:: Ryan Thomas ::

I offer this ongoing series which stems from Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer’s recent book, “Mere Christian Hermeneutics” (Zondervan, 2024). While part of my work is to help others understand biblical hermeneutics in general, I find that this aspect of understanding God’s word is deeply dialogical. Vanhoozer repeatedly emphasizes the fact that the biblical text is both discourse between the author and the ancient reader-hearer, as well as discourse between God and the modern reader-hearer. Therefore, to learn good hermeneutics is to learn good conversation.

What is this book about?

Vanhoozer seeks to compile the foundational parts of biblical interpretation. He explains how different theories of interpretation have come and gone, and that he believes a core set of values and truths exists in the field of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics = the science of interpretation; the branch of theology that deals with how to expound scripture. He gets the title from C. S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity wherein Lewis calls the Church to gather around her shared core beliefs.

“…being biblical means speaking, thinking, and acting in accordance with the scriptures, and literal means reading in accordance with the letter. Sadly, many people, including confessing Christians, have lost the ability to discern or even discuss whether a particular idea or practice is warranted by scripture.” (xviii)

This loss of interpretive ability is a serious problem today. Much of the issue, according to K.V. is due to the lack of understanding among Christians in general as to how the Bible instructs us in its own interpretation. Or as he says,

“The goal of this present book is to think about biblical interpretation in the bible’s own theological terms.” (xx)

He’s saying that the Bible does not leave us without guidelines for understanding what it is saying.

“All books should be read like the Bible, namely, by trying to do justice to the real presence of authorial meaning by inferring their communicative intent from what authors actually did with their words.” (xx)

To summarize:

1. There have been many different methods that Christians have used throughout the centuries to establish a system for interpreting the Bible.
2. K.V. thinks there is a hermeneutic that can work across the board for all Christians for all time.
3. In very short, this hermeneutic is found in allowing the authors of the Bible to dictate how we interpret their words.
4. Those authors do so in the way that they use their words.
5. This is what K.V. is calling “the Bible’s own theological terms.”