Not all or nothing

Peter J. Leithart, August 14, 2006

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."