Mere Christian Hermeneutics has much to commend it. Both of us have benefitted greatly from Vanhoozer’s numerous insights. Indeed, Vanhoozer provides some level of insight into nearly every ongoing conversation about biblical interpretation, and those already engaged in these discussions will glean much from his work.

Bridge-building or betrayal? Genuine unity or fundamental compromise? Throughout history, certain ideas and events have emerged with the rare power to unite previously opposing groups. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, both East and West celebrated together because a concrete symbol of oppression had finally crumbled, reuniting families and restoring freedoms everyone recognized as good. This was unity worth celebrating. But history also warns us of darker reconciliations. The Compromise of 1877 brought “peace” between northern Republicans and southern Democrats, yet this unity came at a devastating cost: the abandonment of formerly enslaved people to Jim Crow terror, as Republicans sacrificed their founding principles for political expediency. The agreement may have bridged a political divide, but in doing so it papered over a moral catastrophe.

So when Kevin Vanhoozer’s Mere Christian Hermeneutics appeared in 2024 to enthusiastic endorsements from Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox alike, we found ourselves asking: which kind of unity is this? Has Vanhoozer genuinely transcended our interpretive divisions with insights into basic truths all Christian interpreters embrace? We sincerely hoped so! This is a noble goal, and Kevin Vanhoozer is as qualified as anyone to pursue it. Yet we were still concerned that his ‘mere’ hermeneutics might achieve consensus by evacuating the doctrinal convictions that give each tradition its distinct identity. Peace and Christian unity are worth pursuing—but at what cost?

What is A Mere Christian Hermeneutic?

Vanhoozer’s stated goal is “to do for biblical hermeneutics what C.S. Lewis did for Christian belief in his book Mere Christianity” (xxi). That is, to sketch the ‘hallway’ of common agreement in which interpreters belonging to the various ‘rooms’ of particular denominational or interpretive Christian traditions can and should mingle. Mere Christian Hermeneutics, then, is about “what all Spirit-illumined readers have in common regardless of the differences in their particular exegetical methodologies” (17). What is it that all such readers share in common, if not a method? An orientation towards Scripture that sees it as the Word of God (divine discourse) addressed to us, in which Christ is revealed. Vanhoozer argues that despite all the disputes about how to read the Bible, all Christians agree on why to read the Bible—to hear God and to see Jesus (22).

What grounds the shared Christian perspective on why we read the Bible? Vanhoozer argues it is a forgotten element of hermeneutics: frame of reference. A frame of reference is “the interpretive assumptions that enable readers to identify what authors are speaking about” (67, emphasis original). In practice, “to read with a frame of reference is to examine the text from a particular angle, put a certain set of questions to it, and filter the readers’ perceptions of what the text is about” (68). The Christian frame of reference then, is one that sees Christ as the ultimate referent (subject of) of Scripture. How Christ is found to be Scripture’s referent (method) varies: some use allegory to see Christ as mystically present in every rock and tree, others trace the authorially-intended typological structures across redemptive history. But all believers agree that the Bible is about Jesus and for us. Training Christian Bible-readers, then, requires forming Christian reading cultures that shape believers into people who come to God’s word as humble listeners to divine speech, expectant to see the glory of Christ and be transformed into his image.

Ascending the Mountain: A Summary of Vanhoozer’s Argument[1]

Vanhoozer’s argument proceeds in three movements which he illustrates as the ascent up a mountain. First, he lays groundwork for the project with the assertion that what the Bible is determines how it ought to be read (6). Since Scripture is the voice of the living God, used by God for the purpose of addressing, establishing, “and preserving his covenant people,” (12), its readers are “answerable persons” (14) accountable to read rightly with humility and diligence, so that their affections might be converted to God’s communicative intentions (21).

While at base camp, Vanhoozer also surveys the various reading cultures Christians have produced from the patristic era to the present day in order to convince readers that they are “answerable subjects, responsible for hearing, doing justice, and responding to the divine address” of Scripture” (193) and that such answerability demands a certain exegetical posture, not merely a right method. Additionally, Scripture aims not only to call individuals to response, but to create a believing community sensitive to the divine address. The contemporary divide between biblical studies and theology has created two polarized reading cultures, each of which brings their own frames of reference to the text.[2] Neither of these frames line up exactly with the church’s interpretive questions and interests, which both biblical scholars and theologians must recover. We must read Scripture with a theological frame of reference that “does not do away with the historical, but, rather, views the historical as a field of . . . divine communicative action,” (98) in the eschatological community of the church.

