Could it not be that God has designed the imagination to be not merely a faculty of fantasy–a means for seeing what is not there–but as a means for seeing what is there, particularly when the senses alone are unable to observe it?
Kevin Vanhoozer, First Theology, 36
The spiral seems inescapable. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? We are helped by understanding that our views of God and Scripture are not formulated independently of one another. We form our views of each together. (See David Kelsey, Proving Doctrine).
So writes Kevin Vanhoozer:
I submit that the best way to view God and Scripture together is to acknowledge God as a communicative agent and Scripture as his communicative action. The virtue of this construal, as far as first theology is concerned, lies in its implicit thesis that one can neither discuss God apart from Scripture nor do justice to Scripture in abstraction from its relation to God. For if the Bible is a species of divine communicative action, it follows that in using Scripture we are not dealing merely with information about God; we are rather engaging with God himself–with God in communicative action. The notion of divine communicative action form an indissoluble bond between God and Scripture.
First Theology: God, Scripture, & Hermeneutics, 35.
The crucial question is simply this: “Which interpretation is right?” The easiest response would be to immediately say that the right interpretation is that which is most loyal to the original author’s intention. I think that this answer is right on in many ways.
However, to be honest, we must admit that such an answer is still situated within a certain interpretative framework. Authorial intention has not always been the flag flown throughout the church’s interpretation of Scripture. Besides how accurate we think such a framework may be, we cannot pretend as though this framework did not come within an interpretative community in the same way that other frameworks have. Authorial intention and reader-response and speech-act theory and the medieval four-fold sense have something in common: they are all products of a certain epoch within church history. They have not always existed. They have come to be.
To simply revert to the author’s intent would create the contention that we are claiming our interpretative community to be superior to other interpretative communities. It is not merely about which interpretation is correct, but would be about which method of interpretation is better. The question, “Which interpretation is better?” could be restated as “Which interpretative community is better?”
Now we are at the real question: To unfalteringly close your eyes and white-knuckle authorial intention at this point is on the verge of interpretative pride. Are we willing to say that the way we read the Bible at this point in time is superior to how everyone else throughout the history of the Church has read the Bible? Perhaps? The Church is growing up into mature manhood (Eph. 4:12-15).
But what do we say? Our understanding of Scripture itself is very important. We do not refer to our interpretative community norm in order to validate an interpretation of the text. We must refer to something that transcends interpretative communities altogether. The right interpretation of Scripture is the interpretation that is most fitting to the dramatic reality of what God is doing in Jesus Christ, by the Spirit, within the history of His creation. The witness of this dramatic reality is the canon. Kevin Vanhoozer writes:
The canon is the abiding theological witness to God’s pattern of communicative action in Israel and in Jesus Christ. As theo-dramatic script, the canon is witness to what God has done. As covenant document, the canon is witness to the solemn agreement that binds God and God’s people together…
The canon, seen in light of its connection to the covenant, is much more than a theological slide rule or criterion for true propositions. It has a properly soteriological purpose as well. The notion of covenant document helps to put the canon into proper perspective, with regard to form and content alike. As to content, Scripture depicts the history of God’s covenantal relations to humanity, including those divine communicative acts—promises, warnings, commands, consolations—that witness to what God was doing in Christ. As to form, the canon is an authoritative and binding witness to the fact, and the terms, of covenant relationship. The canon is thus the instrument through which the Spirit of God ministers and administers the covenant today. The origin (and hence the authority) of the canonical Scriptures is thus far removed from that of human constitutions (Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama as Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology, [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005], 138).
The canon is the ancient witness to what God has already accomplished and it is also the ongoing reminder of what He has yet to consummate. It is the covenant record of His past faithfulness and the unwavering promise of His faithfulness in that which is yet to come. What fits into this far exceeds the human conjectures of any interpretative community.
We must submit our (or any) interpretation of Scripture to the canon, that is, to the greater reality of what God is doing through Jesus Christ and by His Spirit.
Vanhoozer again:
Dramatic fittingness with what God has done in Christ is the supreme criterion for truth, goodness, and beauty alike…
Christo-dramatic fittingness means canonical fittingness. We must think through the canon in order rightly to think about Jesus Christ. The standard of fittingness is specification of this “whole and complete” action. Sounds doctrine is distinguished from the dross of mere opinion only because the former accords with the commissioned testimony of the biblical authors and the latter does not (Vanhoozer, Drama, 258).
