanhoozer's theological claim is that the prevailing non-realist view also implies and often explicitly announces the 'death of God'. Vanhoozer's whole project hinges on the view of God put forth: 'What lies behind one's choice of interpretive principles is ultimately an understanding of oneself and, at least implicitly, an understanding of God' (29). He is not only defending a certain approach to textual interpretation; he is in fact defending a view of God. There is much weight put on the answer to the question, 'Is there something in the text that reflects a reality independent of the reader's interpretive activity, or does the text only reflect the reality7 of the reader?' (15). The conclusion Vanhoozer takes for granted is that this independent reality is the 'meaning' of the text. Because of his assessment of anti-theological, non-realist, postmodern concepts of meaning and the resulting implications they have for the purpose and goal of interpretation, Vanhoozer could be mistaken to mean that modern ideals are more inherently theological and proper for the reading of texts. However, even in the midst of criticism against postmoderns, he points out the inadequacies of modern models for theological interpretation. His concerns with modernity reflect the general concerns of many theological interpreters.3 Modern methods of biblical interpretation, namely historical criticism, are perceived to bracket out the contemporary context and

2. The sustained argument in Is There Meaning in This Text? is rather difficult and the book itself quite lengthy. For a similar, but more condensed argument see Vanhoozer, 'Language, Literature, Hermeneutics'. 3. See for example the chapters in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (eds), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000).

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the concerns of faith.4 Though predominantly concerned with rebutting postmodern anti-theological tendencies, Vanhoozer offers correctives to the traditional, modernistic perspectives of authorial intention as meaning. He, like Wittgenstein, agrees that nothing is more misdirected than to conceive of meaning as a mental activity.5 Standing against the postmodern nature of reality The traditional metaphysics of meaning understood that 'the author is the sovereign subject of the signy the one who rules over meaning, assigning names to things, using words to express thoughts and represent the world' (48, emphasis added). At the heart of deconstruction, the primary non-realist position Vanhoozer impugns, is the project of undoing these thoughts and representations. Vanhoozer believes Jacques Derrida, the principal exemplar of deconstruction, undoes 'modern (and premodern) theories of meaning and truth and of the belief that language and thought correspond to the world' (59).6 In this way, for Vanhoozer, deconstruction becomes the representative of postmodernism. In deconstructionistic postmodernism 'authorial intention is always frustrated by language rather than fulfilled by it' (59), and so texts as linguistic actions add to an already impenetrable barrier for the textual exegete. The Derridean notion of differance, which highlights both the difference between signs and the necessary deference for any attempt at meaning, effectively imprisons texts (and their authors) in the inescapable world of language. Neo-pragmatists, like deconstructionists, find that language is an impediment to reality. Interpretation is not a matter of getting back to what language represents - 'getting reality right' - but rather a piece of a larger conversation. Thus, Fish and Rorty, two neo-pragmatists, agree with Derrida that 'we can never break out of or rise above language to make sure that our words correspond to the world' (55)7 Pragmatists differ from deconstructionists in that their primary goal is not to undo a text; they are

4. See Kevin J. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge Companions to Religion; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 149-69 (151, 158). 5. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees; trans. G. E. M. Anscombe; Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), p. 693. 6. Of Derrida's many works see especially Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). 7. Of Rorty's publications see especially his introduction to The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1967). Likewise, Fish has produced a number of pertinent works. Among those familiar with Fish, it is held that his pragmatic perspective has developed into a communal pragmatism. See especially Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The wit in Vanhoozer's own title is clear.

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more concerned with the readers' various uses of texts.8 'To say that we must read in order to recover the intention of the author is, for Fish, authoritarian' (57). Truth, among neo-pragmatists is but 'a label we assign beliefs that seem good to us, beliefs that perform some useful purpose' (57). In the end the author, meaning, truth, and even God are lost, either dead altogether (deconstruction) or created by the reading community (neo-pragmatism). It is because of their overlapping premises that Vanhoozer bundles the deconstructionists (Undoers) and the neo-pragmatists (Users) into one non-realist, postmodern group, the Unbelievers. Unbelievers 'reject the metaphysical impulse as misleadingly oriented to "transcendence", that is, to extra-linguistic reality that can nevertheless be represented by language' (57). Vanhoozer also states, 'hermeneutic unbelievers do not believe in authors: neither the Creator of heaven and earth nor the originator of meaning in texts' (58).9 The influence of the Unbelievers, or more broadly, postmodernists, creates a theological crisis in hermeneutics to which Vanhoozer feels a need to speak. The loss of the author and the inability to get past the layers of language disrupts, for Vanhoozer, the Christian notion of reality. Arbitrariness The 'linguistic turn' is the first step in the Unbelievers' 'assassination' of the author. Derrida extends the work of the structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure, who was one of the first linguists to break with a referential or representational concept of meaning. Saussure developed a set of contrasting dyadic notions. Chief among these were the complementary ideas of 'the signified' and 'the signifier', and the differences between the system of language (langue) and the particular acts of speaking (parole).10 The notions of signified and signifier create a system of differences. A word means what it means by differing from other signs. 'The meaning of a sign or "signifier" for Saussure is not some actual thing to which the sign refers, but rather a concept or "signified" that has come to be arbitrarily associated with it' (61). Likewise, the whole system

8. The keen reader will already begin to pick up on the differences between Fowl and Vanhoozer. If the earlier assessment of Fowl's position as a pragmatic-functional stance is even partly correct, then already by his disdain for the pragmatist position, Vanhoozer is set over against Fowl. At the end of this chapter and throughout Chapter 4 I will point out ways in which Vanhoozer and Fowl might begin to move toward one another. I believe that movement might be made on Vanhoozer's part by a less caricatured perspective of postmodernism and pragmatism. 'Postmodern* and its derivatives may be understood in Vanhoozer to denote predominantly deconstruction and those views that are seen together and often indistinguishable from it (ex. neo-pragmatism). 9. The sentences that follow this quote are clarifying as to what Vanhoozer has in mind with 'author'. He writes, 'Again, it is not the author as a historical cause of the text that is in dispute. What the unbelievers dispute is the author as metaphysical entity, as a ground or stable home of meaning (5$). 10. The classic text of Saussure in English is Saussure, Course in General Linguistics. See a brief summary of the Saussurean dyads in Chapter 1.

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of language (langue) is arbitrary and conventional. With these ideas in place, Derrida and other deconstructors are able to propose that 'there is no such thing as a "transcendental signified", an extra-linguistic referent that somehow escapes the endless play of language' (62). Thus, the author as a supposed anchor outside of language is eliminated. Just as signs endlessly differ from and point to other signs, so too interpretations. One can never reach the authorial presence of a text, and therefore, one can never have a ground of meaning. In his characteristically creative phrasing, Vanhoozer writes, '"Meaning" is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of reading, which continually recedes as one approaches it' (64). What is striking here is that Vanhoozer and the deconstructionists would seem to agree that authorial intention is the bearer of a text's meaning. Deconstructionists, however, simply do not believe that one can ever obtain knowledge of the author's intention; it is always out of reach and therefore any claim to have identified it is a play of power. The loss of the human subject in the miasma of authorial intention steers many critics into the 'text alone' for access to meaning. The empirical author is not necessarily denied and '[ejnquiries about the empirical author may shed some light on how the text came to be, but not on what the text means', writes Vanhoozer in describing this approach (69). The 'implied author' as 'an implication, effect, or rhetorical "construct" of the text' receives more attention and 'should not be confused with the actual historical person who produced the work' (68). Ironically then, 'contemporary literary theory views the author as an effect of the text rather than its cause' (70). Nothingness These two developments - the decentring of the human subject and the author as an effect of the text - have led some critics to call for the death of the author for the sake of the life of the text and reader. Vanhoozer draws attention to a striking connection in this line of thinking between the death of the author and the death of God. The classic Undoer holds that the belief in meaning, in something that transcends the play of signs, is inherently theological. The author is God to his text: its creator, cause, and master. The reader is obliged to be the author's servant, passively collecting the meaning that, like manna, comes from the hand of the maker. Freed from the author, however, the text becomes a playground on which readers can exercise their own creativity (70, emphasis added).

The connection between meaning and God is most apparent here for Vanhoozer: 'The fates of the author of traditional literary criticism and of the God of traditional theism stand or fall together' (71). He impugns 'unbelievers' who 'find it impossible to accept either the traditional picture of God or that of the author, for both pictures assume a kind of agency and intelligence that stands outside language and controls it, making sure that words correspond to the world and guaranteeing the reliability and truth of speech' (71).

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Without a determinate meaning - which is what Vanhoozer construes as authorial intention - there is really no one 'conceptual framework or interpretive scheme', no 'final interpretation', no 'control on meaning and interpretation' (98). Aside from the fact that it implies the death of God, an unbelieving concept of meaning casts doubt on the reliability of signs as guides to reality for any and all texts, including the Bible. It also casts the human subject in a relentless sea of contextuality. More importantly still, Vanhoozer states, The Undoers effectively strip the Bible of any stable meaning so that it cannot state a fact, issue a command, or make a promise', and 'if nothing specific is said, the text cannot call for any specific response' (86). The metaphysical problem of authorless texts leads to a methodological problem. According to Vanhoozer, Derrida and the Undoers believe that one can never escape language, and Rorty and the Users believe that one can never escape cultural use. Each of these entrapments prevents people from seeing the world as it 'really' is. Therefore, the Unbelievers must 'insist that no human individual or group enjoys a privileged standpoint', and '[consequently how one sees the world or textual meaning is a function of one's interpretive method' (101). Rediscovering reading structures and principles 'Knowledge', as Vanhoozer describes the situation, 'is always relative to a theoretical or interpretive framework' (102). Therefore, he asks, 'If interpretation is no longer a matter of 'getting it right', then what is it?' (102). Without a stabilizing norm for meaning, hermeneutical relativism reigns. It denies any criteria for eliminating false interpretations and makes meaning relative to the individual or community. The interpreter is put in a methodological conundrum. She simply has no idea what to do if pursuing meaning is not a possible option, and so 'playing' with the text or 'creating' her own meaning becomes the only course of action. Methodological judgments After the earlier turn from the subject, which led to the death of the author, textual scholars began to focus on the autonomous text itself. Meaning as authorial intention was easily left aside, but theories of textuality were abundant. Since the human subject was no longer the point of departure for interpreters, they found it necessary to come to terms with the text-asit-is-in-itself. The modern notion of 'book' came into question because it implied a closure, a unity, and an author. 'The concept of the book as an intelligible unity', writes Vanhoozer, 'requires the concept of the author as its controlling presence, the one who intends a discourse as a meaningful whole; a book is the author's work9 (104, emphasis original). Furthermore, Vanhoozer states,

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The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning The 'book' is therefore a theological idea, insofar as it implies that there is a single unified meaning and a comprehensive order. Any claim that a text can be totalized (e.g., interpreted as a unified whole) is thus a 'theological' claim ... Conversely, Derrida's claim that 'there is nothing outside the text is profoundly anti-theological (105, emphasis added).

Once more metaphysical notions of God and meaning converge. Arguing against 'a single unified meaning and a comprehensive order' constitutes, not just a wow-theological argument, but an explicitly anti-theological argument. Vanhoozer places similar theological significance in the terminological shift from 'book' to 'text'. The shift is very much like the prior postmodern shift from meaning to interests. A book, like the realist understanding of meaning, 'resembled an unchanging subject'; a text, like the non-realist account of interests, 'is more like a field of shifting forces' (105). The text then, 'depends on the process of interpretation for its very being in a way that the book does not. Such a change is consonant with the general shift from realism to non-realism in recent literary theory' (106). Vanhoozer calls attention to three approaches that 'abandon the ideal of objective literary knowledge by acknowledging that meaning is largely the product of historically situated ways of reading and decoding' (112). The first approach, which is found in the works of Gadamer and Ricoeur, rightfully acknowledges the idea that texts and readers have their own horizons. Meaning, for this approach, is in the act of reading, where the two horizons converge.11 Proponents of this perspective avoid radical relativism by promoting the idea that the text presents something determinate. However, they leave themselves open to relativity by allowing the notion that readers in effect create meaning by enacting the text and filling the gaps left by it. Robert Morgan and John Barton represent a second relativistic approach to biblical interpretation.12 Their pragmatist perspective finds constraints in the 'members of an interpretive community with specific purposes, interests, and authority' (110). The third approach of general relativity also perceives some level of restriction for methods of interpretation. But, whereas the first approach sees some limitation made by the horizons of the text, and the second approach sees the community's pragmatic use of texts as somewhat guiding, the Derridean notion of grammatology finds interpretive limits only in the fact that a text is forever a part of a signifying system.13 'For Derrida',

11. The work of the biblical scholar Anthony Thiselton is especially helpful for understanding this conception of meaning. See The Two Horizons and New Horizons in Hermeneutics. It is not surprising that this approach, among the three Vanhoozer discusses, would find a more receptive audience in the type of biblical studies Vanhoozer's thesis promotes. The notion of textual horizons leaves open the possibility of authorial intention, but the proponents Vanhoozer mentions still see meaning in the act of reading and not in the textual production of the author or with the author himself. 12. See especially Robert Morgan and John Barton, Biblical Interpretation (ed. P. R. Ackroyd and G. N. Stanton; Oxford Bible Series; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 13. See especially Derrida, Of Grammatology.

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Vanhoozer writes, 'a text is a tissue of signs that is itself enmeshed in a fabric of other tissues, other texts' (111). Vanhoozer also states concerning this approach, '[tjhere is simply nothing non-textual to which one can appeal to halt the inexorable march of indeterminacy' (111).14 In other words without a metaphysical foundation, so claims Vanhoozer, interpreters are invited into a methodological freeplay. The epistemological situation created by the rejection of a metaphysics of meaning is one of pure metaphor. 'Metaphor', Vanhoozer states, 'stands for the inescapable captivity of thought to language' (131). He continues, 'Metaphoricity is simply the phenomenon of differance, now repeated on the level of the sentence and the text, rather than on the sign' (131). Metaphor supplants metaphysics and so invites freeplay with everything, because nothing has a fixed shape, not even God. What Vanhoozer perceives in the approaches of relativity and metaphorical interpretation is another take on the 'all the way down' dictum. It is signs all the way down. It is language all the way down. It is context all the way down. It is text all the way down. It is metaphor all the way down. The result of all of this is what Vanhoozer calls 'interpretive agnosticism' (see 135-140). Indeterminacy becomes the text's constitution and 'so undecidability seems to be constitutive of the process of interpretation. The net result of the undoing of the epistemology of meaning seems to be that authority is reassigned once more, away from the text and onto the reader' (139). Attempts at ethical reading With no constraint or text-provided ethical use of the text itself, Vanhoozer fears all interpretation becomes ideological and interest-governed. He writes, 'One's stance to the text, in other words, is indicative of one's style of being; one's morality dictates one's interpretation' (28). The ethical difficulty of postmodernity, for Vanhoozer, is a natural extension of the prior two postmodern problems: 'For if the author is not the origin of meaning and if there is no such thing as "the sense of the text", then meaning must be the creation ex libris of the reader' (148). In this way the ethical problem is a problem with the reader of the text. What is a reader? What does it mean to read? What responsibilities if any does a reader have?

14. It is interesting that Vanhoozer states he will provide three examples of general relativity (106), but after describing three approaches he compartmentalizes the pragmatists with the deconstructionists under the label of 'grammatological approaches'. Gadamer and Ricoeur (thefirstapproach) are labelled hermeneutical, while Derrida and Fish (approaches three and two, respectively) are neatly put together as grammatological. Ifindthis consistent placement of pragmatists and deconstructionists together under deconstructionists labels very misleading.

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The rise of the reader Recent literary theory has called into question the traditional understanding of the reader who is 'a detached observer of authorial intention or of verbal sense' (149). Vanhoozer observes that in the loss of the traditional reader 'what the reader finds in a text is largely a function of what one brings to it' (149). The traditional reader is ultimately undone', writes Vanhoozer, 'by the postmodern suspicion that interpretation is merely a sophisticated cover for an individual's or community's will to power' (150). As a move from textuality to contextualiry, the focus on the reader as the meaning-maker is yet another non-realist move. At the heart of the ethical problem is the notion of interpretive norms. Are there norms for reading? Do readers have responsibilities? Deconstruction aims to expose not only the hidden forces in the text but also the forces at work in reading. It shows reading to be an interested practice. 'The interests that control one's reading - be it an interest in the history behind the text, the grammar of the text, or one's existence in front of the text - is a function of the reader's choice', writes Vanhoozer, assessing the non-realist position (155). Interests, in this way, supplant meaning as the proper interpretive constraint. Vanhoozer notes in a discussion of the reader in New Testament interpretation that the death of the author makes it so that '[t]here is no one thing that readers must do with texts. Readers will have any number of interests, depending on their place and context'.15 There is no interpretive norm to which one can turn and say this is the right way to interpret because this is the way to meaning. There is too much contextual underbrush to clear. In fact, for radical postmodern readers there is only contextual underbrush. An analysis of the reader, like the postmodern investigation of the author and text, exposes just another impenetrable layer of context. In relation to the traditional aims of interpretation, ethical evaluation has always been part of the goal of interpretation. 'Traditionalists', Vanhoozer states, 'hold that the literary critic should illumine textual meaning and indicate its value for humanity' (158). Postmoderns ask, however, who gets to decide what is 'good' for humanity. Even before getting to the point of having to make that decision, postmoderns would argue that the idea of an objective description of textual meaning is mistaken. There is no difference between description and evaluation. 'Meaning is less about some fixed nature of the text-in-itself as it is about the function of the text-for-me' (158). Meaning is not a property; it is a function. So while there is agreement that many interests may be brought to the text, there is no agreement as to which of these interests should be equated with the text's meaning. Vanhoozer's 'Unbelievers', in principle, would not even consider the question.

15. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, 'The Reader in New Testament Interpretation', in Joel B. Green (ed.)5 Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 301-28 (305). One may already begin to anticipate the tension between Fowl's perspective and Vanhoozer's.

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The moral reader? Modernists as well as postmodernists claim to take the moral high ground in interpretation by freeing the reader from various oppressions. Modernity arose out of the desire to combat the tyrannical interpretations perpetuated among partisan exegetes, especially those within the Church. Thus, modernity called for objective, neutral, value-free approaches. In like manner, modernity encouraged the pursuit of universal meanings for all time and places. Early modernists and their current exponents claim that the objective, rational approach to texts frees the interpreter from the chains of ecclesial authority. Postmodernity, on the other hand, as we have noted, claims that there is no such value-free position upon which one can stand. The scion of modernity, historical criticism, might have claimed objectivity but it really arose out of particular settings, most especially those with decidely imperialistic and sexist perspectives. 'Under the guise of neutrality, the historical-critical model in fact dehumanized the reader, requiring that all contextual factors and commitments be put off before the task of biblical interpretation could begin' (162). Therefore, postmoderns claim to free the reader from 'the academic straitjacket of liberal-democratic European values' (162). While it seems Vanhoozer is equally critical of the modernist position he seeks to establish a way of reading informed by an unqualified Christian theology - he is more concerned to expose the anti-theological precepts of postmoderns. He asks, 'Does the postmodern denial of transcendence lead to more freedom?' (163). Vanhoozer questions the notion that texts and humans are somehow ever free. In this sense, he finds some common ground with postmoderns. In fact he turns their own critique back in on them. How can the postmodernists claim the ethical high ground as liberationists and yet acknowledge the ever-present force of the reader's context? Also, he comes to the support of the text in much the same way postmodernists champion the reader. That is, Vanhoozer wonders about the freedom of the text in the current postmodern setting. 'If the text has no integrity of its own, then readers can have their own way with it. They can disregard what it says and say what it means to them. Such interpretive freedom, however, comes at the expense of the text itself (164). Vanhoozer further writes, 'If meaning is not really "there" before the reader makes it, then it is difficult to see how texts can ever challenge or transform their readers? Textual impotence is a high price to pay for the liberation of the reader' (165). The ideological and deconstructive reader The rise of ideological criticism demonstrates the campaign for the freedom of the current reader over the autonomy of the text and its author. Vanhoozer notes, 'Any answer to the questions about the best books to read (e.g., canon) and the best way to read them (e.g., criticism) will therefore be related to the corporate will to power and to some ideological interest' (166). Whatever may be promoted as the meaning of the text is actually the

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means by which someone makes a play for power. Interpretation becomes nothing more than the support of an ideology. This relates to the ethics of interpretation in that '[t]he value judgments one makes about what to read and how to read it reflect a concern not for objective knowledge but for power over the minds, and perhaps bodies, of others' (167). Again one is aware of the diminished role of the author. The author becomes a product of an ideology. Likewise, the method of recovering the author's intention is an ideological decision and therefore unreliable as a home for meaning. Undoers make it their task to expose the ideology behind authors, texts and/or interpretations.16 With the recognition that all readers are subject to their contexts, Derrida and other Undoers attempt to expose the ways in which the 'text ultimately escapes any one system of interpretive constraints' (183). By critiquing the exposed ideology of determinative meaning they give rise to the morality of knowledge wherein *[t]he moral reader is the one who refuses to believe in fixed meanings and final solutions' (183). In other words the moral reader is the Undoer. The Undoers are not questioning specific claims to knowledge, they question the very idea of knowledge at all. Interpretation and understanding have become unbelievable. Vanhoozer, however, maintains that one can continue to believe in a single correct interpretation. He commends deconstruction as a challenge to interpretive pride, but he states, 'what is idolatrous is not the belief in a single correct interpretation but rather the conviction that it is our exclusive possession' (184). Vanhoozer also commends the deconstructive notion of the 'other'. Undoers seek to undo readings that suppress the 'other'. They highlight the fact that all interpretations are conditioned by historical and socio-political contexts. So often deconstruction in its attempt to both respect the other and account for conditionedness makes understanding impossible. The text is inescapably other and inescapably undecidable; but this also means that it is inescapably unknowable. Therefore, the two steps of deconstructive ethics are resistance and undecidability, or what Vanhoozer calls 'an iconoclastic gesture followed by a shrug of the shoulders' (186). What this amounts to is a respect for the other but an inability to encounter the other. Vanhoozer ultimately concludes: In the final analysis, we must reject the postmodern contention that suspicion the critical moment - is all there is to the ethics of interpretation. While absolute knowledge may indeed suppress the other, it is my thesis that postmodern skepticism too represents an inadequate response to the demands of the other. Fortunately, there is an alternative between the absolutely knowable and the absolutely undecidable. 16. Feminist criticism is a prime example of this style of ideological criticism in that feminist critics read for the specific interests of resisting patriarchy and championing the good for women. They do this by exposing the patriarchy of the language of the text and the setting of the interpretation. 'Text', so feminists critics propose, 'do not mirror the real world but rather "construct" it by representing a particular cultural understanding of the place and role of women as though it were "natural"' (167).

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A proper fear of the other, of the author, is the real beginning of literary knowledge (187).

The communitarian and pragmatic reader Neo-pragmatists, in contrast to ideological deconstructors, seek to avoid relativism by their appeal to communal agreement. Communities play a bigger role in this interpretive practice by becoming the regulating determiner of ethical reading. In this way, postmodernity has not led to complete interpretive anarchy. Vanhoozer claims this approach may avoid 'silly relativism' but it is not able to avoid the charge of being culturally relative. 'What we find in a text is a product of who and where we are' (169). Postmoderns call attention to the contextuality of all aspects of interpretation. Authority, too, is contextual; it is found on the local level, in the community of readers. How can this stance ever be self-critical? How can texts challenge and/or transform the reader? How can texts criticize a dominant ideology? 'If all appeals to the text-in-itself are ruled out, and if all argumentation is relative to the norms of each interpretive community, then the only way to resolve interpretive differences is through majority rule' (170). Has postmodernity, then, led us to freedom or to another bondage? Vanhoozer notes: To assign priority to the reader's context and interest is to immunize one's interpretive community from the very possibility of criticism by the text. Reading the text on these terms is like projecting one's image onto the mirror of the text, a hermeneutic strategy that sentences the interpretive community to stare at its own reflection. Such a narcissistic hermeneutics stands little chance of expanding one's self-knowledge, or for that matter, of achieving genuine liberation. (182)

Thus, Vanhoozer agrees '[t]he reader's spiritual condition, as well as his or her social location, will have an impact on the process of interpretation', but that is 'all the more reason for preserving an independent "meaning in the text" over against the interpreter's interests' (179). Vanhoozer characterizes the postmodern self as 'not master of but subject to the material and social and linguistic conditions of a historical situation that precedes her'.17 Postmodernity denies the autonomous self and the meaning of history, and thus follows Nietzsche in finding 'God' unbelievable.18 Postmoderns claim that no one is able to escape language, or the self, or the situatedness of anything, therefore one cannot reasonably talk about a God who transcends the world humans have created. Likewise, for textual interpretation, one cannot ever claim that there is a meaning that transcends the reading situation. Of postmodernity, Vanhoozer writes, 'meaning cannot 17. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Theology and the Condition of Postmodernity: A Report on Knowledge (of God)', in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge Companions to Religion; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 3-25 (12). 18. Vanhoozer, 'Theology and the Condition of Postmodernity', p. 12.

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be determined absolutely because meaning cannot be decontextualized'.19 In fact nothing of which humans speak can be decontextualized. What does this mean for God? How are Christian readers, who believe God is not bound by context, to hear a word from God in their Scripture? Fred Burnett in a review of Vanhoozer's tome summarizes Vanhoozer's perspective well: The death of the Author and the loss of belief in finding any kind of authorial meaning are theological issues because they cast doubt on any possibility of understanding the presence of God's meaning in a sacred text.'20 Meaning and Communicative Agency Vanhoozer's argument against the postmodern models is quite clear - a realist conception of meaning is not only necessary for proper theological interpretation, but it is required by theology itself. But he wonders if one can 'really recover the theological interpretation of Scripture with either the modern crutch of historical criticism or the postmodern crutch of communitarianism? Do either of these movements really recover Scripture and tradition, or do they only create pale secular shadows thereof?'21 'We need not choose between a meaning that is wholly determinate and a meaning that is wholly indeterminate', he declares in language oddly reminiscent of Fowl's 'determinate' and 'anti-determinate' categories (139).22 There is a distinction between the inexhaustibility of meaning and the indeterminacy of meaning: 'Our interpretations may adequately, though not exhaustively, grasp the metaphorical and textual meaning" (139-140, emphasis added).23 Vanhoozer's proposal for the recovery of an adequate meaning is predicated on the notion of a text as 'a communicative act of a communicative agent fixed by writing' (225, emphasis added). The communicative ideals shape meaning into a form of doing and allows Vanhoozer to continue to speak of the author and the author's intentions without falling into the traps of much modernistic psychologizing or the endless abyss of postmodern freeplay. Vanhoozer's realist perspective finds theological ground in the doctrines of creation and Imago Dei. If Christian interpreters believe God communicates (creates), so Vanhoozer argues, then they must admit that the human author who is created in God's image communicates in similarly creative ways. Simply put, 'In the Christian tradition, then, written words may mediate 19. Vanhoozer 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 159. 20. Fred W. Burnett, 'Review of Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge', Journal of Biblical Literature 120, no. 3 (2001), pp. 594-5 (594). 21. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 163. 22. See Fowl, Engaging Scripture, pp. 33-61. 23. I am reminded of Graham Stanton's warning against confusing uncertainty in understanding with the impossibility of understanding. See 'Interpreting the New Testament Today', p. 69. One may also see once again the image of 'meaning' at work. It is something that can be grasped. It is an object, so to speak.

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personal presence, just as Christ mediates the presence of God' (87). Once the author is alive again to communicate intention and redeem 'meaning' from behind the impenetrable screen of mind, time, context and language, the possibilities for a rational literary knowledge and a responsible reader fall into place.24 Communication A driving impetus in Vanhoozer's development of a Christian approach to meaning is the question of otherness which is emphasized rather clearly among unbelieving hermeneuts. However, the postmodern call for otherness, Vanhoozer has claimed, 'rests on a theological mistake', and so 'we need theology to correct it' (199). Similarly, he believes modern philosophies of language restrict 'the function of language to either "representing" some external state of affairs or "expressing" some subjective state'.25 Vanhoozer wishes to avoid the representational perspective of meaning by appealing to what he deems a 'postmodern understanding of language as doing things'.26 Over against extreme modernistic notions, he looks to redefine the author proposed by 'a 'Cartesian methodology' of psychological probing into the private subjective consciousness', and reconstitute 'the author as communicative agent'.27 If one cannot, for theological reasons, get rid of the author, and one does not want to fall back into the reductionistic mode of thinking that authorial intention is the mental make-up of the author, how does one define authorial intention? With the contemporary turn to linguistics and the admission that authors and readers alike cannot escape the use of language (different from not being able to escape language itself), Vanhoozer appeals to the recent emphases of speech act theory in philosophy and the idea of divine union in theology. He states a principal thesis in the following way: 'To begin thinking about language and human beings from the perspective of Christian belief is to recognize the centrality and interrelatedness of communication and communion' (202, emphasis original). Indeed, Vanhoozer proposes, 'that we take God's Trinitarian self-communication as the paradigm of what is involved in all true communication' (199). Vanhoozer boldly moves away from a traditional objective realist notion of meaning by describing meaning as a verb, an action. 'Meaning', he writes, 'is not an indeterminate thing, much less the intermediate state of a sleeping text that must be wakened to life, but a determinate action1 (202-3, 24. Vanhoozer, The Reader in New Testament Interpretation', p. 303. 25. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 166. 26. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 166 (emphasis added). 27. Scott A. Blue, 'Meaning, Intention, and Application: Speech Act Theory in the Hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer', Trinity Journal 23, no. 2 (2002), pp. 161-84 (168).

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emphasis added). Meaning then is not the internal cognitions of the author but the communicative actions the author performs. Nevertheless, meaning remains identified almost exclusively with the author of the text. Vanhoozer, therefore, does not so much offer a new concept of meaning as much as he redefines what it is one can know about what the author communicates. In this way, too, he unsettles the deconstructionist view of language that is more concerned with the arbitrary system of differential signs. Vanhoozer himself is more concerned with semantics (the study of language as it is used in particular situations) than he is with semiotics (the study of the system of signs). Sentences, or better and more precise, sentences-in-use, are non-reducible entities.28 They are what Vanhoozer calls, borrowing from P. F. Strawson, 'basic particulars' (204). A sentence 'resists all attempts to reduce it to causal laws, either of physics or of sociolinguistics' (204). The sentence becomes in Vanhoozer's project the simplest classification of communicative action. Similarly, he identifies the human self in non-reducible terms. In fact, Vanhoozer writes, 'the fate of the sentence and the fate of human freedom and responsibility stand or fall together' (204). Selfhood and communication are best understood as products of divine largesse. Indeed, Vanhoozer's concept of meaning within his project of theological interpretation appeals to the notion that language is 'a gift from God, to be used gratefully and responsibly as we communicate with others' (205). One might consider the following: Language is a God-given capacity that enables human beings to relate to God, the world, and to one another. Specifically, language involves a kind of relating with God, the world, and others that yields personal knowledge. Language, that is, should be seen as the most important means and medium of communication and communion. (205)

This too impresses upon his argument that God's Word, Scripture, Hs something that God says, something that God does, and something that God is* (205, emphasis original). In that humans are creations in the image of this communicating God, it should be understood that they too have the capacity to communicate and understand. But, 'fw]ith this privilege comes responsibility' (205). Vanhoozer's argues that there is a 'design plan' for language. Language, like the mind, another divine endowment, was designed by God to be used in certain ways. The design plan 28 This conviction is largely indebted to J. L. Austin and other 'ordinary language philosophers'. Austin writes, 'Hence it appears correct to say that what "has meaning" in the primary sense is the sentence.' See J. L. Austin, 'The Meaning of a Word*, in Charles E. Caton (ed.), Philosophy and Ordinary Language (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1963), pp. 1-21 (2). Vanhoozer uses 'sentence' quite frequently, when Austin himself would be more prone to use something like 'sentence-in-use'. Denying the equivalence of 'sentence' and 'sentence-in-use' is at the heart of Austin's theory.

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specifies when our communicative faculties are functioning properly. Proper function is a matter of accomplishing the purpose for which one's faculties were designed. The proper function of our communicative faculties is to produce true interpretation - understanding. Of course, our faculties will only produce understanding when they are (1) working properly (2) in a communicative environment that is appropriate to them (205).

In short, Vanhoozer believes that as god-like creatures who have been blessed with the gift of language humans first have the capacity to communicate and understand. Second, their communication makes the acquisition of literary knowledge possible. Third, and most importantly, they have a responsibility both to communicate truthfully and to seek understanding of another's communication. Thus, the author re-emerges from an explicitly theological foundation. The key point in all of this is that the other's/author's intended communication is the meaning of the text, in so far as meaning is the regulating norm by which interpretations are judged. The use of language as communicative agents in the image of God is the outgrowth of a covenantlike agreement, what Vanhoozer calls 'a covenantal medium of interpersonal communication' (207). Discourse Vanhoozer turns to the ongoing discussion of speech act theory and the relatively novel work of 'ordinary language' philosophy to develop his ideas behind the covenant of communication. Vanhoozer describes the basic tenet of ordinary language philosophy as the view that common language is 'the repository of human wisdom, the accumulation of all the distinctions and connections humans have found worth making' (208). Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosopher often associated with the ordinary language school, is understood by Vanhoozer to have developed a view of language that grasps the meaning of a word or sentence 'in the rules for its actual use in a reallife situation' (208). 'We will only understand a particular sentence, in Wittgenstein's view', Vanhoozer further notes, 'when we see it in the context of its use' (208, emphasis added). Similarly, J. L. Austin, in establishing the precepts that are today known as speech act theory, developed a view that language is basically performative.29 The focus in the analysis of language is not on the representative properties of a sentence but rather on the action the sentence performs. Austin proposed a view of language that classified three types of action that may be performed in any episode of communication. At the most rudimentary level 29. See J. L. Austin, 'Performative-Constative', in Charles E. Caton (ed.), Philosophy and Ordinary Language, (trans. G. J. Warnock; Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1963), pp. 22-54. One should also see Austin's famous tome, How to Do Things with Words (ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2nd edn, 1975).

