I was glad to see that two recipients of Christianity Today's 2006 Book Awards are projects of Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He's the general editor of the Dictionary for the Theological Interpretation of the Bible and author of The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (about which I've written here and here).
The current issue of Trinity Magazine, a publication of Trinity International University, contains an interview with Vanhoozer about The Drama of Doctrine. Here are some select quotes that demonstrate why this volume is deserving of CT's recognition and evangelicals' attention.
Doctrine is dramatic precisely because it is about real life, namely, the way of truth and life identified with Jesus Christ. It's all about equipping the people of God to walk the way of Jesus Christ in the real world, a world that is complex and confusing. If theology is to serve the church, what it produces - doctrines - should help us understand not only the past but also our present.
Theology is 'faith seeking understanding' (Anselm), but understanding is not merely theoretical. We demonstrate our understanding only when we show that we know how to live as disciples of Jesus Christ, people who know how to embody the truth of the gospel in diverse settings and situations. Doctrine is dramatic when it aids and abets lived understanding.
Christianity is essentially about dramatic action, about what God has done in the history of Israel and especially in the person and work of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. Drama means 'doing,' and the Bible is all about the 'doings' of the triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. Speaking is a form of doing, too; the action in some plays is largely dialogical. In Scripture, God gets the most important speaking and acting parts.
Doctrine directs disciples to act, yes, but to act not as hypocrites but according to their true natures and in accordance with the way things really are in Christ. Doctrine tells us not how to pretend to be something that we are not, but rather who we really are; the vanguard of a new creation. Doctrine defines me as a creature of God made in his image and as an adopted child into God's family. My true identity is ultimately a matter of my union with Christ. All other identity-markings-political affiliation, class, race, even gender-while important, are ultimately only secondary.
[T]he imagination enables us to see the parts of the Bible as forming a meaningful whole. But we can go further still. The imagination also enables us to see our lives a part of that same meaningful whole. This is absolutely crucial. Christians don't need more information about the Bible, trivial or otherwise. What the church needs today is the ability to indwell or inhabit the text, the ability to make the Bible serve as the framework through which we interpret God, the world, and ourselves.
I think a picture of doctrine as theoretical information has held evangelicals captive for too long. We believe the right things and sign on the dotted line of our confessional statements, but too many of us are unable to relate our official theology to everyday life. There is a tremendous disconnect. We know how to profess, but not to practice, the cross.
Most evangelical textbooks view doctrine in terms of teaching or of factual propositions. Liberal theologians tend to see doctrine as an expression of religious experience. So called 'postliberals' have recently suggested that doctrines are like grammatical rules that describe Christian talk and Christian action. My own view is that doctrine is a matter of dramatic direction, direction for understanding and participating in the gospel action. In other words, doctrine gives us guidance for our new life 'in Christ.' What you have to remember is that understanding is not merely theoretical: Christians have not only to know but to do the truth.
Last week I mentioned Kevin Vanhoozer's new book, The Drama of Doctrine, in which he proposes a model of theology that relies heavily on the dramatic arts. The English word "drama" is derived from the Greek word drao which means "I do." A drama is a series of doings both dialogical and physical. It is also characterized by entrances and exits by the cast members. "Dramatic" is an appropriate description for redemptive history because in it God interacts with humanity through speech and actions (as well as through speech-acts, the foremost of which is Jesus Christ). The Bible is not only a record of God's historic acts, however. It is a player in the ongoing drama:
The basic insight is that the Bible is not simply a deposit of revelation but one of God's "mighty acts" -- a mighty communicative act, to be exact. Scripture has a role -- a speaking, acting part -- in the drama of redemption precisely as divine discourse. Scripture not only conveys the content of the gospel but is itself caught up in the economy of the gospel, as the means by which God draws others into his communicative action. Jesus is God's definitive Word, to be sure, but Scripture projects his voice and extends his action (48, here and in following quotations, emphasis is in the original).