Doctrine helps us come to our senses, and to our true selves. It does so in part by demythologizing our fantasies and deconstructing our cleverly devised myths.
C.S. Lewis notes that what we normally call our self is largely a dramatic construction, as is the stage we call “the real world.” The theo-drama, far from being fantasy, is in fact a glimpse, and taste, of reality. But it is only through prayer that we become aware of our true selves beneath the mask I call “me”: “Now the moment of prayer is for me… the awareness, the re-awakened awareness, that this ‘real world’ and ‘real self’ are very far from being rock-bottom realities” (Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 81).
Prayer, like doctrine itself, is a powerful tonic of reality, exposing our artificial psychological and social constructions to be no more than glittering images, a theater of shadows.
To pray “Our Father…” is to begin to let a new imagination shape our sense of self. To call God “Our Father” is, says Lewis, to dress up as Christ. But this dressing up is no play-acting, nor does it have anything to do with hypocrisy. For doctrine directs us to participate in the theo-drama precisely by clothing oneself with “then new self” (Col. 3:10) and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 13:14). Such imagining is no pretense; it is rather a perception of what is eschatologically really the case.
As Lewis comments: “Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already” (Lewis, Mere Christianity, [Glaslgow: Collins, 1955], 158).
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 394, paragraphing mine.
The canon is the abiding theological witness to God’s pattern of communicative action in Israel and in Jesus Christ. As theo-dramatic script, the canon is witness to what God has done. As covenant document, the canon is witness to the solemn agreement that binds God and God’s people together…
The canon, seen in light of its connection to the covenant, is much more than a theological slide rule or criterion for true propositions. It has a properly soteriological purpose as well. The notion of covenant document helps to put the canon into proper perspective, with regard to form and content alike. As to content, Scripture depicts the history of God’s covenantal relations to humanity, including those divine communicative acts—promises, warnings, commands, consolations—that witness to what God was doing in Christ. As to form, the canon is an authoritative and binding witness to the fact, and the terms, of covenant relationship. The canon is thus the instrument through which the Spirit of God ministers and administers the covenant today. The origin (and hence the authority) of the canonical Scriptures is thus far removed from that of human constitutions.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 138ff.
The church is the showcase neither for moralism nor for civic religion, much less for technology or for individual personalities, but a theater of the strange new world of the gospel–a theater not of ethics or entertainment but of edification and eschatology…
The local church is that interactive theater where a distinct view of the world–as created for fellowship with the triune God–is remembered, studied, cultivated, and celebrated in corporate performance.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 457
For what God is doing in Scripture–particularly when we attend to the canonical context–is offering a theologically thick description of Jesus Christ. It is precisely by responding to the various illocutions in Scripture–by believing assertions, by trusting its promises, by obeying its commands, by singing its songs–that we become “thickly,” which is to say covenantally, related to Christ.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 68.
“A theological interpretation of the BIble is more likely to be critical of readers than of the biblical authors or biblical texts. It is not that text criticism and other forms of criticism have no role; it is rather a matter of the ultimate aim of reading. Those who seek to interpret Scripture theologically want to hear the word of God in Scripture and hence to be transformed by the renewing of their minds (Rom 12:2). In this respect, it is important to note that God must not be an ‘afterthought’ in biblical interpretaion.”
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, What is Theological Interpretation of the Bible?
“Ok. Count me in.”
Jonathan E. Parnell, here
Prayer is the essential part of the dialogical action at the heart of the theo-drama. Responding to the Bible as the word of God is not merely cognitive but a communicative and spiritual act. Will we pray the text, or simply peruse it? To pray the text is to acknowledge its author, to admit its claim, and to bring our desires into accord with those of God. Prayer is that canonical practice whereby we do not merely envision the theo-drama but indwell it and assume a speaking part. Nothing better expresses the relationship of the covenant servants to their covenant Lord than prayer. Our praise, supplications, and petitions all reflect our utter dependence on divine grace. Prayer tacitly acknowledges how God’s transcendence and nearness are to be understood with an eloquence that eludes the most explicit theological formulations.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 224
It is important not to collaspe the act of authoring (logos) into the church’s act of reception (pathos). To suggest that the way the church receives the word determines what God is saying and doing in the Bible is to wreak havoc with the economy of divine discourse.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 193
