Mere Christian Hermeneutics Quotes

“The knowledge of God is a mountain steep indeed and difficult to climb—the majority of people scarcely reach its base. —Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“According to Levin, the fundamental problem is that both rival parties view social institutions “not as molds that ought to shape their behavior and character but as platforms that allow them greater individual exposure and enable them to hone their personal brands.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Serious and sustained Bible reading, at once reflective and practical, is the soul of theology and the beating heart of the body of Christ, the”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“To read the Bible theologically requires resources beyond those of general hermeneutics, beyond even the secular interpretive virtues. In the final analysis, reading the Bible rightly requires the theological interpretive virtues—faith, hope, and love—and a theological frame of reference.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“There are few more perplexing and yet important problems in the history of biblical interpretation than the issue of defining what is meant by the sensus literalis of a text.”38”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“At the center of humanities is the love of words. The philologist asks, “What do I love when I love these words?” Augustine asked, “What do I love when I love my God?” Christians who want to read the Bible theologically ask, “What do I love when I love the biblical words as the word of God?”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“We best read the Bible theologically, before God, by adopting the posture of prayer: on our knees.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“In the enthralling words of Augustine, When such a day is at hand, lamps will not be necessary. A prophet will not be read to us, the book of the Apostle will not be opened; we shall not seek the testimony of John, we shall not need the Gospel itself. Therefore, all the Scriptures will be taken from our midst which were burning as lamps for us in the night of this world that we might not remain in the darkness. With all these taken away . . . what shall we see? . . . You will see the naked light itself.52”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“The most important qualification for biblical interpretation, and the Christian reader’s primary vocation, is to be “canonically aware and redemptively responsible”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“John Owen said something similar in his Meditations and Discourse on the Glory of Christ, in which he exhorted Christians to read Scripture contemplating the glory of Christ—who he is; what he did; what he continues to do—that we know now by faith in hearing his word, a foretaste of the beatific vision.17”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“The splendor of the divine countenance, which even the apostle calls “unapproachable” [1 Tim 6:16], is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word; so that it is better to limp along this path than to dash with all speed outside it. —Calvin, Institutes I.6.3”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“For there is a hermeneutical dimension to sanctification and a sanctifying dimension to hermeneutics, each having to do with beholding the glory of the Lord.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“There is a difference between having an opinion of God’s holiness and having a spiritual sense of that holiness: “There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness.”146”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Rather, it is “a pneumatological interpretive community”109—”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Perfect love for the biblical text must cast out interpretive fear.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Mark Noll describes the Civil War as a theological crisis, but it was equally hermeneutical: anti-abolitionists read the Bible as supporting slavery; abolitionists protested that slavery was an evil that the gospel opposed.55 To paraphrase Noll’s tragic conclusion: it was left to those consummate biblical interpreters, the Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman, to decide how the Bible would henceforth be read. To the victors go the interpretive spoils!”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Moreover, if we do not even try to recover the author’s intention and respect its own communicative integrity, “we will only hear the echo of our own voices or, like Narcissus, see our own faces in the mirror of the text.”43”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Wrestling with Job: “The book of Job is, in many ways, a hard book. . . . Because it doesn’t give us the answers we want.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“It follows that the greatest hindrance to understanding the Bible is not historical but spiritual distance.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Gregory of Nyssa, in his Life of Moses, commented that the “knowledge of God is a mountain steep indeed and difficult to climb—the majority of people scarcely reach its base.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“We are now in a better position to appreciate the truth of Warfield’s wry comment on Scripture’s interior decorating: the Old Testament is “a chamber richly furnished but dimly lit.”230”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Daniel Block uses christotelic to indicate that we understand Scripture only in light of its end/goal (telos): “Not every text points to Jesus Christ as Messiah, but every text presents a vital part of that story of Jesus.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Bates’s thesis is that Paul uses the apostolic kerygma as his interpretive framework for reading the Old Testament.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“According to Bates, what governs Paul’s use of Scripture is a “christocentric protocreedal narrative” that is kerygmatic (i.e., a core Christian proclamation), apostolic (i.e., held in common by all the apostles), and economic (i.e., the result of God’s “administrative providence”).”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Perhaps, but unpacking “organic hermeneutics” is every bit as challenging as explaining organic chemistry.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Savage contends that Moses was the best-known and most-respected Jewish figure in Greco-Roman antiquity and in Palestinian Judaism, largely because of his meeting with Yahweh on Mount Sinai and his resultant shining face. According to one rabbinic text, “If an opening were to be made in the grave of Moses, the entire world could not endure the light.”142”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Harink draws a stunning inference: “The transfiguration is God’s own exegesis of the prophetic word of Ps. 2, as God himself declares Jesus to be the one about whom the words of the psalms and the prophets are written.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“As Douglas Harink succinctly summarizes, “The transfiguration is a prophetic”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“Calvin was no ophthalmologist, but he famously described the Scriptures as the “spectacles” or corrective lenses of faith that help readers to perceive what there is to be known of God.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

“The doxological rule that is part and parcel of the transfigural framework of interpretation is similar: Choose the reading that most glorifies God and that most promotes the light of Christ in the life of the reader.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically