"Is There a Meaning in this Text?", Chapter 7

Vanhoozer has (re)covered the author and the text and now sets out to deal with the reader. A quick summary: Vanhoozer is an hermeneutical realist and rationalist: he believes that texts have meaning that is knowable, being grounded in the communicative agency of the author. Texts are communicative acts that "with matter (propositional content) and energy (illocutionary force)...and direction (perlocutionary aim)" (367). So, what about the reader? "If there is a meaning in the text, is there a right (and a wrong) way to respond to it?" (368). Reading is not passive, whether one is reading for the text's point (illocutionary force) or for its perlocutionary effect (transformation). So, does a reader have an obligation to the text? Vanhoozer says yes, and, perhaps for just a time as this, focuses on the other of the text: "My thesis is that in reading we encounter an other that calls us to respond" (368). He takes the following steps in laying out this belief: First, what is the reader's relationship to the text? Second, is there a proper way to read a text, in light of the reader's inherent biases? Third, how does the reader's freedom relate to the text? By this Vanhoozer asks whether one can read for different purposes and with different methods and still "obey" texts. With all these moral questions, Vanhoozer asks what role the Holy Spirit plays in making ethical interpretation possible.

Readers can be users, critics, or followers. Users do just that: use the text. Texts have no right and can be manipulated and controlled by the reader to their own gain. Reading is purely pragmatic, completely amoral. Vanhoozer puts Richard Rorty in this category.

Critics stand in a privileged position of power against the text, evaluating and lining up reasons for dispensing with its claims from specific positions (feminist, womanist, etc.) (372). This is different from a reader who views a personal presence in the text, needing to be shepherded and obeyed. Both aim to be ethical in their reading--one by deconstruction and liberation from the text's claims, the other by taking the text seriously and justly and incorporating it into one's life. There are those, of course, who believe that ethical interpretation involves both reading and critiquing. Finally, as interpretation has grown, so has deconstruction; deconstruction is no longer simply about the text, but about undoing certain interpretations, as well.

Followers have a complex relationship with the text. As Ricoeur noted, reading is always a struggle with the text. This involves, first, a reception. The text must have its say; its allusions must be tracked down; its words used as the author would have defined them. Ricoeur also notes that readers must "expose themselves to the effects of the text" (375). How does the text impinge on the reader? Texts, by means of this exposure, allow the reader self-examination. This is the ultimate effect of a text. The text is like musical score that is followed, but with which one must break relationship should it become harmful. One keeps company with a text for a certain while. So, how does one decide whether or not to become friends with a text? Vanhoozer lists four virtues of interpretation: honesty--acknowledging one's biases; openness--willing to hear other ideas; attention--focusing on the text, not its pragmatic use; obedience--reading it, as best one can, as the author intended.

But is it possible for readers to be followers? Is Levinas right that reason and interpretation simply end in self-absorption? This has implications for translation, of course. Does the translator betray the text and deconstruct it as they engage in translation, or do they translate a (potentially) unethical aim, one that the author wished to encourage? Vanhoozer, going back to the communicate act, believes translation should match the impact the author wishes to have. This means that readers and authors enter into covenants of communication: mutual responsibilities and commitments. Vanhoozer suggests it is always valuable to respect others, even the immoral aims of immoral authors. We must respect the communicative agent's intention, as it is part of the communicative act.

With ethics in mind, then, Vanhoozer suggests that readers are both servants and lords of the text. They are servants in that the meaning that they acknowledge the matter of the text and subject themselves to its force. They read as the author intended. This is understanding the text. However, readers are also lords of the text. Readers judge a text's significance and morality. One is able to disagree with a text, perhaps from a privileged vantage point, but only after one has stood under it.

This dynamic relationship between a text and reader means that reader may actually find his/herself in the text. The text is then reading them. In this way Ricoeur says that a text could give a self, in ipse, to the ego, the idem. Reading, then, has all sorts of struggles--historical, moral, linguistic, cultural, etc. To be able to read in light of these struggles, Vanhoozer suggests is a spiritual exercise and perhaps fruit of the Spirit. The remainder of the chapter, which I will not explore, lays out this process for the Christian in community.

"Is There a Meaning in this Text?", Chapter 6

Now that Vanhoozer has resurrected the author, he seeks to redeem the text, showing that literary acts are rational, not simply lost in unconscious motives and words at play. Vanhoozer wants to show that there is a knowable, valid, and right interpretation of the meaning in the communicative act of texts.

Knowledge of texts is not knowledge of what the text is about, but about the text's subject matter and energy. Because authors do things in texts and authors are complex, literary knowledge must be sufficiently "thick" (284). But is interpretation possible? Suppose the author is alive and the text meaningful, can interpreters find anything but their own fabrications? Common sense says, "Of course!", but 'common sense' is a product of a certain language system. George Steiner points out that this means that deconstruction is irrefutable: if everything is interpretation--and deconstruction is content to befall the same reality while it shows it--then there is no proper meaning. However, Steiner bets on meaning, as does Vanhoozer. This he grounds in Reformed Epistemology, saying that interpretation is a properly basic human function. We have interpreting machinery (brains) that, when working properly, interprets properly.

So, then, why is there conflict? More importantly, if there is always conflict of interpretation, is 'knowledge' an appropriate category to describe literary interpretation? As he seeks to answer this question, Vanhoozer defines the primary object of interpretation is "to specify the what, whys, and wherefores of the text considered as communicative action" (293). His theory of knowledge of interpretation is a form of critical realism. This means that Vanhoozer recognizes there are no value free points of view, but affirms that neither are there only value-laden readings. So, the reader must affirm that there is literary knowledge, that she believes she has it, but is not certain she does.

Interestingly, the norm for literary knowledge, even with the author alive and well, is the text itself, but considered as a literary act (303). So, what is the literal sense? Vanhoozer says it entails three elements. The literal meaning of the text is shaped by its historical, narrative, and canonical context.

Next Vanhoozer tackles interpretation vis-a-vis the form of the text. A text's form indicates that it has a different purposes. History is not properly interpreted if read as fantasy, for example, because their forms have different purposes. The purpose of narrative literature is to display a world, according to Mary Louise Pratt (341), but also, according to Susan Snaider Lanser, to take a stance toward it (341). The force of the text, then is to paint, but also to judge. "[T]he way a story is told communicate the author's perspective on the world of the text. To speak of 'point of view' in narrative is to acknowledge that the author's voice and vision is communicated indirectly, in and through the displaying of a world" (341). Lanser says that "'the novel's basic illocutionary activity is ideological construction; its basic plea: hear my word, believe and understand" (341). (Recall that illocutionary force is the energy of the text; the direction the text pushes. Perlocutionary is the purpose of the text, the effects of which may or may not spring from the author's illocutionary force.)

Just like metaphors, genres are indispensable. Genres are necessary aspects of literary communicative acts and are, therefore, not "incidental but [are] essential to the content" (343). "A genre is a covenant, a covenant of discourse" (346). To be a communicative act, it must be sincere, true, and appropriate. This is the responsibility of the author to the reader. The reader must, in turn, pour themselves out to understand the other. [Vanhoozer notes that this might be what N.T. Wright calls a 'hermeneutics of love' (349).] This is so because all knowledge is personal knowing. Indwelling the text, participating in the text is what counts as knowledge. This leads us to Chapter 7.

On Listening, by Jean-Luc Nancy, Interlude

In Derridean fashion, Nancy's continuation of "On Listening," its Interlude, concerning music, is a play on the french word 'mot,' and its relation to other sounds. This game, this play, is the sense, the meaning of the word. In a sense, the word has brought him to this meaning as he has listened. Likewise with music, the listening strains to end in sense.

"Sense, if there is any, when there is any, is never a neutral, colorless, or aphonic sense: even when written, it has a voice" (34). Nancy says that this is the meaning of to write: making a sound beyond signs; a "vocalizing" of a sense that would otherwise be silent except for a self. Nancy quotes Francis Ponge, "I never come to write the slightest phrase without my writing being accompanied by a mental speaking and listening, and even, rather, without it being preceded by those things" (35). [As I read Nancy for the second time, reviewing my notes, I form the words over and over again in my head, sometimes finding my tongue moves in rhythm with these silent words in my head. For the few (any?) actually reading this, perhaps Nancy's work has caused you to do the same. Interestingly, a novel--ones that are easily read, at least--do not force us to do this. We can skip words--paragraphs, even--and still read the novel. But without this vocalization, I do not think we can say that we have listened to it.] This speaking is "the echo of the text" and is what "opens it to its own sense" and a plurality of, literally for different listeners, senses (35). And this sound--Nancy shifts back into music at this point--is more than its listener. Nancy says it listens to itself, thereby finds itself, thereby deviating from itself, and is able to resound further away, becoming another subject, which is "neither the same as nor other than the individual subject who writes the text" (35). [I am hearing traces of Ricoeur here, especially as the text is able to gain an autonomy from the author, embarking on its own course, but Nancy has also tied the text to its author.]

Speaking is a "question of two things together": rhythm and timbre (36), the movement and color of sound, outside pitch and volume. Nancy says these form the constitution of sound offered to listening. This constitution is paralleled by the womb where we can only hear, never see, and begin to listen.

[I think Nancy is here saying that the color of sound--its timbre--which is invisible, is the actual communication. It is the communication because sound opens up its own space for possible relationship and while the child is in the womb, unformed by language, timbre is what is shared between it and what it hears. There is only noise to the child, but its timbre reflects communication of the other--an other not its mother.]

On Listening, by Jean-Luc Nancy, Part I

In this challenging little book, Nancy asks the question, "Is listening something of which philosophy is capable?" (1). Wouldn't it be true to say that philosophy hears, hears to understand, understands to philosophize? Nancy's point here is that there is a space between listening and hearing--listening is a tension and hearing is a balance, although to listen is to understand and to understand means one must listen, in the long run.

He asks why such a difference exists (2). Nancy sees the difference connected with the difference between sight and sound. Whereas philosophy has been more concerned with the visual, form, representation, and less with the sonorous (3). But he asks a telling question: If the question of truth from Kant to Heidegger has concerned with the appearance/manifestation of being ("phenomenology"), then "shouldn't truth 'itself,' as transivity and incessant transition of a continual coming and going, be listened to rather than seen?" (4). But if this is the case, truth is not something to call 'itself' because if heard, then once heard it is gone, and we are only left with an echo.

Nancy, by this reasons (and since he continues past page 4), thinks philosophy can listen. So, what does it mean? "What does it mean for a being to be immersed entirely in listening, formed by listening or in listening, listening with all his being?" Because listening was first used in the context of espionage, Nancy thinks that an answer must thereby be found by considering listening as an action that discovers a secret. "What secret is at stake when one truly listens, that is, when one tries to capture or surprise the sonority rather than the message?" (5). What secret is made public by listening? But beyond this, when we consider the expression, "To be all ears," listening must also take on an existential dynamic. So, what does it mean "to be listening"? (5). The ear, the organ and its intention must therefore be combined: To hear (with the ear), one must listen, just as to smell (with the nose), one must sniff (5). Nancy thinks that hearing and listening have a special relationship, though. In hearing, there is understanding, "as if 'hearing' were above all 'hearing say'" (6). This means that all saying has a hearing and all hearing a listening. Sound, which is really 'say,' desires to be heard, to be sensed (by the ear); to resound.

So, then, what is the difference between hearing and listening? "If 'to hear' is to understand the sense, to listen is to be straining toward a possible meaning, and consequently one that is not immediately accessible" (6). (The sense that hearing understands is the context, not the text of the sound.) Consider two examples of sound and sense, hearing and listening. In hearing a speech, we listen for meaning. But in music, the sound itself is that for which we listen. In a speech, the sound disappears. In the music, sense becomes sound. Nancy thinks that this makes a double move: we both seek sense in sound, and sound is sought in sense. "To be listening is always to be on the edge of meaning..." (7), the sound is this edge whose meaning is found upon its resonance on the listening ear.

