Is There Meaning in This Text?

:
A Survey with Special Interest in Biblical Studies

by
T. A. Middlebrook
B. A., Wheaton College, 2003
M. A., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2012
Campus Post - 1804

A Paper
Submitted to Dr. Harris
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in
Theological Studies
at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Illinois
May 2013

Kevin J. Vanhoozers 1998 Is There a Meaning In This Text?1 presents a hermeneutical

framework that constantly pushes the reader to honestly look at the related tasks of reading,
writing, and interpretation in the post-modern context. This evangelical is not merely burning
straw men but rather goes to great length to expose the reader to a historical and philosophical
development than has essentially bankrupted the meaning of meaning. His reply is not only
philosophical but theological as well. His 2009 Preface makes this point and adds two points of
clarification: (1) this book is set against the living and active post-modern linguistic/literary
machine, and (2) this book proposes a theological hermeneutic that alternately addresses both
general and special hermeneutics throughout. As I read the book I found many familiar faces in
his characters (heroes and villains) from my tour of duty in the world of biblical studies. Coming
from this perspective, I have brought to my reading and this survey mostly appreciative
comments and a few lingering questions that are specific to that field.
Vanhoozers plan of attack is to address the attack on meaning into three natural
categories: author, text, and reader. The critical state of affairs for each is addressed first in a
chapter apiece (2-4) and then Vanhoozer redresses each in turn and provides a positive
foundation for constructing meaning and interpretation (5-7). The strength of Vanhoozers
argument comes from the section regarding the nature of the author, in my opinion. The bulk of
his methodical recommendations attend the second section on the reader. The conclusion is a
brief 12 pages and focuses upon the theological unification of his thesis: the demands of textual

ITMITT for short. I used the reprint from 2009, which I believe added only a preface; Kevin J. Vanhoozer,
Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids,
MI: Zondervan, 1998).

communication cannot be addressed by the skepticism of various post-modern approaches but

requires a trinitarian hermeneutic based upon the communicative paradigm of the Godhead as
revealed in Scripture. My plan of attack is to address each category, critical and constructive, as
a unit (e.g. Text from ch. 3 and 6).2
The Author:
It was to the Enlightenment that Vanhoozer traces a fundamental shift that changed the
way in which the author was viewed. He refers to the so-called secularization thesis to
describe the transition from the medieval concept of God as the sovereign subject to the
Humanist conception wherein the human author has taken up the mold of his erstwhile divine
Author (Vanhoozer, 45). From here, Francis Bacon and philosophers of his ilk engage in a total
reconstruction of knowledge by a sheer feat of reason. The optimism of this project is only
matched by its subsequent demise over the next few centuries when the driving force of credulity
in the rational construction project, that is, skepticism collapsed in on itself. Vanhoozer finds the
logical conclusion of this movement in Jacques Derridas total deconstruction.
Where was this bankruptcy coming from? As Derrida would clarify, scholarship and its
philosophical underpinnings could never escape, never transcend their own context: language.
To assert a singular meaning would be to claim the interpretive throne (power politics), instead
the author is actually a slave to language. Hermeneutics would go on to replace theology as the
queen of the sciences. Without a leap of faith, mans description of the cosmos is
fundamentally self-referential. The gulf around the Cartesian mind, who might humbly claim
cogito ergo sum, is entrenched further by robbing him even of the foundation of referential
self-expression. And for those who take the wager and leap in faith, no sure landing is offered.
2

I hope that it is clear enough that this literary and philosophical novice will be presenting Vanhoozers
material throughout. In general, the material can be readily found in the chapters corresponding to my sub-headings
(Author = Chapters 2, 5).

Friedrich Nietzsche set the nail on Gods coffin, God is dead. He serves as Vanhoozers
symbol of ultimate violence toward the possibility of meaning. With nowhere to run and no leg
to stand upon, the author is undone.
God is not dead (of course) but we must face the death of our god of methodology.3 In
part, Vanhoozer will find comfort in E. D. Hirschs Validity in Interpretation, because it
emphasizes authorial intention as the unmoving locus of meaning. As another man of
hermeneutical faith, Hirsch believes the other/author exists ontologically, which leaves his
argument largely one of pragmatics. Specifically, verbal meaning is accessed as the sharable
content of the speakers intentional object of reference (76). However, this presents a similar
problem because meaning is left as a component of the consciousness of the author, accessed
indirectly via text. Vanhoozer believes we may be walking into some intentional fallacies: (1) of
relevancy: the author may not accomplish (or do so poorly) her intentions, (2) of transparency:
the author is controlled by subconscious (and supra-) factors that undermine the transparency of
ones own intentions, (3) of identity: the authors words are read in another persons context and
this iterability always produces a non-identical repetition, and (4) of objectivity: again, is
anything really out there? This critique must be addressed in another manner, because it is
becoming increasingly clear that the author is not the master of language.
And yet another obstacle awaits us, for though we are slaves of language, we cannot call
it our master. The reading community is the creator of all language, according to NeoPragmatists like Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty. Further, [all] significant distinctions that make
a meaningful world out of human experience are, in the final analysis, linguistic creations (57).
If there is nothing behind language (or meaning) besides more of what is in front of it, i.e. the

