Journal: Trinity Journal
Volume: TRINJ 08:1 (Spring 1987)
Article: A Lamp In The Labyrinth: The Hermeneutics Of “Aesthetic” Theology
Author: Kevin J. Vanhoozer

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TrinJ 8:1 (Spring 1987) p. 25

A Lamp In The Labyrinth:
The Hermeneutics Of “Aesthetic” Theology

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“How every fool can play upon the word!
Wilt thou show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant?
I pray thee, understand a plain man in his plain meaning.”

(Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice III, v)

Robert Funk’s Jesus as Precursor quotes a phrase from John Updike’s novel The Centaur and uses it to characterize the drift of Western culture: “Priest, teacher, artist— the classic degeneration.1 According to Funk, the Western world left the priest behind some time ago, during the Enlightenment to be exact. While for the priest reality is revealed, for the teacher reality is rational. Funk believes that we in the twentieth century are now seeing the end of the teacher’s era and the beginning of the era of the artist, an era marked by ambiguity, mystery, and irrationality. In a similar fashion, I would like to suggest that the history of modern theology may fruitfully be construed as a “progressive reading” of Kant’s three Critiques: theology has passed through a speculative (eighteenth century) and a moral (nineteenth century) phase, and we are now in the midst of an “aesthetic” stage which corresponds to Kant’s third Critique, the critique of aesthetic judgment.2 What I am calling “aesthetic theology” may be roughly defined as that theology which focuses on the Bible’s literary form or shape to the exclusion of the author and historical context.

This essay is an attempt to understand the “aesthetic turn” in modern theology and biblical studies. Our study will be “justified” to the extent that it clarifies the situation of modern theology. Why are notions such as “imagination,” “metaphor,” and “art” increasingly prevalent in the titles of recent books on religion and theology? Why is the tide turning away from historical criticism towards literary criticism in biblical studies, and why all the attention on Jesus’ parables in particular? The answer, I will suggest, is

TrinJ 8:1 (Spring 1987) p. 26

that theology is merely the last step in the line of general cultural disenchantment with the priest and the teacher, that is, with the heritage of Western thought.

“The hermeneutics of ‘aesthetic’ theology”: by “hermeneutics” I simply mean the science or art of interpretation, particularly as this involves the interpretation of linguistic meaning. Interpretation extends to our attempts to understand everything from Tolstoy�...

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