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one can perform a locutionary act. A locutionary act is simply the uttering of words. The second type of linguistic act, the illocutionary act, is what one does in the uttering of words. That is, one could promise, threaten, warn, greet, or do one of many things in the issuance of certain words. Finally, the perlocutionary act is what is brought about in the particular use of words. A perlocution could be convincing, startling, confusing, or any number of things. Vanhoozer, following John Searle's development of Austin's emergent ideas, believes the illocutionary force of a communicative action is the impetus for a revived notion of authorial intention. John Searle took the innovations of Austin and developed them more fully into a theory of language with a more comprehensive typology of speech acts.30 Like Austin, and somewhat like Wittgenstein, Searle helps Vanhoozer promote the idea that the sentence, or better now the speech-act, is the basic unit of meaning. In addition, Searle 'takes communication to be the primary purpose of language' (211). With this, Vanhoozer states rather clearly that '[mjeaning is a matter of intending to convey a message to another person' (211). Searle's argument rests largely on the idea that the sentence itself, and not the group of individual words, is the basic unit of meaning. A group of words (*a sentence type') may in fact be the same from setting to setting, but the sentence itself ('a sentence token') is always already 'tied to the speaker's context' (212). Finally, Vanhoozer notes the distinction Searle makes between ontological and epistemological difficulties, which is quite important for his own chastened notion of determinate meaning. Often we cannot absolutely know what someone may have intended, but this has no relevance to the question of whether there was a definite meaning to the text. It is one thing to be in interpretive trouble because of lack of evidence about the author's intention. In this case we are in an epistemic quandary and can look for more evidence. On the other hand, if we are in interpretive trouble because we think there is no fact of the matter about what the author meant, then that is an ontological problem of indeterminacy, and no amount of evidence can save us. (212)

The notion of the performance of a sentence within a particular language game resists both the traditional psychological model of authorial intention and the materialist deconstructive model of indeterminacy. For Vanhoozer this means that the author's voice can once again be heard over against the critical shouts of deconstruction and without having to defend the idea that meaning is in the author's head. He modifies Paul Ricoeur's definition of a text as 'any discourse fixed by writing'31 to account more adequately for the 30. See especially John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969). 31. Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (ed. John B. Thompson; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 145. Quoted in Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 214. See also Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: A Study in Hermeneutics and Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

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role of the author as the 'originator of the event, as artisan of the work, as proposer of its world' (216). Discourse, for Vanhoozer is 'something said by someone to someone about something' (216, emphasis original). Jiirgen Habermas' theories allow Vanhoozer to expand further this idea of language as discourse.32 Habermas offers a paradigm for understanding that relies on universal structures of inter-subjectivity or the interactive use of language {parole). Vanhoozer writes that what Habermas 'has in mind is a kind of transcendental language game, with universal rules, that all competent speakers invariably play, regardless of what they are discussing' (217). Thus, with speech-act theory as a base and the ideas of Ricoeur and Habermas as tools, Vanhoozer enlarges the notion of a communicative act to include literary texts which follow certain global principles. He writes, 'The basic unit of literary interpretation is thus the text considered as a complex communicative act' (219). Vanhoozer has taken the argument that a sentence is a non-reducible speech act and expanded its logic to the level of a text. Meaning in this paradigm is 'what the author has done in, with, and through the text' as a whole, and not just in the individual sentences (218). A form of hermeneutical realism emerges then at the level of complete texts. Meaning is something that is present in texts 'prior to and independent of reading or interpretation, in much the same way that human actions are what they are prior to the investigative and interpretive work of the historian' (218). Vanhoozer argues 'that understanding texts is ultimately a matter of interpreting human action' (220). He considers two aspects of this point: '(1) If we can interpret actions, then we can interpret texts; (2) we can only interpret actions in light of their agents' (220). Thus, authorial intention remains 'the ground, goal, and guide of textual interpretation, but it is now an affair not of consciousness, but of communicative action' (222). Interpreters look at a text and ask of the absent author, 'What have you done?' Authorship Vanhoozer claims to combine two opposing ideas in communication studies. On the one hand he is obviously predisposed to focus on the transmitter of a message, the author. On the other hand, however, he wants to give due attention to the 'view of communication as the textual and cultural production of meaning through sign systems' where the stress is placed on the decoding of the sign system by the recipient of the message (222). 32. See especially Jiirgen Habermas, 'What is Universal Pragmatics?' in Communication and the Evolution of Society (trans. Thomas McCarthy; repr. Oxford: Polity, 1991, London: Heinemann, 1979; Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 1-68. For a more developed argument see Jiirgen Habermas, Reason and Rationalization of Society (trans. Thomas McCarthy; The Theory of Communicative Action, 1; 2 vols; repr. Cambridge: Polity, 1997, London: Heinemann, 1979; Boston: Beacon Press, 1979 j.

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Vanhoozer combines these two views by defining 'communication as the action [of an author] that puts a language system into motion at a particular point in time by realizing certain possibilities offered by the code' (222). Meaning, nonetheless, remains a part of the authorially centred perspective. Following Searle and Habermas, Vanhoozer denies 'any role to perlocutions in the constitution of meaning' (228, emphasis added). 'The subsequent response and behavior of the audience are extrinsic, often unstable, factors and thus cannot be part of what makes a speech act what it is', Vanhoozer claims (228).33 A text as 'a communicative act of a communicative agent fixed by writing' (225) resists the communal and/or ideological notions of meaning. However, Vanhoozer also sees this model working against both the mentalist and interested notions of meaning in further two ways. First, the communicative model makes communicative action publicly accessible. Second, it holds to the idea that communicative actions are fixed in writing and in history. Vanhoozer does not altogether avoid the inner cognitions of the author. In his analogy of a communicative action as a work of art he concludes that '[t]he artist makes raw materials meaningful by doing something with them - embodying thought9 (226, emphasis added). Despite the familiar language of embodiment (see Fowl), Vanhoozer is still more opposed to the deconstructionists' atheological notions, and so his use of communicative theory defends against the annihilation of the author under the many layers of language and context. Indeed, for Vanhoozer the very contract implied in communication obliges the interpreter of a communicative act to look to the author. He states, 'Derrida ultimately cannot break the covenant of discourse; even deconstructive texts are communicative acts that image the identity of their communicative agents' (226). A text, therefore, 'is a complex communicative act with matter (propositional content), energy (illocutionary force), and purpose (perlocutionary effect)' (228). It 'is an extension of oneself into the world, through communicative action' (229). Likewise, 'the author is responsible both for the existence of the text (that it is) and for its specific nature (what it is)' (228). The parallel to an incarnational Christology leads Vanhoozer to conclude that the text is 'a kind of "body" of the author' (229). In the realm of biblical studies Vanhoozer believes he is moving beyond the question of the identity of the writer. Instead, he is more concerned with the hermeneutical question of authorship. He is trying to answer the more general question of 'What is an author?', rather than the historical question of 'Who was the author?' The model of communicative agency, Vanhoozer believes, more adequately allows for the recovery of an author. This is done via a picture of the human self as a communicative agent and not the 33. In some circles of speech act theorists the terms 'speech act', 'illocutionary act', and 'intentional act' are synonymous. See Kent Bach, 'Speech Acts', in Edward Craig (ed.), Koutledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (9; 10 vols; London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 81-7.

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Cartesian individual or the Romantic mentalist. The author's thoughts are recovered 'by an analysis of the author's public communicative action' (230). Interpreters still must understand the social life of those who have put a language system into action. The author is not an island. Vanhoozer writes, 'communicative agents are not disembodied minds but embodied persons who form part of a language community' (231). Nevertheless, the author is the one who 'activates the system of language' to do something. The meaning of a text is not an impersonal static property', writes Vanhoozer, 'but a dynamic personal act fixed by writing' (232, emphasis added). He further concludes, 'Interpreters search not for the thinking subject or mind behind the text, but for the communicative agent implied in and by the text' (232). This idea is a helpful way of re-thinking the standard view of authorship but, in my assessment, it does not require a move toward understanding 'meaning' in exclusively authorial terms. One could suggest that the author is present by implication only. In this way the author is simply a rhetorical construct, an effect of the text. Alternatively, one could suggest that the author is projected forever into every jot and tittle of the text once written. The voice in the text is the true, 'transubstantiated' voice of the historical author. Vanhoozer wants to avoid these extremes. He suggests that the author is neither a complete rhetorical creation nor fully present in the text. He prefers the label 'inferred' author because the historical author 'must be inferred from the work itself, including its "created" or implied author' (239). 'Interpretation', in light of communicative action, 'tries to understand what the historical author is saying and doing in the work, and this includes what the historical author is doing in and with the implied author' (239).34 Intentions Among speech-act theorists there is some debate about whether meaning has more to do with the intentions of authors in their employment of words or whether it has more to do with the social and literary conventions that govern language use. Vanhoozer, following his reading of Searle, believes conventions may be incorporated into theories of an author-oriented notion of communicative action and intention. 'Indeed', he writes, 'a convention may be said to be a corporate intention' (244). Corporate intentions create institutional facts. A fork, for example, is an institutional fact in that a community has designated a metal object shaped in such a way as a fork, a utensil for eating. It is only a fork Vanhoozer says, 'in relation to a community that designates it as such' (244). Or similarly, a home run in a game of baseball is a only a home run within the rules of the 34. Vanhoozer believes this understanding of an inferred author 'resembles the Reformed tradition's solution to the problem of the mode of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper' (240).

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game, within the institutional facts established by corporate intentions. In another setting this performance is only a stick hitting a ball a long distance. 'Textual meaning', Vanhoozer states, i s in large part a matter of the literary conventions that an author intentionally invokes and puts to work' (245, emphasis added).35 From this he concludes 'that the interpreter should be less concerned with his or her own subjective responses or with the brute fact of the text, and more concerned with textual meaning as an institutional fact9 (246, emphasis added). Already, one may note that authorial intention is not something isolated in the head of the writer, but rather the implementation of an action within the rules of a language game. Vanhoozer further describes intention, the implementation of a speech act, as having direction both toward an object and a disposition. In terms of speech-act theory, the author/speaker directs attention toward an object (the locution or propositional content) in a particular manner (the illocutionary force). Speech act theorists further suggest that 'it is an author's illocutionary force that determines the kind of directedness - what Searle calls the direction of fit - between the propositional content and the world' (247). Vanhoozer claims, 'It is the author's intention that determines the direction (and manner) of fit between words and world' (247). 'Interpretation', he says, 'is largely a matter of following directions: the direction of the author's attention, the direction of fit between words and world' (247). One may assume then, for Vanhoozer, that 'meaning' is this direction of the author's intention and 'theological interpretation' is the search for and following of these directions. Intention, in the way Vanhoozer describes it, is 'not the first in a series of events that initiates an action, but rather the principle that unifies the whole act' (248). In analysing a communicative act, one cannot reduce it to intention only, nor can it be reduced to the mental or social infrastructures of the speaker/author. Intention unifies all of the infrastructural systems one needs to put in motion in order to enact a speech act. 'The author's intention', writes Vanhoozer, 'is the originating and unifying power that puts a linguistic system into motion in order to do something with words that the system alone cannot do' (249). He continues, '[t]he author's intention is the real causality that alone accounts for why a text is the way it is' (249). All of this leads Vanhoozer to conclude that meaning, like the self and the sentence, is a supervening higher-level phenomenon. In other words, Vanhoozer makes a case for meaning as an 'emergent property' which is discontinuous from the lower forms from which it emerges.36 Vanhoozer implies that at some

35. I find it encouraging and helpful to designate certain types of meaning. It is necessary in working through the morass of meaning in theological interpretation. We can, therefore, ask if 'textual meaning' is the same as the 'meaning' that manifests in theological interpretation. 36. Theories of emergence are often found in the thought of postmodern, yet antireductionistic, philosophers. See a brief description of 'emergence' in Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, pp. 18-35, 194-7.

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level meaning is inexplicable in terms of those things that gave rise to it. The language system and the mental state of the author might be part of the infrastructure, but in and of themselves they do not fully account for meaning. Theories of communicative action provide Vanhoozer 'a fuller explanation of how things at the lower linguistic levels get taken up into more complex literary forms' (249). They also provide 'a better account of what we must postulate in order to account for the emergence of textual meaning5 (249). In light of his overall argument that authorial intention, when conceived in terms of communicative agency, is meaning, Vanhoozer's language concerning the unifying role of intention is a bit confusing. At times, his explanations make it sound as if authorial intention is only part of the emergence of meaning. One may consider an example of many of his emphasized statements: 7 believe in the reality of the author's intention, for without it I cannot explain the emergence of meaning, that is to say, how meaning supervenes on written mark' (249).37 The confusion is somewhat clarified in Vanhoozer's revitalized Hirschean distinctions between a text's meaning and its significance. He suggests 'that meaning is a matter of illocutions, while significance is a matter of perlocutions' (261). Because meaning is what one has said, perlocutionary effects the author might have sought to achieve do not concern it. Vanhoozer explains: Perlocutionary intents fail regularly, but this does not threaten the possibility of communication, for perlocutionary intents pertain not to the act but to the effects of meaning. If, on the other hand, I fail in my illocutionary intent, then the communicative act is itself defective. My statements are not my statements; my promises are not promises; my arguments not arguments. Illocutionary intent is thus constitutive of communicative action and of meaning in a way that perlocutionary intent is not. (261)

The exclusion of the perlocutionary aspect of speech-act theory from the meaning-making process is essential to Vanhoozer's argument for the primacy of authorial intention. However, he shows some signs of reconceptualizing the idea of meaning when he writes, 'I would therefore be happier to speak of meaning in terms of the author's intended meaning and of significance in terms of the author's extended meaning' (262). What is particularly interesting is that Vanhoozer uses the term 'meaning' with different descriptors to refer to Hirsch's two terms 'meaning' and 'significance'. In practice though Vanhoozer continues to refer to the meaning of a text in terms of the intended meaning and to the significance/effect/response in terms extrinsic to meaning. Vanhoozer betrays his proclivity for such a practice when he refers to the successful enactment of intentions as 'meaning accomplished', and the achievement of perlocutionary effects as 'meaning applied' (262). In this way meaning remains intention, 'intended meaning' 37. Vanhoozer frequently calls attention to concluding portions of larger paragraphs or sub-sections by placing them in italics.

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seems redundant, and a reworking of Hirsch's terms seems to be an attempt to correct an all too often ill-received idea. Canon and Divine Authorship For Vanhoozer's position, divine authorship requires only an expansion of his previous description of the author of texts as communicative acts. Speech-act theory need only move from an application to whole texts to an application to the whole of canon. In direct opposition to the postmodern denial of 'book' and 'canon', Vanhoozer expands the idea of communicative act from the irreducible sentence to the irreducible text now to an irreducible canon. The canon, in Vanhoozer's programme, is a divine speech act.38 He states, '[m]y thesis is that the "fuller meaning" of Scripture - the meaning associated with divine authorship - emerges only at the level of the whole canon' (264). 'The canon ... is a higher order phenomenon that displays new properties and requires new categories (e.g., divine intention) adequately to describe it?, writes Vanhoozer (264). This language is reminiscent of the discussion of the supervenience of meaning. The supervening role of canon allows Vanhoozer to explain how to reconcile the intentions of the human authors of OT texts with the NT and contemporary Christological interpretations of them. For example, in reference to Isaiah 53 he writes, 'the canon does not change or contradict the meaning of Isaiah 53 but supervenes on it and specifies its referent' (265). It appears, however, that divine communicative action too easily smoothes over the difficulty of the relationship of OT and NT texts. It also seems to pose a problem for retaining the use of the term 'meaning' for it expands the concept from sentence to text to canon while all the while maintaining authorial intention, both human and divine. In other words, Vanhoozer's term 'meaning' seems to have to bear a good deal of weight as it moves to incorporate the whole of Scripture. Discerning the meaning in or of all Scripture is not easily done in the framework Vanhoozer proposes. Meaning and Theological Interpretation While Vanhoozer has argued for the notion of meaning as action, his metaphysical commitments do not allow him to escape the language of 'meaning in texts'. The resulting methodological decisions are informed by a communicative theory which allows Vanhoozer to defend the principle of meaning without lapsing into the unreasonable matters of psychologizing the author. Even with his use of this communication model and the equation of meaning and illocutionary force, Vanhoozer leaves the reader to wonder if the interpreter is relieved of the burden to determine 'what the author 38. See as well Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse. I will consider Wolterstorff's view more fully in Chapter 4.

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had in mind'. Does speech-act theory simply provide a different language for getting at the author's mental consciousness? If communicative intent or illocutionary force is what the author hoped to communicate, as Vanhoozer suggests, does not the author have to have something in mind? Even if this is not the primary concern for Vanhoozer, one must also ask if his limitation of meaning to illocution alone is not only reductionistic but also not a necessary move within speech act theory itself. Vanhoozer rightly states that the text is a 'source of evidence and a means to knowledge not only about the author, but also about what the author feels, knows, observes, and imagines' (282). The advantage of speech act theory, he helpfully suggests, is the need not to probe into these internal ruminations for their own sake. The text itself is able to provide access to the intentions of the author because the text is a communicative act with illocutionary force. The focus of attention in the epistemological conversation becomes not whether and how one can uncover the internal thoughts of the author but rather the possibility of detecting the meaning of a text in the communicative action it performs. Likewise, in the ethical discussion the aim is not to determine what the reader should do with the thoughts of the author but what responsibility the reader has to the covenant of discourse. I am not fully satisfied that these dyads are conceptually distinct for the purpose of theological interpretation, but Vanhoozer's proposals do call due attention to the communicative model which has too often been neglected by modern theorists. Yet, he still shares with the modernists the important matter of establishing meaning as a metaphysical reality. My question thus becomes, 'What implications arise for theological interpretation with this metaphysical concept?' Literary Knowledge and the Literal Sense A text as embodied intention is, as Vanhoozer argues, 'testimony'. Textual knowledge is 'a matter of believing testimony' (282, emphasis added). In Vanhoozer's scheme commentary is largely a matter of discovery, of comprehending 'the nature and content of the author's communicative act' (285). Commentators are to discover things about the text in order 'to know what the text is about (286). This, however, does not necessarily set up the choice between foundationalist and fideistic epistemology. Taking a cue from new Reformed epistemologists, Vanhoozer concludes that a belief in a determinate textual meaning is 'properly basic' (288).39 The mind, so says Vanhoozer, 'is designed to interpret when it is functioning properly in an appropriate linguistic and literary environment. When confronted with human behavior or with written texts, that is, we do not have to prove intentionality but can legitimately assume it' (288-9). Foundationalism is not 39. Vanhoozer borrows largely from Alvin Plantinga on this point. See Alvin Piantinga, 'Augustinian Christian Philosophy', The Monist IS (1992), pp. 291-320, and Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

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necessary for justifying basic beliefs. But, can one also ask if intentionality must be the concept one has in mind with the term 'meaning'? 'When reading a book', Vanhoozer says 'we just find ourselves ascribing things to the author' (289). Thus, Vanhoozer concludes, 'My belief "that there is a meaning in the text" is a properly basic belief (290, emphasis added). These sorts of conclusions make it difficult to argue for anything other than determinate meaning. The line has been deeply drawn in the proverbial sand. Interpreters 'who create rather than discover textual meaning ... prefer their own observations to the testimony of authors' (291). However, traditional biblical criticism only takes one so far. It is thin description that aims for historical reconstruction rather than understanding testimony. 'Only by reading the Bible as testimony and by offering thick description of testimony as a communicative act will one gain not merely knowledge about the text, but knowledge of what the text is about: God's reconciliation with humanity through Jesus Christ', states Vanhoozer (292). Thus, for Vanhoozer, everything is quite straightforward. Meaning is properly basic. The Bible as God's self-attestation is a communicative act that seems to need little to no justification, but only 'thick description' to understand its complex yet solitary meaning. Again, however, I contend that 'meaning' need not be understood as that 'thing that the text is about'. Theological interpretation can evoke a concept of meaning that involves 'what the text is about* without being limited to that idea alone. Vanhoozer believes that 'the conflict of interpretations owes more to the complexity of communicative action than to the inherent indeterminacy of language and textuality' (293). One need not see the dilemma in interpretive disputes as one between absolute certainty and despairing uncertainty. Critical realism, Vanhoozer suggests, affords a legitimate response both to those who would conclude that disagreement implies that there is no correct interpretation and to those who would conclude that agreement guarantees correct interpretation.40 In other words, critical realism can respond to the atheistic deconstructors and to the relativistic pluralists. Critical realism also overcomes the 'model of interpretive rationality that does not presuppose either absolute foundations or a value-free standpoint, on the one hand, or arbitrary and value-laden readings, on the other' (300). Vanhoozer describes himself, therefore, as a pluralist when it comes to the methods used to 'arrive at a comprehensive understanding of determinate 40. Among biblical scholars who appeal to critical realism, see especially Ben F. Meyer, Reality and Illusion in New Testament Scholarship: A Primer in Critical Realist Hermeneutics (A Michael Glazier Book; Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1994), and N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). The appeal to critical realism in no way suggests any sort of consensus among its proponents. Meyer and Wright neither agree on every matter nor do they reflect everything Vanhoozer espouses. Common threads, however, include the rejection of hard and fast distinctions between objectivists and subjectivists, an attention to otherness, and the normative authority of 'historical meanings' (see Wright, p. 67).

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meaning' (301). He is an inclusivist in so far as 'one determinate meaning encompasses more than one level of description' (302). But, 'with regard to the meaning of the communicative act itself, he says 'I am an exclusivist. There is one determinate meaning in light of which the many interpretations must be judged inadequate or incorrect' (302, emphasis added). Meaning 'is a regulative idea that orients interpretation and accounts for its coherence as a practice' (303). Vanhoozer's account of meaning at one and the same time moves against the views that meaning is only the best interpretation among many or that meaning is the interpretation reached by community consensus. If meaning is regulative then it must be prior to interpretation and transcend the fallible and provisional nature of human knowledge. The working definition of 'meaning' is in many respects the linchpin to Vanhoozer's project of theological interpretation. One need only define meaning in a different sense to disrupt Vanhoozer's account.41 Vanhoozer works with Christological connections to ground his description of 'meaning'. One of his strongest points is based on the association between a text's literal sense and the incarnation of the Christ. Vanhoozer suggests that the ideal of one correct interpretation is an 'eschatological goal'. Short of the eschaton the text's literal sense serves as the regulative ideal for interpretation. As with meaning, and in an attempt to connect the two, Vanhoozer rethinks the notion of literal sense in terms of communicative action. He defends the position that 'the author's intention is embodied in the text', and therefore, 'the ultimate criterion for right or wrong interpretation will be the text itself, considered as a literary act' (303). The issue at hand, however, is whether Vanhoozer dis-embodies the author's intention in order to extract the text's meaning. The literal sense is correlated to a Christological doctrine most significantly at this point of Vanhoozer's argument. He writes, '[e]ither meaning (and God) is above the letter and conceptual determination, as the tradition of negative theology maintains, or else meaning (and God) can be known (not exhaustively, but adequately for the purposes of making wise unto salvation) in and through a determinate communicative act (e.g., the Word), as a positive theology of revelation maintains' (304). Just as Jesus is the literal incarnation of God so too is meaning the literal incarnation of the author's intention. The literal sense of the text need not be reduced to the empirical evidence uncovered by historical reason, however. 'Literal interpretation', writes Vanhoozer, 'is more than a univocally descriptive and exact presentation of historical factuality' (308). The historical, narrative and canonical approaches are all 'aspects of communicative action' (310). Literal interpretation is ultimately grasping the propositional matter (locution) 41. The thrust of the present book and the primary argument in the following chapters is a reconceived notion of the term 'meaning' that will try to maintain much of Vanhoozer's argument concerning the author while also at the same time incorporating that argument into a fuller notion of meaning. Meaning need not be construed as either prior to or determined by the reading community.

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and illocutionary force of a text. 'What is at stake in the debate over the reality and knowability of literal meaning', Vanhoozer concludes, 'is ultimately biblical authority and, indeed, the ability of any text to address and transform us' (314). Vanhoozer states, 'clarity means that the Bible is sufficiently unambiguous in the main for any well-intentioned person with Christian faith to interpret each part with relative adequacy' (315). Clarity, in Vanhoozer's understanding, is more a matter of efficacy than obviousness: 'the Bible is clear enough to render its communicative action effective' (317). Vanhoozer opposes the pragmatic idea that literal meaning 'is always a product of some interpretive practice, some way of reading' (318). He admits that people can have different experiences of reality (or different interpretations of the literal meaning) but this does not mean that there are different realities (or different texts or meanings). Indeed, 'to insist on normative literal meaning is to issue a counterblast against the authority of the interpretive community' (319). Reliance on the authority of the community makes it difficult to communicate with those outside the community and to challenge the tradition of the community's interpretation. However, membership in community is significant in that 'the church represents that community of interpreters who share a primary concern for the Bible's literal meaning' (320). Literal interpretation is theological interpretation. The interpretive community of the Church is also the 'community in which the interpretive virtues - intellectual, ethical, and spiritual - are cultivated' (320). Though he echoes Fowl's own appeal to the place of the Church as the vigilant shaper of virtuous readers, Vanhoozer comes far short of bestowing any sort of normative role for the community in the determination of meaning. A community of theological interpreters is surely more than a group gathered around the excavation of a literal meaning. He is limited by his commitment to a particular equation of meaning and authorial intention. The Church, I believe, is a community that is primarily concerned about cultivating a life together around a Christ who is made known in large part in a text, which like Christ himself, is over-abundantly meaningful. The theological community must converse and in this conversation with itself through time and in the Spirit of Christ theological meaning - more than literal meaning - manifests and grows. Although Vanhoozer would likely characterize the community in similar ways, his working notion of meaning does not easily allow the community of readers a creative role in the meaning of Scripture. Vanhoozer, however, is careful to say that critical realists see 'no contradiction between, on the one hand, believing in "the way things are" independently from our descriptions of them and, on the other, employing a number of different interpretive frameworks to describe "the way things are"' (322). Believing in determinate meaning does not confine one to a certain interpretive scheme. While there is certainly plurality with regards to the interpretive schemes utilized, the text itself 'calls for some types

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of descriptions rather than others' (324). Vanhoozer notes, 'we grasp the meaning of the text when we understand, not some facet about the text [which the various interpretive schemes may make clearer], but the text itself (324). Meaning-text-literary act 'is the principal norm for valid interpretation' (325). Returning to what he and Fowl both see as a significant issue, namely interpretive disagreement, Vanhoozer contends that conflicting interpretations may simply be describing 'different aspects of the same text' (325). When one begins to perceive texts as literary or communicative acts then one can see that 'the author acts on different levels ... [and] ... there are several levels and dimensions of the literary act that can be examined' (328). In this way, Vanhoozer is receptive to the suggestion by Jeffrey Stout and Fowl that interpreters abandon 'meaning' and speak of 'interpretive interests'.42 'Much confusion could indeed be eliminated if interpreters would stop speaking of meaning and instead say what exactly they are describing (or prescribing), and why', he concedes (328). While avoiding the term 'meaning', he continues: For my part, I have explicitly stated my aim as an interpreter of the Bible: to gain literary knowledge, to discover what an author is doing in tending to words as well as what those words are about. This, I contend, is a proper response to the text as a communicative act, for it respects the design plan of language (and literature) and increases my self-understanding precisely by giving me knowledge about something other than myself. (328)

With this, Vanhoozer defends the centrality for theological interpretation of literary knowledge, authorial intention, illocutionary force and communicative activity. 'Communication is the unifying act that orders all the other acts that go into producing a piece of written discourse. If we miss the communicative force and go wrong here, we go wrong everywhere', he concludes (331). The 'true' interpretation is one that 'correctly describes the communicative intention enacted by the text' (332). Vanhoozer concludes, 'an interpretation counts as literary knowledge when it accounts for the author's enacted communicative intent under certain thick descriptions of the literary act' (332). What this means then is that textual interpretation is largely 'ascribing illocutions to an author' (332). Is this the limit of theological interpretation as well? Vanhoozer is careful to restrain the endeavour for ascription. The interpreter seeking to explain why a text is the way it is imputes intentions to the author. In what Vanhoozer calls 'abduction' one demonstrates how the author's intention has 'explanatory power and fruitfulness by asking questions about the text to which certain descriptions of the literary act represent possible answers' (334). Furthermore, Vanhoozer vehemently denies that the impossibility for absolute knowledge opens the door for the unbelieving doubters of meaning.

42.

See Stout, 'What Is the Meaning of a Text?' See also the previous chapter.

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He writes, 'the argument, "If no absolutes, then skepticism", is fallacious. Between "all" and "nothing" stands "some". Hermeneutic rationality yields some literary knowledge' (334). 'It is possible to give true, though not exhaustive, descriptions of literary acts', Vanhoozer contends (335). Interpretive adequacy is thus the reader's goal. The interpreter must believe that communication works. Communication, however, may not make all things known. One need not succumb to the endless deferral suggested by Derrida and others. 'We know enough - enough to go on with our reading, enough to go on with lives', Vanhoozer concludes rightly enough (335). Interpretive work, not meaning, is never-ending. Of course, these ideas assume a strong distinction between the two. Genres and Understanding According to Vanhoozer, the material and the object of knowledge must dictate the method of interpretation. After one comes to terms with the metaphysical arguments about meaning, the first methodological step toward communicative competency is to identify the communicative rules governing the text. Vanhoozer focuses attention on the literary concept of genre to discuss the ways in which the relationship between methods and materials work. Genre, he writes, 'is a species of literature' (336). So then, to determine genre is to determine what kind of communicative action is under consideration. Genre criticism is different, however, than older methods of form criticism. Genre criticism does not separate sentences, passages, or texts from their literary context. A focus on genre is 'to treat texts as literary wholes' and to consider the set of literary/communicative rules the texts follow to do what they do (336). Vanhoozer echoes Wittgenstein when he says, '[l]iterary genres, then, are like language games. The interpreter's task is to determine which game is being played' (338). Genres provide practices for communicators to engage reality and interact with others. For a reader to understand a literary act, she must 'recognize and participate in various forms of communicative activity' (338). To read a text as a genre other than what it is is an incompetent move. For many non-realists the distance of time, space and language poses an insurmountable problem. Once written, so they say, the text is independent, or completely dependent on the reader. The text, in other words, becomes context-less. Vanhoozer believes the text can never be completely free of context. There is always the ever-fixed literary context which itself has a determinate historical context. Communication is always initiated within certain historical and social settings. At the same time, literary forms make it possible for writers and readers to share literary contexts. 'A literary form is not a "restraint" on what an author can say', writes Vanhoozer, 'but an enabling means of being able to say something about something to someone at a distance" (339, emphasis original). As literary forms, genres are governed by flexible rules that are shaped by historical context and thus

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guard against anachronistic interpretations, yet they also allow authors 'to make new initiatives of meaning' by often affecting the historical context (340). Vanhoozer argues 'that a true description of a literary act must focus on what the author is doing with a genre' (340, emphasis added). Predictably, he concentrates on the illocutionary force of a text, or 'the intentions enacted in following conventional procedures' (340). Vanhoozer suggests that the concept of genre 'describes the illocutionary act at the level of the whole, placing the parts within an overall unity that serves a meaningful purpose. It follows that genre is the key to interpreting communicative action' (341, emphasis original). Genre not only dictates how a text should be written, it also places limits on how a text should be read. A text is meant to communicate. It is only able to do that 'if the reader is able to follow the rules of the literary genre being played by the author' (342). Of course genre identification is often approximate, especially as one moves to larger levels such as the canonical level of Scripture. Still, Vanhoozer believes genres, when viewed within the larger theories of communication, have the best potential for the interpreter to obtain literary knowledge of Scripture. For understanding a text one must 'grasp what it is and what it is about, for the proper function of a text follows from its form and content' (343, emphasis original). This first requires competency at a universal level. The rationality of communication itself allows Vanhoozer to escape the need to base the universal standards of rationality in the mind of the subject. Every speech act need not only be comprehensible but also 'sincere, true, and appropriate' (344). 'Every communicative act', Vanhoozer surmises, 'implies that it truthfully express its author's intention (subjective condition), that it truly represents something in reality (objective condition), and that it establishes right interpersonal relations (inter-subjective condition)' (344, emphasis original). Vanhoozer, following Habermas, refers to these necessary components of communication as 'universal pragmatics'. Second, 'interpreters may need to attend to local pragmatics too' (345). Particular generic rationalities do not affect the subjective condition of universal pragmatics. Genres do, however, play an important part in the representation of reality and the establishment of interpersonal relations. 'What relation a sentence bears to external reality, for instance, depends on the kind of literary act being performed' (345). Likewise, the shared world of the author and reader is a literary one. Genre establishes the shared literary context. Indeed, Vanhoozer notes that it is because of the mediation of generic texts that authors and readers may share a worldview. In light of the universal and local pragmatics suggested by speech acts and genres, Vanhoozer suggests that genres are covenants of discourse. He writes, '[j]ust as authors implicitly accept the validity conditions of communicative rationality when they begin to write, so readers implicitly accept the validity conditions of understanding when they begin to read' (346). In addition to the first step of determining genre, an interpreter must also reconstruct the particular rationality that governs the specific

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genre. This second step is a matter of universal pragmatics playing out in locally pragmatic ways. Ultimately, genres are bridges 'between the author's and reader's horizon of meaning' (347). 'Understanding', therefore, 'is a covenantal agreement between competent authors and competent readers about the rule-governedness of every kind of text' (347). Interpreters run the risk of form critics if they take the idea of genres and begin dividing up every piece of the NT into generic classes. Vanhoozer's point is to emphasize the supervening effect of genres. Genres are ways for readers to come to terms with the communicative rules at play. Within Scripture, however, genres themselves are part of a larger supervening category. Vanhoozer writes, 'the various literary genres in the Bible themselves have only a relative independence, for they are taken up or appropriated into a larger communicative purpose' (349). Thus, being a part of the canon adds a level of complexity and purpose. Canon in effect is understood to be a supergenre of sorts. Vanhoozer concludes 'we could say that the canon represents divinely appropriated human discourse; taken together, the various books of the Bible constitute the Word of God' (349). A troublesome worry is whether the authority of Scripture resides 'in canon or in the community?'43 Fowl, as we noted in Chapter 2, does not see them as separate authority-giving bodies. Indeed, he argues that the notion of canon implies the authority of the community which set the limits of canon. Vanhoozer, on the other hand, by refining the notion of sola scriptura, claims that Scripture, the 'polyphonic testimony to what God has done, is doing, and will do in Christ for the salvation of the world', ought to 'enjoy epistemic and existential primacy in the life of the church'.44 The supervening effect of canon broadens 'the original historical and literary contexts' and 'adds a new level of illocution' (380). Canonical critics, therefore, 'describe the text as it was meant to be' (380). Reading and Duty Interest in communication, if we follow Vanhoozer to this point, provides constitution and regulation of the activity of understanding. We have been told what 'meaning' is and how it is best understood as a communicative action. Vanhoozer has argued from a perspective of speech-act theory that meaning is the illocutionary force of the text communicated by the author. The reader, though vital to the communicative process, cannot be a part of the constitution of meaning. Meaning is something present in the text before the reader even approaches it. What then is the role of the reader or the reading community? How does Vanhoozer account for the perlocutionary effects of a communicative activity? These are, to Vanhoozer, ethical questions of whether there is a right and wrong way to interpret 43. 44.

Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition*, p. 149. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 167.

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texts. Meaning is something to which the readers are responsible. It is never something for which they are responsible. This ethical obligation hinges on the prior metaphysical question. Readers have an obligation if they believe 'meaning is independent of the reader's activity' (368). Meaning must be something prior to the act of interpretation; it must be an act of an 'other'. Many, postmodern, pragmatic readers have assigned moral rights to the reader or reading community. Utilitarian criteria are the only criteria of note, and the 'difference between good and bad reading is relative to the particular purpose for which it is offered' (371). The pragmatic users face problems, however, when they are asked to critique potentially abusive, improper or immoral community interests, the logic being that as long as a reading serves some purpose the user must accept it as a legitimate reading. Other postmodern critics view texts with an eye on the supposed ideologies hidden within or placed upon them. Good or moral interpretations may, therefore, be those that expose the often distorting visions of life in the text or the more frequent distortion of texts that takes place under the influence of ideological reading methods. In contrast to the moral stance of readers as either pragmatic users or ideological critics, Vanhoozer proposes that readers should be followers of the text. Reading is ethical because the text is a communicative act that requires a response. It is a struggle because we as readers strain 'to hear a voice that is genuinely other than our own: the voice of an other, of an author' (375). Recognition of the text for what it is, or respecting 'the text as a genuine other', is only possible from a realist's perspective. Non-realists, by not believing there is anything there, have nothing to respect. They are immoral readers, because '[r]espect for what is there in the text is a moral virtue' (376, emphasis added). Vanhoozer shuns the modern notion of an isolated individual reader who reads the Bible like any other book, as well as the postmodern notion of meaning as a matter of community reading. He prefers to say that 'we should read every book as we have learned to read the Bible, namely, in a spirit of understanding that lets the text be what it is and do what it intends" (379, emphasis original).45 Communities who view the Bible 'as the Supreme authority for life and thought' are not to be given a special authoring or authoritative position' (380). This is a fundamental point to Vanhoozer's argument. 'All textual understanding is a theological matter - an encounter with something that transcends us and has the capacity to transform us, provided that we approach in the right spirit' (381). His assertion is that an ethics of interpretation calls us 'to guard the otherness of the text: to preserve its ability to say something to and affect the reader, 45. Francis Watson writes, 'Like Barth, Vanhoozer believes that biblical interpretation has paradigmatic significance for other forms of interpretation.' See Francis Watson, 'Review of Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge', Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44, no. 4 (2001), pp. 744-6 (745).

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thus creating the possibility of self-transcendence' (383). This reminds one once more that Vanhoozer's defence of a realist conception of meaning is a defence of a particular position on the nature and knowability of God. 'The postmodern suspicion of hermeneutics', Vanhoozer reminds his reader, 'is also a suspicion of transcendence, that is, a suspicion of our ability as readers to be addressed by what is beyond us5 (383). The result of much postmodern hermeneutics is the elevation of the reader to a place as the meaning-maker. 'To give pride of place to the reader', in Vanhoozer's view, 'is ultimately to subscribe to hermeneutic non-realism' (384). What seems to be most disagreeable to Vanhoozer about this non-realist move to the reader is that it does not leave us a way to be responsible interpreters. He admits that '[a] little deconstruction may not be such a dangerous thing; indeed it may by therapeutic' (386), but, one cannot ethically and honestly identify textual meaning with the effects it has on the readers or the reading community. Vanhoozer argues, 'If readings were indeed "predestined" by our social location, then the notion of responsible interpretation is a chimera and a sham' (386). The responsible reader has an obligation to the transcendent meaning of the text. In simple terms 'the reader ought to acknowledge it as other, to respond to what is there' (395). More specifically the reader should acknowledge 'a communicative act for what it is, namely, a verbal work whereby an author says something about something to someone' (395). Vanhoozer builds on his previous metaphysical and epistemological arguments and challenges the reader in two ways: 1) to determine what type of communicative act a given text is; and 2) to respond to the communicative action appropriately. He writes: The encounter with the text is an encounter with the work and with the 'face' of the author - a face to which the reader walks a middle way between conformity and creativity, neither slavishly repeating nor freely inventing. In the covenant of discourse, one's response to the text's overture of meaning must be one that is fitting - a creative obedience (395).

One is still left with the decision as to which reader response is fitting. What interpretive aims are morally defensible? Vanhoozer acknowledges, 'Different interpretive communities have disparate interpretive aims. What one deems 'good' in interpretation depends to some extent on the community of readers to which one belongs' (398). Yet, he challenges readers to avoid an interpretive violence that would repress the 'other', that would deface the body of the text.46 'The morality of literary knowledge', he says, 'has to do with the checks on interpretive aims and interests. Not every interpretation of the text is as legitimate or appropriate as another' (399). This warning is as much to the reductionistic approaches of historical criticism as it is to ideologically driven revisionists. Vanhoozer's 46.

Vanhoozer, 'Body-Piercing', pp. 275-308.

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essential point is that authorial intention, as perceived in a communicative act, must be the norm to which the reader is responsible. He weds Hirsch's 'recommendation to respect the author's intention' with 'Habermas's universal moral requirement' to claim 'that it is in everyone's interest to respect the authors together with their literary acts' (401). Understanding, as the implicit goal of every communicative act, must become the interpreter's interest; to do otherwise would be 'to undermine everyday communicative practice' (401). 'Understanding', Vanhoozer insists, 'does not necessarily imply agreement' (403). As a communicative act, the text has a mission to which the interpreter must pay attention. 'It is only by first attending to the text's communicative aims that we can later go on to articulate our differences', Vanhoozer says (404). Deconstructive readers may rightfully challenge prideful readings, but they themselves are never able to respond to a text that is endlessly deferred. The deconstructionist's challenge to interpretive pride leads to 'interpretive sloth', to an 'indifference to the other' (404). An attentive, responsible reader will avoid the metaphysical options proposed by modernists and postmodernists alike - that meaning is easilyobtained on the surface of the text, or that meaning is forever lost in the abyss of language, humanity and context. Instead, meaning is in the text. It is found by struggling with attention and respect. 'Ethical interpreters', writes Vanhoozer, 'pay attention to what is there: the language, the literary conventions, the reality model, and the value system' (405). They also, and as Vanhoozer argues, primarily, respect the text's illocutionary matter. Vanhoozer likens his account of ethical interpretation to the 'dynamic equivalence' method of textual translation. 'What dynamic equivalence translation tries to preserve', Vanhoozer writes, 'is the overall illocutionary force of the communicative act' (387). The goal of interpretation is to translate the overall illocutionary force of the communicative act in a way that it 'stands to its original not as an exact copy but as a kind of metaphor' (389). Vanhoozer proposes that 'a faithful interpretation must reflect the same matter, force, and direction that characterized the original communicative action' (391).

Spirit and Community In light of Vanhoozer's metaphysics, methodology and morality of meaning, the reading community seems to have very little, if anything at all, to do with the construction of a text's meaning. The question as Vanhoozer poses it is, 'Does the community's reception of the text, then, whether guided by the Spirit or not, change the meaning of the text or generate new meaning?' (408). Vanhoozer questions the ability of the reader to criticize tradition if tradition is a condition for understanding. The history of effects is better seen, so he claims, as part of a text's ongoing significance rather than its objective meaning. This feature revisits Hirsch's distinction between

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significance and meaning, or in biblical studies, the distinction between meant and means.47 The importance of this distinction is amplified when one considers the interpretation of Scripture, 'for the church's understanding is thought to be not only "traditioned* but "spirited"' (409). Vanhoozer fears that postmodern critics who focus too much on tradition risk 'demeaning the literal sense in favor of an ecclesiastical sense' (409). Vanhoozer notes, 'To read the Bible as Scripture is always to read it in a particular interpretative tradition.'48 Tradition, however, is not to be insular. It should be 'open to the continuing historical effects, and corrections, of the Spirit-ministered word written', and 'open to having its interpretation of the Bible (not divine discourse itself) corrected by insights from the secular world.'49 These convictions result in the following conclusion: 'Even our best readings, those to which Christians are most committed, remain provisional, situated this side of the eschaton.'50 Vanhoozer, in this way, recalls the lesson learned from postmodernity: 'it takes many interpreters to hear the one word of God in all the fullness of its glory and truth.'51 'Scripture, not community, is thus the language-game whose grammar must govern the development of tradition and Christian doctrine', he concludes.52 Vanhoozer's role for community and tradition speaks again to his concept of meaning and its results for interpretation. We may recall the strong link between meaning and divine illocution or 'divine discourse'. One should note that Vanhoozer rightly allows secular critique to correct the Church's interpretation of the Bible. However, he is clear to say that it is the interpretation that may be corrected not the divine illocution. Meaning is stable and prior to interpretation. Community and tradition play a significant role in interpretation when they are seen together with the work of the Spirit and incorporated into the communicative model. The Spirit is connected to the third aspect of a speech act, perlocution. This is not an arbitrary effect of the illocution, Vanhoozer insists. He draws a striking, but not entirely convincing, comparison to the Christian notion of the Trinity: '[A]s the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, so the literary act proceeds from the author, and so too does the perlocution proceed from the illocution' (410). What, then, is the role of the Spirit in the accomplishment of the text's illocutionary mission? Vanhoozer asks, 'Is meaning "in" the text, or is it the product of the encounter between the text and the Spirit-led reader?' and 'Should the meaning of the text include the history of its effects?' (411). He concludes that the Spirit does not create new meaning, but rather the Spirit brings 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

On meant/means see again Krister Stendahl, 'Biblical Theology: A Program'. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 168. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 168. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 168. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 169. Vanhoozer, 'Scripture and Tradition', p. 166.

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about understanding by witnessing 'to what is other than himself (meaning accomplished) and to bring its significance to bear on the reader (meaning applied)' (412). With the community-oriented pragmatists, Vanhoozer agrees 'that the Bible is best read in the context of community of disciplined readers', but he does so 'not because there is no meaning in the Bible apart from its reception of the Spirit-led community, but because the church is the place where the Spirit cultivates righteousness and the willingness to hear the Word' (413-14, emphasis added). The Spirit is 'the minister of the Word, the one who leads the community into the single correct interpretation: the literal sense' (415). The Spirit operates less in the text itself than in the life of the interpretive community. As a part of the perlocutionary effects of the communicative action, the Spirit works to condition virtuous readers and to nurture unity of literary understanding among a variety of readers. A 'Pentecostal plurality' maintains that one true interpretation is best approximated by a diversity of particular methods and contexts of reading. The Word remains the interpretive norm, but no one culture or interpretive scheme is sufficient to exhaust its meaning, much less its significance' (419). Literary acts have multiple levels with a 'single correct meaning' that is 'richer than any one interpretation of it' (420). Vanhoozer argues that the Spirit does not change the meaning but charges it with significance. In essence, Vanhoozer revitalizes the meaning/ significance distinction within a communicational and spiritual model. 'Interpretation remains incomplete', he says, 'without an appreciation of a text's significance, its meaningfulness' (422). It seems to be the case, therefore, that Vanhoozer defines meaning and meaningfulness in much the same way as he has distinguished meaning and significance. In this distinction the Spirit enlivens meaningfulness but not meaning. The 'spiritual sense' is another way of referring to significance, whereas 'literal sense' is the meaning. In the current interpretive practices, Spirit, like perlocutions, significance and meaningfulness, operates on the frontside of the text where the reader stands. Meaning, illocutions and intentions are, on the other hand, backside issues detected by the interpreter in the text itself. Though obviously simplified, this model is a familiar programme now infused with an underlying communicative foundation. The term 'meaning' itself is quite protected in Vanhoozer's programme. Meaningfulness, significance, the spiritual sense, relevance and other attributes of textual interpretation may vary among readers and their communities, but meaning, like God, is unchanging. As is evident in the New Testament authors' Christological interpretations of the Old Testament, significance is 'recontextualized meaning' (423). Vanhoozer describes the meaningfulness of the Bible as 'a matter of the Spirit's leading the church to extend Scripture's meaning into the present; in this way it displays its contemporary significance' (423). Grasping significance should not be confused with grasping intended meaning. Meaning, Vanhoozer says, 'is a matter of historical and literary knowledge' (423). Significance, on the other hand, 'is a matter of wisdom, for

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it concerns not the achieving of knowledge but the appreciation of knowledge and its right use' (423). Therefore, it is for the obtaining of wisdom that interpretation is best performed in the believing community. So while many postmodern interpreters defend the development of meaning within the community, Vanhoozer prefers to defend the development of wisdom within the community for the determination of the meaningfulness of the determinate meaning. In the end, readers should be wise disciples, and - to the point of dying to self so that the author may once again live - martyrs. Vanhoozer states, 'A text is a communicative act, and interpretation is a witness to its meaning. An interpretation, in other words, is a testimony to the communicative act of the author' (439). Thus, in this way, interpretation becomes embodiment. 'The interpreter's response to texts', says Vanhoozer, 'is ultimately not only a matter of reading but of being. The way we live is also our 'interpretation' of the texts we read' (441). This perspective offers hope that Fowl and Vanhoozer can find some common ground in the notion of embodiment. One wonders, however, if Vanhoozer is too intent on narrowing definitions in order to defend his argument of authorial intention as meaning. In like manner, his distinction between a spirited and traditioned community causes one to wonder whether tradition has a role in the communicative act itself or whether tradition is only a part of the context in which the communicative act is discerned. Similarly, is the 'literal sense' somehow different from the 'ecclesiastical sense' in a Christian understanding? Answers to these questions are not easily elicited, but they do raise for us the ongoing issue of terminology that divides too easily. These are issues for a future discussion. I simply raise them here. Challenges and Questions I have already raised questions about the proposals Vanhoozer makes regarding how one should understand meaning and how this understanding affects the practices of theological interpretation. These and other questions anticipate ways in which Vanhoozer's programme might be reassessed. They concern Vanhoozer's description of postmoderns, his use of speech act theory, and his definition of 'meaning'. Reconsidering the Modern-Postmodern Divide Vanhoozer astutely draws out both devastating and correcting implications from the anti-theological postmodern positions he presents. His argument, however, is weakened if postmoderns turn out to be more complex and pluriform than he portrays them. Fowl, in fact, reviews Is There Meaning? and wonders whether Vanhoozer tends 'toward a melange of stock

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characterizations of "postmodernism".'53 It has not gone unnoticed by others that Vanhoozer has a tendency to oversimplify the complexity of postmodernity.54 If one looks at postmodernity through modern lenses it is inevitable that postmodernity will look like chaotic and at times nihilistic pluralism. Indeed, Vanhoozer persistently refers to postmodernists as if they were all represented by the position of deconstruction, which is itself variegated. It is my contention that Vanhoozer, in his effort to support a critical realist notion of meaning, has overlooked 'Unbelievers' who are friendlier to his own proposals than many realists.55 I believe the future of theological interpretation will require more analysis in the middle of the spectrum than on the extremes on which Vanhoozer has focused. It is interesting to consider Vanhoozer's proposal for an alternative genealogy of modernity. His reconsideration of modernity is done in order to establish the postmodernity to which he will respond. In Vanhoozer's account of modernity, Duns Scotus' adoption of the Averroist reading of Aristotle and departure from Aquinas' ontology resulted in a denial of God's transcendence and the rise of reason to investigate all that has being (including God). 'The "God" thus known, however, is only a conceptual idol manufactured by human reason; and the "God" proclaimed dead or unbelievable by Nietzsche is, likewise, only the construction of modern "ontotheology"', Vanhoozer claims.56 Postmodernity, especially its deconstructive and nihilistic elements, is the logical extension of modern tendencies begun with Scotus. In Vanhoozer's words, then, the dispute with postmodern thought is actually a clash with long-lived modern tendencies. Does the use of modern and postmodern as found in Is There Meaning? then seem ill-advised? Vanhoozer would have been better served to respond to the alternative genealogy of modernity and its current culminations without reference to 'postmodern'. It is not accurate to continue to use 'postmodern' to refer to the anti-theological positions that are more precisely stances of late modernity. If Nietzsche's theory eventually killed the wrong notion of 'God', as Vanhoozer contends with his alternative genealogy, then an argument against Nietzschean tendencies in biblical interpretation can be seen to defend this same wrong notion. 53. Stephen E. Fowl, 'Review of Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge9, Modern Theology 16, no. 2 (2000), pp. 260-2 (261). 54. See for example, Anthony C. Thiselton, 'Review of Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge", Journal of Theological Studies, New Series, 51, no. 2 (2000), pp. 702-5 (705), and A. K. M. Adam, 'Review of Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge^, Theology Today 56, no. 3 (1999), pp. 422-4 (424). 55. One might consider, for instance, the positive presentation Murphy makes regarding Stanley Fish, one of Vanhoozer's frequent antagonists. See Murphy, AngloAmerican Postmodernity, pp. 135-49. 56. Vanhoozer, 'Theology and the Condition of Postmodernity', pp. 21-2.

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Vanhoozer's own genealogy of modernity and postmodernity raises questions about his insistence on a realist basis of meaning and his assessment of those who do not hold to it. Is this basis of meaning necessary for interpretation to be theological? Surely there are non-realist notions of meaning that do not lead down a deconstructive path. Not being a realist does not make one anti-theological. The argument for realism is hopelessly mired in modern confusions, as evidenced already in the 'postmodernity' Vanhoozer sets up as his antagonist. Furthermore, Vanhoozer's Reformed epistemological approach could imply intellectual disagreement as a result of sinfulness. Sin, thus, accounts for the problem of relativism. So even if one completely agreed with Vanhoozer, even if one believed that meaning was independent of interpretation, one still must wonder if authorial intention as meaning does the hermeneutical work that he wants it to. To intimate that sinfulness is the deterrent to detecting meaning or the reason for shunning authorial intention does not advance the questions of theological meaning and is itself loaded with theological difficulties. One move I suggest in reconsidering Vanhoozer's postmodernity is to separate properly deconstructive readings from pragmatic ones. Though they share many things, most especially the direction taken with the linguistic turn, they do not promote the same ideas. Pragmatism can have constructively tempered positions. One cannot lessen the deconstruction of something, however.57 Also, by its nature deconstruction cannot be constructive. Not all pragmatic positions fall off the deep end as Vanhoozer imagines Fish and Rorty to have done.58 Deconstruction and pragmatism have different starting points and need not be tangled together as 'Unbelievers', even if terms like 'Undoers' and 'Users' wittingly refer to them separately at times. By taking up an argument with Derrida and deconstructionists, Vanhoozer perpetuates an endless debate. He plays into Derrida's hand. One cannot argue Derrida away. The only way to get rid of Derrida is to move past the foundationalist argument. The more foundationalist one sounds the louder Derrida becomes in disagreement. To move beyond foundationalist language does not necessarily drive one into the deconstructionists' fold as Vanhoozer intimates with his treatment of pragmatists. A second consideration in a reassessment of postmodernity is to note that Saussure is not the only place to begin the linguistic turn. If one begins with Saussure's dyadic formulation the only options for linguistic meaning seem to be those of realistic and anti-realistic natures.59 Vanhoozer has intimated 57. It is striking though that Vanhoozer's description of Barth's analogiafideibears a resemblance to deconstruction. The one exception is Barth's element of faith. See Vanhoozer, 'Language, Literature, Hermeneutics', pp. 29-31. For a fascinating comparison of Barth and Derrida, see Graham Ward, Earth, Derrida, and the Language of Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 58. Again I call attention to Murphy's reading of Fish (see n. 55 above). 59. See a discussion of modernity as various dyadic structures in Murphy and McClendon, 'Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies'. For two attempts to reorient the discussion of linguistic meaning see Sheriff, The Fate of Meaning, and Hughes, Worship as Meaning.

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as much in his description of radical postmoderns and overly rational moderns. Vanhoozer's project might, therefore, benefit from a dialogue with other recent attempts that defend alternative linguistic pedigree for questions of meaning, positions that through his lenses might even be postmodern. I anticipate much constructive ground can be found in an appeal to speech act theory. Reviewing Speech-act Theory I have previously called into question whether Vanhoozer's use of speech-act theory truly gets him past the pursuit of the author's thoughts. I have also called attention to the exclusion of perlocutions in the network of meaning. A more capable and holistic concept of meaning would relieve Vanhoozer of some of the burden he has in defending his use of the communicative model which excludes perlocutionary effects at the point of detecting meaning. In the next chapter I will take this issue up in discussion of the use of speechact theory and interpretation of Scripture. Along these lines, there seem to be detectable trajectories among the proponents of speech-act theory and meaning as use that do not necessarily conflate illocutionary intent with meaning.60 In addition to these concerns about speech-act theory and meaning, I wonder also if Vanhoozer's association of philosophers like Wittgenstein, Austin and Searle mistakenly places them together as if they were all from the same school of thought. He understands Wittgenstein to have promoted the idea that 'there are a variety of "fits" between language and the world' (208). It is not clear, however, that Wittgenstein was primarily concerned with the fit between language and world. In fact, he might have been opposed to that kind of language in the first place.61 Even if one allows an understanding of Wittgenstein in these terms his notion of meaning as use does not seem to comply with Vanhoozer's overall aim of re-establishing authorial intention as the determinate textual meaning. Vanhoozer rightly understands a sentence (or meaning?) as contingent on context of its use, but that context is not at all clear and isolated from a whole history of tradition and community involvement by the speaker. More importantly though, limiting 'meaning' only to the use of the author excludes the need for uptake on the part of the reader/hearer in defining the term. Vanhoozer often writes as one who has not fully appreciated Wittgenstein's arguments against private language, despite Vanhoozer's continued and helpful appeal to meaning as use. 60. See especially Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, and Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse. I will expand on these trajectories in the next chapter. 61. See especially Fergus Kerr, Theology after Wittgenstein (London: SPCK, 2nd edn, 1997), as well as Wittgenstein's later work, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.

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Likewise, Austin's initial proposals for speech acts and the subsequent proposals by followers such as Searle present a more textured view of speech-act philosophy than Vanhoozer considers. It is supposed by some that Austin initiated a trajectory that was later redirected by Searle's more realist position. Fowl, in fact, raises the issue in a lengthy footnote. He proposes that there are 'two ways of carrying on the views laid out by J. L. Austin in How to Do Things with Words9.62 On the one hand are those who 'treat Austin as a therapeutic philosopher, a philosopher who helps eliminate problems and confusions', and one who shows 'that words and utterances become intelligible because of the way they are used in context and in the light of various conventions, not because words have meanings as inherent properties'.63 On the other hand, are those who follow Searle and 'attempt to use Austin's work to develop a philosophy of language, and at least implicitly, a metaphysic or ontology'.64 While Fowl does not develop these insights, he does at least raise the question about whether speech-act philosophy is as uniform in its defence of meaning as Vanhoozer implies. Re-evaluating Vanhoozer's concept of meaning The above observations lead me to ask if Vanhoozer's concept of meaning and the ground upon which it is built are question-begging. A literary, linguistic, or communicative basis for meaning may move us beyond the psychologizing of the biblical authors, but when meaning is equated with intention alone meaning becomes something that can be extracted if the interpreter employs some set of methods to make known the intentions, be they communicative action or mental conceptions. With this we are back again to the questions of Fowl. Furthermore, equating meaning of Scripture to divine illocution relevantly connects meaning and God, but does so in such a way that Christian tradition and community are afterthoughts to theological interpretation. Does the loss of the author as sole producer of textual meaning necessarily imply that meaning comes solely from the reader? Does Vanhoozer set up an either/or that is unnecessary? Is his metaphysical question the only way to properly ground theological interpretation - 'Is there something in the text that reflects a reality independent of the reader's interpretive activity, or does the text only reflect the reality of the reader?' (15, emphasis added). Vanhoozer implies that if meaning is understood as an objective entity, it has to come from one of these places: author, text, or reader. I believe a concept of meaning is possible wherein we are not limited to placing meaning in only one location and we can still affirm the desired metaphysical significance Vanhoozer so adamantly wishes to maintain. This is not to question the importance of seeking the author's communicative intention. What I am 62. 63. 64.

Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 76, n. 10. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', 76, n. 10. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 769 n. 10.

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wary of is defining authorial intention, even from a communicative model, as the meaning of Scripture. Interpreters can continue to seek the author's original intention, not because it is the meaning of Scripture, but because it is a necessary component of the larger complex that is meaning. Vanhoozer himself leaves room for this line of thinking. He claims meaning is an 'emergent property' and not explicable on the levels from which it emerges. Meaning, therefore, could be more properly seen as emerging from both authorial intentions and reading aims. Vanhoozer at times seems to give in to the notion that authorial intention is a part of meaning and not meaning itself. Is it possible to go along with Vanhoozer's arguments about authorial intention within a communicative model and stop short of calling it 'meaning'? Meaning can be something other, something more than what he has described. I do not aim to dismiss Vanhoozer's notion of intention, nor do I think his assessment of the anti-theological stances is off the mark. I do, however, believe 'meaning' is being sold short. The meaning of Scripture is more multi-faceted than one portion of the communicative model. The challenges for repairing Vanhoozer's idea of meaning and its underlying concepts will begin to take shape as I examine ways in which his notions of authorial intention may be brought into a mutually correcting relationship to Fowl's more communitarian approach. In the next chapter I will propose that a more textured, even 'triadic', notion of meaning can help solve the difficulties of Vanhoozer's image of the concept. If meaning and God are connected in the ways implied by Vanhoozer's system, and if Vanhoozer is set on illustrating the triadic character of God in the communicative process, meaning itself may be best understood in triadic terms. In the end, I find Vanhoozer beholden to an idea of meaning in which meaning must be some thing deposited in texts by one and recovered by another. The term 'meaning' refers to a thing that stands in for something else. For Vanhoozer, this 'something else' is authorial intention communicatively rendered. If 'meaning' is not authorial intention then it must be dead and authors must be dead. Either that, or meanings and authors are results of the creative imaginations of readers and reading communities. But I question whether this image of meaning is necessary. Without denying the fact that texts point/refer to author's communicative intent, I question whether 'meaning' must be the placeholder for this extra-textual something. Fowl, too, yields to this image of meaning as a 'thing'. He determines, however, that no one will ever agree on what this 'thing' is. In the next chapter I begin to explore the working image of 'meaning' in Fowl and Vanhoozer. My questions about the predominant images lead me to strive for a better, and more helpful, concept of 'meaning', one that neither denies authorial intention nor renounces interpretive interests.

Chapter 4 'MEANING' AS A TRIADIC TERM The preceding chapters have outlined the re-emergence of theological interpretation and considered two divergent approaches to the discipline. Theological interpretation has found new life in the continuing reflections on the nature of the biblical texts as Scripture and the role of the Christian reading community in its interpretation. Stephen Fowl and Kevin Vanhoozer each consider the notion of 'meaning' and how convictions about this concept fashion what it is theological interpreters do. For Fowl, the term 'meaning' as it is commonly construed fails to account for the interpretive interests with which all reading communities approach texts. He proposes that theological interpretation become a way of reading texts that eschews the question of meaning and instead attends to the theological interests of the Christian community as it lives with one another and worships God. In this way theological interpretation takes on the form of an ethically pragmatic style of reading. Vanhoozer, on the other hand, defends interpretation in general against the assault of the relativistic postmodernists who would have readers read as if the author was irrelevant. The theological tenor of Vanhoozer's arguments derives in large part from his metaphysical convictions about 'meaning' and its relation to metaphysical convictions about God. He believes the logic that the author is dead and therefore the readers must create meaning (or avoid it altogether as with Fowl) is theologically faulty and relies too strongly on the anti-theological, philosophical ideas about the death of God. Therefore, Vanhoozer looks to revitalize the traditional notion of authorial intention and ultimately defend a determinate theory of textual meaning. He readily admits to the difficulty of recovering psychological notions of intention and utilizes several resources to argue for authorial intention as communicative intent. The speech-act notion of illocutionary force becomes one of the key concepts for his argument. Thus, while Fowl dismisses meaning and turns to interpretive interests, Vanhoozer defines meaning in terms of the author's communication and calls for interpretive responsibility. In this chapter my presumption is that meaning is still an important concept for theological interpretation (contra Fowl), but it should be understood more holistically than even a communicative notion of authorial intention (contra Vanhoozer). The chapter will consider the explicit employment of speechact theory by Vanhoozer and the implicit appeal to speech-act concepts by Fowl. Their different ideas of 'use' and its relationship to 'meaning' are

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demonstrated in their employment of communicative theory. From this conversation about meaning and use, I suggest a triadic understanding of meaning that fully maintains all three Austinian components of speech-act theory to be more germane for theological interpretation.1 'Meaning* as an Ordinary Term From the earlier discussion of meaning one might surmise that the term 'meaning' is used to denote 1) what one intends to convey', 2) what is actually conveyed, 3) the logical denotation, connotation or extension of a word or phrase, or 4) a word/phrase/text's special significance or quality. It could be inferred that the discordance between Fowl and Vanhoozer and their use or rejection of 'meaning' is nothing more than a commonplace disagreement about definition, with each hermeneut proposing one of the several definitions of 'meaning' as the 'ordinary', 'standard' or 'stock' definition to which the other definitions are secondary. Gilbert Ryle reminds would-be theoreticians that stock uses 'are philosophically colourless and can be easily dispensed with', because we, as users of stock terms, are simply giving references 'which we expect our hearers to get without hesitation'; yet he also states that stock uses are not always the same from place to place, or period to period.2 'A dispute about which two or five uses is the stock use is not a philosophical dispute about any one of those uses', but 'settlement of it is sometimes requisite for communication between philosophers', he writes.3 Ryle's reminder is important for the dialogue about meaning for theological interpretation because it calls attention to the fact that disputes about the 'ordinary' use of 'meaning' are tedious. It does, however, also raise the issue of the need for theologically rich descriptions of the everyday use of the word 'meaning' in the context of biblical interpretation. The term 'meaning' is most often used in a non-technical, everyday sense, but even here the term finds more than one ordinary use. For example, different common stock uses of the non-technical expression are found in questions such as 'What is the meaning of life?' and 'What is the meaning of his hand gesture?' In the former question 'meaning' can be understood as an equivalent to 'significance' or 'meaningfulness' (definition 4 above, or possibly some understanding of 3). In the latter 'meaning' is synonymous with 'intent' or 'representational value' (definitions 1 or 2, possibly again a variety of 3). Which ordinary use of 'meaning' is at play when one interprets a text? Does one seek the straightforward representational meaning of the 1. I briefly introduced Austin's theory of speech acts in the preceding chapter. I will consider it more fully below. 2. Gilbert Ryle, 'Ordinary Language', in Charles E. Caton (ed.), Philosophy and Ordinary Language (repr. from The Philosophical Review 68 (1953), pp. 167-86, Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1963), pp. 108-27 (110). 3. Ryle, 'Ordinary Language', p. 110.

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signs in the text or does one seek the larger 'meaning'fulness of the text for the reader or the reading community? The comparison of Fowl and Vanhoozer pertains to these various common uses of the term 'meaning', but it also brings the non-technical uses of 'meaning' into a more technical, philosophical and theological situation. Indeed, Ryle notes that many philosophical discussions are of this type. '[Technical concepts have to be examined', he claims, 'and these concepts are what are expressed by more or less recherche dictions.'4 In the context of theological interpretation 'meaning' becomes a technical term whose ordinary use is in dispute not only because the non-technical, standard uses are so varied, but also because the significant theological quality implied by the chosen stock use is so important. Here, then, the theologically significant supposition that the biblical texts have a divine author adds an even more complex element to the discussion. Almost every sense of the word 'meaning' can be read into the focal question for theological interpretation in the present study, 'What is the meaning of meaning?' Theological interpretation, whatever it may be - from the discussion of Chapter 1 theological interpretation has something to do with an understanding of the biblical texts as Scripture - is somehow perceived as something other than, or more than, interpretation proper. Thus, straight away theories of meaning of Scripture are loaded with more freight than they would be for other pieces of literature. All of this to say, the term 'meaning' has more than one ordinary use and for reading Scripture the understanding of the term is flushed with overwhelming significance, which makes the use of it as a technical term in theological interpretation both more important and more complex than its uses in everyday language. In that current conceptions of meaning are obstacles for a constructive development of theological interpretation as an effective and fruitful enterprise, the purpose of this chapter is two-fold. It will explore some of the questions raised about Vanhoozer's and Fowl's concepts of meaning and lay the groundwork for a third voice which suggests that theological interpretation may find a richer description of the use of 'meaning' - one that enables complementarity to emerge without entirely obliterating differences - through a use of speech-act theory that recognizes that a system cannot be determined or explained by the sum of its components alone. This will require me to describe the categories of disagreement between Fowl and Vanhoozer and to display the ways in which they might be seen as a complementary pair.5

4. Ryle, 'Ordinary Language', p. 111. 5. I have in mind the ways in which theories of complex systems use 'complementarity'.

