"Is There a Meaning in this Text?", Conclusion

The conclusion to Vanhoozer's tome answers the question, "What is Vanhoozer doing in this text?"

First, Vanhoozer sought to uncover the philosophical and theological presuppositions of contemporary debates around language, texts, signs, etc. These should be placed on the table and acknowledged. Vanhoozer's own theological presupposition is Trinitarian theology, which he believes is the necessary condition in order to experience meaningful communication. "Speaker (Father), Word (Son), and reception (Spirit) are all interrelated" (456). God's trinitarian communicative action is the "paradigm" for our own communicating. Interpretation is the reception of the author's intention. And there is always interpretation because one cannot live suspicion.

The text, the communicated action of an author with an intention, illocution (force), and efficacy (result) is more like a person than a thing. This is because the words communicated are icons of the speaker. So, the reader is to recognize the face of the other in the text other than their own. Vanhoozer then lays out the sins of interpretation: pride and sloth. The one sees the face of the reader; the other forgoes the hard work of seeing the face of the other. In their place must be humility and conviction: humility and conviction combine to say there is an other to discern, but that the reader may not be able to exhaust this meaning on their own and that reaching understanding is easy.

But Vanhoozer closes not with standing (conviction) or understanding (interpretation), but with following. The final move of the reader is to follow the Text, shaped by the Word and obedient to its call.

"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.

"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.