The shared space of meaning and sound is 'referral. ' Meaning is "made of a totality of referrals: from a sign to a thing, from a state of things to a quality, from a subject to another subject or to itself, all simultaneously. Sound is also made of referrals: it spreads in space, where it resounds while still resounding 'in me'" (7). Sound, and therefore meaning, returns to itself and is also placed outside itself. Nancy says, then, that meaning and sound refer to each other, and that this space of referral "can be defined as the space of a self, a subject" (8). This means that a self is always in relationship, always part of a referral, and that "a subject feels: that is his characteristic and his definition" (9).

To be listening, then, means straining toward or approach a self--not a specific individual self, but the structure of a self. "When one is listening, one is on the lookout for a subject, something that identifies itself by resonating from self to self, in itself and for itself, hence outside of itself, at once the same as and other than itself, one in the echo of the other, and this echo is like hte very sound of its sense" (9). Here the difference between sight and sound becomes clear. While I can hear what I see, I cannot see what I hear. Visualization includes an object, a mimetic reflection. Sonority is methexic, a participation or sharing.

To be listening, then, means to enter this sharing, to be looking for relation to self, "to relationship in self," not to specific individuals (12). Nancy says, then, that to listen is not to have access to self, but the reality of access itself. (I think this means that listening is not what makes a self, but is the possibility of relation to self.) Nancy, I think, uses this to move away from phenomenology rooted in being and toward action--coming, passing, extending, penetrating (13). Because sound cannot be captured, it is always moving; it is "not a point on a line" (13), but captures space-time because sound expands. Thus, to listen is to enter that type of space that also penetrates me, opens in and around me; moves toward me and away from me (14). To listen has elements of being open from within and from without (which is why listening provides opportunity for relationship, but is not relationship with self itself). Because sound creates this space and it is in this space that I listen, listening takes place at the same time as the sound-event. Sound therefore has an ability to attack that sight simply does not. A visual presence is there before seen; sound simply arrives the moment it is heard. (Think here of an instance when you have been frightened. Often the fright is doubled if sound accompanies the sudden pop up of the other's face.)

The omnipresence of sound in the space it creates means that it returns to itself, encounters itself. It is co-presence--"presence in presence" (16). But because it is not fixed or stable, sound is a place as relation. Inasmuch as sound resounds sound creates a subject. So, Nancy gives the example of a child who, with his first cry, becomes a "sudden expansion of an echo chamber"--a place for resounding (17). So, Nancy comes to say that sound is not intended, but that sound places a subject in tension. The child is open to relation by the sound now resounding and them being able to re-sound--both themselves and others. So sound (and here Nancy is using the example of music) is not a phenomenon, but an evocation, a call, of presence (20). Sound, resonance, is not a phenomenon, but ought be considered as being itself. And here sound must be understood (Nancy says, cleverly, s'entendre--which is french for both understood and heard by oneself) not as privation of resonance, but an arrangement. Just like when the silence is just right so that you hear your own breathing, heart pounding, and body resonating.

"Is There a Meaning in This Text?", Chapter 5

Vanhoozer now sets out to offer a counter to the Derridean notion that language is master of us all. Instead, Vanhoozer suggests that being a citizen of language is an appropriate descriptive metaphor for the relationship between humans and language (202). He writes, "Language is indeed our environment, but it is neither open field nor prison house. Language is like a city in which there is both overall structure and diverse neighborhoods, a city in which speakers have freedom of movement within (city) limits" (202).

Vanhoozer begins by suggesting we think of "meaning" as "something people do" (202). Texts only mean something when someone means something by it. Vanhoozer notes that Ricoeur takes a step forward by suggesting that a sentence is not merely a higher order sign, but a new entity (204). For Ricoeur, semantics is not just the study of symbols, but of sentences--language used in actual situations. From here, V. defines language as a gift of God, "to be used gratefully and responsibly as we communicate with others" (205). Human beings also have communicative faculties which allow us to interpret correctly. Vanhoozer shows the theological base of his project: "the design plan of language is to serve as the medium of covenantal relations with God, with others, and with the world" (206). This means that language has to be used responsibly.

To defend this move, Vanhoozer enlists three philosophers: John Searle, Paul Ricoeur, and Jurgen Habermas. First, Searle, as part of the 'ordinary language cohort, notes that, contrary to Derrida's belief that language is unstable, language "works well enough." The fact that people use the same words to say something completely different does not mean that those words have no determinate meaning, and one that can often be deduced from context.

Second, Vanhoozer utilizes Ricoeur's interpretation theory. For Ricoeur, a text is a discourse fixed by writing. Texts join authors and readers together and makes shared meaning possible. Both Ricoeur and Derrida are post-structuralist, which means they do not believe there are basic and universal ways of articulating and understandings things like texts, but in different ways. Whereas Derrida held that language was all self-referential and there was nothing outside the text and everything was interpretation, Ricoeur believed that language had a structure to facilitate referring to "beyond itself to the world" (214). This means that authors use language as a "communicative social practice" (214). However, more than discourse, texts are their own. They have impacts on readers that authors do not intend, even separated from their semantic meanings. Hermeneutics thus includes this impact, not simply the semantic meaning. This means that "what the text means now matters more than what the author meant when he wrote it" (215, quoting Ricoeur). Obviously Ricoeur does not want to ground meaning in authorial intention, and so refers to the intention of the text. Vanhoozer notes, however, that texts do not have intentions; they do not act. Instead, Vanhoozer suggests that humans leave "traces" which can make up a kind of text.