Having surveyed the area, Vanhoozer begins the first ascent up the mountain to determine what Scripture means. The starting point for this task is to determine the Bible’s “literal sense” and that sense’s relationship to Jesus. The Bible’s literal sense, Vanhoozer argues, is what the author(s) of Scripture are saying: the words they use, and the meaning of those words in the context of their discourse.[3] This is distinct from, but closely related to, the text’s referent—what or whom it is about. “The literal sense is the way words run; the literal referent is that to which the words run” (123, italics original).[4] Every text has both a sense and a referent: that is, every text both says something and is about something. Literal interpretation then involves rightly discerning both what is said and what (or whom) it is said about.

Because any given Scripture has two authors (human and divine), many interpreters have understood Scripture to have two different senses: literal and spiritual (or figural). But Vanhoozer argues that the text’s spiritual sense is not different in sense from its literal sense. Instead, he claims that the ‘spiritual sense’ is simply the glory of the literal sense’s ultimate referent.

Whether or not one sees this referent, however, depends on one’s frame of reference. One’s frame of reference is the window through which one looks at a text and determines what the reader will pay attention to: “a frame of reference refers to all the things that influence how a reader attends to the letter of the text, and thus what the reader sees there” (124). To see what Scripture is really about (referent), we need a frame of reference that makes us attentive to what it is really about. Now that Christ has come and brought the end-time fulfillment of what the Old Testament promised (i.e., the eschaton), rightly reading it requires an eschatological frame of reference. Using Vanhoozer’s terms, recognition of Scripture’s spiritual sense, that is, its glorified literal sense requires a grammatical-eschatological frame of reference (24, 106, 180, 182) in which readers approach the text expecting to see the glory of Christ in the subject matter of the text and desiring to be transformed into his image.

Vanhoozer contends that the literal sense ought to be understood from both historical and eschatological frames of reference, such that the literal meaning is understood to include both “the events in the immediate present of the human author” and their “future fulfillment” or “eschatological realization” (358). Debates about the literal sense are largely issues of which frame of reference the literal sense belongs in (127). Against modernism, which would situate biblical discourse within an immanent frame of reference (that is, a closed naturalistic system), Vanhoozer argues for a transcendent-eschatological frame that situates biblical revelation squarely in God’s plan of revealing Himself in the face of Christ.[5] Such an eschatological frame of reference is necessary to do justice to the letter of the text: “Literal interpretation . . . requires thick description: a reading that takes account of all relevant contexts that have a bearing on what authors mean by their words,” and so, if the fulfillment of all God’s promises in Christ is a relevant context the eschatological frame will be absolutely necessary to properly interpret the literal sense (136). This frame does not change the sense of the Old Testament (OT)’s human authors (sensus plenior); instead, it clarifies the referent of their discourse beyond what they could have known (referens plenior) (137).

Finally, Vanhoozer argues that what Scripture is ultimately about is “the knowledge of God in the face of Christ” (194, 358) and that the Spirit illumines believers to this eschatological Christological referent, so that they might behold him, believe him, and be transformed into his image (259, 336, 346). In this final section, Jesus’ transfiguration functions as a governing analogy: just as the transfiguration did not change Jesus’ nature but revealed the glory he always possessed, so the eschatological frame of reference that has come with the coming of Christ and the sending of the Spirit do not change the meaning of Scripture’s literal sense, but reveal the glory of that to which it always ultimately referred (266–270). In the end, Vanhoozer asks us to embrace “a transfiguration [i.e., a rethinking] . . . of what is involved in reading theologically” as well as “an interpretive process that transfigures” (359). Only in so doing will we both establish properly Christian reading cultures that cut across epochal, institutional, and disciplinary divides and do justice to the literal sense of the divine discourse that addresses us.