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At first glance, it would seem Vanhoozer and Fowl propose completely irreconcilable notions of meaning (whether via positiva or via negativa) for theological interpretation.6 On a theoretical level Vanhoozer defends meaning as a property of texts. His foundation is a realist conception of meaning. In the previous chapter I noted how Vanhoozer reformed modernistic notions of authorial intention to attend to communicative action rather than an author's psyche. Vanhoozer defines 'meaning' more as the make-up or action of the communicative activity of the author, subsequently appropriated by the reading community. Fowl's proposals suggest meaning is more the weight of the history, doctrine and aims of the reading community coming to bear on, and themselves enlightened by, engagement with the biblical text. To be fair, however, 'meaning' does not appear as a central expression in Fowl's argument.7 In fact Fowl, in contradistinction to Vanhoozer, denies that meaning is a property of texts. Fowl's view of meaning is conspicuous by its absence. He challenges theological interpreters to focus 'discussions, debates, and arguments about texts' on 'more precise accounts of our interpretive aims, interests, and practices'. 8 1 contend, with regard to meaning, however, one cannot think that one has solved a problem by eschewing it. One of the primary arguments of this chapter is that 'meaning' is still a helpful term for theological interpretation especially as it is understood in ways that are theologically descriptive, self-involving and not philosophically abstract. Fowl's arguments regarding theological interpretation and his critique of certain concepts of meaning will assist the process of 'coming to terms' with a concept of meaning that is theologically more fruitful. Fowl's implicit conception of meaning and Vanhoozer's explicit conception of it contain important matter. It is a consequential part of the life of the Christian community to examine the import of its present existence as well as its history, doctrine and aims as they bear on the texts the community 6. Note the conclusion reached in Scott David Foutz, 'On Determinate Meaning in Texts': 'The basic distinction between these two centers on whether or not the Biblical text is attributed universally accessible meaning. Vanhoozer's thesis cannot be sustained without this attribution, whereas Fowl's cannot stand with it. For this reason, it is the conclusion of this paper that despite certain common recognition of hermeneutical error and human sin, they are at their core irreconcilable.' Much of the following echoes Foutz's comparison. This chapter, however, moves beyond Foutz's short online-only article by suggesting that Fowl and Vanhoozer might reconcile many of their differences by reconceiving the notion of meaning. This may be done, I will suggest, in the very terms of speech-act theory. 7. One should note that Fowl states categorically that he is 'not opposed to people using the word "meaning" in either general conversation or scholarly debate as long as it is used in its everyday underdetermined sense. What this sense of "meaning" cannot do, however, is resolve an interpretive dispute where the parties involved disagree about the nature of their interpretive tasks.' Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 35, n. 7. See also Stephen E. Fowl, 'The Role of Authorial Intention', p. 79. 8. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 56.

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holds dear. Likewise, despite the consistent claim of folly in seeking the author's intent, it would seem for the readers of Scripture qua Scripture that knowledge of the divine communicative activity would be profitable. The dichototnous question at hand is which of these conceptions should be the 'stock' use of 'meaning' for theological interpretation. How can this impasse be resolved? For the present conversation Fowl and Vanhoozer might be better seen as a dialogical rather than a dichotomous pair. Uniformity of thought is neither a desirable goal nor a realistic possibility. Theological interpretation, however, should be understood as a dialogical process of scriptural reading. On the philosophical landscape, theological interpretation is best placed among those movements Nancey Murphy sees stemming from Anglo-American postmodernity which are 'holistic', 'naturalized' and 'fractally structured'.9 For the future of theological interpretation one must transform the impasse of the ordinary use of the term 'meaning' as either authorial intention or communal significance by abandoning the either/or mentality. As I will argue in the final chapter, the logic of either/or resists a theological description of meaning. In the present chapter, I want to examine hints of such a rejection of an either/or structure in the less systematized and more pragmatic ideas of speech-act theory. Both Fowl and Vanhoozer appeal to the language of 'use' and speech-act theory, though much depends, for them, on the purposes for which one interprets.10 The term 'speech acf The term 'speech act' itself presents a handful of difficulties with regard to a stock use. There are at least three ways in which 'speech act' is used in the literature. At times 'speech act' refers broadly to the whole complex of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects. Thus William Flesch can speak of 'the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects of a speech acf.11 William P. Alston uses the term in a second but similar way. For Alston the speech act does not comprised locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects; a speech act is either a locutionary act, an 9. See Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, pp. 49—62. The present chapter, while drawing from the philosophical conversations, does not aim to become a philosophical argument beyond what is necessary for making the point regarding the stock use of 'meaning' for theological interpretation. 10. In the previous chapters, it was noted that Vanhoozer's entire programme revolved around a certain understanding and use of speech-act theory, while Fowl's arguments only referred to elements of speech-act theory from time to time. Thus, the discussion in the present chapter will speak to Vanhoozer more directly, allowing Fowl to interject when his ideas resonate with the argument being made. 11. William Flesch, 'J. L. Austin (1911-1960) and Speech Act Theory', in Julian Wolfreys (ed.) The Continuum Encyclopedia of Modern Criticism and Theory (New York: Continuum, 2002) pp. 703-9 (707).

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illocutionary act or a perlocutionary act. So one of his aims in the first part of Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning is to say 'how illocutionary acts are to be distinguished from other speech acts'.12 Much of this is terminological hairsplitting. Neither Flesch's nor Alston's use of 'speech act' is problematic for the argument being put forward in this chapter, namely, meaning is best understood in speech act terms as the interrelationship of these three aspects of a speech act (Flesch) or as the interrelationship between these different types of speech acts (Alston). Nonetheless, the term suggested originally by J. L. Austin indicates a more specific use of the term 'speech act' as a synonym of the illocutionary act, with all its components.13 James McClendon and James Smith in Convictions provide one of the most faithful interpretations of the Austinian use of the term 'speech act' and helpfully clarify some terminology by arguing that the context of the illocutionary (or speech) act is 'the total speech situation' which I take to be the larger complex of the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.14 Thus, using the terms provided by Austin, McClendon and Smith, my argument for 'meaning' relies on taking account of the 'total speech situation' and not just the illocutionary/speech act alone. However, I find it easier at times to use the term 'speech act' as does Flesch, but in doing so I have in mind to promote McClendon and Smith's idea of the 'total speech situation' as the full carrier of 'meaning'. The Author's Use of Language Having established the 'speech act' terminology for the present discussion, a brief analysis of Vanhoozer's and Fowl's use of speech-act terms will highlight the ways programmes such as theirs fail to give a holistic account of the communicative template. For Vanhoozer the goal of interpretation is to obtain literary knowledge, which is to say for him the goal of the interpreter should be to discover the activity performed by the author in his or her literary communication. In speech-act terms the interpreter is to examine the text in order to make known the illocutionary force of the inscribed communicative activity. In this way Vanhoozer maintains the stance that meaning is use but it is understood as the use of speech acts by the author. The focus of interpretation, however, remains on the author of the text and meaning remains a determinable object.

12. William P. Alston, Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 24. 13. See especially J. L. Austin, 'Performative-Constative', and How to Do Things with Words. 14. See James Wm. McClendon, Jr. and James M. Smith, Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism (Valley Forge, Perm.: Trinity Press International, rev. edn of Understanding Religious Convictions (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 1994).

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K. Allan, writing to an audience primarily of linguists, distinguishes four acts within the hierarchy of speaking (writing is included under the term 'speaking' for the sake of simplicity; 'speaking' as well stands in for 'communicative activity').15 The first act is the simple utterance of sounds. An utterance does not become the concern of speech-act theory until the speaker utters an identifiable language expression with identifiable prosody. When this occurs the speaker is said to have performed a locutionary act. The speaker 'uses the senses of language-expressions in the locution to identify things in the particular world' that the speaker is speaking of.16 This is known as the denotational act of speaking. The final act in the hierarchy of speaking, the illocutionary act, is what the speaker does in uttering sounds in an identifiable and identifying way to a hearer in a certain context (the total speech situation). The utterance is said to have the illocutionary force of a statement of fact, an opinion, a question, a confirmation, a denial, a promise, or a host of other possible forces.17 Allan states, 'under normal conditions of use, [the speaker] makes an utterance, uses locution, denotes with it, and expresses at least one illocution, all at one and the same moment'.18 For the present discussion of 'meaning' Allan's summary of the hierarchy of speaking is less important for what it includes than for what it excludes. With the acts of utterance, locution and denotation, Allan expands Austin's locutionary act into three parts, claiming 'Linguists recognize three acts which Austin conflates into his locutionary act.'19 For the science of linguistics the illocutionary act is properly the final stage of the speech act.20 Thus, Allan excludes Austin's idea of per locutions (effects and/or responses) from the linguists' interests in speech act theory. A perlocutionary act or effect is what Allan describes as the consequence of the hearer recognizing the locution and illocutionary point of an utterance. He writes, 'Although extremely 15. K. Allan, 'Speech Act Theory - An Overview', in R. E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics vol. 8; 14 vols (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994), pp. 4127-38 (4128). Allan's four-part hierarchy is one of several such orders. A very early debate among speech-act theorists centred on the identifiable parts of the communicative situation. The reader should certainly notice the early differences between Austin and Searle. See Austin, How to Do Things with Words and John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969). 16. Allan, 'Speech Act Theory', p. 4128. 17. See the content of and the works cited in K. Allan, 'Speech Act Classification and Definition', in R. E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 8; 14 vols; Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994), pp. 4124-7. 18. Allan, 'Speech Act Theory', p. 4128. Speech-act literature more frequently uses the adjectival terms locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary to describe sorts of acts, forces, effects, etc. I will try to follow this practice, but as seen here with Allan, theorists often refer to the three terms as the nouns locution, illocution and perlocution. I recognize these nominal terms as referring to the respective result or upshot of the sorts of acts common in the total speech situation and will from time to time use the nouns in such a manner. 19. Allan, 'Speech Act Theory', p. 4128. 20. See Allan, 'Speech Act Classification', p. 4124.

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significant within a theory of communication, perlocutionary acts/effects fall outside of linguistics because they are not part of language per se but instead responses to the illocutions in utterances.'21 This type of conclusion is resonant with Vanhoozer's argument. He too excludes perlocutionary effects from his discussion about the understanding of meaning and echoes Allan who writes, 'What linguists can properly look at, however, are the intentions of speakers to bring about certain perlocutionary effects; these intentions appear in definitions of speech acts as "illocutionary intentions".'22 Vanhoozer follows a narrowing focus of speech act theory commonly understood to reflect Austin's terms by concentrating on the classification of speech acts according to their illocutionary forces.23 But, more often speech-act theory, conceived in the narrower sense as the illocutionary intention of an act of communication, becomes for many theorists, Vanhoozer among them, the crux of the matter of meaning. In Vanhoozer's account, the term 'meaning' is too straightforwardly consigned to these intentions. Vanhoozer claims that meaning is best understood as 'what the agent did, and why'.24 This seems a bit difficult for a couple of reasons. Illocutionary intention, it is true, may be sought in the text. In that the text is a communicative product of a communicative agent, one must still consider the history and context behind the utterance so as to understand what it is the author purposed to cause in the reader. It seems, with the addition of the 'and why', Vanhoozer opens up the door once again to a pursuit of the author's conscious intentions. At some point in Vanhoozer's appeal to speech act theory the author's mental thoughts resurface as an interpretive conundrum. Must not the author contemplate what he wants done and how to use the tools of language to do it? And if this is true, how is intention not somehow also, but note solely, the author's mental thoughts conceived prior to the actual writing of the text? These are in many ways questions directed to all speech-act theorists, and while the conversations in the discipline have helpfully moved textual interpreters past the Schleiermachian idea of understanding authors better than the authors understood themselves, they have not completely freed interpreters from asking questions about what was going on inside an author's thought process, especially when illocutionary intentions become the fixation of interpretation and the end-all to meaning.

21. Allan, 'Speech Act Theory*, p. 4128. Austin states a perlocutionary act consists in 'what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading' (How to Do Things with Words, p. 109). 22. Allan, 'Speech Act Theory', p. 4128. See the previous chapter and Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 228. 23. See his initial classification of illocutionary acts in How to Do Things with Words, pp. 151-64. In some sense speech-act theory after Austin became a taxonomical discipline. 24. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 234.

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More importantly though, even if one could resolve or move beyond this notion of intention in the brain, one may ask whether communicative (or cognitive) intention alone delivers the meaning of a text? A home run means something quite different to a fan of the opposing team, although the hitter's intentions were simply to hit the ball out of the park using the equipment and rules of the game corporately instituted. One must wonder whether meaning as an objective activity is not actually understood still as an object, a thing that is discovered, grasped and appropriated. It is perfectly acceptable to claim the author is the one responsible for the way a text is because of the communicative intent the author had, but is Vanhoozer right in making the move to say that this is 'meaning' in toto} Until he gets to the point of saying 'this is the meaning of the text', Vanhoozer's use of speech act theory is extremely helpful in addressing the pitfalls of older notions of authorial intention (though it is not entirely clear how one can avoid some psychologizing of the author).251 contend, with Vanhoozer, that meaning may be understood as the communicative action, but it becomes more difficult to accept this idea of meaning when it is limited to the narrowest understanding of a speech act as illocutionary intention, without taking account of the total speech situation. This is not to say that intention has nothing at all to do with meaning. Indeed, the home run could not mean anything to anyone had it not been intended. Vanhoozer is right to consider the illocution as the logically prior action within the total situation, but logical priority is not necessarily the same thing as hermeneutical priority. Logical priority is not the acceptable criteria for defining 'meaning'. The Community's Use of the Text For Fowl, the goal of theological interpretation depends in large part on the context of interpretation. Interpretation in the Christian community is done ultimately for the ongoing communal relationship with God and others. Obtaining literary knowledge may contribute to this ultimate goal but it need not set the universal agenda for the practice of interpretation or consign meaning exclusively to the inscribed illocutionary act. The focus of Fowl's style of theological interpretation, and thus the central aspect of meaning is on the use of the text by the reading community, the communal uptake, or the perlocutionary effects of the speech act upon the reading community. It is helpful first to review Fowl's perspective of authorial intention, and thus the place for locutionary and illocutionary actions in the interpretive task and the conception of meaning. Understandably, Fowl speaks to 25. Vanhoozer is not the only theorist to propose a refined notion of authorial intention using speech-act theory. Thiselton and Wolterstorff have for some time made similar arguments. See the discussion of Wolterstorff and Thiselton below where I hope to show that speech-act theory may be helpfully used to reform notions of authorial intention without making the move to authorial intention as meaning.

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the activity of interpretation more than the activities of the production or recovery of meaning. Interpretation is not in his eyes the practice of uncovering a hidden meaning or even creating a subjective readerly meaning. Fowl would seem to have little problem with Vanhoozer's challenge to deal with the communicative actions recorded in the biblical texts. Indeed, Fowl seems to echo many of Vanhoozer's arguments concerning the possibility of authorial intention. He writes, 'that it is possible to speak in a coherent if constrained way about an author's intention', and furthermore, 'critics might make serious claims to explicate an author's intention'.26 Fowl agrees with Vanhoozer that the author is not dead. In addition, Fowl is quite wary about climbing inside an author's head because Christian convictions about sin and self-deception should call into question the idea 'about humans being fully or substantially present to themselves'.27 Thus, like Vanhoozer, Fowl considers the psychologizing of the author an impossibly difficult task. He follows the directions of speech-act theorists and thinks it necessary to distinguish between authorial motives and communicative intentions. The former is the 'why' of the author's speaking or writing; the latter is the 'what' an author is trying to communicate. Displaying the author's communicative intention, the 'what', requires practices that are familiar to most biblical critics. One would presumably need to be familiar with the language, the customs, the context, and more. That is, like Vanhoozer, Fowl upholds the need to become familiar with the conventions that went into the performance of the illocutionary act. Neither author makes any claims about a set formula or method, however. 'In fact', Fowl writes, 'the great majority of interpretive arguments among professional biblical scholars could be cast as arguments about whether or not these considerations should even count as relevant pieces of evidence and what sort of weight to give each piece of evidence.'28 The recognition of conventional and contextual concerns requires also a certain amount of practical reasoning; a notion Fowl shares with most adherents of speech act theory, including Vanhoozer. He would, however, call into question Vanhoozer's consistent label of the illocutionary side of these communicative actions as the text's meaning. What sets Fowl apart from Vanhoozer and others is his doubt 'that speech act theory can provide either a theory of meaning or the basis for arguing for the interpretive priority of the communicative intention of authors'.29 One could presumably read the texts for something other than the discovery of its illocutionary force. It shuts off the text's possible contribution to the ongoing life of the community when the goal of interpretation is constrained to finding meaning as illocutionary force. In addition, as I noted in Chapter 2, Fowl 26. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 73. Fowl's ideas about the author echo Vanhoozer's claim to a 'chastened' view of authorial intention. Of course, Vanhoozer makes much more of this view than does Fowl, ultimately equating it with 'meaning'. 27. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 74. 28. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 75. 29. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 77.

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comments on certain theoretical and theological reasons for not 'limiting a text's meaning to an account of authorial intention'.30 Theoretically, the 'notion of authorial intention, no matter how coherent in and of itself, cannot provide us with the "meaning" of a text without begging the question of what textual meaning might be'.31 Theologically, the notion of authorial intention as meaning makes it difficult to come to terms with the way Scripture interprets Scripture. It is not that the notion of authorial intention - especially that one informed by communicative theory - is incoherent, but rather, 'it is because we cannot make the notion of textual meaning strong enough to do the sort of work such a claim needs it to do'. 32 What is especially significant then about Fowl's arguments against authorial intention as meaning is his promotion of the primacy of interpretive interests. Interpretation in general, Fowl concludes, should become more pragmatic and pluralist. Theological interpretation, in particular, needs to advance the 'larger ends of the Christian life', which includes a deepening of 'communion with the triune God and others' that comes about by faithful life and worship.33 Fowl's argument suggests to Vanhoozer that his insistence on meaning as authorial intention described in communicative terms is set by his conviction that such a definition best advances the larger ends of the life of the Christian reading community. He thus suggests that Vanhoozer's definition of meaning is in fact a promotion of his particular reading interest in communicative intent. For Fowl the gap between himself and Vanhoozer is not a result of interpretive practices. Indeed Fowl promotes the use of methods which display authorial intention, but he believes they are only useful on an ad hoc basis. The separation between the two, at least as Fowl sees it, comes clear when theological interpretive disagreements arise. The logic of Vanhoozer's account of meaning would lead one or the other of the disagreeing parties to judge that his or her opponent has not properly understood the author's communicative intent, for it is here that the locus of authority lies. Fowl, on the other hand, believes, 'judgments about the quality of any particular theological interpretation ... have to be rendered in the light of [the larger ends of the Christian life]'.34 Theological interpretation, which considers the biblical texts as livings sacred texts, is unsatisfied with the static quality of meaning as an intention in a certain context. Meaning as the Total Speech Situation Vanhoozer's primary concern with Fowl's focus on interpretive interests is the unintended advancement of relativism. It was made clear in the previous 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Fowl, *Role of Authorial Intention', p. 7S. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', pp. 79-80. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 85. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. $6. Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 86.

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chapter that Vanhoozer levelled his most scathing critique on those he deemed anti-theological. The main reason for this critique was the loss of God in the relativism of current interpretive theories. By placing the locus of authority of the sacred texts with the Christian reading community Fowl skirts dangerously close to the unbelieving opponents of Vanhoozer. Vanhoozer asks at one point, 'What are commentaries doing if they are not trying to grasp the author's intended message?'35 This is a completely legitimate question. But as Vanhoozer continues, his concerns about relativism arise more clearly, 'To anticipate: what is 'the meaning of the text' if it is not the author's intended message? The short answer ... is that the author is never really absent. The reader has simply taken his or her place.'36 The fear of relativism, however, should not force one into an overly limited conception of meaning. Vanhoozer makes a strong case for the resurrection of the author as a concern in biblical interpretation; Fowl supports such a concern. My question is whether it is therefore necessary to equate meaning with the author's intended message. Is meaning reduced to either authorial intention or readers' interests? Can we follow Vanhoozer in rescuing the author from the radical postmodernists, but not follow him in claiming authorial intention as meaning? Is Fowl necessarily a member of the Unbelievers because he echoes Vanhoozer's Derrida - 'Derrida does not deny the concept of intention, only that it is constitutive of a text's meaning'?37 To Fowl, one might ask whether there is the possibility for meaning as a concept that, while not fully equated with authorial intention, nevertheless, cannot be understood without it. Vanhoozer is right to notice the shortcomings of those more pragmatic interpreters like Fowl who do not give adequate attention to the role of illocutionary acts in the shape of theological interpretation. He picks up on this especially in the conclusion reached by Fowl and Lewis Ayres in '(Mis)reading the Face of God'. There the two state, 'The aim of reading Scripture, to build up Christian faith and practice, should always order decisions about which methods and approaches to adopt.'38 Vanhoozer's argument against this conclusion has to do with the confusion of illocutionary intent and perlocutionary effect. He writes: I do not dispute the aim of spiritual formation. However, I do resist letting this intended perlocutionary effect run roughshod over Scripture's communicative action. Spiritual formation can be the aim, but not the norm, of biblical interpretation. The norm must remain the author's illocutionary intent ... To proceed too quickly to perlocutionary effects is to run the risk of making the illocutionary content hermeneutically dispensable.39 35. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 89. 36. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 90. 37. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 78. 38. Lewis Ayres and Stephen E. Fowl, '(Mis)Reading the Face of God', p. 528. 39. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, 'From Speech Acts to Scripture Acts: The Covenant of Discourse and the Discourse of Covenant', in First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (repr. from Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene and Karl Moller (ed.), After Pentecost-. Language

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Vanhoozer's resistance to letting perlocutionary effects run roughshod is well founded, as it seems at times Fowl does seem to make illocutionary content hermeneutically dispensable. Vanhoozer, however, speaks here of the norm of biblical interpretation, not meaning. Are interpretive norms and textual meaning the same thing? Furthermore, must the norm of biblical interpretation be wholly identified with authorial intention? Positive answers to these questions should not be taken for granted. On the first question, it is not at all clear that meaning and norms are the same thing, as Vanhoozer implies. Indeed, if interpretation is supposed to find the meaning of the text and norms are what guide the interpretive practice, then interpretation is guided by the very thing it is meant to discover. On the second question, not only does the preceding logic argue against a positive answer, the inseparability of the total speech situation makes any focus on one part of it an incomplete view. Thus, if readers want to equate interpretive norms with authorial intention, they run the risk of making perlocutions hermeneutically dispensable. For theological interpretation, however, I want to make the case that neither illocutions nor perlocutions should be expendable. So neither Fowl nor Vanhoozer propose adequately full notions of theological meaning (or norms, or the total speech situation, for that matter). Halion writes, 'The distinctions [between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts] are largely matters of empirical research of the total speech situation and thus are not likely to be hard and fast.'40 In a sense I am arguing for the supervenience of the total speech situation over its comprising parts. In his now classic text on speech acts, How To Do Things With Words, first presented in the William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1955, Austin sets out to tackle the problem of the performative-constative phenomenon. Austin initially outlines the distinction between performatives ('the performing of an action - it is not normally thought of as just saying something')41 and constatives (descriptions or recordings of information), but later rejects that the distinction can be maintained. He writes 'there is a danger of our initial and tentative distinction between constative and performative utterances breaking down'.42 Nevertheless, his conclusion that constatives could conceivably be understood as performatives (statements of information could be preceded with the performative words of *I state ...'), compels him to explore the performance portion of the speech situation, namely illocutionary acts. An illocution is the 'performance of an act in and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig Bartholomew, Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, 2 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2001), pp. 1-49, Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), pp. 159-206 (199). 40. Kevin Joseph Halion, 'Speech Act Theory and Deconstruction: A Defence of the Distinction between Normal and Parasitic Speech Acts', unpublished doctoral dissertation, McMaster University, 1989, cited 24 November 2004, online: http://www.e-anglais.com/ thesis.html. 41. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, pp. 6-7. 42. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, p. 54.

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saying something as opposed to an act of saying something'.43 Austin is very clear to distinguish between the locutionary act and illocutionary act despite the fact that he claims the performance of 'a locutionary act is in general, we may say, also eo ipso [is] to perform an illocutionary act'.44 This distinction comes through in his two senses of 'mean', which in some ways maintains the performative-constative distinction at the levels of locution and illocution. On the one hand a locution means by way of sense and reference, and so one 'may entirely clear up the "use of a sentence" on a particular occasion, in the sense of the locutionary act, without yet touching upon its use in the sense of an illocutionary act'.45 An illocution, on the other hand, means by way of force. In the latter half of How To Do Things With Words, Austin attempts to provide a preliminary taxonomy of these forces, or types of performances. Searle, the Melanchthon to Austin's Luther,46 more strongly contends that locutionary acts are actually illocutionary acts of some sort. In this he also conflates Austin's notions of meaning as reference and force.47 Halion notes, Searle denies 'that one can abstract from the illocutionary "nature" of the utterance to consider it solely in terms of locutionary meaning. In other words, he is saying that it can be described as an illocution but not as a locution'.48 This signals not only a slight shift in terminology but also a dramatic shift in the focus of speech-act theory. Illocutions become the primary, and often only dynamic of the speech act investigated for the 'meaning' of a communicative action. As noted, Austin himself hints in that direction, but he did so in response to a particular linguistic problem. He equally hints at the preservation of the third interrelated component, the perlocutionary act. The distinction between illocutions and perlocutions, for Austin, is 'likeliest to give trouble'.49 Distinguishing between //locutions, which are performed in saying something, and perlocutions, which are performed by saying something, is 'at best very slippery'.50 In other words, Austin sees a bit of difficulty in separating the use of certain forces from the achievement of certain effects. The noticeable difference is one of convention. Illocutionary acts conform to certain conventions, many of which are non-linguistic (e.g. rules, regulations, customs and practices).51 The possible effects on the 43. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, pp. 99-100. 44. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, p. 98. 45. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, pp. 100-01. 46. See Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 209. 47. See especially Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, and John R. Searle, 'Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts', in I. Berlin (ed.), Essays on J. L. Austin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 151-9. 48. Halion, 'Speech Act Theory and Deconstruction', n.p. 49. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, p. 110. Alston believes Austin was mistaken at this point. See Alston, Illocutionary Acts, passim. 50. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, p. 131. 51. The non-linguistic conventions may account for some of the incorporation of speech-act theory in traditional modes of historical-critical methods of biblical

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speaker's audience are entirely non-conventional, or what one might call 'natural'. Halion, nevertheless, states that for Austin, 'It is thus difficult sometimes to see where illocutions end and perlocutions begin.'52 What can one make of all of these conflations of the dynamics of the total speech situation? Searle argues that locutions and illocutions are indistinguishable; Austin notes that illocutions and perlocutions are difficult to separate. It advisable to bear in mind the difficulty of unnatural separations, and remember any such separation should be for investigative purposes and not for the establishment of foundational theories. How then can we maintain much of Vanhoozer's argument for communicative intent over psychological intent and yet reject the equation of this intent with meaning? One way forward is to reintroduce the speech-act notion of perlocutionary effects into the conceptualization of meaning itself. These points, I think, speak to biblical studies and theology. The primary focus on intention moulds biblical studies into a discipline that pursues the thoughts, intentions and/or actions of the author and anything and everything that might shed light on those. This pursuit in and of itself is not problematic. In light of communicative theories it is difficult to dispute claims such as 'Texts without historical authors are texts without meaning.'53 Of course historical authors are necessary for the existence of the text and the text's meaning. The problem is that in solely focusing on meaning as the author's intentions (however they are defined) one loses sight of the depth and complexity of the concept of meaning. Biblical studies become the search for the holy grail of the author's intention, when in fact authorial intention is just one piece of the puzzle of scriptural meaning - a large and important piece but still just one piece. A piece that is of vital significance does not wholly define meaning or complete the theological interpretation of texts even if one set of interpreters agree on fixed authorial intention communicatively understood. The Meaning of Scripture in Speech act Theory For linguistic purposes, or for communicative analysis, meaning as illocutionary intent advances the discussion beyond the entrapments of 'the author's head'. Vanhoozer and Fowl both contribute helpful thoughts on this matter. Linguists, who are primarily concerned with the deployment of language, would of course be interested only in the speaking/writing

interpretation. Speech-act theory does, however, remind the historical critic that these nonlinguistic conventions do not entirely comprise meaning. Searle reminds his readers that 'very simple sorts of illocutionary acts can indeed be performed apart from any use of any conventional devices at all'. Searle's point, however, in this was to undo Austin's distinction between illocution and locution. Searle, Speech Actsy p. 38. 52. Halion, 'Speech Act Theory and Deconstruction', n.p. 53. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p. 234.

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side of the communicative equation. Whatever interest in the hearing/ reading side is shown primarily as a way to better understand the speaker/ writer. Perlocutionary effects may be examined as a way to reconstruct illocutionary intentions. In his helpful summary article, M. Davies says the central phenomenon to be studied in the philosophy of language is linguistic meaning.54 Should not theological interpretation be concerned with more than linguistic analysis? Is the purpose of theological interpretation to discover linguistic meaning} I wonder what might be theological about linguistic or communicative meaning that would make it interesting to readers of Scripture. Certainly a theological meaning would draw from communicative theory but it need not restrict itself to the definition of linguistic meaning found there. One should keep in mind the mistaken idea that illocutionary actions can be pinned down. Speech-act theory as a holistic and natural theory of the entire communicative process contributes to a concept of meaning that is not limited to, but also not exclusive of, illocutionary intentions. For the most part, uses of speech-act theory have been centred around the concepts and classifications of illocutionary forces, the communicative intents of texts' authors. This bears out even among the few who have employed speech act philosophy for a doctrine of Scripture or for examination of biblical texts. However, most proponents of speech acts working in these areas have rejected the notion that speech-act theory provides a universal foundation for meaning. The use of speech-act theory may be divided between those who find the theory as a helpful tool for understanding certain biblical texts and those who see speech-act theory as a useful hermeneutical modelP One may see, then, in these employments of speech-act philosophy, support for a fuller notion of meaning. That is to say, if speech acts are seen by in large as illocutions, as these proponents contend, and this use of speech acts cannot provide a universal theory of meaning, then one can conclude that illocutions do not adequately define meaning. So while the suggestion to re-examine the three parts of a communicative action in an interdependent relationship may be counterintuitive in current discussions of speech acts, several speech-act approaches to biblical interpretation foster a fuller use of the term meaning 54. See Martin Davies, 'Philosophy of Language5, in Nicholas Bunnin and E. P. TsuiJames (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 90-139. 55. See Richard S. Briggs, Words in Action, Speech Act Theory and Biblical Interpretation: Toward a Hermeneutic of Self-Involvement (New York: T&T Clark, 2001), pp. 18-27. See also the two classes of questions about meaning provided in Davies, 'Philosophy of Language'. Davies divides the questions into those regarding particular linguistic expressions and those concerned with the nature of language and meaning. Vanhoozer also sees these two uses of speech-act theory at play, but he divides the second of these further. His three uses of speech-act theory include: 1) for understanding a particular part of the Bible (Thiselton); 2) for opening up possibilities for reading the whole Bible as divine discourse (Wolterstorff); 3) for contributing categories for a fully fledged theory of interpretation that resonates well with properly theological themes (Vanhoozer). See Vanhoozer, First Theology, pp. 164-5.

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that has theological richness and depth. A brief look at two mediating figures, their use of speech-act theory, and their rejection of a speech-act model of meaning will contribute to the holistic perspective being put forward here. In various ways, Nicholas Wolterstorff and Anthony Thiselton stand between Fowl and Vanhoozer on the matter of meaning and illocutionary acts. Nicholas Wolterstorff Nicholas Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse is one of the most coherent arguments available for viewing the biblical texts as God's speech act. In this volume, Wolterstorff's argument rests on the conviction that God speaks; that is, God performs a speech act by deputizing and/or appropriating the discourse of the human authors. In a shorter, but related article, 'The Promise of Speech-act Theory for Biblical Interpretation', he propounds the validity of authorial-discourse interpretation rather than authorialintention, textual-sense, or performance interpretations. The middle position (textual sense), or what Wolterstorff deems the 'reigning hermeneutic' in the twentieth century, is characterized by the aim of discovering the sense of the text itself. The unity of the text is a key factor, but a certain inherent level of vagueness also prevails. Wolterstorff writes, 'The sense of a text is thus not to be understood as fixed and closed, but as incorporating within itself a certain amount of indeterminacy and openness.'56 In that it is a reaction to the previously held interpretive tradition of authorial intention, the textualsense tradition grounds itself in part on a certain philosophical anthropology that espouses the views that we humans are constantly projecting ourselves and that we are always tradition bound. As Wolterstorff summarizes, 'The interpreting self is always an anticipating self whose anticipations are formed by tradition.'57 Wolterstorff considers the Derridean objection to textual-sense interpretation, especially Derrida's critique of the Fregean-Husserlian ontology that understands the sense of the text as an ideal entity. He concludes, on the one hand, Derrida's attack on this ontological view is 'misguided and ungrounded'. Wolterstorff writes, 'I agree with Frege and Husserl that the right analysis of judgment is that, in judgment, there is something that one judges to be true that's to be distinguished from both that particular act and the sentence one uses to make the judgment.'58 On the other hand, Wolterstorff believes Derrida is correct to question the idea that texts have unified senses. '[Ejven if we adopt the assumption of unity', Wolterstorff claims, 'we would still be left with indeterminacy 56. Nicholas Wolterstorff, 'The Promise of Speech-act Theory for Biblical Interpretation', in Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene and Karl Moller (ed.), After Pentecost: Language and Biblical Interpretation, {ed. Craig Bartholomew; Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, 2; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2001), pp. 73-90 (76). 57. Wolterstorff, 'Promise of Speech-act Theory', p. 77. 58. Wolterstorff, 'Promise of Speech-act Theory', p. 80.