Third, Vanhoozer turns to Habermas, who developed a new rationality outside the subject-object distinction. For Habermas, language "does not contaminate reality, but...contains it" (217). This means that communication has elements of inter-subjectivity. Three such elements to make such speech-acts competent are that it must be true (to the outside world); it must be truthful (to the speaker's intentions); it must be right (in the context of the society in which it is spoken).

The implications of these thinkers form Vanhoozer's thesis for the remainder of the chapter, that "meaning is a three-dimensional communicative action, with form and matter (propositional content), energy and trajectory (illocutionary force), and teleology or final purpose (perlocutionary effect)" (218). To use this notion of communicative action, Vanhoozer grounds texts in communicative action and writing (225). Therefore, Vanhoozer thinks that what an author means by the communicative act that is a text counts as what it means.

However, this meaning is not to be separated from community, but not because communities form meaning, but because communicative acts are made in community and authors are "embodied persons who form part of a language community" (231). This means that meaning is not to be found in the subjective consciousness of the author but in her communicative act. Vanhoozer takes this a step further. The author, in part, becomes something by doing what they do.

Let me summarize, using Vanhoozer's words, "Textual meaning, I have argued, enjoys an independence and integrity of its own, apart from the process of interpretation, thanks to the nature and directedness of the author's communicative act. The author attends to a particular matter (the propositional content) in a particular way (the illocutionary act); the author's intentions is what makes his or her words count as one kind of action rather than another" (254).

"Is There a Meaning in This Text?", Part II

We now enter into Part II of Vanhoozer's tome, "Is There a Meaning in this Text?" Let me begin with a recap. Part I examines how all participants in the act of reading are deconstructable.
> The author is no longer in control of the text because language is her only means of communication and language is fluid. Further, the author has already been shaped by this fluid language that is an interrelation of signs that refer to nothing beyond themselves. Her intentions are subconscious and not necessary to understanding...

> The book is not a complete whole because the whole world is an interpretation and hence understanding is always progressing and interrelated. Texts are thus separated from their authors, but cannot stand on their own, but require...

> The reader, finally, is in a similar position as the author, without the stability of their own ability to read outside cultural values, linguistically formed. There is no position above the text from which to read; nothing behind the text to guide interpretation. There is only the text and that is all there is. But this text, as noted, is not complete and it does not stand on its own. The reader and text enter into mutual relations that leave no determinant meaning.

So, in light of this contemporary situation, is there a meaning in this text? Vanhoozer argues yes, there is!, and bases this position on an unapologetic theological claim that "God communicates with others ('In the beginning was the Word') and that humans, created in God's image, are likewise communicative agents" (198-99). "The triune God is communicative agent (Father/author), action (Word/text), and result (Spirit/power of reception)" (199). Vanhoozer argues against the above contemporary philosophical hermeneutics theologically because it is based on a theological mistake.

"Is There a Meaning in This Text?", Chapter 4

After exploring the undoing of the author and the book, Vanhoozer turns his exploration of contemporary hermeneutics to the reader: meaning is found neither in the text, nor behind the text, but in front of the text says this age (148). This is because the reader is no longer an observer, detached from the text, but a participant in its meaning.

While texts are written to elicit specific responses from ideal readers, this ideal reader does not exist. All readers are situated and, as a result, do not see texts as they are meant to be read. As a result, all meanings of texts have their readers' influence. Vanhoozer sums this up by saying, "Instead of reading conforming to the text, the text conforms to the reading" (152).

So, then, how should a reader act? A reader can participate with the text by reading it to form a coherent whole, governed by the text; she can create the text's whole; she can be formed by the world the text describes. (For example, a person can study a piece of Bach music; a person can study a Bach piece that is shaped by their own setting; or, a person can perform a Bach piece.) Taking this question further, Is there a morality involved in reading? Should readers read to describe texts? evaluate texts? use texts? By undoing the text, the reader is free from the power of the text and can interpret it to different ends. The end that Vanhoozer discerns in postmodernity is liberation: freedom from author and freedom from text. However, this liberation is strange because it allows a certain "violence" to be done to the text; it can be misused; the author is silenced. But even more importantly, if there is no meaning in the text, then texts should not have an impact on readers. Texts should not be able to form readers.

Perhaps the idea of freedom from texts is a bit confusing. Here we should note that for Derrida texts are not just pages with black ink printed on them. 'Texts' are those things we interpret. And, as Derrida says, 'nothing is outside the text.' All of life is interpretation. But applying this directly to written texts helps make the point of liberation: Why should Shakespeare be required reading? Why does the Bible have 66 books? [That's my own question that reflects my own theological commitments.] Those who read the texts establish the canon, the standard, are themselves historically and culturally situated. You now see why "different readings" become necessary: how does one read a text, like a biblical letter, from a feminist point of view when the letter is written in a patriarchal society? Is such a reading fair? Is such a reading necessary to bring a text down from its hierarchical thinking and apply it accurately?

Most of us don't read just on our own, though. We belong to literary communities: churches, companies, countries, etc. Stanley Fish is the main guy here. Communities shape how we read and how we construct a text's meaning. [Think about being in a church where you hear, say, an apocalyptic text preached as pure prophecy with strong reaction from the audience. It's quite possible that neither the audience nor the preacher would interpret the text in that way outside a church service and outside each other's company.] But what's good for the goose is good for the gander! Communities don't just create texts. Texts create communities. Whether or not that church just mentioned knows it (or reflects it!), the biblical text has shaped it and brought it together. In other words, texts kick back against readers!

Because of this dynamic relationship, the reader's relationship to the text is a live question. And the questions that Vanhoozer wants us to ask--what's the morality of reading?--become legitimate. How do you fight fair with texts? How do you undo their ideology? How do you get shaped by them, especially when one can no longer make dogmatic claims to purely objective knowledge? For the postmodernist, deconstruction is the answer to this how: deconstruct texts as they have been written; deconstruct the authors who wrote them; deconstruct the people who read them. This humble (?) pursuit takes the other with utmost seriousness. But is there really an "other" there at all? Isn't the author an other? Isn't the text an other? Aren't readers others? Does a hermeneutics of suspicion help us to live graciously? [My rhetoric may have gotten the best of me in the last few sentences.] Vanhoozer thinks not, and engages in a reconstructive proposal in part two that resurrects the dead author (chapter 5), redeems the unbound text (chapter 6), and reforms the meaning-making reader (chapter 7).