"Derrida mistakenly tries to drive ontological conclusions from an epistemological problem (212).

reader, then reading becomes a matter of creating brand-new texts (inherently excluding
commentary). And so, if we are not slaves or masters of language, what are we? Vanhoozer
suggests that we are citizens of language (204).
An important point in Vanhoozer's reconstruction of meaning is to clarify that as citizens
of the city we go to work. The failure of the Undoers (Deconstructionism) and the Users (Neo/Pragmatism) is their inability to account for the functionality of communication. It is at the
level of the communicative act that we must identify meaning, and it is at this level that
Vanhoozer calls three scholarly groups from the bench.
Speech-Acts: A quick look at ordinary language, according to John Searle and J. L.
Austin, will show that language is not a passive object of study but an active tool being used in
countless speech-acts everyday. Promises are made. People are demoted. Permission is
granted. All with words. They do things. Moreover, activity requires agency. At the level of
speech-act, communication can be effectively parsed with authorial intention intact, though
perhaps not at the level of its constituent parts.
Discourse: Vanhoozer maintains that many skeptics in search of a valid referent get
bogged down at the semiotic level. With Paul Ricoeur, he asks us to make the important
distinction between semiotics and semantics. The sentence, a complete thought according to
my grammar school, becomes more than the sum of its parts. Vanhoozer considers the sentence
a basic particular, an item whose integrity is prerequisite to its correct analysis. The fleeting
event of writing at the sematic level partakes both of the langue (the static system of language)
and the parole (the active use of language) (215). The meaning of the text transcends the
moment of inscription via textual discourse.

Social Theory: Having reintroduced human agents into our communicative acts, it is
appropriate that the literary theorists cross disciplines from semiotic, even semantic, to the
sociological. For Wittgenstein, language is something closer to a social game that incorporates
certain rules within a given context in order to act. These norms would correspond to a particular
grammar that is implemented successfully when a shared understanding allows for action.
Habermas notes (328), however, that this interpersonal event requires validity testing to succeed:
it must be true (an actual referent), truthful (an honest intent), and fitting (a coherent meaning).
This does make sense of and accounts for our experience of language. Letters in the sand
(taking Knapp and Michaels analogy) are just scribbles until we assign intentionality to them.
This gives them meaning. Vanhoozer writes that just as the Descartes disembodied mind gets
one nowhere, language also requires embodiment through communicative agency as well as
inter-subjective support in order to be meaningful, much less significant. 4
Significance in this action theory of language is simply meaning applied or meaning
extended. The author may (apostolic missionary effort) or may not (film Apocalypse Now)
have intended such consequences. But one thing must be clear, meaning is independent from
significance (263). They are not unrelated (i.e. contextual horizons can/should be fused
alongside one another) but they should not be confused. Legitimate application of meaning will
have constant reference to the communicative act intended by the author.
To conclude, Vanhoozer provides a formula definition of meaning: M=Fp. (M)eaning
equals the illocutionary (F)orce multiplying the (p)roposition/(p)lot, depending upon the genre.5
The Text:
4

This discussion reminds me of the issue of inscriptional forgeries in our day. It matters a great deal and
for many reasons to the scholarly community who wrote a text and when. We boil down a texts value to this issue.
5
To review, locution is the act of speech (w-o-r-d) of verbal communication. Illocution is the intended
effect of communication (to promise, to inform, to discourage). Perlocution is the actual consequence of said
communication (having trusted, being informed, to have lost heart), which is extrinsic to meaning itself.