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of sense9,59 These conclusions suggest as well Wolterstorff's position on authorial-intention and Derridean performance interpretations. These are legitimate modes of interpretation often worth practising, Wolterstorff maintains. He only objects to their universalizing claims and contends that they are 'relatively minor acts in human affairs',60 whereas he believes textual-sense interpretation is based on the false assumption that there is the sense in a text. All of this leads Wolterstorff to conclude that authorialdiscourse interpretation or the pursuit of 'what the author did in fact say by inscribing the words of the text is far more prominent'.61 What he does not conclude is that authorial-discourse interpretation 'is the only right mode of interpretation' or 'that it and it alone is truly interpretation'.62 What is striking in this whole discussion is the absence of the language of 'meaning'. Rather, Wolterstorff is somewhat specific about his goal of defending the possibility that God speaks in Scripture. Nowhere, in this conversation at least, does he equate divine discourse and textual meaning. The term 'meaning' does however get used with some frequency in Divine Discourse as Wolterstorff considers the idea of a first and second hermeneutic. The first hermeneutic is pretty much what biblical scholars have been up to for some time; it is the pursuit of the human discourse in the text. Wolterstorff avoids talk of 'speaker's meaning', opting instead to reserve 'the word "meaning" to something that sentences have'.63 He prefers to speak of the noematic and designative content of the speaker's illocutionary act. Noematic content refers to the thought expressed, while the designative content refers to the predication of property of a particular thing. For example, the statements 'The queen is dead' by an English person of the late twentieth century and 'De koningin is dood' by a Dutch person of the same time period are said to have the same noematic content but different designative content. That is, both statements express the same thought but speak of different people. Any sentence, Wolterstorff says, 'always has just the meaning that it has per se. What differs from occasion to occasion is not the meaning of the sentence but the noematic content of what is said by using the sentence.'64 Furthermore, he claims 'many sentences in any natural language have more than one meaning'.65 Sentences simply come equipped with meaning(s). Meaning, however, is not necessarily the thought expressed, the noematic content. It could be, if the sentence meaning and noematic content were the same, but such connection is not inherent to either meaning or noematic content. Wolterstorff seems to imply then that meaning, strictly speaking, is more like the locutionary act of a speech

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

Wolterstorff, Wolterstorff, Wolterstorff, Wolterstorff, Wolterstorff, Wolterstorff, Wolterstorff,

'Promise of Speech-act Theory', p. 80 (emphasis added). 'Promise of Speech-act Theory', p. 83. 'Promise of Speech-act Theory', p. 83. 'Promise of Speech-act Theory', p. 82. Divine Discourse, p. 191 (emphasis added). Divine Discourse, p. 193. Divine Discourse, p. 190.

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action.66 The author can use the sentence literally or metaphorically or any number of ways. What an author does with the sentence's meaning is not by definition the sentence's meaning. 'I hold that literality and metaphoricity are a matter of use rather than of meaning', writes Wolterstorff.67 The difference between noematic content of illocutionary acts - his primary concern in authorial-discourse interpretation - and meaning can be seen also in the first of three things one must consider in determining noematic content. From the very start one must take account of the meanings of sentences. That is, meaning is a part of determining noematic content but is not itself noematic content.68 While Wolterstorff and Vanhoozer propose similar goals for interpretation, Wolterstorff uses the term 'meaning' in a different way and he allows for the viability of other legitimate interpretative pursuits. Alternatively, Vanhoozer seems to universalize his speech-act reformed notion of authorial intention. Wolterstorff, unlike Vanhoozer, promotes speech-act theory as a supporting theory for understanding the notion of a speaking God. This does not, however, translate into a widespread claim for all practices of textual interpretation. Still, much of the logic in Wolterstorff's programme is found in Vanhoozer's, particularly the grounding or anchoring role of authorial discourse/intention for understanding divine discourse. 'The anchor of appropriating divine discourse is the human appropriated discourse' Wolterstorff writes, in a way that anticipates Vanhoozer's later argument.69 Yet, once again, the difference in the use of the term 'meaning' is clear as Wolterstorff continues, 'and one of the main anchors of the human discourse is the meanings of the sentences used'.70 Thus, Wolterstorff's first hermeneutic places equally considerable weight on the importance of authors for understanding Scripture, but it neither universalizes the claim nor does it equate authorial discourse and the term 'meaning'. Wolterstorff's second hermeneutic also contributes to the present conversation. Like Vanhoozer, Wolterstorff's claims about divine discourse or God's illocutionary action are claims that perceive the whole canon as divine illocution. Similarly, Wolterstorff contends, 'that interpretation of a biblical passage for the divine mediating discourse cannot proceed without the interpreter appealing to convictions she has as to what God would and would not be likely to have intended to say by appropriating 66. It should be noted that Wolterstorff prefers the term 'speech action' over 'speech act', and that he has in mind to designate 'an action which can function as an illocutionary action"'. See Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, p. 37 (emphasis added). So while he may not use the term meaning to designate it as such, Wolterstorff follows the same path as Vanhoozer in limiting the speech act to the illocutionary action. 67. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, p. 193. 68. Wolterstorff also believes one must consider 2) the tropes used in the linguistic culture; and 3) the probabilities and improbabilities as to what the discourser had and did not have as his intentions to say. See Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, p. 200. 69. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, p. 189. 70. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, p. 189 (emphasis added).

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this passage within the whole text of the Bible. And such convictions will depend crucially on what the interpreter believes about the nature and purposes of God.'71 This language echoes much of what one finds in the first part of Vanhoozer's Is There a Meaning in This Text? where Vanhoozer defends a view of meaning that is in line with a certain view of God.72 But, Wolterstorff anticipates Fowl as well. In the way he alludes 'to that long tradition of biblical interpretation in which one employs distinctly theological convictions in one's interpretation', one finds echoes of Fowl's notion of theology influencing scriptural interpretation.73 Also Wolterstorff writes, 'even when considering the Bible as God's one book, one might well have other "interpretative" interests than discerning the divine discourse', which coordinates well with Fowl's claim that there are a variety of aims a scriptural interpreter might pursue.74 Previously it was noted that implicit in Fowl's programme was a challenge to Vanhoozer that his interest in authorial intention was one of many interests in the text and that it had no right to claim priority over any other interest. Wolterstorff would agree, though with some reservation. He accepts the idea that discerning divine discourse is one interest among many. However, he also claims that seeking authorial discourse is simply what most interpreters do and so in some respects it holds a place of priority over other interpretative modes. What is most salient about Wolterstorff's association with Fowl is the contention that the theological conviction that Scripture is God's book comes into play in the second hermeneutic, at the point of seeking divine discourse. For Wolterstorff, authorial-discourse interpretation is just what people most often do when they interpret texts, but divine-discourse interpretation is a 'dogmatic' application of this normal mode of interpretation of texts believed to be God's words. In my assessment, Wolterstorff employs speech-act theory in similar ways to Vanhoozer, but initiates it with certain convictions and reveres its results in ways similar to Fowl. 'Meaning', however, in Wolterstorff's work, remains a special term analogous to locution. Therefore, he does not contribute directly to the reconceptualizing of the term 'meaning' other than to call into question the equation of illocution with it. He supports the idea prominent in Fowl that the search for God's voice in Scripture is but one of many possible interests in biblical texts, which for Wolterstorff relies in large part on the notions of first and second hermeneutics. Wolterstorff mediates between the two, but what kind of mediation has he provided? While he may help me defend a holistic notion of meaning by passing up the idea that meaning and illocution are the same thing, it is unclear how his distinction between first and second hermeneutics mediates between the divine and human, literal and spiritual, and plain and interpreted senses. 71. 72. 73. 74.

Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, p. 221. See Part One of Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, pp. 37-196. Wolterstorff, 'Promise of Speech-act Theory', p. 86. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, p. 202.

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This is a disjunction that is evident as well in both Fowl and Vanhoozer. Fowl, like Wolterstorff, holds to the possibilities of various interpretive manoeuvers, including the search for the noematic content of the speaker's illocutionary action. Fowl does not go nearly as far as Wolterstorff in claiming that this search is the normal mode of interpretation, especially in light of the plethora of interpretive practices today. Nonetheless, whatever interpretive interest occupies the reader, the interest in things divine is in most ways a different direction, a move to Wolterstorff's second 'dogmatic' hermeneutic. Vanhoozer, likewise, echoes Wolterstorff in his 'anchoring' of divine discourse in human discourse. He seems to go further than Wolterstorff as he subsumes the first hermeneutic in the second. There seems to be no distinction whatsoever between authorial-discourse interpretation and divine-discourse interpretation.

Anthony Thiselton Anthony Thiselton has been championing the merits of speech-act theory for biblical studies for well over 30 years.75 As recently as 1997, Thiselton claims speech-act theory has been neglected in biblical studies, systematic theology and the philosophy of religion.76 Of late, his student, Richard Briggs, has produced a masterful work that extends much of Thiselton's programme to New Testament texts with the help of Donald Evans' 'logic of selfinvolvement'.77 Briggs distinguishes himself and Thiselton from Vanhoozer in that they do not promote 'speech-act theory as an overarching perspective within which different genres are at work'.78 Rather, as Briggs states, he (and Thiselton) offers speech-act theory, 'not as a hermeneutical method, but as a tool for investigating certain types of strongly self-involving biblical language'.79 Thus, with Wolterstorff, Thiselton and Briggs agree that speech75. See especially Anthony C. Thiselton, 'The Parables as Language-Event: Some Comments on Fuch's Hermeneutics in the Light of Linguistic Philosophy', Scottish Journal of Theology 23 (1970), pp. 437-68; Anthony C. Thiselton, The Use of Philosophical Categories in New Testament Hermeneutics', Churchman 87 (1973), pp. 87-100; Anthony C. Thiselton, 'The Supposed Power of Words in the Biblical Writings', Journal of Theological Studies 25 (1974), pp. 283-99; Anthony C. Thiselton, 'Semantics and New Testament Interpretation', in I. Howard Marshall (ed.), New Testament Interpretation: Essays on the Principles and Methods (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977), pp. 75-104. These and other works eventually contributed to his monumental tome, The Two Horizons. 76. Anthony C. Thiselton, 'Speech-Act Theory and the Claim that God Speaks: Nicholas Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse', Scottish Journal of Theology 50, no. 1 (1997), pp. 97-110. As the title implies, Wolterstorff's work is one exception to this neglect. 77. Briggs, Words in Action. See also Donald D. Evans, The Logic of Self-Involvement: A Philosophical Study of Everyday Language with Special Reference to the Christian Use of Language about God as Creator (London: SCM Press, 1963). Thiselton, himself suggests a hermeneutics of self-involvement. See especially Chapter VIII - 'The Hermeneutics of Selfinvolvement: From Existentialist Models to Speech-act Theory' in Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, pp. 272-312. 78. Briggs, Words in Action, pp. 26-7. 79. Briggs, Words in Action, p. 18 (emphasis added).

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act theory does not provide a universalizing method of interpretation. That is, speech-act theory is a tool. For Wolterstorff it is a tool for supporting the idea of God speaking and therefore has hermeneutical worth when beginning with such a dogmatic conviction. For Briggs and Thiselton it is a tool for investigating specific sorts of texts. Briggs claims Thiselton adheres to the notion that speech-act theory is 'a powerful resource for refining and clarifying the varied tasks of hermeneutics> and providing exegetical insight to those texts having to do with promising, blessing or commanding.80 In his recent discussion on the issues of behind-the-text and in-front-ofthe-text questions Thiselton himself draws lines of comparison between his stance and Vanhoozer's.81 Thiselton's agreement with Vanhoozer centres on the significance of the author and the world behind the text, and, in connection to that, the theological shortcomings of in-front-of-the-text models of interpretation. Most notably, Thiselton writes, 'As Vanhoozer implies, the "world" behind the text has links with whether or how a "control" or "directedness" may be said to characterize a text apart from its perception and reception by successive audiences.'82 Thiselton does, however, claim that the models of interpretation that focus solely on issues in front of the text are not only theologically deficient as Vanhoozer himself asserts, but they represent 'a liberal political overreaction against control on the part of authority figures of status and learning'.83 Over against those who find referential or representational theories of meaning (questions behind the text) flawed, Thiselton asserts that such a claim 'does not follow logically from the proposition that such theories of meaning fail to provide a comprehensive account of the relation between language and meaning'.84 In addition, the overreactions against control 'rest on half-truths'. The sender alone does not complete the communicative act.85 These statements move Thiselton at one and the same time closer and further from Vanhoozer's position. The two hermeneuts share a common 'foe' and utilize a common defence, but Thiselton does not make the jump to an argument for a single determinate meaning. Like Wolterstorff and Briggs, Thiselton maintains that communicative theory is a resource that is not universally applicable to the interpretation of all texts at all times. In many ways he echoes Wolterstorff's 80. Briggs, Words in Action, p. 24 (second emphasis added). 81. See Anthony C. Thiselton, '"Behind" and "in Front o f the Text: Language, Reference and Indeterminacy', in Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene and Karl Moller (ed.), After Pentecost: Language and Biblical Interpretation (ed. Craig Bartholomew; Scripture

and Hermeneutics Series, 2; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2001), pp. 97-120. For a recent attempt to interpret the New Testament as Scripture in terms of behind, in-frontof, and in the text questions see M. M. Gruber, 'Wandern und Wohnen in den Welten des Textes. Das Neue Testament als Heilige Schrift interpretieren', Studien zum Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt 29 (2004), pp. 41-65. 82. Thiselton,'"Behind"...', p. 107. 83. Thiselton, '"Behind"...', p. 107. 84. Thiselton, '"Behind"...', pp. 102-3. 85. Thiselton, '"Behind"...', p. 107.

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criticism concerning the attempt of both sides of the hermeneutical debate to universalize their programmes. Like his student, Briggs, Thiselton finds claims about a determinate meaning applicable only for certain texts. He writes: We cannot conceivably find ways in which a consumer philosophy or consumer hermeneutic of indeterminate meaning open to the shaping of ethnocentric communities may be regarded as compatible with Christian theism, which asserts certain universal truth-claims about 'how things are' (against Rorty). Nevertheless, we must also concede that any approach that limits textual meaning to either a single meaning or a tightly determinate meaning in all genres of Scripture in every case will reduce and emasculate the capacity of Scripture to act transformatively and creatively**3

More pointedly, Thiselton declares that Vanhoozer's Is There Meaning in This Text? too readily asks whether a mode of interpretation is 'theologically constructive or destructive' instead of asking the more appropriate question of when they are such. Vanhoozer's volume, Thiselton writes, 'tends to demote the importance of non-referential, non-representational, language if we resort to suggesting that the grossly over-simple, over-general, exhausted distinction between meaning and significance could serve as a panacea for all hermeneutical headaches by the revered E. D. Hirsch'.87 'As Wittgenstein, once again, urged', Thiselton continues, 'it is in the application of a piece of language in which meaning and understanding, as a communicative act or process, reside; not in some second-level category distanced and demoted into mere connotation or resonance by the term "significance", in contrast to meaning.'88 So while Thiselton's work with speech-act theory has in large part been concentrated on specific types of texts, his account of questions in front of and behind texts suggests several things for the present discussion. Two things in particular arise from the article oft-quoted above. First, he commends the rising work of theorists of reception history or Wirkungsgeschichte.*9 He believes reception history avoids 'the 'local' contextual pragmatism of Rorty and Fish. Nevertheless it challenges the notion that biblical interpretation is nothing but the endlessly wooden replication of a 'single determinate meaning'.90 Wirkungsgeschichte may prove to be a helpful tool for developing a notion of meaning that accounts for perlocutionary effects. It at least offers a way to talk about effects in ways that chastens the 86. Thiselton, * "Behind"...', p. 115 (emphasis added). 87. Thiselton,'"Behind"...', p. 103. 88. Thiselton, '"Behind"...', p. 104. 89. Thiselton notes specifically the work of Hans-Robert Jauss (Thiselton,' "Behind "...', p. 105). See Hans-Robert Jauss, 'Paradigmawechsel in der Literaturwissenschaft', Linguistische Berichte 3 (1969), pp. 44-56; Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970); and Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, (trans. Timothy Bahti; Theory and History of Literature, 2; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). 90. Thiselton, '"Behind"...', p. 105.

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possibilities of making meaning a wax nose. Fowl, as I have noted, has been often criticized for defining theological interpretation in terms of the desires of the reading community. Similarly both Thiselton and Briggs wonder whether Wolterstorff's 'dogmatic' divine-discourse interpretation might give too much leeway to 'an arbitrary religious onlook'.91 Neither Fowl nor Wolterstorff fall prey to the traps of radical sectarianism, but a fuller development of Fowl's reading community and Wolterstorff's dogmatic convictions, which a history of effects could afford, might contribute more fruitfully to a holistic notion of meaning. Second, Thiselton commends Randolph Tate for arguing 'rightly and convincingly that what is needed is an "integrated" approach which takes all three [behind-, in-, and in-front-of-the-text issues] into account, in their distinct but complementary roles'.92 Tate and Thiselton suggest what I am proposing for the three aspects of the total speech situation, namely that though distinct as foci of investigation, the three components are inseparable as elements of meaning. What does the discussion about speech-act theory suggest for the meaning of 'meaning' in theological interpretation? Is one left to decide between meaning as the plain sense meaning of the text (a locutionary act), meaning as use of the author (an illocutionary act) or meaning as the effect on communities of readers (a perlocutionary act)? The short answer is no. Vanhoozer follows a popular path in limiting the scope of speechact theory to the illocutionary act, more specifically to the illocutionary force or intent. He moves beyond some illocution proponents by decidedly equating textual meaning and illocution,93 and then applying this idea to the whole of Scripture. The preceding overview has shown that there are trajectories within the history of speech-act theory itself that cling to the fuller notion of communicative action in its three parts. Likewise, the uses of speech-act theory by Wolterstorff, Thiselton and Briggs demonstrate that even if illocutions are the focus of a speech act investigation, the jump to meaning as the author's intention is not necessarily a universal connection. Fowl too questions the correlation of illocution and meaning, while at the same time touting the benefits of communicative theory. In this way, Fowl's use of speech act theory offers a counter move to Vanhoozer's within the conversation concerning theological interpretation. Fowl, however, has not provided a satisfactory alternative for 'meaning' within the scope of communicative theory. His concentration on the use of a text by the community moves toward an equation of meaning to perlocutionary effects

91. Thiselton, 'Speech-Act Theory', p. 101. See also Briggs, Words in Action, p. 16. 92. Thiselton,'"Behind»...', p. 102 (emphasis added). See Randolph W. Tate, Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated Approach, (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, rev. edn 1997). One may relate this idea of distinct but complementary to the previous discussion of the relationship of first and second hermeneutics. 93. This equation of the illocution and meaning is not Vanhoozer's own. One may find a similar argument in Alston, Illocutionary Acts.

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or in~front-of-the-text questions. This position may be more inclusive but it does not offer a holistic use of the term meaning. The Grammar of Meaning Some of the difficulty with the term 'meaning' involves the nominalization of the verb 'mean5. The grammatical differences between a noun and a verb point to some of the philosophical and theological difficulties of 'meaning', a gerund which has both verbal and nominal qualities. To be sure, structuralists and their kin have analysed the many differences between words in a language system and between words enacted in communication. It is not my intention to make a structuralist argument. Instead I want to make some observations within a rather ordinary account of nouns and verbs and suggest that we might be better served to consider 'meaning' less an abstract concept.94 That is, one would do well to refocus attention toward the verbal qualities of the gerund 'meaning' in a way that the relational implications of it being both nominal and verbal at once are carefully considered. Reification of meaning Frequently, in the past, 'meaning' was understood in exclusively nominal ways. 'Meaning' simply represented some 'thing', which was more often than not the author's internal ruminations. This nominalizing led to a reification of meaning, an almost idolatrous temptation to locate and fix the god of the text or the god behind the text. 'Means', however, requires some grammatical context (usually the supplying of a subject) or alteration ('meaning') in order to stand as a topic of conversation. It is impossible to speak of the verb alone without at least some implicit reference to a subject. 'Running' or 'to run', one could say in an ordinary way, is the moving of legs at a rapid pace in order to transport oneself from one place to another. The noun 'run' is this act of moving and transporting. But, 'runs' at the very least requires the inclusion of a third-person noun or pronoun. One is, therefore, not relieved of the lure of reification with the addition of an agent. If an author means, the logic is that the result is a meaning, an object to recover. Thus, one is inclined to venerate the agent, the creator of this thing or reify the thing produced, 'meaning'. Vanhoozer's strong association of meaning, author and God evidences such an inclination. It may also be the reason Fowl tries to avoid this association at all costs precisely in an attempt to resist the idolatry. Vanhoozer and Fowl move in different directions in order to avoid idolatry, but neither one offers less reifying notions of meaning. Instead Vanhoozer too easily connects 94. See also Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, (ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright; trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe; New York: Harper and Row, 1969).

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'meaning' with God by way of authorial intention and so while trying to avoid the idolatrous element makes an unnecessary link between the life of the agent and the life of God, thus reifying, possibly even deifying the term 'meaning'. Fowl tries to resist the idolatry simply by avoiding the relation between God and meaning entirely. But, surely Christian interpreters are perfectly capable of non-idolatrous descriptions of meaning. Exclusive interests in authorial intentions, additionally, derive from an incomplete understanding of Christian anthropology. The Christian view of selfhood and identity will always mean participation in God's life, which is always 'more than' one can imagine, and certainly more than one can imagine about one's own reasons for doing, thinking, saying, writing anything ('the heart has reasons that reason knows not of, says Pascal). In this sense, the drive for authorial intention as the sole container of the meaning of God's word can itself be deifying and even somewhat idolatrous; the desire to direct interpretation via the human alone leads to determinate readings that are incapable of acknowledging the mystery of God, let alone the mystery of humans. Fowl reminds us of this in his critique of determinate theories of meaning. By this he offers some corrective to Vanhoozer, whose description of authorial intention differs very little from Fowl, but whose equation of it with the meaning of a text moves too closely to the temptation to reify the term. Recovering the verb There are certain verbs that demand extra contextual information more strongly than others. One would seemingly be satisfied to know that David hits a ball, at least in that one could now understand the term 'hits'. One might ask with what, how hard, to whom, or for what reason did David hit the ball, but the verb 'hits' does not seem to demand much more than a subject and object. What of verbs such as 'requests'? It is grammatically correct to state, 'David requests'. This sentence begs for an object, however, and so one is again grammatically correct and now more definite in saying, 'David requests a piece of bread'. It is still not as satisfying as 'David hits the ball' because requesting implies an 'other' to whom the request is made, whereas hitting implies only an object. It satisfies the verb more completely to supply an object or object phrase - 'David requests that Paul pass him a piece of bread.' What then of the verb 'means'? It too requires an object. One would not be satisfied with 'David means'. Even more appropriate to the present discussion, one is not satisfied with 'The Bible means'. With the verbal derivation of 'meaning' in mind, one might be equally unsatisfied with the statement, 'The Bible has meaning.' Too often, the debate has focused on these sorts of statements, and energy has been spent trying to define just what this 'meaning' is. The assumption is that if all can agree on the nominalized term 'meaning* one needs nothing more than the statement at hand, 'The Bible has meaning.' The implication of having arrived at an acceptable

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definition of 'meaning' in this way is that the verb 'means' is more like the verb 'runs' than like the verb 'requests'. One can be as grammatically and logically satisfied with 'The Bible means', as one is with 'David runs.' The context in which the action occurs is less significant. One might, however, notice the way this sort of logic implies the influence of the reified term upon its verbal precursor and so one might suggest a more appropriate logic that the implied object of the verb 'means' is 'meaning'. We have already noted that supplying an object derived from the verb does not get one beyond the temptation to reify the supplied object. The logic suggests that the sentence 'David means that... ' contains David's meaning in the phrase which follows 'that'. Whatever that phrase is is thus perceived in nominal ways and the meaning does not derive but results from the verb 'means'. Attention is paid to the object of the verb and not the verb itself. What if one were to focus on the verb? How would an investigation of how a text means affect how one speaks of meaning} A return to the verbal sense of 'meaning' ought to restrain a reification of the concept. Vanhoozer and Fowl both make restraining moves by drawing attention to verbal aspects of the concept 'meaning'. Vanhoozer appeals to speech-act theory to show how it is an author via a text means something to someone. Fowl appeals to the interpretive interests of the community to explain how a text means something to the reading community. They are both interested in the action, 'means'. They are both interested to observe how language works and how texts mean, but again it is not clear how Vanhoozer avoids the reification, even deification of 'meaning'. Nor is it clear what Fowl really achieves by sidestepping a concept of meaning altogether. I would like to suggest that another approach to speech-act theory might allow us to explain how a text means something by the interdependence of the author, text and reading community.95 A concept of meaning developed by way of felicitous speech acts allows me to maintain the important notion of meaning while at the same time avoiding the temptation to reify it. One might ask, with Fowl, why even hold on to the term 'meaning' at all. In short, because 'meaning' is not a term that can or will easily go away, thus I hope to make some steps toward a concept of the term that will more suitably benefit the conversations of theological interpretation. The idea of happy speech acts lays the groundwork for a holistic concept of meaning that better recognizes not only what counts as meaning but also, as I will emphasize in the next chapter, better corresponds to the relational and incarnational nature of a Trinitarian godhead.

95. I use 'reading community' here instead of 'reader' because, as I noted in the first chapter, an understanding of Scripture as Scripture in the discussions of theological interpretation involve not just a single reader and his/her text, but the larger community of Christian readers that spans geographic and chronological divides.

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The Triadic Nature of the Happy Speech Act James McClendon and James Smith make the point, like Vanhoozer, that 'saying something ... is to be understood in terms of the crucial significance of the speech-act (Austin's "illocutionary act"), rather than in terms of the sentential act or the perlocutionary act'.96 They set out to investigate what conditions must be met for the successful completion of a speech act, what makes a speech act 'happy'; but they also acknowledge that these conditions ought 'to be complex enough to reflect the various aspects of meaning we have suggested and yet allow for the evident capacity of large numbers of people to speak a language'.97 These conditions for a happy speech act are fourfold, though the first set is quickly met in most cases and thus McClendon and Smith establish a triadic set of criteria for felicitous speech acts. The preliminary set, the preconditions^ require the speaker and hearer to know a common language and be free of impediments. Once these preconditions are met it is possible to have a communicative situation in which three sets of conditions are in order. First, primary or conventional conditions require 1) the speaker to issue a sentence (perform a sentential or locutionary act) in the common language and 2) that there is a convention of language to the effect that this sentence is a way of performing a particular speech (illocutionary) act, be it confessing, asserting, requesting, or any number of possible acts. In discussing specifically a confessional speech act - an example I find especially appropriate for the discussion of the interpretation of sacred (confessional?) texts - McClendon and Smith expand on the idea of language conventions and add a third primary condition. The speaker, in issuing a sentence, is required to maintain a certain stance to which the speaker is thereby committed and to which the speaker witnesses. Second, representative or descriptive conditions require the speaker to represent the relevant states of affairs with sufficient exactness to make it possible for the speaker to take up and display the stance. That is, the sentential act must describe or represent the world rightly in order for the primary conditions to be met. McClendon and Smith note, 'the representative condition is just what is required for the fulfillment of the other conditions'.98 One cannot happily request bread if one already possesses the bread. One cannot happily confess God speaks in the words of Scripture if 1) there is no such thing as Scripture; 2) the notion of speaking is not attributable to the God acknowledged in this confession; 3) this God does not exist. The relevant states of affairs vary from one speech act to the next. Finally, the affective or psychological conditions require that 1) the speaker has a certain affect and conveys possession of it to the hearer, 2) the speaker intends to use the language's conventions for a certain speech act and intends the hearer to understand this use, and 3) the hearer takes the speaker to have the requisite affect/intentions, and to have 96. 97. 98.

McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 52. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 52. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 66.

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displayed or witnessed to the stance. This last affective condition is called 'uptake'. Uptake is distinguished from perlocutionary effects in that uptake is the effect, that if lacking, the utterance could not be called a confession, or request, or assertion. McClendon and Smith do note, however, 'that where the normally central features of the illocutionary act are missing or unknown or distorted [or, I would add, difficult to discern], an observer may use what would normally be perlocutionary effects as tests of what sort of speech-act has been performed'.99 In many ways the speech-act structure outlined by McClendon and Smith does not differ from Vanhoozer's notions of speech acts. It is a bit puzzling that Vanhoozer does not engage McClendon and Smith. One would think that the similar subject matter and rather similar approach to speechact theory would have led Vanhoozer to this book that had been around some 24 years before his own, and had even been revised during the time Vanhoozer was likely collecting material for his volume.100 Nevertheless, the holistic understanding of the speech act, especially the ideas of uptake and the involvement of convictional communities is the key difference. Therefore, I suggest the model proposed by McClendon and Smith is a more serviceable use of speech-act theory and offers a structure to account for the central ideas of Vanhoozer and Fowl. Bearing the full weight of 'meaning' The primary, representative and affective conditions 'are not competing rivals for the bearing of meaning in an utterance'.101 One can still say that there is a triadic nature to the speech act itself (primary, representative and affective conditions), much as there is a triadic nature to the total speech situation. Vanhoozer and Fowl in their own ways limit 'meaning' to one or only a few of the conditions. In meeting the intentional condition of the affective set, albeit with the tools of speech-act theory, Vanhoozer believes 99. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, pp. 62-3. 100. Vanhoozer is not the only one to neglect McClendon and Smith's arguments. A rather exhaustive search for reviews of thefirstedition of their book (James Wm. McClendon, Jr. and James M. Smith, Understanding Religious Convictions [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975].) turned up only a small handful. This is not terribly surprising given the relative novelty of speech-act theory in religious and convictional discussions in 1975. It is more surprising that a search for reviews of the revised edition which came out some 20 years later (McClendon and Smith, Convictions) turned up only one review. See John Richard Burkholder, 'Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism', Conrad Grebel Review 13 (1995), pp. 220-7. More surprising still is the scarcity of references to this work in some of the most important books dealing with speech-act theory and theological hermeneutics. Aside from a brief note in Briggs, which amounts to little more than his separation from McClendon and Smith's goals, there is no mention of McClendon and Smith in Thiselton, Wolterstorff, Vanhoozer, or Briggs. Some of the problem could be that the titles of both editions give no real indication of a discussion of speech act issues. 101. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 60. 102. For an example of this typical separation (made famous by K. Stendahl) within a

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one will have discovered the meaning of the text. This is not to say that he does not also consider the whole complex of conditions for a happy speech act. For instance, uptake, while not a part of meaning per se, becomes the responsibility of the hearer to the meaning. Thus, Vanhoozer's notion of 'meaning understood' or 'meaning applied' is analogous to the idea of uptake but it separates the idea from meaning itself. In addition all of the conventional and descriptive conditions are those things that must be in place for the author to mean anything and for the hearer to understand what the author means. In other words conventional and descriptive conditions are prior to meaning and uptake succeeds meaning. He differs from McClendon and Smith by placing the full weight of 'meaning' on one sub-condition of one condition set, namely the intentional element of the affective set. Similar things could be said for Fowl. He seems to place the weight mostly on the hearers' shoulders, to the point where meaning is found in the process of uptake, or more arbitrarily in the many perlocutionary effects. The community in all elements of the speech act In the current discussion among theological interpreters, the role of the community is one of the most disputed topics. On the one hand, there are those like Vanhoozer, who acknowledge the inevitable influence of communities on authors and interpreters, but who limit the role of these communities to something outside of the system of the meaning of Scripture.102 On the other hand, those like Fowl bring the communities into the centre of the discussion and focus on the interpretive interests these communities bring to the table. A more comprehensive look at communities and their placement in the conditions of a felicitous speech act should enervate the dichotomous positions without neglecting the concerns in both factions. In the first place, a typical set of preconditions demonstrates the sharing of a common language and puts people within a broadly construed community. The other conditions outlined in McClendon and Smith contribute more to the integral role of community and are expanded below. Community in primary conditions The primary conditions set up what it means to be the actor of a particular speech act, what it means, one might say, to be a confessor or the author of sacred texts. In the example of a confessor, for instance, the community has some significant bearing in at least three ways. At the very least the community has over time established the conventions for performing the speech act of confessing. To deviate from these communally established conventions one decidedly sectarian setting see F. D. Gayoba, 'The Relationship Between "What It Meant" and "What It Means" and the Task of Theology', Asia Adventist Seminary Studies 5 (2002), pp. 61-71. 103. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 63.

