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Not all or nothing

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Kevin Vanhoozer wisely warns against hermeneutical all-or-nothingism: "Interpretation is not an all-or-nothing affair. We need not choose between a meaning that is wholly determinate and a meaning that is wholly undeterminate. Neither need we choose between a meaning that is fully present and a meaning that is forever deferred. . . . There is something in the text that can be known, though perhaps not exhausively. We must therefore distinguish between the inexhaustibility of meaning and its indeterminacy. The former need not imply the latter; it is one thing not to know everything, quite another to know nothing."

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 02:15 PM

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