"Is There a Meaning in This Text?", Chapter 3

These posts should come a little quicker now as I have finished reading this mammoth, but beneficial and important, book. Of course, that's not couting the two week hiatus for a honeymoon. :)

Chapter 3 is entitled, "Undoing the Book: Textuality and Indeterminacy." Following from Vanhoozer's discussion of the author, he now explores deconstruction's impact on the text: if the author is deconstructed, can the text survive on its own?

So, what is a text? For Roland Barthes, a text is not the product of an author, but a "network of diverse cultural codes" (105). But some even deny it "substantial presence" at all. The text is the product of the person reading; it is the reader's playground of meaning. Then there is also a middle ground (held by Gadamer and Ricoeur) that the text provides a "well" of meaning; it has intentions on its own, apart from its author, but is not open to any meaning whatsoever: its meaning is co-created by the text and the reader. Vanhoozer thinks this falls apart, however, and allows the reader to be the author of a certain text had they written it.

Derrida provides another approach to the text: grammatology. Because writing separates the author from the text, Derrida doesn't believe that Ricoeur's autonomy of the text takes its autonomy seriously enough. So, Derrida wants to analyze texts outside hermeneutics and interpretation. This study, "grammatology," emphasizes that there is nothing in the text to study except relations between signifiers. There is no end to the text: there is no such thing as a "book." The writing keeps going on and on and on. (Vanhoozer notes that "text" comes from the latin "textere" to weave.) Texts have "iterability": the ability to be iterated again and again in non-identical ways.

Very well. But if the text does have meaning, what sort of meaning does it have? Do we interpret spiritually? Allegorically? Literally? Vanhoozer discusses these, and other options, but goes deepest into literal interpretation. He distinguishes this from "literalistic" meaning, which would exclude figurative interpretations. Literal meaning is the plain, proper, meaning, which takes into account figures of speech, metaphors, etc.

But what about metaphor? Is there such a thing as literal language if language is metaphorical? Since metaphors by definition are malleable, do they reflect the fluid nature of meaning? This is Derrida's belief: there is "no non-metaphorical way of speaking about the world" (131). This implies that meaning is also a matter of invention.

So, Vanhoozer asks if interpretation must simply be agnostic. Is one interpretation better than another? Is there a stable meaning to be discerned or is all writing simply interplay with no reference outside language? Here Vanhoozer draws three options: Interpretation can be absolute, anarchic, or adequate.

Absolute interpretation believes that one can obtain pure, objective knowledge of the text. There is an objective "standard by which to measure our truth claims and our interpretations" (136). Our own vantage points do not interfere with our knowing.

Against absolute interpretation, there is anarchic interpretation. This reacts against the authoritarian nature of absolute interpretation and affirms that everything is interpretation; interpretation is invented. This means that literary criticism becomes a form of "play." Everyone can play this game, but no one can "win." Words--signifiers--are always in interrelational activity, but never refer to something beyond themselves. Interpreters simply devise a new type of relation as the text's meaning. The skeptics, therefore, believe that interpretations are about power and clinging to socio-political power. This means that deconstruction aims to keep meaning destabilized in order to ward off the authoritarian nature of absolute interpretation.

But is there middle ground? Vanhoozer believes so and offers just a taste here. Adequate interpretation affirms that while interpreters may not--cannot--know everything about a text, they may know enough to understand and react to it appropriately. There is such thing as "responsible" interpretation. While meaning may be inexhaustible, Vanhoozer says this does not mean it is indeterminate (139). While God is Father is a metaphorical statement [I think Crusty Guy might want to critique that a bit!] and, as a result, has multiple correct uses, it cannot mean just anything.

So, Vanhoozer concludes: "Texts may be determinate enough to convey meaning without being specificifiable enough to overcome all ambiguity" (140). Literary knowledge is "both adequate and provisional." It is sufficient to being claimed as knowledge, but open to correction and supplementation.

"Is There a Meaning in This Text?", Chapter 2

Part One is Vanhoozer's exploration of the undoing of the author, the book, and the reader, with chapter 2 focusing on the author.

Most believe that there are texts because authors wrote them. We can interpret what a text means because the signs used (words) reflect reality, or at least reality as the author sees it. Vanhoozer argues, however, that postmodernity "puts into question the notion that signs are reliable indicators of the way things really are (43). This, of course, poses a problem to the author.

Modernity lifts up the individual and their consciousness as the home of meaning. An author writes what she consciously thinks. Once we figure out what the author thinks, we have the (original, authentic, stable) meaning of the text.

Kant began the undoing of this notion, however, by suggesting that the categories in which we interpret reality actually mold what they are interpreting. The categories of thought mold the world they interpret. Derrida takes this one step further by saying that the categories of thought are themselves constructions. This obviously does away with stability: The world is formed by the categories that understand it that are themselves formed. This is then applied to language: Language is not the great mirror of reality, but as much caught in the trap of being formed and forming thought. No one can escape this matrix and so all thought is constructed or interpreted. This is the root of Derrida's critique of "logocentrism," which believes that we talk about reality, not just about talk. This view of language explains why Derrida critiques philosophy's preference for speech: Speech shows the continuity of language with author much more closely than writing.

So, what of Derrida's famous dictum: "There is nothing outside the text"? Only this: "everything is part of a signifying system" (63). In other words, there's no base; it's interpretation all the way down. Words are signs that "play" with one another; they operate in a system of différance, which means defer presence (of something real) and differ from one another. Meaning is created in the system of deferring a real meaning using signs that differ from one another.

