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Meaning, intention, and application: Speech act theory in the hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Trinity Journal, Fall 2002 by Blue, Scott A

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Christian Scripture is not a random assortment of texts but . . . it has a particular shape, characterized above all by the enclosure of a normative center by the two distinct canonical collections, and ... this must affect the literal interpretation of individual scriptural texts of both testaments.30

III. VANHOOZER'S TRINITARIAN HERMENEUTICS

Watson finds company in his defense of determinate meaning and authorial intention in Kevin J. Vanhoozer's Is There a Meaning in This Text? Vanhoozer's attack of postmodern hermeneutics and defense of a realist approach to the interpretation of texts take shape in his Trinitarian hermeneutics. His use of the Trinity is "not merely an illustration of a general intellectual process" but reflects his conviction that

More Articles of Interest: First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics; hermeneutic of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. and its impact on expository preaching:...; Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of...; Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of...; benefits of an author-oriented approach to Hermeneutics, The

the literary crisis about textual meaning is related to the broader philosophical crisis concerning realism, rationality, and right, and .. this crisis, summed up by the term "postmodern," is in turn explicitly theological.31

The Trinity, for Vanhoozer, is therefore analogous to the experience of meaningful communication, something which human beings experience, but may not be able to explain. Trinitarian hermeneutics is thus explained:

From a Christian perspective, God is first and foremost a communicative agent, one who relates to humankind through words and the Word. Indeed, God's very being is a self-- communicative act that both constitutes and enacts the covenant of discourse: speaker (Father), Word (Son), and reception (Spirit) are all interrelated. Human communication is a similarly covenantal affair, though we cannot pour ourselves into our communicative acts and ensure their effects as God can through his Word and Spirit.32

In the chapter "Resurrecting the Author: Meaning As Communicative Action," Vanhoozer explores "the image of the author as citizen of language, with all the rights and responsibilities attaching thereto."33 Similar to Watson, Vanhoozer finds within the notion of language-as-communicative-act the means of securing both the author and determinate meaning. In developing a deeper understanding of language as a "covenantal medium of interpersonal communication," he draws upon three philosophical programs: Searle's speech act theory; Ricouer's hermeneutics; and Habermas's social theory. From John R. Searle, Vanhoozer uses speech act theory to recover the necessity of the author's intent in interpretation, because he or she is a communicative agent.34 While disagreeing with Paul Ricouer in many ways, Vanhoozer nevertheless finds value in Ricouer's idea of a text being a meaningful action, although divorced from the psychological intent of any author. Vanhoozer, grasping Ricouer's apparent belief in the intent within a text, turns it into a defense for the author: "If the text is a meaningful action, and if the meaning of an action depends on the intention of its agent, it follows that the meaning of a text as act depends on its author's intention."35 From JOrgen Habermas, Vanhoozer gleans the idea that language is a means primarily of coordinating human action. He appropriates Habermas's injunction for interpreters "not to separate speech acts from the context of their utterance or from their speakers."36 Drawing from these three philosophers, Vanhoozer defines meaning as "a three-dimensional communicative action, with form and matter (propositional content), energy and trajectory (illocutionary force), and teleology or final purpose (perlocutionary effect)."37 The goal of understanding thus becomes "to grasp what has been done, together with its effects; the possibility of attaining such understanding is the presupposition of communicative action."38

Meaning, intention, and application: Speech act theory in the hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Trinity Journal, Fall 2002 by Blue, Scott A

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