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

by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

• ISBN13: 9780310324690
• ISBN10: 0310324696
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-01
• Publisher: Zondervan

Summary

Is There a Meaning in This Text? is a comprehensive and creative analysis of debates over biblical hermeneutics that draws on interdisciplinary resources, all coordinated by Christian theology. It revitalizes and enlarges the concept of author-oriented interpretation and restores confidence that readers of the Bible can reach understanding. The result is a major challenge to the central assumptions of postmodern biblical scholarship and a constructive alternative proposal-an Augustinian hermeneutic-that reinvigorates the notion of biblical authority and finds a new exegetical practice that recognizes the importance of both the reader's situation and the literal sense.

Author Biography

Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Ph.D., Cambridge University) is Blanchard Professor of Theology at the Wheaton College and Graduate School. He is the author or editor of sixteen books, including The Drama of Doctrine and the forthcoming Remythologizing Theology.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xiii
Preface to the Anniversary Edition	p. 1
Preface	p. 9
Introduction: Theology and Literary Theory	p. 13
Faith Seeking Textual Understanding	p. 15
Three parables on reading and reflection
Philosophy and literary theory: from Plato to postmodernity
Meaning and interpretation: the morality of literary knowledge
The three ages of criticism: the plan of the book
Augustinian hermeneutics
Undoing Interpretation: Authority, Allegory, Anarchy	p. 37
Undoing the Author: Authority and Intentionality	p. 43
Authorship and authority: the birth of the "author"
Undoing the author's authority
Undoing the author's intention
Has the Bible lost its voice?
Undoing the Book: Textuality and Indeterminacy	p. 98
Demeaning meaning?
What is a text?
Meaning in Antioch and Alexandria
Textual indeterminacy: the rule of metaphor
Interpretive agnosticism?
Undoing the Reader: Contextuality and Ideology	p. 148
The birth of the reader
The aims of reading: literary knowledge and human interests
Interpretive violence
Power reading and the politics of canon
Undoing biblical ideology
The ethics of undoing: the "new morality" of knowledge
Redoing Interpretation: Agency, Action, Affect	p. 197
Resurrecting the Author: Meaning As Communicative Action	p. 201
The physics of promising: from codes to communion
Dissenting voices: speech rehabilitation
The "what" of meaning: texts as communicative acts
The "who" of meaning: authors as communicative agents
Communicative action and the author's intention
Meaning and significance redivivus
Redeeming the Text: The Rationality of Literary Acts	p. 281
Belief in meaning as properly basic: the nature of literary knowledge
The conflict of interpretations: the problem of literary knowledge
How to describe communicative acts: the norm of literary knowledge
Genre and communicative rationality: the method of literary knowledge
Reforming the Reader: Interpretive Virtue, Spirituality, and Communicative Efficacy	p. 367
The reader as user, critic, and follower
Is exegesis without ideology possible?
Reader response and reader responsibility
Understanding and overstanding
The Spirit of understanding: discerning and doing the Word
The vocation of the reader: interpretation as discipleship
Conclusion: A Hermeneutics of the Cross	p. 453
A Hermeneutics of Humility and Conviction	p. 455
Trinitarian hermeneutics
The verbal icon and the authorial face
Hermeneutic humility and literary knowledge
Bibliography	p. 469
Name Index	p. 487
Subject Index	p. 492
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