But what about dictionaries? Don't dictionaries tell us what word means? Think about words that change meaning. Does "cool" reflect temperature? Mood? Fashion style? Reaction to anger? Which of these goes down to the "real" meaning? Of course, it depends on context and Derrida's point is that context never goes all the way down to something real, but always reflects the interchange of signs/words. So, is the author in control of the words, then? Could it just as easily be the case that the words control the author? If yes, then does the author have "control" over meaning?

Vanhoozer consistently brings this back to theology. If language reflects this indeterminacy, then what of God? If the author is in the control of language, then is God a product, or a projection, as well?

But certainly an author intends something when they write, don't they? If we can grasp what the author intends, isn't that the meaning? This is the position of E.D. Hirsch. This is not to grasp the author's mental intention, but to the effect it seems the text was aimed to have. The text is stabilized by the author, but it is still the text we are focusing on and not the author. The person who wrote meant something by these words that is not destabilized because words differ. While the text is stable, it's applications to new settings are endless.

The response is that the author's intention is still subject to language and systems. The author herself is not stable, but constructed by language and society, and so intention is not stable either. Even if the author intends something really, really badly, they are as confined to language as anyone. This means that the author's intention is irrelevant, but that it is insufficient to interpretation.

In light of this discussion, Vanhoozer summarizes four fallacies with regard to authorial intention:
1. Fallacy of Relevancy: the author's intentions are irrelevant for the purpose of a text's interpretation.
2. Fallacy of Transparency: the author's intentions are not transparent but coated with cultural practices and beliefs, coded in this culture's language.
3. Fallacy of Identity: The author's intention and a text's meaning are not one in the same. The text has a "career of its own."
4. Fallacy of Objectivity: We do not stand apart from texts, but in their reading are already at work in interpreting them by our own structures, cultures, and language. We do not stand apart from the text.

So, what does this say about the Bible? Do scholars write commentaries on revelatory texts or on (biblical) texts that are themselves commentaries? The postmodern critic believes that the intention of whatever biblical author is indecipherable and that Jesus cannot be a reliable sign of God. Vanhoozer believes that the author's death spells doom for human agency, proper speech (commentary) about texts, and meaning in texts. (But, as Part 2 asserts, the author can come back to life.)

"Is There A Meaning in this Text?", Chapter 1

Some authors are able to take large issues and condense them into small books. In my opinion, Colin Gunton did that in "Actuality of Atonement." Kevin Vanhoozer has taken a large issue--do texts mean anything outside their encounter with a reader and if so, how does one interpret ethically?--and written a large book. The book is large because Vanhoozer describes the work of deconstructionists and pragmatists vis-a-vis texts (Part I) and then proposes a solution (Part II). Each part is broken into three chapters, with Part II's matching the problem addressed by its Part I counterpart. If you're wondering what all this is about, then the Introduction should put us on the same footing.

Is understanding texts (books, articles, events) a matter of faith or reason or both? Going further, in reading texts, do we see ourselves or do we see a reality outside ourselves? To answer these questions, Vanhoozer starts with Plato. Do words give us knowledge of the world or not? For some, language is a human construct, which means that all interpretation is human construct, as well. And because texts are linguistically created (you can't think of an event without ascribing a word to it!), then interpretation is what originally creates the text. This need not be free-floating interpretation. For example, a "birthday party" cannot be interpreted as "a solemn, bleak affair." But even the event of "birthday party" is socially constructed and its interpretation generated by a particular society. Interpretation, as a result, is not just "recovering verbal messages," because the message itself is socially constructed.

Hermeneutics is the "reflection on the principles that undergird correct textual interpretation" (19). Philosophy has often believed that it sets these principles, but Jacques Derrida shows that philosophy itself is a kind of hermeneutics. In other words, philosophy interprets texts just as much as any other discipline (sociology, psychology, theology, etc.). This means that interpretations are situated and so hermeneutical study involved not only studying the text, but the interpreter. We now see why interpretations create new texts! It's texts all the way down and texts all the way up--theologically speaking. Even God is a text--interpreted and created by our interpretations, used to manipulate and control for the sake of some group, culture, nation, etc.

Vanhoozer does not want to leave the situation so hopeless. He believes in reality, in a reality to which texts testify that is not only the reader of the texts. So, Vanhoozer writes that "literary theory relies not only on philosophical assumptions but on assumptions that are implicitly theological as well" (25). This means that Vanhoozer believes in ethical interpretation, grounded in his (trinitarian) theological commitments. More on this in Part II.

Vanhoozer then lays out the structure of Part I: How does the recent philosophical mindset (deconstruction and pragmatism) treat the (1) Author; (2) Text; (3) Reader?

The point of the book is to ask the (what will soon be obviously) theological question: "Is there a meaning in this text?" Vanhoozer points to the answer he will give: there is a meaning that is other than the reader and that is connected to the author's intention.

Actuality of Atonement: Chapter Seven

Gunton now draws his work to a close. He begins with a nice summary:
1. Metaphor can produce knowledge;
2. The cross is meaningfully understood as sacrifice, justice, and victory;
3. This generates and fits with Christian dogma.

But this, he says, leaves one large problem: "the fact that language takes shape, remains alive, in a community of speech" (173). Gunton is wanting to make the previous chapter's abstractness concrete in this chapter, aptly titled, "The Community of Reconciliation."

But which community reconciles? In what community does Christian language live? Gunton offers two answers: Western culture or the church. Obviously there is overlap, but Gunton wishes not to let the church off the hook by evidencing a culture that has remnants of Christian language and practice. Instead, he presses the point: If Jesus is victorious, what community should we expect to find?

Gunton wishes for linguistic renewal in the church: This means that biblical language must be used again and again in conversation; it must infiltrate the way we think. We must think in new words. We must think in new metaphors of justice, sacrifice, and victory. (How appropriate in a day of war.)