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runs the risk of performing something other than a confession or performing no speech act at all. The community also determines what stances (outlooks, positions) are necessary for a happy speech act. McClendon and Smith understand 'stance' as 'the entertaining (as true and important) of certain alleged facts, the embracing of certain pervasive theories about what matters in life, the hoping of certain hopes, the adoption of certain roles in certain communities, and the undertaking of certain patterns of behaviour with regard to those facts, theories, hopes, and roles'.103 One who issues a sentence intending to perform the act of confessing must act like a confessor. Furthermore, McClendon and Smith write, 'merely and even sincerely to say the words of G [the confession] is not eo ipso to take up or even to understand Aleph's [the confessor's] stance; we must learn what Aleph's stance is from Aleph and his community'.104 Finally, the confessor must witness to this community-moulded stance in a self-involving way. Witnessing, of course, requires a community to whom one can witness. Overall, the community's role in the primary conditions is very much in line with the ideas of genres discussed in Vanhoozer. It is important to note, however, that McClendon and Smith's ways of talking about community-established conventions for a confession and a confessor are more open to the notion of the ongoing life of the community. The fact that the confessor (or the author of a biblical text) and the theological interpreter are a part of the same community that traverses several generations and continues to expound what constitutes a confession (or a word from God) makes the exercise of learning what stance the confessor has taken more complex. Community in representative conditions The representative or descriptive conditions require that the relevant states of affairs be represented with enough exactness to make the taking of the stance possible. McClendon and Smith say about their hypothetical confessor Aleph, 'if this is not the way it is, Aleph's confession is unhappy as it stands'.105 They then ask, 'how are we or how is anyone in this pluralistic world justly to say that these conditions are or are not fulfilled?'106 In order to answer this question without falling prey to the relativist's sectarian approach or the imperialist's 'miracle of transconvictional justification' one will need to consider the historical, hermeneutical and theological issues of the confessional utterance. The historical problems are straightforward enough. For instance, one can verify that there is indeed a set of biblical texts used by communities of Christians. Much can be said about how these texts came to be and their canonical limits, and thus historical issues may forever be debated, but the answer to whether there is a set of biblical texts is yes. 104. 105. 106. 107.

McClendon McClendon McClendon McClendon

and and and and

Smith, Convictions, p. 64. Smith, Convictions, p. 66. Smith, Convictions, p. 66. Smith, Convictions, p. 66.

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A confession (that God speaks through the Bible, let's say) 'requires much more than this'.107 The historical reality of the biblical texts is taken, within the religious context of the confession, to have been a product of divine inspiration, revelation, or appropriation. McClendon and Smith ask whether the 'inner' history of the community can coalesce with the 'outer' history of detached scholarship. They conclude, 'If we can doubt the God of Israel who is said to preside over Israel's self-confession, asking whether Israel's self-understanding is not fallible, we can equally doubt the god of scientific historiography, asking whether that muse does not slumber or sleep.'108 This leads not to a hard scepticism but rather to a 'less dogmatic caution'. The hermeneutical question is whether it makes sense to say that the God of our confession speaks, or the God of Aleph's confession acts in history, which then leads to the theological question of whether this God even exists. The hermeneutical question and theological question go hand in hand, as Vanhoozer himself has strongly argued. The dawn of the modern era brought a new cosmology that made it 'difficult to say how God ... could be said to "act" in the universe'.109 McClendon and Smith find the options of reacting to, accommodating, or accepting the new cosmology unappealing. Instead they suggest a fourth option in which 'once could find new ways to describe God's acting and (therefore) a new way to describe God himself'.110 Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse is in many ways just this sort of exercise. Some might insist that we cannot move forward until we've answered the pivotal question 'Is there a God or not?' McClendon and Smith, while sympathetic to this 'brasstacks' question, respond with a question of their own, 'which is the present condition - true or false?'111 They conclude 'that there is no such journey that ignores the convictional communities to which Aleph, and we, and Brass Tacks, each belong - no nonconvictional road to the truths around which our convictions cluster'.112 Furthermore, To put the point in the terms we have been employing, it seems that for a member of Aleph's community, and certainly for anyone else, happily to make the straightforward assertion that the representative conditions of G are all fulfilled (including the condition that God did in fact lead Israel across the sea [or for us, that God does in fact speak through the biblical texts] and therefore that God does indeed exist) he must issue a speech-act that is itself a confession, or (what comes to the same result) this 'straightforward assertion' can be issued only by one who is in position to make such a confession. And this is not the tautologous point that only those who believe that God exists believe that God exists, but is the rather richer one that such assertions happily occur, can happily occur, only in connection with the rich 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113.

McClendon and McClendon and McClendon and McClendon and McClendon and McClendon and

Smith, Convictions, p. 67. Smith, Convictions, p. 67. Smith, Convictions, p. 68. Smith, Convictions, p. 69. Smith, Convictions, p. 69. Smith, Convictions, p. 70.

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involvement in stance, commitment, and in appropriate affect (yet to be discussed) that makes up the happiness of G.113

Community in affective conditions Finally, the affective conditions, McClendon and Smith assert, 'interlock with the primary and representative ones (so that changing the others may not be as simple as some religious revisionists might suppose)'.114 As an example of this sort of interrelationship, they suggest that the affect of 'awed gratitude' is the normal, expected and conventional attitude for the words of confession. It would be 'abnormal, unexpected, and deviant for the speaker to lack that attitude'.115 Their suggested affect is not as important (though I believe it to be right) as the point that they make about it, namely, 'The evidence for awed gratitude as the appropriate affect of G can be found by consulting the tradition in which we have placed Aleph.'116 The affective conditions not only play a part in the argument of a triadic understanding of the speech act, they also speak to the implied confession of theological interpreters that the biblical texts are Scripture/God's word. Again the words of McClendon and Smith: Aleph cannot happily confess that God led Israel across the Reed Sea unless he is in position to do so. To be in position is among other things to possess the affect we have called grateful awe. Without that attitude neither Aleph nor anyone else can in this sense confess what God has done. The outsider cannot happily make the confession (without becoming in the act an insider to Aleph's confessing community), but the outsider cannot happily deny that God has so led Israel, either; not without meeting the affective conditions for that utterance, which are not the same, but which would themselves require some particular getting into position for felicitous utterance.117

These statements 'remind us that confessing stance and witness together with awed gratitude are not sufficient to make a confession happy'.118 McClendon and Smith's account of speech acts is helpful to the argument I want to make in favour of a triadic understanding of speech acts and meaning. One ought also, however, to heed their caution: 'if it turns out that the representative, primary, and affective elements of our utterances are intertwined as it seems to us they are, then saying what is true [saying what is meaning?] will sometimes be an elusive goal'.119 Nevertheless, I believe a verbal idea of meaning that reflects the full set of conditions of a happy speech act not only addresses the traditional grammatical-historical methods, but also addresses the aims of Vanhoozer and those of Fowl. Their account 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120.

McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 70. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 71. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 71, emphasis added. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, pp. 73-4. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 74. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 78. Halion, 'Speech Act Theory and Deconstruction'.

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considers the conditions for a happy speech act more fully than others and it avoids placing the weight of meaning upon any one condition. In that way their account resonates with some of the voices like Fowl's. Still, their focus on the illocutionary act and its intentional condition address those perspectives more like Vanhoozer's. With its concern for preconditions and descriptive conditions the conception of meaning reflected in McClendon and Smith's account of a happy speech act asks many of the same questions historical critics have been asking for several generation. Construing meaning in ways similar to a happy speech act also accounts for the revitalized concern for authorial intention in Vanhoozer. A happy speech act necessarily considers the intentional aspect of the affective condition set, as well as the idea of the speaker's stance within the primary conditions. Finally, the role of the community of readers is prominent throughout the consideration of a happy speech act. This, along with the affect of the speaker and the notion of uptake within the affective condition sets, accounts for many of the ideas of interpretive interest in Fowl. Conclusions One might wonder at this point if the appeal to the approach of McClendon and Smith, with its concentration on the illocutionary act, has deviated from the central point of this chapter - 'meaning' is a term that is best understood within the triadic interrelationship of the total speech situation. On the contrary, McClendon and Smith have offered an approach to the speech act and its felicity that relates on the level of the illocutionary act what I propose on the larger level of the total speech situation. I accept the earlier idea of Halion that the separation of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts is a matter of empirical research of the total speech situation. In a similar way Austin's examination of the speech act indicates that it 4is not an act made up of various components which fit together to constitute the total speech act but rather an act of many dimensions which cannot ultimately be sharply divided from one another9.120 That being the case, McClendon and Smith offer, to my mind, the best treatment of a holistic notion of the speech act that reflects a triadic notion of the total speech situation. The concepts of meaning at work in Vanhoozer and Fowl, I have repeatedly asserted, establish a false contrary; and yet a combination of their concepts does not adequately take full account of the triadicity of meaning in the total speech situation. Left alone the divergent notions of meaning in Fowl and Vanhoozer would present potential theological interpreters with two broad options. One could take up the suggestions of one or the other and advance as if those selecting the alternative path are doing something other than theological interpretation. Or, one could forge ahead by creating a third approach that transforms both. The purpose of this chapter is to 121. 'The Society of Scriptural Reasoning: The Rules of Scriptural Reasoning', The

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anticipate a way in which one may begin to re-envision the concept of meaning so that Fowl and Vanhoozer, and those attracted to their positions, may become engaged in a more fruitful conversation with one another. How would their respective programmes look if a more complex notion of meaning were at play? Could they both be understood to contribute to the same emerging field of theological interpretation if meanings of texts were conceived triadically? Simply put, this chapter suggests that neither of the theological interpreters conceive of meaning wrongly, just incompletely. One of the worries in this argument for triadic meaning as a way forward for theological interpretation is that it will appear to be a proposal for a synthesis of Fowl's and Vanhoozer's concepts of meaning. Peter Ochs warns us that 'the logic of the Hegelian dialectic ... continually reiterates the logic of contrariety' and 'should be exposed for what it is: a reassertion of the logic of modernity in a more subtle form'.121 'From the Scholastics on', Ochs claims, 'theological and religious discourses display a comparable dialectic when complements are made contraries'.122 The differences between competing concepts of meaning, therefore, need not be covered up, unnaturally blended, or transcended; instead the apparent contraries may be transformed into participants in an ongoing dialogue which proceeds with a triadic understanding of how the Bible means. The next chapter will explore ways in which this dialogue may itself be construed as theological interpretation and how the interrelationship of the elements of the total speech situation may be conceived as meaning.

Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 2 (May 2002), no pages. Cited 12 February 2005; online: http:// etext.virginia.edu/journals/ssr/issues/volume2/numberl/ssr02-01-e01.html This article was originally a paper presented at the annual meeting of The Society of Scriptural Reasoning, November, 1999. 122. Ochs, 'The Society of Scriptural Reasoning', n.p.

Chapter 5

Mediation and Conversation The movement of the present study, to this point, has focused on the concept of meaning in two divergent perspectives of theological interpretation of Scripture and it has considered an alternative use of speech-act theory in order to propose a use of the term 'meaning' that could allow these two seemingly contradictory views to be seen as complementary contributions to a larger whole. The results of this investigation open up ways in which theological interpreters might begin to show an interest in both the role of Scripture in the Christian reading community and the role of the community in the reading of Christian Scripture. In this final chapter, I briefly recount the development of my argument and more importantly, I offer new images for 'meaning' and 'theological interpretation' that draw upon the holistic notions called for and developed in the previous chapters. Quite simply, I pull together the resources of the preceding discussion to suggest a concept of meaning with triadic, even Trinitarian, semblance and thus to regard theological interpretation in interrelational terms as a conversation.1 Removing the discussion Chapter one described the re-emergence of theological interpretation as springing from renewed interests in the Scripture qua Scripture and in the role of the Christian community in one's understanding of the meaning of Scripture. These interests move against the 'modern' tendencies to read the Bible in a wholly objective way like any other text and sheltered from the Christian community within which most interpreters with theological interests are located. While the interests in Scripture and community have revitalized theological interpretation and the discussion of scriptural meaning, they have also been the cause for much disagreement. Both one's perspective about Scripture as Scripture and one's conviction about the role of the community in a concept of meaning have separated theological interpreters from one another. On the one hand are those who begin with a pragmatic conviction about 1. For an encompassing account of the epistemological significance of Trinity as the primary criterion for truth see Bruce Marshall, Trinity and Truth (ed. Colin Gunton and Daniel W. Hardy; Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine, 3; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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Scripture and thus conceive of meaning as something that is created during interpretation. On the other hand are those who begin with an ontological conviction about Scripture as Scripture and so conceive of meaning as something that exists prior to the community's reading of the text. Meaning is something excavated in the interpretive process. The different starting points affect the development of theological interpretation and ultimately lead to divergent ideas about what theological interpretation is or should be. Chapters 2 and 3 describe two contrasting representatives of theological interpretation, focusing particularly on the respective ideas about meaning and how these ideas affect the descriptions and practices of theological interpretation. In Chapter 2, I note that Fowl's conception of theological interpretation began with a critique of the very conceptualization of meaning as an overly abstract notion that could be used to limit the use of the text by the Christian reading community. As one loosely related to the pragmatic stance described in Chapter 1, Fowl develops a notion of theological interpretation which begins with an understanding of biblical texts functioning as Scripture because of the very identity of the Christian community that reads them. Since the Christian community is variegated and the interests and aims of reading are multi-faceted, the prevailing ideas of meaning are too stifling and impractical as far as the actual aims of reading go. Fowl thus follows Jeffrey Stout in calling for a dismissal of concepts of meaning as factors that determine what an interpretive community might do with its sacred texts. Part of the argument in Chapter 2, however, was to make the counterclaim that one cannot do without a concept of meaning despite all attempts to the contrary. Even the challenge to set aside meaning is itself a working concept of meaning. With this in mind, I described Fowl's concept of meaning of Scripture as communally and pragmatically founded. The resulting shape of theological interpretation was one formed by vigilance on the part of the community to shape virtuous readers. Theological interpretation, in Fowl's description, took on many elements of an ethical reading. Fowl's ideas raise several questions. Those who fear that his approach allows for manipulation of texts to fit whatever the reading community desires level the most disapproving critique.2 This is a legitimate fear, but one that a fuller notion of meaning might assuage, especially as it understands the reading community in more dynamic ways and opens up the bi-directional influence between Scripture and theology in a manner that is suggested but undeveloped in Fowl's own work. What one gets from Fowl is a healthy critique of overly deterministic models of interpretation that are based on excessively objective ideas about meaning. One also realizes in Fowl's work the important role the community's interests play in the practice of interpretation, and the important need there is for developing Christ-like readers of the Scripture. What is needed, however, is a model of meaning that might incorporate elements of his critique of overly objective models and at the same time strengthen the elements of 2.

See again Snodgrass, *Reading to Hear', pp. 1-32.

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communitarianism by pulling them into the framework of a model of meaning itself. Indeed, a holistic notion of meaning informed by the ideas of happy speech acts and total speech situations not only supports Fowl's notion of communal influence and interests, but also gives shape to the community itself. Chapter 3 described an approach to theological interpretation that holds to a view of Scripture heavily regulated by ontology. Vanhoozer places more emphasis on the idea that meaning was something to be found in the text. He develops an argument with the resources of communicative theory that attempts to revitalize the anti-postmodern notion that meaning is authorial intention. His philosophical ground in speech-act theory and his theological image of Trinity allow him to move away from 'a "Cartesian methodology"of psychological probing into the private subjective consciousness', and toward an understanding of 'the author as communicative agent'.3 This is all well and good, but Vanhoozer's perception of the relativistic loss of meaning in critiques of conceptualism generally and postmodern concepts of meaning in particular causes him to argue for his own concept of meaning that bogs down conversation by limiting the philosophical and theological possibilities for the location of meaning to one place or the other. Vanhoozer's concept of meaning, though helpful for a better understanding of authorial intention, is too caught up in a dichotomizing debate, and so even the constructive arguments suffer from a reactionary stance and only perpetuate the dyadic modes of thought I argue theological interpretation must overcome if it is to be theologically fruitful. In short, the creative parts of Vanhoozer's arguments are valuable but the dualistic residue found in them tarnishes the overriding concept of meaning governing these elements. In Vanhoozer one finds a necessary focus on 'meaning', but his emphasis stems from the perceived need to argue against atheological, destructive approaches that allow for haphazard things to be done with the text to suit any whimsical interest. Rather than a concept of meaning formulated as a reaction to such destructive models, I want to argue that the significance of 'meaning' comes from the need to get past the modes of thinking that cultivate these arguments in the first place. If we could extract 'either/or' language at some critical junctures in Vanhoozer's work, I believe we would have the resources for a concept of meaning that is more theologically constructive and would contribute to genuinely theological readings by more closely reflecting the abundance of God and God's Word. I sympathize with Vanhoozer's concern for discouraging relativistic approaches to Scripture, but an argument about authorial intention that at the end of the day reduces the discussion about meaning to the same two options - either authorial intention or readers' interests - does not effectively address the interplay of intentions and interests that takes place when people read most texts, 3. Scott A. Blue, 'Meaning, Intention, and Application: Speech Act Theory in the Hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer', Trinity Journal 23, no. 2 (2002), pp. 161-84 (166).

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especially those texts they deem sacred. When we speak of the 'meaning of Scripture', it diminishes the fullness and effectiveness of these sacred texts in the life of the reading community to consider the term 'meaning' as a placeholder for 'authorial intention' or 'readers' interests'. I believe we need a model of scriptural meaning that affirms both intentions and interests but is not beholden to either image. Admittedly this sort of model will not satisfy those who insist on thinking about meaning in dyadic ways. A convincing argument against dyadic models would need to begin at a deeper philosophical level than the present work plumbs. I acknowledge these dyadic positions and the many helpful ideas coming from them, but I do not believe we have to let their questions dictate the way we conceive meaning. At the end of both Chapters 2 and 3,1 raised questions about the concept of meaning and the shape of theological interpretation implied by each programme. The effect of this questioning called for a better conceptualization of the terms 'meaning' and 'theological interpretation'. I suggested that practitioners of the emerging discipline of theological interpretation could more clearly define their discipline if they began to work with a concept of meaning that neither excludes Vanhoozer's ontologically regulated view of meaning, nor Fowl's pragmatic one. Thus, in Chapter 4 we began the process of developing a richer conception of 'meaning' for theological interpretation. There I argued that a fuller notion of meaning might be found in a holistic approach to speech act theory. On the level of the speech act, James McClendon and James Smith suggest a 'happy' speech act is constituted by the interrelatedness of conventional, referential and affective conditions. Contra Vanhoozer, discerning communicative intent alone does not make a happy speech act nor does it uncover 'meaning'. McClendon's and Smith's approach to speech acts, however, is more communally embodied by calling attention to the way uptake and convictional communities play a crucial part in the speech act's felicity.4 In this way, when all conditions of a speech act (including those resting with the reading community) are met, a text, as a speech act, means. Or, one may say a text 'has meaning', though I prefer to emphasize the verbal action of 'means' in order to avoid for the moment the tendency to think of 'meaning' as an object that is hermetically sealed in a text. Most importantly, I suggest that the interrelatedness found in the happy speech act may also play out on the level of the total speech situation, where locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects are at play. Despite the fruitful efforts of Vanhoozer and Fowl, an interrelated, holistic account of the total speech situation argues against either an illocutionary force or a perlocutionary effect as a suitable residence for meaning. In short, I conclude in the previous chapter that neither Vanhoozer nor Fowl offer a concept of meaning that harmonizes well with either a text as a happy speech act or Scripture as a total speech situation. When 'meaning' is not limited to any one aspect of the speech act or total speech situation it no longer has to be 4. See the previous chapter for a brief description of a happy speech act and uptake's role in it.

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synonymous with either intention on the one hand or effect on the other, but can be regarded as a full-bodied concept in its own right. Put more succinctly, the movement of the argument in this book has been one of description, questioning and re-description. This structure leads me to five evocative observations. 1) Theological Interpretation as a distinct practice within wider biblical and theological studies has renewed vigour as an effect of deeper and more serious reflection on Scripture as Scripture within and for the Christian reading community. This has in turn revitalized the discussion of meaning. 2) Fowl and Vanhoozer, representative theological interpreters, propose ideations of Theological Interpretation based on implicit or explicit conceptions of meaning, which differ according to their understanding of Scripture and the role of the reading community. 3) Theological Interpretation will remain a somewhat nebulous discipline as long as these opposing conceptions of meaning continue to reinforce dyadic modes of thinking. 4) There are resources for a fuller conception of the term 'meaning;' resources that incorporate the elements of a happy speech act and, even more, account for the triadic aspect of the total speech situation. 5) A complete notion of meaning should transform the limited conception of meaning found in Vanhoozer by opening up his determinate idea of meaning to the unavoidable influence of the Christian community, and enrich Fowl's description of theological interpretation with its ostensibly absent conception of meaning. Staying with problems of meaning through a more dynamically triadic view of it will enable Theological Interpretation to become more dialogical and less dichotomous, more attentive to the way in which sacred texts and their interpreters mediate between God and human communities.

Meaning as Mediation I am, thus, arguing for the meaning of Scripture, The term 'meaning', however, need not be a placeholder for either 'intention' or 'interest'. If theological interpreters must have a synonym for 'meaning' I suggest they develop one that mirrors the incorporation of propositions, intentions, uptake, effects, interests, aims and all of what it takes to make a happy speech act. Better still, if the interrelational character of the felicitous speech act is active as well on the level of a total speech situation, 'meaning' should account for the full dynamic of the communicative process. The meaning of Scripture is a complex reality of the entire dialogue Christians understand is taking place within their community, through their texts, and with their God. I suggest an image of meaning as 'mediation';5 specifically, the meaning of Scripture may be imagined as the mediation of truth. In one very important 5. The OED lists the following definitions in its third verb entry for 'mean': *1. To mediate.' Insomuch as etymologies, like genealogies, display how the meaning of words grow with use, I call attention to the fact that 'meaning as mediation', though not new, does suggest one fruitful direction for the rehabilitation of meaning in the theological interpretation of Scripture.

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theological sense, mediation can be understood as God mediating truth through the whole ecclesial process of interpreting Scripture over time in reading communities. God here is the subject; truth is the object; and the meaning of Scripture is fleshed out in a rich, narratival sense as what is 'in-between'. Mediation, in this way, acknowledges more than one side of communication. It acknowledges the necessity of valuing the whole communicative action with God as the communicator of truth. But it also acknowledges the need for the readers' uptake of God's message and the need for a communal context in which not only uptake is possible but perlocutionary effects are enacted. Mediation is not any one thing discovered or created at any one point in time. The meaning of Scripture is the consequence of a total communicative situation that is enacted over time and in a community that is still itself involved in this communicative situation. That means that Scripture does not have a mediating function, or we could even say Scripture does not have meaning without the ecclesial process of interpretation in reading communities.6 Meaning as mediation is admittedly less of a definitive image than intentions (whether psychological or communicative) or interests (whether of the individual or community). It is more difficult to pinpoint mediation in a particular location than it is to locate intentions with authors and interests with readers. One could presumably employ different interpretive tools and uncover the author's communicative intention or the text's narrative world or the reader's personal interests. The history of biblical interpretation attests to such endeavours. There is no methodological tool for locating mediation. The very language of 'location' is the trouble. It is true, we cannot speak of mediation without a speaker, message and audience, but mediation imagines a more complex network of influence that is equally dependent on all elements and cannot be 'uncovered' or 'shaped' by the employment of a specific and preferred critical method. The idea of a variety of methods corresponds with the ideas of both Vanhoozer and Fowl, but with them methodological variety is called for because either the author's communicative intent is best discerned through various methods or because readers' interests vary in different situations. A notion of meaning as mediation, which emerges when a triadic nature is developed, enlivens once again the idea of conversation, without isolating the term with one aspect of that conversation. In the previous chapter and thus far in this chapter, I have referred to triadic in rather ambiguous ways. 'Triadic', for the most part, has been used as a synonym for 'holistic', which has been a term used more to capture what meaning is not - meaning is not either the communicative intent of the author or the reading interests of the community; it is not just a matter found behind the text, or in the text, or in front of the text; it is not an issue of meeting only the primary, descriptive or affective conditions of a happy speech act; it is 6. In some sense this is a very Barthian claim I am making. It is not one I explore any further than to imply that we do not have direct access to God, or Christ, or even Scripture as the Word of God, but we have access through the Church, and the Church gives us mediated access to Scripture, and this gives us access to who Jesus Christ is, who gives us mediated access to who God is.

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not solely a locutionary, illocutionary or perlocutionary aspect of the speech situation. 'Triadic' can, however, be understood to reflect the theological reality of the Trinitarian nature of God as Father, Son and Spirit. If we follow Vanhoozer by drawing points of contact between God and meaning and we follow both Vanhoozer and Fowl in turning to theology for categories for theological interpretation, then careful assessment of the Trinitarian imagery inherent in the concept of meaning is more 'theo'logical than the term 'holism' alone involves. Trinitarian imagery can suggest the kinds of categories with which the ecclesial process has used to read Scripture. Thus, I am indirectly suggesting, by the use of 'triadic', how the theological interpreter might look to theology once again to solve textual and philosophical problems about 'meaning'. The Christian doctrine of God as triune might better resource the theological turn in discussions of scriptural meaning. Describing meaning in triadic terms then hopefully evokes an image of meaning that is more than a philosophically abstract category. The image of mediation or that which is 'in between', likewise, might suggest the ideas of relationality commonly associated with the Trinity. To treat meaning theologically then, we can read all relationality in the light of triune relationality. With this idea of relationality, we can no more claim 'meaning' to be solely a matter of an illocutionary force than we can claim that God is Father, Son or Spirit alone. To be more explicit about the triadicity of meaning, I suggest, as we theological interpreters speak of 'meaning' of Scripture, we invoke a concept such as mediation that can reflect the many-in-one ideas of the felicitous speech act and the total speech situation, and reason about this in a Trinitarian way. I also suggest, as we consider ourselves to be doing an activity of theological interpretation, that we speak less of discovering what is hidden or creating what is not, and more of participating in something that manifests itself only in the interplay between author, text and reader, in the total speech situation, in the mediation of God's truth. Meaning is more than something discovered or created at the convergence of horizons. Meaning occurs in complex conversations over time. Theological Interpretation is just that sort of conversation. Theological Interpretation as Conversation In the recently published Dictionary for the Theological Interpretation of the Bible, Vanhoozer, as its general editor asks, in the introduction, 'What is Theological Interpretation of the Bible?'7 Since the dictionary is 7. The sub-title to the introduction poses this question. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Introduction to Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005), 19-25. Interestingly, the working title for this volume was Dictionary for the Theological Interpretation of Scripture. The introduction made available to me before publication was entitled 'What is the Theological Interpretation of Scripture?' and referred to the larger volume as DTIS. The change from 'Scripture' to 'the Bible' is slight but telling. 'Bible' is a term that, to me, implies less of an embedded-ness of the text in a community of faith that endears the text as 'Scripture'.

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meant to appeal to a broad audience, Vanhoozer does not promote just his approach to theological interpretation. After first describing what theological interpretation is not, he moves on to describe what it is. There is little to question in his descriptions. In fact the dictionary has real potential to give better shape to theological interpretation as a whole, and for that it is highly commended. What is fascinating about this brief introduction for the purposes of the present issue is the section that begins with 'The theological interpretation of Scripture names a broad ecclesial concern that embraces a number of academic approaches.'8 Beneath this heading Vanhoozer acknowledges that 'no one model of theological interpretation of Scripture holds sway in the church',9 and 'there is more than one way of pursuing an interest in theological criticism'.10 He then describes three distinct emphases, saying they are 'more complementary than contradictory'.11 The first emphasis is closest to his own, namely the 'interest in divine authorship, in the God-world relation "behind" the text as it were'.12 In this approach to theological interpretation, 'Theological assumptions about God's involvement with the production of Scripture play an important role in how interpreters take or construe the text and in how they deal with thematic developments as well as apparent historical inconsistencies.'13 The second approach to theological interpretation 'focuses on the final form of the text rather than on questions of human or divine authorship'.14 In their own ways narrative and canonical interpreters 'seek to interpret the Bible on its own terms'.15 Vanhoozer describes this second approach as one in which the 'God-world relation as depicted in the text thus becomes the framework for understanding today's world too'. 16 Finally, the third approach identifies 'the theologically significant moment with the reading and reception of the Bible in the believing community today'.17 He points to Fowl in particular as one who sees the theological significance of biblical interpretation as 'a function of the aims and interests of the community of readers for which the Bible is "Scripture"'.18 This approach has a 'primary concern with the outcome of biblical interpretation'.19 In short, Vanhoozer describes approaches to theological interpretation that begin with the divine author ('God's involvement with the production of Scripture'), the sacred 8. Vanhoozer DTIB, p. 22. 9. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 22. 10. Vanhoozer, DTIB, pp. 22-3. 11. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23. The language of complementarity is resonant with the argument put forward in the present work. 12. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23. 13. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23. 14. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23. 15. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23. 16. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23. 17. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23. 18. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23. 19. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 23.

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text ('God-world relation as depicted in the text') and the interested readers ('aims and interests for the community of readers'). In broad terms Vanhoozer describes theological interpretation as 'biblical interpretation oriented to the knowledge of God'.20 Theological interpretation and knowing God are 'intellectual, imaginative, and spiritual' exercises, he says.21 It is especially interesting, however, that 'meaning' is nowhere in the discussion.22 It appears that Vanhoozer tacitly accepts Fowl's challenge to be more clear about what it is he is interested in and thus states quite clearly that his own approach to theological interpretation displays an interest in authorial intention. I would like to think, however, that he was in fact, with this broader discussion, describing the very complexity of theological 'meaning'. Like knowing God, knowing the meaning of Scripture is something that does not come upon the reader at the point of discerning the communicative intent; meaning is not something that appears with the depiction of the God-world relation in the text; meaning is not something that the Church constructs in the outcome of biblical reading. Meaning, I am suggesting, and I think Vanhoozer himself may allow for, arises from all 'approaches' to theological interpretation. It is as Vanhoozer states, 'to know the triune God by participating in the triune life, in the triune mission to creation'.13 The meaning of Scripture is the God's mediation of truth to particular communities in the interpretive practices of these communities over time. Although meaning as mediation cannot be surely fixed, it does not permit one to have free reign over the text. The meaning of the text is entwined in a governing matrix that includes the author's communicative intent as well as the text's reception over time. Vanhoozer's description of the 'approaches to theological interpretation' is better seen as a description of the various aspects of the vital conversation that is theological interpretation and in which Scripture's meaning is made manifest. The Future of Theological Interpretation The future of theological interpretation as a discipline whose direction is set by Trinitarian imagery and whose development is a matter for the academy and the Church depends on a re-description of its character and a re-imagination of the concept of meaning which will prevail within it.

20. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 24. 21. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 24. 22. Vanhoozer makes a similar move away from a defence of the term 'meaning' in 'Body-Piercing, the Natural Sense and the Task of Theological Interpretation: A Hermeneutical Homily on John 19:34', in First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (repr. from Ex Auditu 16 (2000), pp. 1-30, Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), pp. 275-308. 23. Vanhoozer, DTIB, p. 24.

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Dyadic Models and Modern Tendencies If theological interpretation continues to exist in the way it does now, it would remain an ambiguous field comprising 'three distinct emphases', which help 'to distinguish types of theological interpretation'.24 With this outlook, the idea of 'theological interpretation' would often be the focus of dictionaries, conferences and books, wherein these various types could be demonstrated and contend for primacy. I am afraid without a more encompassing image of the discipline the conversations will again digress into a discussion of what theological interpretation is, how other approaches are deficient, where meaning is located and how one can or cannot get to it.25 Eventually theological interpreters would have to agree on the location of meaning in one place and one time or dismiss meaning altogether before they could proceed with the matter of theological interpretation. Such is often the case with our two representatives. Despite the cooperative efforts of Vanhoozer, Fowl and others, the various advocates of the types of theological interpretation eventually claim their way to be the most valid form of theological interpretation and the ways of others to be completely mistaken, partially flawed, or at best secondary contributions. This is the same phenomenon one can observe between and within the larger areas of biblical and theological studies.26 This disputatious future for theological interpretation is grounded in what I believe to be dyadic (either/or) modes of thinking. Ironically, arguments against these dyadic perspectives have been catalysts for the re-emergence of theological interpretation. Influenced by these arguments, I characterize the sort of theological interpretation that is beholden to dyadic models as reparative of these models but not free from their constraints. Current descriptions of 'modernity' illustrate the idea of 'dyadic' models to which I am speaking.27 Nancey Murphy and James McClendon map 24. Vanhoozer, DTIBy p. 23 (emphasis added). One should also consider John Riches' 1993 inaugural lecture at the University of Glasgow published as 'A Future for New Testament Theology?', Journal of Literature and Theology 8, no. 4 (1994), pp. 343-53. While his title states a focus on New Testament Theology the content of his lecture deals more with the right of theological interpretation to participate in the dialogue of New Testament studies. Unfortunately Riches only considers traditional and radical contemporary approaches and so propagates the fatigued descriptions of theological interpretation. 25. See, for example, Peter Addinall's earlier connection of theological interpretation to biblical history in 'The Bible and History', Expository Times 102 (August 1991), pp. 328-32. 26. The chasms between various branches of biblical studies are well documented. As I noted in Chapter 1, the gap between biblical studies and systematic theology has also become a growing concern. Indeed, the revitalization of theological interpretation has come about in part from those who are attempting to bridge that gap. See especially the many chapters of Green and Turner, Between Two Horizons. For a review of the issue within Catholic biblical scholarship see Sean Freyne, 'The Bible and Theology: An Unresolved Tension', in Christoph Theobald and Dietmar Mieth (eds), Unanswered Questions (Concilium 1; London: SCM Press; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), pp. 15-20. 27. See, for example, Joel B. Green, 'Modernity, History and the Theological Interpretation of the Bible', Scottish Journal of Theology 54, no. 1 (2001), pp. 308-29.

