Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Lit

<p>Is there a meaning in the Bible, or is meaning rather a matter of who is reading or of how one reads? Does Christian doctrine have anything to contribute to debates about interpretation, literary theory, and post modernity? These are questions of crucial importance for contemporary biblical studies and theology alike.</p><p>Kevin Vanhoozer contends that the postmodern crisis in hermeneutics--"incredulity towards meaning," a deep-set skepticism concerning the possibility of correct interpretation--is fundamentally a crisis in theology provoked by an inadequate view of God and by the announcement of God's "death."</p><p>Part 1 examines the ways in which deconstruction and radical reader-response criticism "undo" the traditional concepts of author, text, and reading. Dr. Vanhoozer engages critically with the work of Derrida, Rorty, and Fish, among others, and demonstrates the detrimental influence of the postmodern "suspicion of hermeneutics" on biblical studies.</p><p>In Part 2, Dr. Vanhoozer defends the concept of the author and the possibility of literary knowledge by drawing on the resources of Christian doctrine and by viewing meaning in terms of communicative action. He argues that there is a meaning in the text, that it can be known with relative adequacy, and that readers have a responsibility to do so by cultivating "interpretive virtues."</p><p>Successive chapters build on Trinitarian theology and speech act philosophy in order to treat the metaphysics, methodology