The church already has practices that help us think in terms of these metaphors. First, communion thinks in terms of cleansing. But this 'thinking' must include living. "The end of baptism is...the actuality...of a new form of existence" (185). The judgment that Christ undergoes makes possible a favourable judgment for those baptized.

The community of faith also makes possible full implementation of atonement in the "space" of forgiveness. Forgiveness makes possible a person's acceptance in a community where further transformation--healing and growth--is possible.

I close this series of posts with one of Gunton's beautiful (there are several) theological statements:

"Human community is the gift of the God who is himself communion. The church is called to be the echo of the very being of God, and is enabled to be so as it is taken up in worship into the life of the Trinity."

Next up will be Kevin Vanhoozer's, "Is there a Meaning in this Text?"

Actuality of Atonement: Chapter Six

Gunton now examines atonement in light of a Triune God. He sums his argument, thus far, succinctly. First, all the metaphors are formed in relationship. They can all be understood as the "expressing in human language the significance of the life of a man, born, crucified, risen and ascended, as at once coming from God and bearing upon the life of all humankind" (143). Second, the relation is not simply between humanity and God, but between God and all of creation. The relatedness is also metaphorical, as language that relates. The metaphors don't just express the relation; they are the relation, opening new possibilities for relating.

Gunton then asks two questions:
1. Who is this relating God?
2. What kind of world is this?

First, God's act in Christ is not simply interventionist, but is consistent with his entire history of acting. The work of God in Christ is new and unparalleled, but is continuous with God's action of creation and rescue in the Old Testament. God's is always victorious, just, and sacrificial.

Second, the creation of God has a purpose. It is not created a "static and perfect whole." This means that atonement is prelapsarian. So, is atonement to right something that went wrong or to continue creation? Gunton believes that either of these options poses a threat for metaphors, but believes the incarnation takes its form because of the fall and works the end of creation. (I don't quite understand Gunton's point here.) Metaphors are also to be understood from the far side of the cross. Victory could not be seen prior to resurrection.

Third, Gunton asks what Jesus' relationship is to humanity. Is he a substitute, a representative, or some combination? Gunton urges that Jesus' life also be exemplary. An objective picture of atonement cannot come at the expense of a subjective one. However, subjective pictures can sometimes trivialize evil. God must do the work of cleansing, freeing, and ordering.

So, substitution or representation? Gunton likes both. "Jesus is our substitute because he does for us what we cannot do for ourselves" (165). What Jesus does 'for us' includes, but is not fully described as 'instead of.' And as representative, we are found in Christ before God.

Gunton now flips the argument backward: The fact that God creates in Christ means that his atonement has universal significance and in the resurrection means that, concretely, the world is changing, being drawn to its end by the power of the Spirit. The world becomes just; the world is cleansed; evil is conquered.

Gunton then hints at where his next chapter is headed. To keep atonement from being strictly abstract, there must actually be an accomplishment of atonement. There must be a space where justice, victory, and sacrifice are realized. This, of course, is the church--"the place where the reconciliation of all things is from time to time anticipated" (170).

Actuality of Atonement: Chapter Five

Gunton turns his final chapter on atonement models to sacrifice. Is Jesus a sacrifice? How are we to understand this metaphor of Jesus' death?

Gunton follows Mary Douglas in arguing that sacrifice is about keeping things in order. Sacrifice works to purify and cleanse those things that got out of order. (Here Gunton notes that our own concern with cleanliness might not simply be rational!) This means that while the previous metaphors of justice and victory might at first seem to be most appropriate, sacrifice can still strike a deep chord for contemporaries.

Sacrifice is already a metaphor in the Old Testament: God's desires a broken and contrite spirit as a sacrifice. Paul uses it as a metaphor in Romans 12, too. This doesn't mean that sacrifice as a metaphor isn't real; it means that Christ tells us what sacrifice really is.

Gunton doesn't see the sacrifice of Christ in punitive terms. It is a free act of Jesus. It is also a gift of God. God sends his Son. There is both reception and loss, being giving and free action in the sacrifice.

Gunton then mentions Calvin's metaphor of the temple. Because the temple, the center of sacrificial practice, is a place to draw close to God, Christ has now accomplished this in his death. Flesh is devoted as a temple to God in the ascension of Christ. Gunton emphasizes the fact that the covenant established here deals with the heart, to bring transformation by the death of Christ. The cleansing work of this sacrifice is deep and penetrating.

Actuality of Atonement: Chapter Four

In Chapter Four Gunton examines the Cross as God's Justice. He first points out that the cross' metaphors have some overlap. The cross as justice is no different because Satan's has a legal role in the biblical story, as the accuser--the prosecuting attorney. His defeat, Gunton notes, means that "God is not to be identified with abstract legal justice" (84).

The idea of legality in the cross is old--Tertullian and Cyprian both talk about it--but it achieves a significant status with, of course, St. Anselm. Here, the image is of a feudal lord overseeing a society whose honour is affronted. To maintain order in the society, the honour must be restored, or satisfied, or the lord is not lord and the society becomes unjust and irrational. Anselm simply draws out this analogy to a universal scale. God is universal ruler whose honour is challenged and must be restored. The death of Christ offers a worthy penalty to God to restore his honour and justice. What is often neglected in caricatures of Anselm's work is that what deteriorates is the society--in which the lord's subjects live. If his honour is not restored, their society runs amok and they suffer. The restoration of God's honour is as much in the interest of the underlings as the lord. The honour of God is restored by God's own gift of the Son.

Gunton notes that the idea that salvation is remission of penalty is a weakness here. Further, it feels as though the cross is external to us; it is removed, even cosmically, from real life.

Gunton then explores the justice of God, which he roots, not in abstract pictures, but in the covenant with Israel.

Finally, he explores two twentieth century theologies. First, P.T. Forsyth and his idea that the cross is what justifies God, is explored. Putting the cross at the center of World War 1 theology, re-immersing it in real life context, is Forsyth's aim. Second, Gunton looks at Barth's notion of Jesus as the judge judged in our place. Jesus replaces us in the seat of judgment, but we are also there, as sinners, with him. In the death of Jesus, our sin is put to death. God's justice reveals our sin, bears it in Jesus, and destroys its power.