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modern dualities along three separate but related axes.28 A brief look at the three axes will help describe the 'modern' dyadic ways of thinking that still too often dominate discussion about theological interpretation and therefore perpetuate a contentious spirit among its practitioners. 1) The epistemological axis comprises optimistic foundationalism on the one end and pessimistic scepticism on the other. Either 'knowledge can be justified only by finding indubitable "foundational" beliefs upon which it can be constructed', or it cannot.29 2) The linguistic axis comprises representative referentialism at one end and emotive expressivism at the other. Language gains meaning by representing the objects or facts to which it refers, while non-factual discourse must be deemed expressivist.30 3) Individualism and collectivism represent the opposite sides of the societal or metaphysical axis. Either the individual has ontological priority or there is some sort of generic, ideal society that governs ideas of being. In short, Murphy and McClendon characterize 'modern' thought as that which can be mapped along the three interdependent axes. 'Postmodern' thought, thus, is that which has 'managed to transcend all three of these polarities or debates, but without simply returning to premodern modes of thought',31 Essentially, Murphy herself claims, '(Anglo-American) postmodernity is at its root a rejection of reductionism in all its forms.'32 My argument for a holistic/triadic concept of 'meaning' thus falls into the postmodern category in that I am rejecting the reduction of 'meaning' to either authorial intention or readerly interests. Vanhoozer's work, while 'postmodern' in several ways, remains bound to the dichotomy of the metaphysical axis. This is evidenced most strongly by the primacy of the 'metaphysics of meaning'. One can recall that Is There For a brief exploration of the way modem exegetical programmes of interpretation were apologetic formulations in the context of modern academic sciences see Timo Eskola, 'An Era of Apologetical Hermeneutics - Detecting a Neo-Kantian Paradigm of Biblical Interpretation', Evangelical Quarterly 68, no. 4 (1996), pp. 329-44. 28. I am not in favour of painting 'moderns' and 'postmoderns' with broad strokes, but the language has become commonplace in today's discussions. I think the continued use of caricatures maintains a dichotomy not only in the academy but also in the hermeneutical concepts being aired. This dichotomy of concepts is the very issue I am addressing in this work. I am strongly influenced by Murphy and McClendon in the way I understand what is modern and postmodern. I have used the term 'dyadic' to coordinate with the 'either/ or' language of modernity. See Murphy and McClendon, 'Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies', pp. 191-214. One should also note the project of the Society of Scriptural Reasoning (SSR) whose work Peter Ochs describes in a brief online article as interrupting 'a dialectical pattern of enquiry that encourages the mutual exclusion of two poles of modern religious reasoning' (Ochs, 'The Society of Scriptural Reasoning', n.p.). 29. Murphy and McClendon, 'Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies', p. 192. 30. Murphy and McClendon note the strong ties between representational theories of language and epistemological foundationalism. Vanhoozer's description of modernity's turn to the subject and postmodernity's turn away from it reflects many of the same ideas. See Kevin J. Vanhoozer, 'Language, Literature, Hermeneutics', pp. 15-50. 31. Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 8. 32. Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 8.

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a Meaning? is structured in two halves of three parts each. The first half describes the metaphysical, epistemological and ethical crises of textual interpretation (in that order), and the second half builds an argument to repair these three crises. Vanhoozer is able to explore 'postmodern' resources to support a thoroughly 'modern' metaphysical stance. Once the metaphysical position has been established the epistemological and ethical dimensions fall into place. Interestingly, Murphy and McClendon note a different order of influence, stating, 'Thus escape from either the modern epistemological or linguistic axis calls for a corresponding detachment from the metaphysical axis as well.'33 So while Vanhoozer sees one's metaphysical stance driving the epistemological and ethical directions one takes, Murphy and McClendon call attention to how a metaphysical position is disrupted by epistemological or linguistic moves. This observation is not particularly significant other than to draw attention to tensions in Vanhoozer's general argument and, indeed, to tensions inherent in any argument that places a large weight on any one side of a dyadic modern axis. That is, Vanhoozer is so bound to his metaphysical position that even when he offers creative ways to consider ethical and linguistic issues he must rein them in to his metaphysical (and resulting epistemological) constructs. He does not break free of the epistemological or metaphysical dualities and thus ultimately fails to set himself free of the representative-expressive dyads of the linguistic axis.34 Vanhoozer's opponents are thus not really postmodern at all but rather arch-moderns who have not departed from the modern axes; they have simply extended the opposite end from where he is positioned. What drives Vanhoozer's argument for meaning is the perceived need for the author's ontological priority and the metaphysical beliefs attached to it. He takes on opponents who extend the metaphysical axis too far in the other direction and thus keeps the discussion within the dyadic, modernistic plane. Vanhoozer's turn to communicative theory is promising and is one of the areas where theological interpreters might begin to find ways past the continued dyadic forms of thought. He would echo the idea that speech-act theory destroys the distinction between the referential and the expressive (the linguistic axis). But, if Vanhoozer wants to follow the departure from the modern linguistic axis fully it will require also exploring implications for moving away from modern metaphysical and epistemological debates. He seems to get stuck by tying meaning to illocutionary intents, which to him adhere to his metaphysical presuppositions. I doubt Vanhoozer would follow Murphy and McClendon too far when they conclude, 'So according to Austin language ordinarily relates to the world, to the deeds and attitudes and standpoints of the speaker and hearer, and to the employed linguistic conventions of the community. None of these relations can be ignored, none made the exclusive focus in 33. Murphy and McClendon, 'Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies', p. 205. 34. I suggest Vanhoozer can be described in the same way Murphy and McClendon describe Cox - postmodern by one standard, but thoroughly modern by others (205).

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accounting for the meaning (or reckoning the success) of the utterance.'35 Vanhoozer uses a tool that could potentially move the discussion off of the axes characterized by opposing dichotomies and instead argues against overextension of these axes, not for moving beyond them altogether. Fowl, on the other hand, more successfully escapes the confines of the dualistic 'modern' axes. This is most clearly seen in his argument for an underdetermined approach to interpretation. Meaning, however, gets left behind in the flight.36 Fowl invites the dyadic argument back in by not developing a theory of meaning that coordinates with his less dyadic approaches to metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. He perpetuates a dyadic idea that either meaning is a determinate object or it is nothing at all by tending toward the latter. Vanhoozer desperately tries to provide a way to keep meaning as authorial intention; Fowl desperately wants to get past the whole discussion of meaning. The holistic notion of meaning as mediation may at first glance mirror Fowl more than Vanhoozer. However, unlike Fowl, I am not willing to claim that the debate about 'meaning' is simply a vestige of modern times gone by. I believe 'meaning' is a term that has potential usefulness in this era of theological renewal in scriptural interpretation and in any case, it is a term that is unlikely to fall out of common usage even amongst theological interpreters of Scripture. Thus I make the following challenges to Fowl and Vanhoozer. To Fowl, I suggest that what he is claiming about reading interests, community vigilance and virtuous habits are in fact compatible with a transformed theory of meaning as mediation. It may not seem important to maintain use of this term, but in fact it is. 'Meaning' understood in this way is a term that allows Fowl to speak of this complex of interests, vigilance and virtuosity in a singular sort of way. This singularity is important for the ongoing conversation that is needed for the very life of the community upon which he claims theological interpretation to be centred. Fowl's problem with meaning is a problem with dyadic theories of meaning. And fair enough, these are problematic. But he need not give up on the problem. Staying with problems of theological interpretation will also require staying with meaning. To Vanhoozer, I suggest the tangible practice he describes for theological interpretation actually plays into a fuller notion of meaning than he proposes. The idea that we first determine what is meaning and then we determine how best to go about discovering it separates determinate meaning from the reading of the texts. These two activities are not separable. It appears that Vanhoozer must fight for this separation because he has taken on archmoderns who are themselves fighting for the separation for destructive reasons. Vanhoozer's problem with those more communitarian and pragmatic 35. Murphy and McClendon, 'Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies', p. 202 (emphasis added). 36. As I noted in Chapter 2, Fowl's notion of underdetermined interpretation 'avoids using a theory of meaning'. See Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 10.

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interpreters like Fowl is that they look too much like relativists. But they only look that way because they need to critique a dyadic theory of meaning that needs to be critiqued, and, frankly, one that Vanhoozer is still defending. Indeed, I believe, Vanhoozer's appeal to speech-act theory may open up doors for a reconception of meaning that is not captive to the either/or thinking established by his struggle with the overly modern deconstructors. Triadic Models, Postmodern Tendencies and Historical Criticism Theological interpreters must continue to listen to and learn from the various dyad-driven arguments for and against specific locations for meaning. Indeed, if theological interpretation is going to be a discipline that is true to the idea of community involvement and conversations over time, then it must acknowledge the dyadic heritage from which it emerges.37 But, it need not remain shackled to this heritage. A crucial shift in thinking is needed in two areas. First, theological interpretation can move past the dyadic forms of thought by reconceiving 'meaning' as the mediating dynamic of a conversation between God's Word and God's people, and between God's people themselves. Second, theological interpretation can escape an unhealthy dualism by construing theological interpretation as that ongoing conversation, which is filled with meaning. These two ways of re-imagining meaning and theological interpretation, namely as mediation and conversation over time, hold real possibilities for a healthier future for theological interpretation by conceptualizing the task as one in which God gives Scripture meaning. We have access to the fullness of that meaning in the reading of Scripture in the community of God. In this way, again, Vanhoozer's helpful description of the various types of theological interpretation is really a description of the types of things we can and should discuss in the larger conversation that is theological interpretation. That is, the approaches to theological interpretation are not different conversations but different voices and perspective in a larger conversation. In conversation one can surely ask, 'What did the author mean? What was the author's communicative intent? What is the symbolic world of the Bible? What is and has been the outcome of reading these texts in the church?' At times any one of these questions may dominate the conversation, but one does not 'uncover' meaning with the answer to any particular question. One is not obliged either to say with Fowl that these are all legitimate questions that make known the interpreters' interests but the idea of 'the meaning of scripture' is irrelevant. Theological interpretation is more than being clear about what questions we are asking and for what reason we are asking them. 37. It is true that some proponents of 'theological interpretation' may not care to continue discussions of community involvement in the conceptualization of meaning. I do not see how these forms of theological interpretation are any different from more traditional forms of textual interpretation that pass on their findings to the systematic theologians for the more 'theological' work.

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Theological interpretation is also more than restricting one or the other of the opposite sides of dyadic axes. Vanhoozer admits the difficulty of determining meaning, but concludes that one can know enough?* Likewise, Fowl has shown that he is not completely opposed to the idea of 'meaning', but he limits its use to the more 'everyday' sense. Being aware of limitations in one's argument is certainly a step in the right direction. To re-imagine firmly entrenched concepts within the arguments, however, is not an easy task. Nevertheless, having expressed a concern for new images of meaning and theological interpretation, I would like to promote some hermeneutical trajectories that could contribute to a holistic re-imagination of meaning as mediation and theological interpretation as conversation. Triadic trajectories Perhaps no discussions are livelier in philosophy, theology and biblical studies than the ones that are calling into question 'modern' dyadic notions.39 One cannot hope to cover adequately all the relevant material. In what follows, I recall once more the contribution of speech act theory to the present discussion, but I also look briefly at certain uses of the ideas of L. Wittgenstein and C. S. Peirce, noting their possible contributions to a triadic understanding of meaning. Using speech-act theory and Wittgenstein Vanhoozer and Fowl both support speech-act theory as an excellent way to re-conceptualize the idea of authorial intention.40 Because authorial intention is important to the concept of meaning, it should continue to be vital to the discussion. But, as Chapter 4 argues, speech-act theory does not obligate us to locate meaning with the author's communicative intent. I made this point in the previous chapter in several ways. First, there is some debate about what is meant by the very term 'speech act'. At times it is used to refer to the whole complex of locutions, illocutions and perlocutions. At other times 'speech act' may refer to any one of a locutionary, illocutionary, or perlocutionary act. And, still in other places 'speech act' is synonymous only with an illocutionary act. These various uses do not do much for my argument other than to note the difficulty with the term. Most speech-act theorists who follow Austin rather strictly use the term 'speech act' to refer to illocutionary acts only. But of course, as Austin and others point out, locutions are necessary parts of the illocutionary act; so much so that Searle all but obliterated the line of distinction between the two. Second, I try to point out that the lines of distinction between the various types of acts (locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary) are not always all that clear. 38. See Vanhoozer, Is There Meaning?, pp. 139-40. 39. See for instance Green, 'Scripture and Theology', especially pp. 26-32. 40. See especially Vanhoozer, Is There A Meaning?, ch. 5, and Fowl, 'Role of Authorial Intention', pp. 71-87.

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This, I believe to be the case in some of Austin's own words (see especially his distinction between illocution and perlocution as 'slippery') and in those who have analysed Austin more thoroughly than I (Halion, 'difficult... to see where illocutions end and perlocutions begin').41 Finally, if we do in fact work with the use of 'speech act' as just the illocutionary act, it does not necessarily lead to the idea that meaning is found in the intentional dimension. Both Wolterstorff and Thiselton, devoted speech-act theorists, avoid a universal theory of meaning based on illocutionary intention. Furthermore, I believe the work of McClendon and Smith also helps me to argue that the meaning of a happy speech act cannot be located with any one set or sub-set of conditions. In their model a happy speech act requires the primary, representative and affective conditions to be met satisfactorily.42 So in at least three ways locating meaning in a speech-act model is difficult: 1) 'speech act' is a variously used term; 2) the lines between locution, illocution, 41. See previous chapter. In personal correspondence Nancey Murphy has challenged the 'blurry' lines I am noting. For instance, she notes that it may in some cases be difficult to say where uptake ends and perlocution begins, but that depends in large part on the act. 'Not all speech acts aim at getting others to do things. The main point is that the illocutionary act itself is a doing. Many speech acts do not aim at a perlocutionary effect, though all require uptake to succeed (to be happy). If I tell you I am happy and you understand me, uptake is all that's intended and telling is all that I have done. If I ask you to open the door, you may understand me (uptake) but not do it, and then my intended perlocutionary act failed. I do sometimes act by using an illocutionary act (speech act) to get someone to do something I want, sometimes people do something different from what I wanted, and then it is in no sense an act of mine.' Parsing out the distinctions between the various sorts of acts does indeed draw the lines more sharply, but I do not think it threatens to undermine my point that the logic of speech-act theory casts a light on the interrelatedness of the acts involved in a total speech situation and makes it difficult to claim the meaning of that total speech situation is found at any one place. Indeed, my point is to say that the mediation involved in this interrelationship is a real and equivalent expression for the term 'meaning', which could be theologically more fruitful for theological interpretation than either intentions (which in speech act terms are found in one smaller part of the illocutionary act) or interests (which are related almost exclusively to the perlocutionary effects of a communicative act). 42. One may rightly wonder whether the inclusion of 'uptake' along with the three conditions listed might not make my proposed model of meaning more quadratic than triadic. I acknowledge the significance of uptake, especially as it opens the discussion up to readers' responses, but I understand McClendon and Smith to have included uptake as one of the necessary affective or psychological conditions and so a part of the triadic satisfaction of a happy speech act. See McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 60. Here McClendon and Smith make the claim that 'uptake' is a (sub-)condition under the heading of affective conditions; sub-condition 4.3 to be exact. Murphy finds it helpful 'to distinguish within McClendon and Smith's affective dimension two categories ... expressivist conditions and uptake' (Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 135). While 'triadic' is a term that I believe can help us be theologically imaginative and account for a more holistic image of meaning, it need not limit us to a specific triptych. I am more than happy to allow uptake to make for a quadratic model of meaning (or maybe a pentad in the case of Murphy's list of conditions for the successful use of language; see Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 135). I just do not think it is necessary to see it as a fourth component. For another example of a triadic hermeneutic, see A. Yong, 'The Hermeneutic Trialectic: Notes Toward a Consensual Hermeneutic and Theological Method', Heythrop Journal 45, no. 1 (2004), pp. 22-39.

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and perlocution are not distinct enough; and 3) even if illocutionary acts become the focus, the conditions for its felicity make location of meaning at any one point too circumscribed and inappropriate to the realities of all circumstances. Although speech-act models cannot pinpoint meaning they do open up possibilities for alternative conceptions of meaning. 'What does matter', write McClendon and Smith, 'is the intimate interdependence of affective, representative, and primary conditions for happy utterance, the interconnection of language structure and person and whatever else there is beyond both.'43 Speech-act theory reminds us that communication is always an interrelational affair, involving not only the speaker/author or the hearer/reader but also and always the community of both. Speech-act theory provides the resources for perceiving interpretation as communal dialogue. It challenges us to come to terms with the mediation of the various conditions for felicity, and thus allows us to begin to consider 'meaning' as the term for this mediation. At about the same time that Austin was developing his ideas of speech-act theory at Oxford, Ludwig Wittgenstein was having powerful influence on philosophical and even theological discussions from his post at Cambridge. His influence has not waned since the middle of the twentieth century. Indeed, C. C. Pecknold rightly notes, 'Anglo-American theology is now permeated with all sorts of Wittgensteinian assumptions.'44 The subsequent development by the followers of Wittgenstein's ideas of 'language games' and 'meaning as use' share much in common with the development of Austin's speech-act theory. The social scientist Peter Winch's influential 1958 publication The Idea of Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy is a Wittgensteinian attempt to justify the legitimacy of the social sciences, which are inherently relational, over against the natural sciences, which are inherently dyadic, conceiving reality with either/or categories. The publication of the second edition in 1990 attests to the continuing call for the sorts of conversations that contest dualistic concepts.45 Winch moves further than a naive understanding of meaning as use, to the proper view that meaning is implicated in all

43. McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p. 74 (emphasis added). 44. C. C. Pecknold, Transforming Postliberal Theology: George Lindbeck, Pragmatism and Scripture (London: T&T Clark, 2005), p. 62. In hermeneutical works see again Vanhoozer's Is There a Meaning in This Text? In Chapter 3 I noted Vanhoozer's appeal to Wittgenstein. I also questioned whether his was not a rather simple use of Wittgenstein's dictum of 'language as use'. One should also consider Thiselton's extremely helpful introduction to the significance of Wittgenstein (and others) for New Testament hermeneutics in Two Horizons. For a creative blending of Wittgenstein's approach to understanding and a Lutheran tradition in reading the Bible as Holy Scripture see M. Coors, 'Vom Lesen der Bibel als Heiliger Schrift. Zur Grundlegung einer theologischen Schriftlehre', Neue Zeitschrift fiir Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 45, no. 3 (2003), pp. 328-45. 45. Peter Winch, The Idea of Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (ed. R. F. Holland; Studies in Philosophical Psychology; London: Routiedge, 2nd edn, 1990).

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descriptions, and in all of the sets of habits and skills that involve us always in a social framework of meaning which cannot be fixed in any one author, text, or even an isolated community, but occurs in a complex conversation in time. Meaning, for Winch, is inextricably bound to language, and the rules of language that get performed in different kinds of descriptions of reality. Winch writes, 'The impression given is that first there is language (with words having a meaning, statements capable of being true or false)'; he continues, 'What is missed is that those very categories of meaning, etc., are logically dependent for their sense on social interaction between men (sic).'46 His conviction that 'the very existence of concepts depends on group-life' is a precursor to the idea of meaning for which I am arguing. This concept of 'meaning' depends on the interactions of community from the beginning. It is not as if it existed before the community and the community just discovered it and gave it a name. Meaning is not something waiting to be discovered if one can only employ the right tools, nor is it, I should be clear to say, something that is put together by the reader from the raw materials supplied by the author of a text. The notions of speech-act theory and Winch's use of Wittgensteinian ideas force the interpreter to take account of a whole network of relationships to understand meaning. Winch writes regarding the meaning of words, 'To give an account of the meaning of a word is to describe how it is used; and to describe how it is used is to describe the social interactions into which it enters**7 Within that network are the dyadic ends of author and reader, but more importantly, for theological interpretation, the network envelops a third element, namely the context of the faith community within which the author, readers and texts find themselves and their identity. Questions of theological interpretation echo Winch's account of certain religious questions: Was the Pharisee who said 'God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are' doing the same kind of thing as the Publican who prayed 'God be merciful unto me a sinner'? To answer this one would have to start by considering what is involved in the idea of prayer; and that is a religious question. In other words, the appropriate criteria for deciding whether the actions of these two men were of the same kind or not belong to religion itself. Thus the sociologist of religion will be confronted with an answer to the question: Do these two acts belong to the same kind of activity?; and this answer is given according to criteria which are not taken from sociology, but from religion itself.48

The answer to the question of meaning in theological interpretation, in like manner, is given according to criteria which are taken from Christian theology. Thus, I am suggesting, and I believe speech-act theory and Wittgensteinian reflections support, that the meaning of Scripture is the mediation that is found in the author-text-community network. Prior to 46. 47. 48.

Winch, The Idea of Social Science, p. 44 (emphasis added). Winch, The Idea of Social Science, p. 123 (emphasis added). Winch, The Idea of Social Science, p. 87.

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the mid-century development of speech-act theory and Wittgensteinian philosophy the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) made similar claims with regard to signs. Peirce's ideas of signs and meaning Theories of signs owe much to the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure whose structural linguistics grew out of a fundamental understanding of signs in dyadic terms.49 Hughes notes that 'Saussurean semiotics remains anchored in the dualistic structures everywhere apparent in modern thought.'50 In recent years, however, the involved reflections on the complex work of Charles Sanders Peirce, a contemporary of Saussure and one who was equally interested in the structure of language, have become useful resources for philosophers and theologians in challenging the hold of Saussurean dualism (and any dualism for that matter).51 Again Hughes notes, 'Peircean semiotics sees all signification as irreducibly triadic, building the role or function of interpretation directly into the sign's production of meaning*51 A brief examination of some of the ideas in Peirce's thought could then provide us with further tools and models for envisaging the meaning of Scripture in ways that involve the interpretive community, that is, in triadic ways.53 Peirce's triadic ideas derive in large part from a rejection of 'Cartesian dualism and the Lockean description of all thought as the experience or internal perception of ideas'.54 His reflections on signs, therefore, centre on the nature of thought. I cannot hope to unpack the whole of Peirce's 49. See the brief discussion of Ferdinand de Saussure's dyadic model of signs in ch. 1. 50. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 29. 51. I am not aware of any biblical interpreters who have explicitly employed the ideas of Peirce, though I am sure that his ideas have had implicit influence. 52. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 29, emphasis added. Note also Sheriff's comment about how Peirce 'incorporates the human into the sign'. Sheriff, The Fate of Meaning, p. 49. 53. The publication of Peirce's work is complicated. Most of his writings are scattered about in various academic journals, correspondences and personal notes. The process of compiling all of this has proved quite a task. One should see especially Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition (ed. Christian J. W. Kloesel and Max H. Fisch; 6 vols; Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1982), The Essential Peirce I and II (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), and Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss and A. Burks; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935-58). Generally references to Peirce are given to the Collected Papers (CP) with volume number and numbered paragraph (ex. CP 6.32). For a discussion of how Peirce's ideas about meaning save the concept see Sheriff, The Fate of Meaning. For a similar idea applied to the context of worship see Hughes, Worship as Meaning. For one of the most perceptive and constructive uses of Peircean thought especially as it might be applied to Scripture see Peter Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Ochs' use of Peirce has recently been employed in a re-reading of Lindbeck by C. C. Pecknold (Transforming Postliberal Theology). 54. James Hoopes, Introduction to Charles Sanders Peirce, Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic, (ed. James Hoopes; Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991) p. 7.

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thinking, nor would that be necessary for the present discussion. In what follows I extrapolate ideas from his notions of signs, thoughts and meaning, and draw connections to the concept of triadic meaning for theological interpretation for which I am arguing.55 A sign, for Peirce, is a thought whose meaning is not self-evident. 'A sign receives meaning by being interpreted by a subsequent thought or action', writes Hoopes.56 Hoopes uses a stop sign to illustrate this point. A stop sign at a street corner, for example, is first perceived as an octagonal shape bearing the letters S-T-O-P. It is only in relation to a subsequent thought - what Peirce called an interpretant - that the sign attains meaning. The meaning lies not in the perception but in the interpretation of the perception as a signal to stop or, better still, in the act of stopping. Peirce held that, like the perception of the stop sign, every thought is a sign without meaning until interpreted by a subsequent thought, an interpretant.57

Meaning, therefore, is attained in the triadic relationship of a sign-vehicle, an object and an interpretant^ or as Hoopes states, 'the meaning of every thought is established by a triadic relation, an interpretation of the thought as a sign of a determining object9.58 Within this triadic relationship the idea of an interpretant, or the relational element, stand out in a world of meaning more often governed by dualistic theories. 'It is thus the interpretant within the triadic relationship which will localize or specify in which signifying respect or capacity the sign-vehicle stands to the sign-object. It is the interpretant which mediates or relates the one to the other', writes Hughes.59 Hughes also notes, 'it is the interpretant which effects the way in which the sign's object is apprehended, its meaning'.60 Peirce himself states almost in passing, 'It seems a strange thing ... that a sign should leave its interpreter to supply a part of its meaning'61 Peirce spoke often of sign-vehicles, objects and interpretants in relation to the categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.62 He describes the First 55. Those familiar with Peirce's work will recognize that I am sketching Peirce's ideas with broad strokes. One of the hallmarks of Peirce's style of philosophy was continual experimentation with and expansion of initial ideas. Thus, in a way his philosophical style reflected his idea of the interpretant (see below). 56. Hoopes, p. 7. 57. Hoopes, p. 7. 58. Hoopes, p. 7. Peirce continually recast old terms and introduced new ones in his ongoing effort to arrive at a satisfactory theory of signs, which he never truly reached (see Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 138, n. 73). Though originally introduced as representamen, Peirce later used simply the term 'sign' to speak about the First dimension of a triadic sign proper. This confusion of terms leads Hughes to decide on Charles Morris' use of 'sign-vehicle' for this First dimension. See Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 139, n. 75, and Charles Morris, Writings on the General Theory of Signs (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), passim. I have followed this use of terms here. 59. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 138. 60. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 144. 61. CP 5.448, n.l (emphasis added). 62. Peirce was not averse to creating neologisms.

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as 'that whose being is simply in itself, not referring to anything not lying behind anything'.63 Firstness is the category of potential.64 'Stop to think of it', writes Peirce, 'and it has flown!'65 Hughes describes Peirce's category of Firstness as the 'quality of possibility or potential, which preempts a thing's actual existence and thus can be prescinded from it'.66 The category of actual or brute existence is what Peirce names Secondness.67 he writes, 'The idea of second must be reckoned as an easy one to comprehend. That of first is so tender that you cannot touch it without spoiling it; but that of second is eminently hard and tangible. It is very familiar, too; it is forced upon us daily: it is the main lesson of life.'68 Peirce often describes the beginning or the absolute first in terms of Firstness, and the end or the absolute last in terms of Secondness.69 It is the Third 'which bridges over the chasm between the absolute first and last'.70 Thirdness is the category of mediation.71 It stands between potential and brute existence, bringing them in relation to one another, much as the interpretant stands between the sign-vehicle and the object.72 Hughes describes Peirce's idea of Thirdness as such: It is Thirdness which mediates the world to us and us to the world. That means that Thirdness encompasses the conceptual domain, the laws of nature which we formulate, indeed the entire world of thought language, law and custom. Thirdness is inherently interpretative.73

Thirdness, as Sheriff claims, sets us free from the 'nemesis of human understanding in literary theory based on the Sausurrean sign ... the gap between the signifier and the signified, the word and what it represents, the statement and its meaning'.74 The importance of the interpretant and the category of Thirdness cannot be overemphasized,75 but their implications can be extracted too easily from

63. Charles Sanders Peirce, Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic, ed. James Hoppes (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 188. 64. CP5.21. 65. Peirce on Signs, p. 189. 66. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 135. 67. CP 6.32. Secondness is a dyadic category. 'It is thus Secondness', writes Hughes, 'which opens me to the irresolute otherness of the world I so encounter' (Worship as Meaning, p. 136). 68. Peirce on Signs, p. 190. See the larger context in CP 1.358. 69. See for example CP 1.337. 70. Peirce on Signs, p. 190. 71. CP 5.436. 72. CP 8.332. 73. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 137. 74. Sheriff, Fate of Meaning, p. 53. See also Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 122. 75. John Deely writes that the interpretant 'is the fulcrum of semiosis in the writings of Peirce'. See New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), p. 222.

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Peirce's overall schema and given a place in a theory of meaning all its own. Such is the fear of those who view pragmatism as a model of meaning that accepts 'whatever works'. The idea of interpretant for Peirce can only be seen in conjunction with the sign-vehicle and the object. Hughes reminds his readers that 'the sign-producer was hardly absent from this either; in constructing and proposing the sign he or she must actively have anticipated which interpretant the sign-recipient would be likely to bring in completing the signification5.76 With Peirce interpreters have categories with which they can begin to conceive of meaning as something more than either side of the gap between the ideal' (the world of the author?) and the 'material' (the world of the reader?).77 Sheriff notes that Peirce's 'definition of a sign does not separate the mind made world from the "real" world in which we live and move and have being'7% Peirce, in distinction from those working with dyadic models, understood the sign itself as a triadic relationship. This overview of Peircean terms is a presentation of an alternative to traditionally dualistic modes of thought.79 As Pecknold notes, 'Peircean logic helps correct and supplement the dyadic ("subject-predicate calculus") logic of Cartesian-Kantian thought through a triadic logic of relations that displays the interdependency of signs, understood in semiotic and social terms.'80 Notions of Thirdness and interpretant open up discussions about the complexity of meaning that dyadic models cannot adequately address. The conception of meaning that begins to emerge with the resources of speech act theory and Peirce's notion of signs is at one and the same time real and yet not fixed, A triadic idea of meaning is able to account for the real theistic reference of the interpretive community of the past, present and future. The distance between the activity of interpretation and the activity of meaning is not wide. Meaning as mediation - an idea that considers fully the notion of an interpretant - is understood to be as real as it is when defined in terms of intention or interest. The ideas of Thirdness and interpretant thus provide a realistic way of thinking about meaning as the mediation of truth over time. And so we can look to a future of theological interpretation that asks all of the usual questions about authors, texts, readers, intents, symbolic worlds, interests and aims, but we do not necessarily need to see ourselves working on different projects. If we see these critical questions stemming from the idea that in answering them we are contributing to the conversation 76. Hughes, Worship as Meaning, p. 138. 77. I am appropriating terms used by Hughes in Worship as Meaning, see especially pp. 11-31. See also Hoopes, p. 9 ('Peirce's semiotic offers a middle ground, a rejection of dualism that nevertheless avoids the excesses of either materialism or idealism'). 78. Sheriff, Fate of Meaning, p. 48. 79. Probably the most recognizable terms from Peirce's lifelong project are 'icon', 'index' and 'symbol', the three types of signs categorized based on the nature of the relationship between the sign-vehicle and the object. It does not add anything to the point being made but it is interesting to note the notions of Firstness in the icon, Secondness in the index and Thirdness in the symbol. See Hughes, Worship as Meaning, pp. 138-44. 80. Pecknold, Transforming Postliberal Theology, p. 62.

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in which mediation has shaped our enquiry and in which our answers have given form to the mediation, then we may begin to conceptualize meaning as something that emerges from the whole speech event. The triadic trajectories also suggest for theological interpreters the need for a clearer idea about the community (the interpretant?), the setting of the total speech situation that is Scripture. Indeed, Pecknold notes, 'Meaning is not generated out of nothing, but out of communities of interpretation^ out of traditions of inquiry that endure over the long run of time.nx I read McClendon and Smith's use of speech act theory in similar ways and so believe certain readings of Austin and Peirce might work together to provide a framework for a triadic understanding of meaning that is thoroughly communal and yet painstakingly non-relativistic, thus addressing Fowl on the one hand and Vanhoozer on the other. In short, the concept of meaning I am promoting, and which I believe emerges from the resources of speech-act theory and Peircean pragmatics, is one that is established from the triadic complex of author, text and reader. This complex, however, is not easily separated into three isolated components. Speech-act theory reminds us that the notion of authorial intention is much more involved with the literary forms of the biblical text than a focused analysis of Paul or Luke or John allow. It also reminds us that the happy speech act involves contributions from both the author and the reading community. In much the same way, Peirce's ideas of Thirdness and interpretant remind us that mediation is a dynamic that holds the ideal and material together. In other words, mediation is the concept that neither limits meaning to intentions or interests nor allows it to be defined without them. Indeed, in so far as meaning exists, it does not exist without intentions or interests. Theological Interpretation as a postmodern exercise? Given the tendencies of dyadic models to lead interpreters to assume opposite sides of the 'modernistic' axes and their inability to account for the relational nature of communication (and the triune godhead), it is my hope that theological interpretation can utilize the triadic logic and capabilities of speech-act theory and Peircean pragmatism to account for all that dyadic interpreters cherish while moving beyond the disagreements about meaning. It remains to be seen whether the argument for a triadic concept of meaning is a workable image. The necessary conditions for a happy speech act, the components of a total speech situation, the Peircean ideas of Thirdness and

81. Pecknold, Transforming Postliberal Theology, p. 70 (emphasis added). Pecknold notes the way Ochs understands Peirce as preceding twentieth-century thinkers who defend a 'tradition-constituted* form of reasoning. In this way Peirce's ideas precede Fowl's appeal to these same twentieth-century thinkers, especially Maclntyre. See Fowl, Engaging Scripture, passim. But Ochs and Pecknold would also want to remind us that Peirce's 'postfoundationalism' is not relativistic as we might imagine Vanhoozer to fear. See Pecknold, Transforming Postliberal Theology, p. 113.