Having theoretically re-established agency and the possibility of meaning is one task but
we have yet to consider a strategic approach to the textual mediator between the reader and
author. How does this jumble of words come to pass Habermas test of validity or any other?
Vanhoozer claims that it is to be found within the literal meaning of the text garnered from a
textual unit that is literarily unified.6 The critical responses are twofold: Thus faced with the
prospect of the literal sense as ones interpretive norm one, one can either deny its existence
(Fish) or its knowability (Derrida).
The existence or ontology of the literal meaning in communication is a restatement of the
title of the book Is there meaning in this text? Surprisingly enough, Vanhoozer answers this
question rather quickly, we will call it his short answer: Yes, and it is properly basic. In other
words, given the existence of communication, meaningful interpretation is foundational.
Thererfore, what undergirds the existence of this system does not require argumentation, but
Vanhoozer provides his thinking on the topic. Not surprisingly, it is a theological answer. The
reply concerns the doctrine of God, for if Jesus (the Word become flesh) exegetes the Father
(John 1:18), then ultimate reality has determinate meaning. The Word of the Father undergirds
textual meaning.
r
This is something I would like to unpack further. Christian writes
have made arguments

in the past, this example is taken Justin Martyrs Dialogue with Trypho (paragraph 61), based
upon the illustration of a word that proceeds from the mouth retaining all of the force and the
genuineness of the word that remains in the mouth, much like the flame that does not lessen in
quality when it is spread from one torch to another. The analogy is that the divine Word
functions in like manner to the human word (or flame). Vanhoozer, however, is arguing the
6

He hastens to add the distinction between a literal/literary meaning and a literalistic one. The latter is
equated with what is commonly associated with fundamentalist interpretation and the uncritical assertions of plain
meaning in order to settle disagreements. In contrast, the literal meaning of Gen 1 may not be a 6-Daycreation.

reverse. His analogy is that the human word functions in like manner to the divine Word. And,
he seems to be arguing not just for an analogy of language but arguing for an actual foundation
of language. Vanhoozers biblical rationale, scattered throughout the book, derives largely from
the bestowal of the divine image upon man in Gen 1:27 and Christ (more generally supported in
passages like Johns Prologue and the Christ-Hymn in Col 1).7 I believe there is a temptation
to utilize the imago dei as a catch-all for any praiseworthy capacity within man. It is not that
every good and perfect thing does not come to us from our Father. But it is another thing to
set communicative acts as a part as that specific blessing (responsibility?) for humanity. I think
Vanhoozer is on better ground when he establishes the possibility of transcendent meaning more
generally in the Incarnation, which he does numerous times (304-10, 412, etc.).
Vanhoozer also addresses the knowability of the literal meaning of the text. He does so
in the faces of Derridas critique of the very categories literal and figurative. For him, the
properly literal can never signify the referent without any remainder; there is always an element
of metaphor in language (119). Perhaps this is a product of the Fall, corrupting our language and
the cognitive environment in which it is employed (297-299). Then again, Vanhoozer does not
demand such totalizing language (any, all, always) and takes confidence in words like: fitting,
adequate, sufficient, appropriate.
Thus, the definition of the literal meaning is described sufficiently when it allows us to
appreciate everything the author is doing in a text (284). These thick descriptions clarify the
signs, the referent (proposition and plot), the poetry (manner of construction), and its function
(313). The last category is closely tied with genre which requires a familiarization with
historically comparable texts. It will please the sensitivities of a biblical scholar that Vanhoozer

It is ironic that the image of God, as a visual metaphor, is here used for verbal communication.

will readily affirm that genre is irreducible and that the form is not incidental but essential to the
content (343).
For Vanhoozers Users and Undoers the loss of transcendence (the belief that signs and
texts have fixed meanings) opens up every horizontal possibility (137). The interpreter is left
with no logic but the logic of juxtaposing texts and with no real sense of progress. In fact,
without the presence of transcendent meaning in the text, abuses of language (Derridas
warnings; 100) cannot even be spoken against with authority. Complaint and accountability can
only be done against oneself. The interpretive community would have no prophet, only selfperpetuation. It may be that as a literary theologian, Vanhoozer can be the prophet that is
needed.
Reader:
The last point regarding outside corrective forces in texts is particularly relevant for the
third category of the reader. The post-modern complaint is that groups asserting singular
meaning are merely asserting positions of power and domination over their linguistic subjects,
languishing in the myth of neutrality (149). Dogmatic interpretation is an ideological
oppression. Vanhoozer sees the situation resulting in Stephen Fowls 88 presentation at SBL
where he submits that we are left to either choose readings based upon interest, social justice, or
abandon the quest for moral universals in favor of particular communities (160).The
interpretive community becomes the all-important locus of authorization.
It is not as though the interpreter has not been a looming figure in world history.
Vanhoozer comments that the early Christian distinction from Judaism is not a difference of text
(well, mostly) but a difference of interpretation, specifically the Christological one. The power
of a single reading held in the church for centuries until the Reformation brought to light a whole

