I appreciate your thoughts about the seemingly relative nature of the task, but I honestly don’t feel the force of the critique. Is the point that because we can’t do it perfectly, or because there are possible scenarios where well meaning believers couldn’t do it, that we shouldn’t bother doing it at all? I think that this discussion has the same issues that biblically hermeneutics has, but I don’t think we should stop because we can’t compare one pastor to another on a scale and decide which one is the better exegete.

The point of cultural hermeneutics seems to be, from my point of view, a task of growing in wisdom. The task is both individual and communal, and isn’t necessarily for the purpose of “out-narrating” it necessarily, as much as recognizing that it is a “text” which affects your (singular and plural) engagement with and in God’s world.

I am also concerned about the phrase “theological competence” which is incredibly relative. What does it say to those who are mentally disabled or who come from a cultural context where they take much longer to understand the maxims and symbols of one kind of Christianity? How do denominational diffrerences come into account.

Finally, I have one faculty member at my divinity school right now who has questioned the “theological competence” of Vanhoozer. I think it is unfair of him to say the least, but it illustrates how proper understandings are hard to come by.

Media literacy, which is the movement that Church groups who advocate cultural engagement, is done on a scale. A person never reaches a point of absolute media literacy. Just like a piano player may always have a harder piece to learn (Chopsticks to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and onto Bill Joel then Bach…). I think it is a helpful process for the Church, but the motivation must be examined. If the purpose of encountering a narrative is to out-narrate it (and sometimes it should be, such as with the narrative of conspiracy theorists, for example), then the dialogue is already broken down. And humility, a core Christian virtue, is already lost.

But I could be wrong.

Regarding your question about “globalization”, my hunch is that the tools he outlines aren’t culturally limited – meaning they would be applicable in any culture, even the increasingly global culture many of us are experiencing.

Perhaps Vanhoozer could answer your question more completely. We have invited him into the conversation.

Kent

With so called “globalization” is it possible to map how this can be done for so many cultures.

Waiting with eagerness for the second article.