:: Ryan Thomas ::

On we go with more of Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer’s “Mere Christian Hermeneutics” (Zondervan, 2024).

So far in Dr. V.’s book (and this blog series), he (and I) have been driving at an issue of highest importance: how to understand what God, through his word, is saying to us. Specifically the topic of what “literal” means in light of the reality that authors are engaging in discourse of some kind; discourse that is set in both a particular context and frame of reference. Frames of reference, as we learned, are generally created by reading cultures (the mini-world of influence around us) and social imaginary.

I’m skipping a section where Dr. V. gets into some attempts in scholarly history to reckon with the divide between immanent and transcendent frames of reference, and where he demonstrates that Platonism ultimately cannot attest to the Gospel. In very short, he argues that Christians must maintain an eschatological frame of reference, which inherently requires both the immanent and transcendent. 

He ties all of this back to the responsibility of the exegete: to be a Spirit-filled philologist (one who lovingly attends to the words). “This christological truth – that the Word through whom all things were created has entered into it and spoken – has philological consequences.” (140) Lovingly attending to the words of the Bible means lovingly attending to the Word who is both their sense and their referent.

This next paragraph is perhaps one of the best (concisely speaking) summaries of how every believer should see and approach Scripture:

“God has commissioned and inspired the words of the prophets and apostles, words that ultimately run to Jesus Christ. Doing justice of the letter of the text therefore means situating it in an eschatological frame of reference, ruled by a scriptural imaginary: the story of God forming a holy nation (Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:9), making all things subject to Christ (1 Corinthians 15:28) and the earth his footstool (Isaiah 66:1; cf. Matthew 5:35; Hebrews 10:13). Biblical discourse is messianic kingdom discourse. Christ is the realization of the eternal purpose of God ‘to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Ephesians 1:10). All this to say: the eschatological subject matter of the text calls for an eschatological frame of reference.” (140)

Calling Scripture eschatological means that we cannot merely attend to the “historical reality behind, the narrative world within, or the contemporary context of the reader.” In fact, we must remember that “the Word of God is not simply the context of the Bible, but the voice of God speaking to us in and through it.” Dr. V. says, “It is eschatological because it is breaking (and speaking) into time and space from one who is beyond [the words].” (140)

We hold to the eschatological context of Scripture in that it “exposes us to the divine address today.” We hold to the eschatological frame of reference for interpreting scripture in that the Bible is “about events pertaining to the end of the ages.” (141)

In Revelation 5 the angel of heaven cries out for anyone who is worthy to open the scroll of God. This scroll is a representation of the telos of God – his ultimate purpose and plan for the ages. Of course, the slain Lamb who stands as a Lion, is found worthy because by his blood he ransomed for God a people from every tribe, language, people, and nation. That is such a beautiful, poetic image of what is meant by eschatology. The Christian should be utterly and totally concerned with moving forward to this end. God with man, the curse undone, the cosmos restored, sin and death forever wiped away – these are what God is moving toward, and so his self-revelation moves us toward that same end. The sense of Scripture (how the words run), the referent of Scripture (the Messiah who is both the external and internal center), the context of Scripture (God’s voice / revelation to his people), Scripture’s frame of reference (eschatology), Scripture’s social imaginary (the Spirit-renewed mind) all make up how the Church today must approach Scripture. Missing any one of these parts throws off the whole or leaves us with a truncated theology.

“Eschatology is the true north of biblical history and the literal sense.” (142)