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interpretant, and traces of God's triune life in the structure of interpretation itself have all contributed to a relational reassessment of the term meaning. The image of theological interpretation as a conversation, to my mind, best accounts for these descriptions and the triadic concept of meaning that emerges. Conversation implies an activity that neither aims toward discovery or creation, though it cannot be engaged without a bit of both. Insomuch as this idea of theological interpretation avoids the dyadic polarization of 'modern' axes, we might, therefore, consider it a 'postmodern' activity.82 In this instance 'postmodern' is intended to convey an idea that neither limits the discussion to the various modern dyads, nor does it try to extend one or other of these dyads to a radical extreme. Instead 'postmodern' is here used in the vein of Murphy and McClendon. According to Murphy and McClendon, 'postmodern' describes 'any mode of thought that departs from the three modern axes described above without reverting to premodern categories'.83 Postmodernity, then, is characterized in epistemology by holism, in linguistics by the relation of meaning to use, and in metaphysics by community. The direction of the current argument has traversed these themes on several occasions. I note them once more here in order to make the claim that theological interpretation as a conversation that involves the mediation of God's truth in the ecclesial process of scriptural interpretation is not a reactionary development, but instead it is a productive and constructive exercise of the community of faith with its sacred texts. It is an activity that engages deeply with Scripture, recognizing the fullness of these texts, the interpretive act and the meaning that emerges within it. Being critically historical about meaning It will not do, however, to call theological interpretation a conversation of the postmodern ilk. The triadic dimensions of meaning and the holistic, pragmatic and communal interests of theological interpretation force upon us questions about the reading community and the development of meaning over time. One thing is clear in the questions prompted by the triadic models - historical criticism is necessary. I deliberately use 'historical criticism' rather than 'the historical-critical method' for several reasons: 1) it is not clear that there is a single or unified historical-critical method; 2) part of my argument about mediation and conversation is to promote the use of a plurality of methods; however, 3) the lack of a historical-critical method and the plurality of interpretive methods does not preclude the interpreter from having an historical awareness of the texts' production, transmission, interpretation and application. In part, what theological interpretation 82. Walter Brueggemann has long been a proponent of seeing Biblical Theology as a postmodern exercise. See for example 'Biblical Theology Appropriately Postmodern', Biblical Theology Bulletin 27, no. 1 (1997), pp. 4-9. 83. Murphy and McClendon, 'Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies', p. 199.

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argues against is that meaning of Scripture is the 'historical' meaning. The historical qualifier in front of criticism, therefore, does not mark off a set of methods but rather an attitude of enquiry that is judicious with regards to events and circumstances of time, especially those things that develop over time as I suggest theological meaning does. This, of course, will make use of several historical-critical methods absolutely necessary to the project of theological interpretation. It may seem an oxymoronic claim given the strong connection between historical criticism and the dyadic models of modernity. But, in those dyadic models meaning was too often limited to one set of conditions that historical enquiry could reveal. Thus it became common to believe that historical criticism alone could uncover the meaning of Scripture. In a triadic model of meaning, historical criticism continues to play its traditional role of getting at behind-the-text questions, but also it turns a historical eye to the communities within which the text has been interpreted and to the historical evolution of the interpretation of the community itself. In this way I am suggesting that theological interpreters need to be even more historically attuned to the whole of the author-text-reader triad than traditional historical critics have been. Nancey Murphy's argument for the stability of meaning in a postmodern philosophy of language is particularly helpful here and points to ways in which historical investigation will always be a part of meaning holistically considered.84 She appeals once again to the idea of a felicitous speech act. For a speech act to be 'happy' it must have its necessary conditions fulfilled. An essential primary condition 'is to suppose that the author was successful in employing linguistic conventions in order to enact his intentions'.85 Murphy also comments, 'To note that a set of texts were preserved and circulated to a variety of communities over a span of years shows that those conventions were somewhat widespread and invariate over time.'86 Thus, the traditional historical critical exercises that focus on original languages and settings of textual production continue to be vital elements in the theological conversation. Furthermore, a holistic account of meaning modelled on the happy speech act must 'suppose appropriate referential or representative conditions obtained'.87 These referential conditions would necessarily include certain historical facts and true characterizations. 'But', Murphy writes, 'it is worth reiterating that the history is not to be equated with meaning; nor is the reconstructed history in any sense foundational for the meaning of the text.'88 In fact, she continues, 'The order must be the reverse - first to understand what the text was doing in its original setting, then to ask what historical knowledge (some of) its readers must have had in order for it to succeed.'89 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

See especially Anglo-American Postmodernity, pp. 142-51. Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 143. Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 143. Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 144 (see also p. 149). Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 145. Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 145.

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Another part of being historically critical about the mediation of truth in conversations over time is recognition of the continuity of the current interpretive communities with the Scripture-producing, Scripture-transmitting and Scripture-interpreting communities of the past. Robert Jenson claims, 'the text we call the Bible was put together in the first place by the same community that now needs to interpret it'.90 Jenson echoes McClendon's 'hermeneutical motto5: 'the present Christian community as the primitive community and the eschatological community'; that is, 'the church now is the primitive church and the church on the day of judgment is the church now; the obedience and liberty of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth is our liberty, our obedience'.91 The historical gap between meant and means is thus called into question by taking a more broadly historical account of the interpretive community. What I find useful in the motto is the notion that the Christian community is not somehow a wholly different community than it was in the first century or what it will be in the 25th. Murphy echoes McClendon's motto in what she calls 'a baptist version of the hermeneutical circle': Historical criticism helps to recover the practices of the early church in their own setting; attempting to live out those practices in the contemporary setting sensitizes readers to new meanings in the texts. The New Testament churches were not perfect - they were struggling to become the church. Insofar as contemporary Christian communities, too, are struggling to become the church, they will be better able to hear what the texts are saying and as a consequence better able in the future to 'perform the Scriptures'.92

The idea of a historically complete church is significant for (re)imagining meaning and theological interpretation within it. With 'mediation' and 'conversation' I attempt to capture the enduring qualities of community described by Jenson, McClendon and Murphy. Theological interpreters are a part of a conversation that precedes them and will outlive them. The Christian community, which carries on this meaningful conversation, is grounded in history but it is not bound to particular points in time. In some ways then the idea behind McClendon's motto echoes the idea of Peirce's interpretant and fits into the broad appeal of the affective conditions of a happy speech act. With these notions one may begin to view the interpretive community as a continuous body, and so one may speak of theological interpretation as a conversation within that body.93 The meaning of Scripture, may be 90. Robert W. Jenson, 'The Religious Power of Scripture', Scottish Journal of Theology 52, no. 1 (1999), pp. 89-105 (98). 91. James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Ethics, Systematic Theology, 1, 3 vols (Nashville: Abingdon, 1986), p. 31. 92. Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 149.1 do not here want to defend a 'baptist' vision, which Murphy has appropriated from McClendon (see especially Ethics, pp. 27-8), though the characteristics of it are much in line with my own arguments for meaning and theological interpretation. 93. See also D. R. Lindsay, 'How to Read the Bible in the Twenty-First Century: The Church as a Hermeneutic', Encounter 64, no. 4 (2003), pp. 349-71.

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understood as the mediation of truth between that continuous interpretive body and its sacred texts.94 McClendon's motto, nevertheless, does need some clarification because it seems to be incapable of distinguishing between Christ and the Church that is always on a pilgrimage. The motto could be taken to conflate the truth that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, with the Christian community. This effectively secures the identity of the enduring Church, but it is unable to deal sufficiently with its real change, growth and development. McClendon's motto would benefit from a clarification of what he means by the 'is' in reference to the Church in different periods. Likewise, Jenson's use of 'same community' needs further explanation. Surely the interpreting community of today is not exactly the same as the community that put the texts together in the first place. To follow these suggestions too far would imply that the history of the community did not matter. It could imply that the early Church was the authoritative model for ecclesial life - a notion that seems too uncomplicated with regard to the realities of communal development. Nevertheless, McClendon and Jenson (I would add Peirce and Austin too, though not in reference to sacred texts) effectively support the idea that we cannot extract the author, the text, or the interpreter from the community of Christ without disrupting the wholeness of it. There is one Church of God in all times and all places. The community's continuity promoted in McClendon's motto, Jenson's claims, Peirce's interpretant and the contextual conditioning of a speech act imply a supervening notion of the interpretive community that theological interpreters cannot easily ignore. In this way, too, Fowl's communitarian ideas can be brought into the overriding concept of meaning that is triadically construed rather than suffer from the weaknesses associated with communitarian models. Of course one can still question the viability of a continuous community. One might ask whether such a notion does not too easily draw together historically and geographically disparate communities. But a theologically informed perspective on the Christian community must in some ways insist on a view that regards the biblical texts as our Scripture, thus being historically critical will require care in maintaining this view. That care is practised in the way the interpretive community not only sees itself in continuity with the producing community but also as it sees itself in logical and historical continuity with previous expressions of the interpretive community. That 94. For illustrations of how interpreting the Bible in its present context and as part of the Church's canon can yield fresh perspectives see T. Hieke, 'Neue Horizonte. Biblische Auslegung als Weg zu ungewohnlichen Perspektiven', Zeitschrift fur Neues Testament 6 (2003), pp. 65-76. Murphy notes how her conclusions are 'consonant with Alasdair Maclntyre's notion of tradition-constituted enquiry' (Anglo-American Postmodernity, p. 151). See Aladair Maclntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry; Encyclopaedia,

Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Though Fowl calls attention to Maclntyre's ideas about tradition (see Fowl, 'Ethics of Interpretation', p. 387), I am not aware of an in-depth analysis and application of Maclntyre's work for biblical studies.

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is, the interpretive community in being historically critical must manage the tension between being faithful to the interpretive tradition and being selfcritical. In one way then, historical criticism plays out in the community's view of itself, which comes about in better understanding of its historical relationship to its Scripture. The history of the interpretations and effects of Scripture becomes a vital part of the conversation that is theological interpretation. To be clear, the history of interpretations and effects will no more yield a text's meaning than uncovering the author's communicative intent or developing a reader's interest. It does, however, offer 'potential to draw together insights from different forms of scholarship, reminding us simultaneously that a text has a history, a history that begins after it has left the hands of its author'.95 This idea clearly points theological interpretation in the direction of Wirkungsgeschichte, the name given to the technique of analyzing the history of a text's influences and effects as it is received in reading communities. Wirkungsgeschichte is, as Mark Goodacre describes, the 'exciting development' that considers the oft-forgotten but 'much more concrete and varied ways that the texts have been handled'.96 The ideas of Wirkungsgeschichte are in many ways analogous to the perlocutionary effects of speech act theory. They both focus attention primarily on the reader, though Wirkungsgeschichte puts this focus in historical perspective. As do critics of too strong an emphasis on perlocutionary effects, critics of a history of effects warn us that Wirkungsgeschichte treads awfully close to locating meaning in the interests and actions of the interpretive communities, and in so doing tends toward an uncomfortable level of relativism.97 My appeal to Wirkungsgeschichte here is not to promote a particular method for theological interpretation. Indeed, the notion of meaning for theological interpretation being put forward does not allow a history-of-effects approach to commandeer the term 'meaning' for the various 'new meanings' in each interpretive generation any more than speech-act theory allows 'meaning' to become synonymous with a perlocutionary effect. The appeal here to Wirkungsgeschichte is rather to note once again the fullness of the theological interpretive conversation (total speech situation) and in that way promote a concept of meaning which is shaped in the interrelatedness of this totality.98 A look at the history of interpretation is an acknowledgement of 95. Mark Goodacre, * "Drawing from the Treasure Both New and Old": Current Trends in New Testament Studies', Scripture Bulletin 27, no. 2 (1997), pp. 66-77 (72). 96. Goodacre, 'Drawing from the Treasure', p. 72. 97. See Donald A. Hagner, 'Review of Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20, James E. Crouch (trans.), Hermeneia', Journal of Biblical Literature 121, no. 4 (2002), pp. 766-9. 98. For a recent look at the prospects and problems of reception history see Jeremy Punt, 'Inhabiting the World In Front of the Text: The New Testament and Reception Studies', Neotestamentica 34, no. 1 (2000), pp. 207-24. For an exploration of how specific biblical texts have exercised influence throughout history see David William Kling, The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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the 42000 years of creative interaction between text and reader which has left us with a rich source of material on the meaning of the Bible'.99 A theologically sound notion of Wirkungsgeschichte goes hand in hand with the theological perspective of a continuous interpretive community, and together they encourage historical critics not to fix meaning to one particular moment in the writing or the reception of a text. The historical interests of the community and its life with the texts coordinate as well with traditional historical issues to further develop the notion of theological interpretation as the conversation which is 'extended through time'.100 Historical criticism, then, cannot simply be employed on an ad hoc basis.101 I think Fowl's assessment that historical-critical methodology should be employed on an ad hoc basis can too easily be construed to claim that historical criticism is dispensable or optional since they are closely linked to getting the intention of the author.1021 cannot stress strongly enough the continued need for the tools of historical criticism. They are indispensable for the very reason that the texts and the reading community are already and always situated in historical settings. Fowl's disposal of meaning may very well be understood as a way of circumventing the tight hold that theologians feel historical critics have on the Bible. The unstated sense that historical critics get to the 'true meaning' and that they thus shut down meaning for actual communities who need the wisdom of the Scriptures today has contributed to unnecessary fissures and equally unnecessary responses that shun or at least restrict historical criticism. I agree that eschewing the discussion of meaning might have been a clever rhetorical strategy for this end, but it was not wise or true to dispense with meaning altogether, and thus only to pick up historical-critical tools when it suited a reading interest. The interrelationship of the various interested participants mediates the truth of Scripture for each generation and that mediation is always historically delimited. Historical-critical methods have to be taken up into a more comprehensive approach to interpretation because of how we construe 'meaning'. It is an essential tool to use in the examination of necessary conditions for a happy speech act. We cannot do without historical, 99. John F. A. Sawyer, 'The Role of Reception History, Reader-Response Criticism and/or Impact History in the Study of the Bible: Definition and Evaluation' (paper delivered to biennial meeting of Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar authors, 21-23 March 2004), no pages; cited 21 May 2005. Online: http://www.bbibcomm.net/news/sawyer.doc 100. Alisdair Maclntyre defines tradition as a 'conversation extended through time' in Whose Justice, Which Rationality?, p. 12. A future challenge for theological interpreters could be to see themselves as a part of a developing tradition of scriptural interpretation. I am here more interested in the image of conversation than I am tradition, though Maclntyre demonstrates how we might see these two images as synonyms. 101. One can see a recent examination of faith and history in R. K. Soulen, 'The Believer and the Historian: Theological Interpretation and Historical Investigation', Interpretation 57, no. 2 (2003), pp. 174-86. 102. See Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 179, and 'Role of Authorial Intention', p. 75.

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grammatical and sociological investigations of the texts, their composition, and their reading. With a triadic notion of meaning one cannot insist that historical criticism reveals the meaning of Scripture. Historical critics are an essential part of the theological conversation. Without them we have no recourse to the necessary referential conditions, nor can we adequately understand the various historical settings in the life of the Church wherein the Scriptures were produced, transmitted and read. Historical criticism, however, focuses on an essential dynamic of the conversation and cannot become the ultimate regulator of the conversation. The meaning of Scripture is tied to a comprehensive, historical and theological narrative. Meaning, in other words, is tied to the Christian story - the story with Christ at the centre and the story in which Christian readers of all times and places are involved. The Superabundance of Meaning and Other Theological Implications Winch notes, 'In Wittgenstein's words "Philosophy leaves everything as it was."' 103 Similarly, Hoopes concludes his helpful introduction to Peirce's thoughts on signs by writing, the adoption now of a Peircean perspective would not require the wholesale dismantling of the traditional humanistic disciplines and social sciences that seems to be called for by some other, methodologically more radical semiotics. Yet even while allowing for the usefulness of much past, traditional scholarship, Peirce's semiotic points to a new use for that scholarship by thinking about thinking in a way that does not divorce it from the natural world.104

The same could be said for the suggested re-imagination of the concepts of meaning and theological interpretation in the present work. On a very practical level, I am not challenging biblical interpreters to change their activities. Instead, I am suggesting that those interpreters who are a part of the renewed interest in Scripture as Scripture and who are interested in the role of the Christian interpretive community reflect more deeply about what it is they are doing as they go about the business of discussing Paul's relationship to the law, or the provenance of the Gospel of John, or the historicity of Luke-Acts, or even more broadly the theology of the New Testament. Rather than promoting the ideas that their works either help to uncover meaning for theological purposes or strive to create meanings for theological aims, I suggest that they see their work of theological interpretation as the participation in a conversation. In this conversation the meaning of Scripture is made known. Meaning is not simply discovered or created, rather it is given by God in the whole ecclesial process. Indeed both 'discovery' and 'creation' suppose a responsibility for the interpreter that 103. Winch, The Idea of Social Science, p. 103. 104. Hoopes, p. 13.

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does not resonate with the nature of Scripture itself. For what one discovers in the texts or how one creatively reads are not in and of themselves the ways the texts 'mean'. The dialogue between Jesus and the legal specialist in Luke 10 with which I began this work ('How do you read?') does not settle the question of meaning with the answer to either the 'what' or the 'how'. When the legal specialist probes further (asks for more clarification about the meaning?) Jesus responds not with an abstract definition or with certain methodological steps. He replies by telling a story, whose meaning emerges in his own life and in the life of the community he created. Mediation and conversation have imaginative implications for the practice of communities conversing with God through Scripture. Mediation is a word that is theologically richer and more biblically resonant than intention and interest, but in the logic of my argument it is not a word meant to replace intention and interest. It supplements them; or better yet, intention and interest supplement mediation. However, ultimately the shift to mediation and conversation is a theological shift. It has Christological concerns about Christ the Mediator, the conversation between and among God and God's people, and having access to the holy conversation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The promotion of a triadic notion of meaning is an attempt to reach for a Trinitarian rule for 'meaning', that is a Trinitarian rule for understanding the mediation of God's Word in Christ, which also reflects a trinitarian rule for reading Scripture (often called a rule of faith).105 In reflecting the relational character of the Trinity, meaning as mediation better imitates an incarnational understanding of signs. On this matter Rowan Williams expounds: Rather the incarnation manifests the essential quality of the world itself as 'sign' or trace of its maker. It instructs us once and for all that we have our identity within the shifting, mobile realm of representation, non-finaiity, growing and learning, because it reveals what the spiritual eye ought to perceive generally - that the whole creation is uttered and 'meant' by God, and therefore has no meaning in itself. If we do not understand this, we seek for or invent finalities within the created order, ways of blocking off the process of learning and desiring. Only when, by the grace of Christ, we know that we live entirely in a world of signs are we set free for the restlessness that is our destiny as rational creatures. The coming of the Word in flesh establishes, we might say, the nature of fleshly being as word, as sign, the ail-pervasiveness of 'use'. That is to say, we live in world of restless fluidities in meaning: all terms and all objects they name are capable of opening out beyond themselves, coming to speak of a wider context, and so refusing to stay still under our attempts to comprehend or systematize or (for these go together) idolize.106 105. The idea of a rule of faith is much discussed. For a brief discussion of a Trinitarian rule of faith see especially Moberly, The Bible, Theology, and Faith, pp. 232-7. For a practical reflection on the idea of a rule of faith in general see Robert W. Wall, 'Reading the Bible from within Our Traditions', pp. 88-107. 106. Rowan Williams, 'Language, Reality and Desire in Augustine's De Doctrina\ Language and Theology 3, no. 2 (1989), pp. 138-50 (141). Williams' language of systemization and idolization is reminiscent of my earlier discussion of the reification/ deification of meaning.

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Meaning as mediation, thus, points toward a hermeneutical replication of Christ as mediator, as the one who stands in between the many and the One to redeem, reconcile and hold together. Mediation enables scriptural signs to truly refer to God by a process of discovering their meaning in God's abundant triune life. Discussions or conversations about meaning - in other words, theological interpretation - are discussions about divinehuman mediation in learning (authorial intention) and desiring (interests of reading communities). Theological interpretation then as a kind of wisdom interpretation of scripture, which does justice to history, authors, texts, communities and, supremely, God's incarnate wisdom mediating between all these complex relations. Having access to the meaning of Scripture then is somehow to have access to God's own life, which is the pre-eminently theological issue of the hermeneutical intervention of the incarnation of the Word in Christ (a rule of faith, hope and love which gives us hermeneutical access to divine-human meaning). God's life is superabundant. It is something that cannot be contained and is known, however partial, in relational communication. Williams rightly reminds us, 'Only God means nothing but God.'107 All of this adds up to a superabundance of meaning understood as the mediation of the interrelational aspects of a full communicative event, Christ, the Word of God. Divine relationality is the supervening notion that gives the framework for meaning and theological interpretation. Mediation and conversation, as terms used to describe the meaning and theological interpretation of Scripture, challenge readers toward virtue. Corrective of Vanhoozer, however, I do not think virtuous readers are shaped only to better discover the meaning of a text. Virtuous reading is a part of the constitution of the meaning of the text, the mediation of the truth of Scripture. Virtuous reading allows a text to mean, because it allows for a happy act. Corrective of Fowl, I do not think virtuous readers are shaped only to avoid abusive uses of the text, rather virtuous readers are also constituted by and constitute the conversation over time. Meaning is not absent in this. But it is not just a result of the process of reading. The whole process of reading and writing, that is, the whole conversation is infused with meaning in the mediation of its various conditions and actions. Gadamer evokes a resonant image when he writes, 'we are forced to go one step beyond romantic hermeneutics, as it were, by regarding not only understanding and interpretation, but also application as comprising one unified process9.102 'One unified process' is precisely the idea in mind throughout the present discussion. The unified process, 'theological interpretation', can be characterized as a conversation within which 'meaning', that triadically unified concept of mediation, is everywhere observed and always, like God, overabundant.

107. Williams, 'Language, Reality and Desire', p. 148. 108. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall; New York: Continuum, 2nd rev. edn, 1989), p. 308.

CONCLUSION Too often ideas of meaning have been set within a dyadic framework. Either meaning is found in the intentions of the authors or it is not. The readers and their communities either create meaning or they do not. Either meaning is embedded in the illocutionary force of the speech act or it is manifested in the perlocutionary effects of the speech act. Meaning must be attached to the ideas of intentions or interests, or it is not an appropriate term to use. Even within the smaller spectrum on which theologically interested interpreters can be found the dyadic frameworks exert influence. My examination of Fowl and Vanhoozer was an attempt to show how even helpful approaches to theological interpretation are beholden to the either/ or models of meaning. There is no doubt that Fowl and Vanhoozer, each in their own way, move against the still existing divisions within (and between) biblical studies and theology. Fowl, for instance, insists on breaking free of the determinate ideas about meaning and interpretation that have held biblical studies enthralled for several generations. He briefly engages the anti-determinate models as well, but his primary interlocutors are those who insist that meaning can be discovered in the authors of texts through the proper employment of critical methods. His conclusions about theological interpretation rest on his conclusion that meaning is not a term or an idea that benefits the communities who read their sacred texts in order to live together and with their God. Therefore, 'meaning' is set aside in favour of interpretive interests, which are governed in large part by the life of the community with God. In like manner, but primarily engaging an opposite set of interlocutors, Vanhoozer builds an approach to theological interpretation on the foundation of a concept of meaning that rests on authorial intention as the conveyor of meaning. Vanhoozer adeptly manages to employ theories of speech acts to avoid locating meaning in the authors' conscience, but whereas Fowl's primary concern is to combat the overly determinate notions of meaning, Vanhoozer aims to combat the overly relativistic notions of meaning that 'kill' the author altogether. The answer to the question of practical pay-off depends on who is asking the question. If the question comes from the direction of a theological interpretation that mirrors Fowl's approach then a triadic notion of meaning challenges the theological interpreter to hold on to the idea of meaning in which reading interests and authorial intention are seen together under a larger more dialogically conceived rubric. Those ideas wherein authorial and communicative intentions provide guides and limits challenge the theological interpreter of this ilk. If the question about pay-off comes from

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the direction of one like Vanhoozer then the challenge becomes one of seeing the role of the community within the complex of meaning and not as a part of a succeeding step taken once the meaning of the text is discovered. Thus, ideas found in Wirkungsgeschichte and communitarian models of readerresponse criticism might offer challenges to Vanhoozer and others. These are challenges not so much to be opposed but challenges to open up ideas of the meaning of Scripture to incorporate the notions of community into the concept of meaning itself. This book, one might say, is an attempt to lay the groundwork for a concept of meaning that affirms what Fowl and Vanhoozer argue against, yet re-imagines those things for which they argue. That is, I want to second the arguments Fowl makes against overly determinate interpreters who 'argue that a text's meaning is coextensive with, or primarily determined by, the author's intentions',1 and the ones Vanhoozer makes against 'a community's use of Scripture merely to reinforce a social identity (and agenda?) that it may have obtained elsewhere'.2 Indeed the climate of biblical studies within the smaller discipline of theological interpretation (or, one might add as well theological hermeneutics and theological exegesis) suggests that finding one's path between the Scylla of deterministic models and the Charybdis of relativistic models is a particularly important enterprise.3 This territory is, to my mind, a smaller piece in a larger world where people have grown weary of defending and leery of the philosophical ground upon which common divides - academy and church, biblical studies and theology, history and faith, authorial intentions and interpretive interests - rest. Vanhoozer and Fowl rightfully look to make theological interpretation an approach to biblical texts that move against these larger divisions. However, I believe, the underlying images of meaning in their work do not also dissolve divisive notions. It does not do to repair the ideas of authorial intention4 or to 'eliminate talk of 'meaning' in favour of other terms', in order to 'put a stop to futile discussions'.5 Thus, I have offered the idea that 'meaning' is not something that can be located with any one element of a larger system, nor is it a term that should be wholly expunged from the wider discussion. Meaning is neither synonymous with intentions nor interests, but it is also not a concept that can do without either. Meaning is the mediation of God's truth that takes place between authors, readers and the community of God 1. Fowl, * Authorial Intention', p. 77. Note as well that Fowl does not find the restructuring of authorial intention into communicative intent (Vanhoozer) any more theoretically or theologically sound (pp. 77-9). 2. Vanhoozer, 'Body Piercing', p. 302. 3. See again the explosion of consultations, gatherings, series, collaborations and the like, all of which are committed to theological interpretations of Scripture. See especially ch. 1, n. 3. 4. In simple terms Vanhoozer's programme amounts to a reformulation of authorial intention as meaning. See several places in his publications, especially the whole of Is There Meaning in This Text? and 'From Speech Acts to Scripture Acts', pp. 159-206. 5. Fowl, 'Authorial Intention', p. 80.

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of which they are all a part. It is neither a determined object nor an openended idea. I have tried to employ tools used by Vanhoozer and Fowl, specifically I have examined some of the ideas of speech-act theory. As Fowl himself recognizes, speech-act theory is helpful for determining an author's communicative intent, and to that extent he and Vanhoozer are not far apart.6 I argue though that there are readings of speech-act theory that can lead to images of meaning that do not necessarily force us to equate these images with any one aspect of the speech act, and, contra Fowl, they can at least suggest a theory of meaning.7 In short, I have described McClendon and Smith's account of a happy speech act as the coordination of a set of conditions, especially the conventional, referential and affective conditions. Thus the triad might be represented as follows: Happy Speech Act = Conventional + Referential + Affective conditions. Likewise, I have argued that the total speech situation is only understood when the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary elements are incorporated: Total Speech Situation = Locutionary + Illocutionary + Perlocutionary acts. Similarly, Peirce's conception of a sign offers yet another triadic formula: Sign (and its meaning) = Object + Sign-Vehicle + Interpretant. I suggest that these triads provide models for how we may begin to conceive of meaning. Theological interpreters run into trouble when they insist on locating meaning with any one component of the theologically interpretive conversation. If I am even partially successful in re-imagining meaning as a triadic term, I have not alleviated the work of theological interpreters. Indeed, I believe triadic meaning forces theological interpreters to think more deeply and offer 'thicker' descriptions of the biblical authors' communicative intents, the texts' scriptural nature and the reading communities' interpretive interests. Vanhoozer is keen to challenge theological interpreters towards a 'thick' description of the communicative intentions of the biblical texts.8 I encourage theological interpreters to heed his challenge, but I also believe 'thick' descriptions are needed for Scripture and Christian communities as well. It may well be no one interpreter has the resources to do all of this description. In that case though, no one interpreter has the right to claim that he/she fully possesses the meaning of the text or knows the right methods for doing so. Instead the interpreter contributes to the wider conversation in which meaning is mediated. The triad of meaning might then be represented thus: Meaning = Author + Text + Community. Still, however, we are left with the questions of practicality and pay-off. My purpose in this work was not to propose one interpretive method over another. I have only intended 6. Fowl, 'Authorial Intention', p. 76. 7. Fowl, 'Authorial Intention', p. 77. Fowl writes that he does 'not think that speech act theory can provide ... a theory of meaning'. I accept this notion to some extent; however, I do believe that a holistic view of speech act theory does reflect a similar holism with regard to meaning. 8. See for instance, Vanhoozer, 'Body Piercing', pp. 292-3.

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to explore opposing notions of meaning within differing approaches to theological interpretation and suggest to proponents of both that the reemerging discipline might better thrive if a broader concept of meaning informed it, a concept that itself was informed by and reflected a Trinitarian understanding of God.9 I might then ask what current approaches to the biblical texts struggle best with the holistic idea of meaning for which I am arguing. In returning to the passage in Luke 10 with which I began, I ask what interpretive models strive to answer both of Jesus' questions to the lawyer. How can theological interpreters articulate what is 'in' the texts and at the same time articulate 'how' they and the whole history of theological interpreters read? With a large brush I would paint theological interpretation as a discipline that is making great strides with these sorts of questions, though it is still a discipline in need of definition. There are those who appeal to traditional ideas of sensus plenior or grammatical-historical-theological interpretation, or to the return to pre-modern and apostolic approaches to biblical text. Also, disciplines such as reception history, Wirkungsgeschichte and readerresponse criticism are giving us ways to give 'thick' descriptions of the previously neglected community of readers of Scripture. In addition, the tools of communicative theory are providing better ways to talk about authorial intention, and canonical criticism has given us resources for considering Scripture qua Scripture. No one interpretive discipline can account for all elements of scriptural meaning. Many of the hermeneutical examinations within particular cultures are exploring the conversational nature of theological interpretation in ways that traditional Western interpreters are unable to do.10 It seems to me, however, that narrative approaches to interpretation are at least trying to understand the meaning of biblical texts in ways that do not tie it to one element of the larger 'story'.11 Narrative 9. Vanhoozer also appeals to a handful of triads in Is There Meaning? (p. 456) and specifically equates God to locution, Jesus to illocution, and the Holy Spirit to per locution (p. 457). Where I believe his connections fall short is in his larger argument that illocutionary intent is the meaning of texts. I contend that meaning can no more be limited to illocutions alone than the Trinitarian godhead to the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit only. 10. See, for instance, the P. Meagher, 'Biblical Hermeneutics in India: The New Testament', Bible Bhashyam 30, no. 4 (2004), pp. 260-79. For readings from within particular Western Christian traditions see T. Bechtel, 'How to Eat Your Bible: Performance and Understanding for Mennonites', Conrad Grebel Review 21, no. 2 (2003), pp. 8 1 7, and John Christopher Thomas, 'Reading the Bible from within Our Traditions: A Pentecostal Hermeneutic as Test Case', in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (ed.), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 108-22. 11. Hans Frei's The Eclipse ofBiblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974) was a watershed publication with regard to narrative in biblical studies. For an interesting exploration into the way Jesus' story is told as a exercise of theological interpretation see Mogens Muller, 'The Theological Interpretation of the Figure of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: Some Principal Features in Matthean Christology', New Testament Studies 45, no. 2 (1999), pp. 157-73.

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theology is variously understood and practised but at its base it understands 'the "revelation" of God's person is inextricably tied to ... narrative'.12 Joel Green concludes that 'narrative theology' is 'more an intrinsically selfinvolving theological vision of God, church, Scripture and world, bound together within the economy of salvation, with the people of God cast as pilgrims on a journey whose destination is known and achieved only by indwelling the divine story - which cannot be reduced to principles and rules, but must be embraced and embodied'.13 In the end, however, mine is not an argument of practice; it is rather an argument of conception. For me to say that biblical scholars can no longer afford to isolate themselves from theologians, and theologians can no longer isolate themselves from biblical scholars is not a novel declaration in today's climate. But, like the incarnation of the Word made flesh, we must find a dynamic union between theology and biblical studies if we are ever going to escape the dyadic problems of biblical interpretation. The recent revival of theological interpretation is a concerted effort by interested scholars to overcome the problems of scriptural interpretation we have inherited from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I have proposed that our concepts of meaning are one important way of transforming these inherited problems and getting us to a new level of scriptural interpretation - one we have not yet reached, but signs of its in-breaking are everywhere apparent. Theology and biblical studies cannot help but work together in the ongoing and meaning-full conversation. This project makes a careful argument which unites historical and theological approaches to Scripture by expanding the biblical scholar's and theologian's scope to the whole history of what the text has meant, is meaning and will continue to mean to the Church throughout the whole of its history. It holds open a conception of meaning that supports the current impetus towards this sort of unity in the current eruption of theological interpretation, and in practical terms, the eruption of so many new commentaries and works that now aim at theological interpretation rather than the application of traditional tools upon a text. We need not dismiss meaning, but rather we are able to hold out for a conception of meaning that can do justice to the sensus plenior and the 12. John Goldingay, 'Biblical Narrative and Systematic Theology', in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (ed.), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 123-42 (137). 13. Joel B. Green, 'Narrative Theology', in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005), pp. 531-3 (533). See also Green's contention that a narrative-oriented hermeneutic is the best way forward for re-thinking the disciplines of biblical studies and systematic theology in order to develop a genuine theological exegesis of Scripture, in 'Practicing the Gospel in a Post-Critical World: The Promise of Theological Exegesis', Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47, no. 3 (2004), pp. 387-97. For a fairly recent attempt to reinstate the concept of intention from a narrative approach see Susan Lochrie Graham, 'On Scripture and Authorial Intent: A Narratological Proposal', Anglican Theological Review 77, no. 3 (1995), pp. 307-20.

186

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Wirkungsgeschichte, that can indicate that God's Word is abundant with meaning, and that acknowledges it will take the Church an indefinite period of time to go deeper into 'the strange new world within the Bible'.

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