Scripture, according to this understanding of redemptive history is far more than source material for building theological systems. It is a script intended to direct the life of the church. If theology is to be consonant with the dramatic nature of its subject matter, it cannot be satisfied with merely repeating doctrinal formulations from the past or with mental apprehension of biblical truth:
The script exists for the sake of speeding the drama of redemption. The ultimate purpose of the divine canonical discourse is to form a new people, the vanguard of a new creation. This is the "perlocutionary" [According to speech-act theory, the perlocution is the effect produced by saying something. This is in distinction from the illocution, the act performed in saying something] purpose of Scripture, its intended effect. Dramas are not devised primarily to convey information but to move us, to persuade us, to delight us, to purge us of unwanted feelings (182).
It's not that intellectual understanding is of no value. As Vanhoozer points out, actors must understand a script in order to render a faithful performance. Understanding, then, is displayed not solely by the ability to repeat the lines, but to live our parts. This requires more than rote recitation of lines and mechanical acting which amount to hypocrisy. Vanhoozer believes that the famed acting teacher and director Constantin Stanislavski has something to teach us. According to Stanislavski's system for learning how to act (referred to as "the Method"), an actor must become his or her role. This encompasses the use of the intellect, yes, but other cognitive factors as well. "What doctrine [understood as theo-dramatic direction] communicates --its 'import'--involves the whole person: cognition, affection, and volition alike" (100).
Many of us bemoan the anti-intellectualism that characterizes much of contemporary evangelicalism. (One of my own pet peeves is that it seems that whenever we sing "Take My Life and Let it Be," we skip the verse that reads "Take my intellect and use, every pow'r as Thou shalt choose.") I think there is due cause for lament. However, I know I have to guard myself against overcompensating such that I neglect the other dimensions of my humanity with which I am to love, enjoy, and serve the living God. Talk about developing a "Christian mind" can easily lead us to think in exclusively intellectual terms. That's why I especially appreciated the following description of theology's ultimate goal according to Vanhoozer's conception:
Canonical-linguistic theology is not simply a hermeneutic, a way of dealing with the text, but a way of life: a scripted and spirited performance, a way of wisdom generated and sustained by word and Spirit. As such, it is as concerned with training performers as it is with understanding the script. Its intent is not merely to inform but to transform minds. Canonical-linguistic theology represents a kind of cognitive therapy that aims to replace distorted patterns of thinking with patterns that correspond to canonical practices, to theo-dramatic reality, and, ultimately, to the mind of Christ
The "mind of Christ" refers not merely to Jesus' intellectual quotient or his stock of knowledge but to his habitus: the distinctive pattern of all his intentional acts--desires, hopes beliefs, volitions, emotions, as well as thoughts. The mind of Christ refers, in a word, to the characteristic pattern of Jesus' judgments--to the way that Jesus processes information and to the product of that process: the embodied wisdom of God. The mind of Christ is the set of moral, intellectual, and spiritual habits or virtues that serve as the mainspring for all the particular things that Jesus does and says (255-256).
In the introduction, Vanhoozer writes, "The hoped-for outcome of canonical-linguistic theology is nothing less than the missing link between right belief (orthodoxy) and wise practice (orthopraxis): right judgment (orthokrisis)" (30).
I am weary of doctrinal debate and discussion that seems to hang in the air, detached from life. That's why I find Vanhoozer's vision so refreshing. There are exceptions, of course, but it seems to me that many of us who are rightly concerned about doctrinal precision are more comfortable in the realm of abstraction and in need of connecting the doctrines we defend and love to the lives we live. Truth, after all, is not only to be known, but practiced.
So what have I been doing with the time I haven't blogged? I've been wearing my pencil lead out underlining and making notes in a volume that Scot McKnight has already declared "the best book on Scripture for the new century" - Kevin Vanhoozer's The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. Vanhoozer makes a compelling case that theatrical drama provides a helpful model for conceiving of the nature of Scripture, theology, doctrine, and Christian life. Following N. T. Wright's division of redemptive history into a drama of five "acts," Vanhoozer says that the canonical texts compose an authoritative script that not only recounts the "theo-dramatic" action of the past but also serves as a means by which God is still acting, calling people to participate in the theo-drama and directing the performance of the church which lives between Acts IV and V. He writes in the book's preface:
This book sets forth new metaphors for theology (dramaturgy), Scripture (the script), theological understanding (performance), the church (the company), and the pastor (director). It argues that doctrine, far from being unrelated to life, serves the church by directing its members in the project of wise living, to the glory of God. It sets out to convince ministers and laypeople alike not to dismiss doctrine as irrelevant, and to encourage theologians not to neglect the needs of the church. It aims to make the pastoral lamb lie down with the theological lion. Its goal is to refute, once and for all, the all-too-common dichotomy between doctrine and real life. Christian doctrine directs us in the way of truth and life and is therefore no less than a prescription for reality (xii).