kingdom of interpreters. Meaning spread thin across political and ideological boundaries.
Moreover, in light of the events of recent world history (e.g. genocides), the effort to centralize
ideology was further marred and the shift to pluralistic meaning was lauded: The moral stance
towards knowledge is to suspend belief indefinitelyI believe in order to withstand (183).
What began as a helpful motion, even deconstruction is pedagogically helpful says
Vanhoozer, becomes narcissistic after a point. Post-modern ethical prerogatives amount to an
iconoclastic gesture followed by a shrug of the shoulders: first resistance, then undecidability
(186).
In contrast to these critiques, rooted in duress yet blossoming in hollowness, Vanhoozer
provides a model of responsibility for our encounter with the other or the transcendent within
texts. He mimes the biblical virtues of faith (in the real presence of meaning), hope (in the
possibility of a consensus among interpreters), obedience (to the literal sense), and love (that
faithfully inhabits and gives testimony to the meaning) as the interpretive virtues; he later adds
honesty, openness, and attention to the text. To reiterate, first the author does a
communicative act that extends her presence, which is not identical but shares a semantic
equivalence with the author (Vanhoozer calls this ipse identity.). Our responsibility then extends
from the presence of the other in a set of virtues that may also be said to mirror the second table
of the Decalogue: do not murder (e.g. zealous censure), do not bear false witness (e.g.
misrepresentation), do not steal (e.g. plagiarism; 439-440).
The readers responsibility, reasons Vanhoozer, will drive him to recognize the temporal
and topical complexity of a given text. This does not confound its singular meaning. A unified
literary piece will often require numerous descriptions. There are various levels of signification

from the clause level, ascending to sentence, trope, book, and canonical levels.8 Each require a
description using distinct methodologies. Addressing the fuller context(s) is an essential tool for
providing an adequate account of what the author is doing with the text.
Vanhoozer frames this responsibility within a covenant of discourse that stems from his
trinitarian hermeneutic. Covenantal language is appropriate because of those qualities of
commitment and repercussion it entails. The fulfillment of obligation promises reward while
failure leads to confusion or exile from the promised land of meaning and significance. The
Trinity, on the other hand, serves as the paradigm of communication. Vanhoozer is taken with
the communicative interrelationships between the Father as locutor/speaker, the Son as
illocution/word, and the Spirit as perlocutor/underwriter of reception (456-468). He writes,
Speech-act theory serves as handmaiden to a trinitarian theology of communication (457).
I too believe that God is the paradigmatic communicator who has engaged us in a model
verbal communication, i.e. Scripture. However, I have these things against Vanhoozers
argument. First, I believe that Gods communication frequently transcends words (the parting of
the Red Sea and the Resurrection come to mind) and transcends their normative use (e.g. calling
forth Creation), therefore his speech acts may not be appropriate events for comparison with our
speech acts. Second, language about God is often taken to be metaphor (though hopefully not an
insufficient one) that God has used to reveal himself to us. For instance, God is my fortress
speaks to his protective qualities. Nonetheless, I would not reverse the analogy in order to
clarify the true nature of my citys fortress. It worries me that Vanhoozers trinitarian
hermeneutic argues along these lines. At this point in my study, finding comfort in Gods use of
human language is helpful but seeking within the doctrine of God for hermeneutical

Of course, this list is not exhaustive and does not have a direct correspondence in ITMITT.

10

foundation/confirmation lacks sufficient warrant.

Vanhoozer finishes his section on the reader with three final recommendations that are
doctrinally based and apply to a special hermeneutic. The first is efficacy: the Spirit of God
empowers us by the effective presence of the Word by remembrance, conviction, etc. (John 14,
16). Second is eschatology: the interpretations that we produce and our embodiment of its
significance is bound to the humility fitting a position of already/not yet. Third is
ecclesiology: the church is the permanent witness to Scriptures meaning and significance,
called to be faithful, fruitful, forceful, and fitting to the Word (431).9
There is much within ITMITT to introduce to the novice biblical scholar and a great deal
to celebrate. Vanhoozer gives the clarion call for the full expression of interpretive virtue
alongside a fully funded rationale for such a response to the communicative act. Utilizing the
influential and critical post-modern philosophies of language, he calls us to be interpreters of
conviction, pursuing a hermeneutic of the cross. And so, may we sacrificially read beyond
ourselves and truly embody the meaningful act of communication, especially meaningful
communication of the Gospel as revealed in Gods Word.

Vanhoozer proves, yet again, his pastoral qualifications by his steady use of alliteration.

11