:: Ryan Thomas ::

This is part 5 in the series covering Kevin Vanhoozer’s “Mere Christian Hermeneutics” (Zondervan, 2024).

Dr. V. describes Philology as “the love of words (philia + logos)… [it] refers to the entire enterprise of attending to and understanding a work of written discourse. What does it mean to love words and to give loving attention to the way the words go in biblical texts?” (108)

One who studies philology is attending to more than the mere words themselves – as if they could be isolated from the discourse wherein they are found. Dr. V. hammers this point repeatedly so far in the book – that written text is discourse in some form or fashion. He uses this phrase often to describe discourse – “what someone says to someone about something at some time in some way for some purpose.” (109)

Those six points are different “lines of inquiry” that need all be considered due to the multi-faceted dimensions of discourse. He calls this “philological criticism.” (111) Without a good understanding of how to employ this form of criticism, we fall into traps that lead to poor interpretation. “If we are not alert and attentive to an author’s particular communicative intent, we are liable to read the words as if we had written them..” (111)

This is an important aspect of Vanhoozer’s thesis he builds toward. It leads us from the divide between scholars and theologians as a defined polemic, into a better two-lane highway of sorts, recentered on Christ. It is no small thing that Jesus is named the logos of God. “What philologists of Scripture ultimately love about biblical words is that they are the words the Word speaks.” This reorientation offers a complementary pairing rather than a contentious dichotomy. (112) Both theologians and scholars can remain biblical in their work by giving loving attention to the sense of the words and the referent of the words. Both are needed to offer Christianity a right understanding of the Divine discourse.

Next Dr. V. moves into explaining the difference between literal and literalistic. The former attends to the authorial intent of the words, while the latter ignores the facets of discourse and reads through externally sourced lenses (a form of illiteracy) (114). There are several different uses of the term literal so Dr. V. lays out his fivefold typology (114 – 121):

1. Verbal Sense
   1. Dictionary meaning.
   2. Language specific.
   3. Semantic range provides complexity.
2. Authorial Sense
   1. Meaning is purposive communicative action.
   2. Intentional actions by personal agents.
3. Historical Sense
   1. Attends to the referent.
   2. The referential function of language.
   3. In terms of physicality.
4. Literary Sense
   1. The meaning is the story.
   2. Function of the world within rather than behind the text.
   3. Literary form.
5. Rules Sense
   1. Ruled reading practices.
   2. Based on the community’s technique for following an argument.
   3. Intrinsic canonicity.

“The combination of the verbal and occasional, the semantic and the pragmatic, gives rise to what has become a standard definition of the literal sense.” (117)

As you can see, there is a lot to consider when approaching a text. This isn’t to make the Bible intimidating. It’s to help us understand that we cannot come flippantly to God’s word. We cannot bring our own ideas to the text. We cannot be lazy in our understanding. Not only is the revelation of God worth more effort than that, it requires much effort if we desire to know him well and to mine the depths of what he has offered us.