The rift between so-called "academic" and "practical" theology has long been a burr under my saddle so to say that I'm enthusiastic about this kind of thinking is a gross understatement. In the paragraph preceding the one I just quoted, Vanhoozer states that doctrine is vital to the church's well-being and witness. "The problem," he writes, "is not with doctrine per se but with a picture of doctrine, or perhaps several pictures, that have held us captive." What he has in mind is the picture of the Bible as a deposit of revealed truths or assertions about states of affairs. According to this view, theology's primary goal is to abstract and arrange these propositions in a logically consistent system. But this is flawed for a number of reasons. First, this approach is reductionistic in that it recognizes only one of the many things that authors and speakers do with words. Referring or informing is only one of language's many uses. God does more in and through the Bible than impart information. He promises, commands, warns, comforts, etc. Scripture is revelatory, but is more than revelation. Privileging assertions over other linguistic practices entices us to focus on the intellect at the expense of our other faculties and on theorizing at the expense of practice.
Propositionalism also runs roughshod over the variety of canonical literary forms:
The main defect of propositionalism is that it reduces the variety of speech actions in the canon to one type: the assertion. This results in a monologic conception of theology, and of truth. To think of theology as a monologue, even a truthful monologue, is to reduce theo-drama -- in which the dialogical action is carried by a number of voices -- to mere theory. Neither the theo-drama nor the canonical script can be reduced to propositions and theories without significant loss. Doing justice to the biblical text ultimately requires a different kind of exegetical scientia, one that goes beyond propositionalism without, however, leaving propositions behind (266).
Vanhoozer, then, is not denying the propositional content of Scripture. He's simply calling us to recognize that there is more than meets the eye (and the heart) than assertions. He proposes a postpropositionalist hermeneutic where the prefix post- means "beyond," not "against." Faithful interpretation, according to Vanhoozer's proposal model, is not merely a matter of sound exegesis and conceptualizing. Conceiving of the Bible as script means that our understanding of it is ultimately demonstrated by our following its direction in contemporary situations:
"Faith seeking understanding" involves both coming to appreciate the meaning of the script and knowing how to perform it in new contexts. Hence theology is both an exegetical scientia [disciplined knowledge] that is faithful to the canonical text and a practical sapientia [practical wisdom] that is fitting to the present cultural context. The ultimate goal of theology is to foster creative understanding -- the ability to improvise what to say and do as disciples of Jesus Christ in ways that are at once faithful yet fitting to their subject matter and setting. The church continues to perform the same text in different contexts, despite the difference of centuries, cultures, and conceptual schemes, by "improvising" with a canonical script (32).
Reading The Drama of Doctrine reminds me of another passage I marked in another sizable tome -- Calvin's Institutes:
Doctrine is not an affair of the tongue, but of the life; is not apprehended by the intellect and memory merely, like other branches of learning; but is received only when it possesses the whole soul, and finds its seat and habitation in the inmost recesses of the heart....To doctrine in which our religion is contained, we have given the first place, since by it our salvation commences; but it must be transfused into the breast, and pass into the conduct, and so transform us into itself, as not to prove unfruitful (III. VI. 4.).
Don't let the cost or mass of this book stand in the way of your reading it. It's worth the price and physical exercise is good for you.
Lord willing, tomorrow I'll be attending a discussion Dr. Vanhoozer will be leading for pastors and church planters, sponsored by the Great Lakes District Church Planting Office of the Evangelical Free Church. I'm looking forward to hearing more about how he envisions his model of theology playing out in pastoral ministry. If you're in the area of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, the event will be held in A. T. Olson Chapel between 3 and 5 p.m.