Singing the Rock: Positive Contributions

Vanhoozer’s book is a tour-de-force: perhaps one of its greatest strengths is its breadth. In addition to developing the book’s main thesis, Vanhoozer deals with so many issues and current conversations in hermeneutics that it is difficult to catalogue all the contributions the book makes. However, there are a few that stand out to us. Due to the sheer volume of these, we have elected to list them as bullet points:

• Against critical and sterile readings of the text, Vanhoozer reminds us that a right reading of Scripture is always spiritual. The text is never simply an object to be scientifically analyzed, but the Word of God which addresses us and makes a claim on us.
• Vanhoozer helpfully recognizes that all believers seek the same thing in the Scriptures: we all want to see Jesus. Regardless of errors some may make in method, there is common ground in that we seek the same thing.
• Despite recognizing our common aim, Vanhoozer helpfully distinguishes between “good” and “bad” figuration. This book does not fall into the trap of blurring all distinctions between Christian readers, or of making all methods of reading equal.
• To distinguish good and bad figuration, Vanhoozer turns to Scripture’s own self-presentation of the relationship between Christ and the literal sense, rather than a grid imposed on Scripture from the outside (whether by the church or anyone else).
• He therefore rightly identifies a biblical hermeneutic as one that traces redemptive historical developments across Scripture to find Christ, rather than one that adopts a Christian Platonist scheme in which Christ is mystically present in the text (130–133). In other words, the relationship between the Old Testament and Christ is horizontal (movement towards fulfillment in history) rather than vertical (mystical sacramental presence).
• Along the same lines, Vanhoozer refuses to accept the cheap dismissals of the distinction between typology and allegory which are sadly all too prevalent today. Typology aims to be sensitive to redemptive history and Scripture’s own development of its patterns, whereas allegory conforms Scripture to an outside interpretive grid.
• One reason Vanhoozer’s work here is more helpful than other recent contributions is that Vanhoozer does not limit himself to gleaning from the patristic era. While he resources[6] much good from the fathers, Vanhoozer does not do so in such a way that eliminates the clarity and distinctions contributed by later eras of the church. He draws just as much from the Protestant Reformers and the Reformed Scholastics as he does from the fathers.
• As such, Vanhoozer does not retrieve a “lowest common denominator” hermeneutic, drawn only from points of universal agreement.

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1. Mere Christian Hermeneutics largely comes as a development of ideas Kevin Vanhoozer dealt with in the 2012 article “Ascending the Mountain, Singing the Rock: Biblical Interpretation Earthed, Typed, and Transfigured” Modern Theology 28.4 (2012): 781–803.

2. Biblical scholars typically operate with a “historical frame of reference” which privileges “the world ‘behind’ the text” whereas theologians operate with frames of reference that privilege some “world ‘in front of’ the text,” whether “ecclesial tradition or . . . the prevailing philosophies and cultural currents of the day” (97). The world behind the text is “the sociocultural context of the authors and editors who produced it,” whereas the world in front of the text is “that of its readers, who bring the world of the text into their lives, if only for a moment.” Both of these are distinguished from the world of the text, which is “made up of words and has a coherence of its own, thanks to its literary structure and plot” (87).

3. We recognize that this definition is vague. Concern over the confusing and contradictory ways Vanhoozer defines “literal sense” will feature later in this review.

4. More fully, “the sense of a word or text pertains to one’s mental concept of an object; the referent is the real-world object to which that sense or concept corresponds” (123).

5. Vanhoozer explicitly contrasts this eschatological frame with the “sacramental frame” (i.e., sacramental ontology) of Hans Boersma. Boersma makes the biblical text a “sacrament” which “participates” in the Word of God (that is, Christ). The exegete who approaches the text with a sacramental frame of reference “looks for the deeper, hidden meaning beneath the literal, or historical, meaning of the text,” that is the Christological res in which the signum of the text metaphysically participates. Vanhoozer, 131, citing Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 140). The problems with the sacramental frame are 1) the spiritual sense of the text quickly becomes unmoored from the literal meaning via allegory and 2) that it fails to capture the dynamic development of redemptive history (creation, fall, redemption, consummation).

6. This word is an intentional reference to Ressourcement, the return to patristic sources that became popular in mid-twentieth century scholarship and continues to the present day. Ressourcement is a French word meaning “return to the sources,” and it became an anthem of the nouvelle theologians who influenced Vatican II. While the recovery of patristic sources has brought many benefits, they can be weaponized to undermine clarifications and contributions made by later eras of the tradition, reducing us to a lowest common denominator kind of Christianity.