SAHS at SBL: Engaging Kevin Vanhoozer’s Mere Christian Hermeneutics

The Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar is thrilled to host a conversation and critical reflection with Kevin Vanhoozer on his award-winning work, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically. In 1952, C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity eloquently defined the essential tenets of the Christian faith. With the rise of fractured individualism that continues to split the church, this approach is more important now than ever before for biblical hermeneutics. Many Christians wonder how to read the text of Scripture well, rightly, and faithfully. After all, developing a strong theory of interpretation has always been presented by two enormous challenges: 1. A variety of actual interpretations of the Bible, even within the context of a single community of believers; 2. The plurality of reading cultures—denominational, disciplinary, historical, and global interpretive communities—each with its own frame of reference. In response, influential theologian Kevin J. Vanhoozer puts forth a “mere” Christian hermeneutic—essential principles for reading the Bible as Scripture everywhere, at all times, and by all Christians. To center his thought, Vanhoozer turns to the accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration—a key moment in the broader economy of God’s revelation—to suggest that spiritual or “figural” interpretation is not a denial or distortion of the literal sense but, rather, its glorification. Please join us as we host Kevin Vanhoozer and several other leading scholars in a conversation around this landmark work.