Vanhoozer received his M. Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University where he studied under Nicholas Lash. His inter-disciplinary dissertation was titled Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: A Study in Hermeneutics and Theology and was published in 1990 by Cambridge University Press. He joined the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1986, but during two periods since has taught elsewhere. From 1990 to 1998, he was Senior Lecturer at New College, University of Edinburgh; from 2009 to 2012, he was Blanchard Professor of Theology at Wheaton College. He returned to TEDS in 2012. Vanhoozer is the Senior Theological Mentor for the St. Augustine Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians. He and his wife Sylvie have two daughters. He maintains a web page, "The Theophilus Project," at www.kevinjvanhoozer.com.
Academic contributions
Vanhoozer has written several notable books, including The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology, which won the Christianity Today 2006 Book Award for best book in theology, and Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine, which won the Christianity Today 2015 Book Award for best book in theology. He has edited several others, including the Gold Medallion Book Award winner Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, and, with Charles A. Anderson and Michael J. Sleasman, Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends. In his work Is There a Meaning in this Text?, Vanhoozer gives an in depth response to the challenges of Deconstructionism to biblical hermeneutics. Primarily, he engages the thinking of Jacques Derrida, but Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty also receive attention. Vanhoozer develops a theory ofcommunicative action which relies strongly on the speech-act theory of J. L. Austin and in which a biblical text is seen as a communicative act involving "locutions", "illocutions" and "perlocutions". Among the conclusions that Vanhoozer draws from viewing a text as a communicative act are the involvement of the author, text, and reader in the process of interpretation. The intended meaning of the author can be discerned to a certain degree from the text. The text is not an arbitrary "playground" but part of a covenantal relationship between all people. As a result, the intention of the author can be adequately decoded. Another consequence is that the reader/interpreter has a responsibility to honor the intentions of the author and try to interpret the text in a way which re-creates the author's intended meaning. This responsibility is coupled with a freedom to determine the significance in the context of the interpreter's community.
Works
Books
Edited works
Articles
Online writings
, an excerpt from the Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology
