Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 04:1 (Summer 2013)
Article: A Generous Reformer: Kevin Vanhoozer’s Place In Evangelicalism
Author: Mark Alan Bowald

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STR 4:1 (Summer 2013) p. 3

A Generous Reformer: Kevin Vanhoozer’s Place
In Evangelicalism

Mark Bowald

Guest Editor for STR
Redeemer University College

Introduction

In the Spring of 1986 Kevin Vanhoozer, a young Ph.D. student at Cambridge, concluded a book review of Clark Pinnock’s The Scripture Principle suggesting that:

The Scripture Principle is not the modern counterpart to the ninety-five theses, but perhaps its not least valuable service in sorting out interpretation and inerrancy in the evangelical household is its issuing a clarion call for a similar Reformation in our own troubled times.1

Later that year Vanhoozer confidently entered evangelical hermeneutical debates, pursuing the questions of reform orbiting around scriptural hermeneutics that he saw engendered in Pinnock, publishing the article “The Semantics of Biblical Literature: Truth and Scripture’s Diverse Literary Forms” featured as chapter 2 of the collection Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon edited by D. A. Carson and John Woodbridge.2

Vanhoozer’s contribution to that volume is unusually mature for someone at that stage of his career in that it already bears all the marks of his writing voice as well as concerning itself with the issues that continued to animate his research and writing. These all reach something of a watershed in his recent book which is the focus of this special edition of the present journal: Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship.3

Characteristic Features Of Vanhoozer’s Research In
Remythologizing Theology

First among these characteristics is his commitment to affirm and promote that quintessential feature of evangelical theology: the unrivalled authority

STR 4:1 (Summer 2013) p. 4

of Scripture and the appropriate and fitting practices of its reading. He concludes “Semantics” mounting the argument that speech act theory actually better serves and supports the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture better than theories which are founded on notions of propositional truth.4 In Remythologizing he employs concepts drawn from speech act theory, drama theory and others, in order to reframe Scripture and its reading within the purview of the doctrines of the Trinity and theology proper. Nearly all of his work in the intervening 25 years, in some way, contributes to the development of this theological arc.

The second feature on display early on...

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