Actuality of Atonement: Chapter Three

In Chapter Three, Gunton addresses the metaphor of victory for the cross. Here we see the benefit of metaphor in advancing knowledge and refection on seemingly disparate objects, as a cross could never have been seen as a victory in the first century for the one who died on it.

Gunton begins by affirming that the victory of the cross is both human and divine. The ministry of Jesus is the divine victory over sickness/death/demonic, ushering in the Kingdom of God. The fact that the combination of physical and spiritual is seen in this victory only continues the tight connection between Old and New Testaments, where physical saving from Egypt follows the mythological victory of God at creation, brooding over the deep.

Gunton then explores the language of demons. After the New Testament, the early church becomes more comfortable in speaking of The Devil, an individual being that Jesus conquered by the cross. We see the development of the ransom theory, with Gregory of Nyssa's notion of the fishhook. Gunton says that this is an example of a metaphor being taken too literally to become a myth. He notes that Paul's language of principalities and powers is about earthly powers, but one's that "cannot be described in everyday empirical terms" (65). (Gunton also includes "the law" as a metaphorical way of referring to human religious bondage for Paul; I think he's wrong, but I think he's stated quite well the wrong position. Of course, this is published before the NPP starts taking off.)

The question is whether or not demonic language needs to be demythologized or whether it is irreducibly metaphorical. Gunton opts with the latter: evil and demons is a metaphor necessary to describing the irrationality of evil that captures the momentum it builds and its control over people. So, the New Testament can describe political powers as created good, but also becoming demonic. The cross is a victory over the demonic because it is the conclusion of Jesus' life and ministry refusing to exercise his power demonically; refusing to engage violence with stronger violence. The cross is the final confrontation of Jesus' life with the demons that waged war against him, with him refusing to fall under their influence.

This means that victory, the metaphor, doesn't just change our picture of the cross, but that it itself is changed. What is true victory? It "is the kind of thing that happens when Jesus goes to the cross" (79).

Actuality of Atonement: Chapter Two

Gunton believes that metaphor pervades language thoroughly. To offer a strict definition, then, would likely exclude some fine uses of metaphor. However, the basic gist in which he operates is that a metaphor takes a term belonging in one context and applies it in another, specifically in speech and communication.

This, however, goes against the rationalistic idea that truth can only be "utterly clear and distinct." But metaphors muddy the waters (at first) and, therefore, could not achieve truth on rationalistic terms. Gunton, citing advances in physics, notes that metaphor played a significant role in advancing knowledge. He mentions Descartes' idea to treat nature as if it were a machine and the idea of the 'field.' This means that metaphors are not only permissible, but necessary to advance knowledge because it changes and creates new language.

Gunton then moves on to asking the difference between literal and metaphorical words. He does not believe in the idea that words mirror reality, and so asks how words can accurately communicate. The answer: indirectly. Words do not capture reality without remainder. However, because words do not perfectly capture reality, metaphor is even more appropriate, since its communication is always indirect. Therefore, metaphorical language can be quite accurate, measured by how well it helps humans to interact with the world. In other words, "Does language (or the metaphor) work?" is the question.

Metaphors work by their ability to join the disparate ideas. But words themselves, which metaphors require, shape, and change, are objects of interaction with the world. Because they help us relate with the world, they are relative. Because metaphors relate disparate notions, metaphors themselves are relative (meaning they make things relate), which brings us back to the start of the circle that metaphor is an instance of the harmony that exists between language and the world. This means that the line between objective and subjective is beginning to blur: the objective world is captured and communicated by subjective language, which itself is subjective, but because of this, captures what the world is to humans. Gunton believes that one need not choose between objectivity and subjectivity because there really is a world that really is related to with words.

For the theologian, this is useful, because metaphors admit both the reality of God and his distance from them. The first metaphors that Christians used captured this fact when they applied different metaphors to the cross, grounding their theology in history, but taking it beyond sheer historical fact to describe God's work to repair broken relationship. This, again, affirms the value of metaphor because if linguistic changes advance knowledge, so does the flip side apply: changes in reality result in change in language. Metaphor was necessary, then, to capture the change God accomplished in Jesus' life, death, resurrection, ascension. The three metaphors Gunton explores that describe the cross are victory, justice, and sacrifice.

Actuality of Atonement: Chapter One

One of my doctoral supervisors (though I'm currently on hold) studied with Colin Gunton. This week I started reading Gunton's, "The Actuality of Atonement." I see why the super wants me to write as he does: it reflects how Gunton wrote. The first chapter of Actuality is Gunton's effort to carve out a space for a rational study of atonement in the face of rationalism, the belief that reason is the sole source of knowledge. This, he says, cuts off a large chunk of the world in its examination.

He gives three examples of thinkers who succumb to rationalism: Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. For Kant, rationalism gets expressed in that human reason can both discover and obey morality. Moral tenets are discovered by reason and able to be obeyed. Because we cannot know the world (or the Divine) in itself, knowledge is limited to this morality and so theological study becomes ethics. Schleiermacher, however, urged a new category for theology: aesthetics. This meant that doctrine was not simply ethics, but the aesthetic experience of the doctrine. God's plan was to form persons, and so doctrine serves this purpose, but does not capture reality. Hegel, contrary to Kant, believed that the Divine could be known, but to the point that reconciliation between God and humanity deteriorated almost to the point that they almost became one. Reconciliation between God and humanity nears simply being a recognition that divine and human reason are the same things. This leads Hegel to note that conception exceeds metaphor in reality. Ideas surpass history in their ability to reveal.

To counteract this rationalism, Gunton aims to propose that metaphor is linked with language and, as such, a new dynamic must be developed to show that Hegel is wrong and that history and metaphor can tell things they way they are. That will be chapter two tomorrow.