Here’s one side: I doubt even the most devout man or woman serving in a local congregation that has a library (!) will investigate the volumes. I mention this, as I’ve served in a few Presbyterian churches in NA, and some relatively fresh and engaging dictionaries and encyclopedias sit on the library shelves collecting dust. Much of these texts would fund, correct, and expand the imagination for worship and mission for many of these devout men and women. For some of the churches without a tradition of keeping a theological library on their campuses, the distance from such fine resources is only longer: obvious enough.

When I’ve suggested to some of the folks I know who have the chops to read such resources, there’s always been a reticence to crack such books, and it’s not entirely a false objection: they don’t want to wade through arguments and data that speak to the author’s colleagues and interlocutors: they want to follow the topic along and determine how it may empower their reading of and faith in the Scriptures.

Let me also add that in a recent conference our ministry hosted for university students, I found a mixed bag of students regarding their reading skills, as well as a mixed capacity to verbalize their reflections and synthesis. I don’t mean for this get us too far afield, but, here again, there was a troubling inability to read in a way that did justice to the text and allow the text to generate theological replies of worship and mission: and very little initiative to even “connect the dots.” There were some delightful exceptions! Nonetheless, my doubts that anyone will make this pursuit are there on this one side.

The other side regards something you intimated in a reply to another commenter, viz., getting started with the generation that is receiving theological education. I would want to affirm this in the strongest possible way. Among the few students I mentioned above, I sought them out to encourage their approach, as well as to begin reading some other works, e.g., The Mission of God by Wright, in order to expand some of their budding theological reading of the Bible. We have to take some risks regarding other books, e.g., Billings, to cultivate what someone else coined as TIS! Do nothing: and there’s no change. But, “starting young” could not be affirmed enough; and clearly there is much more that could be discussed in this regard of andragogy and pedagogy.

I try not to get my hopes up too high, and yet some of the insight and imagination expressed by the students (undergrads at that) could not help but elevate the worship and mission of those listening. Good questions!

I had just finished reading the book when your review popped up on TF. In regards to the issue highlighted above by Mike D, I would say that Billings’ proposal is hopelessly optimistic, at least for our generation. Furthermore, even with Billings’ careful qualifications regarding the theological skewing of ancient interpreters whenever we set out to mine the nuggets they do afford, I suspect the dangers for the “everyday Christian” significantly outweigh the potential benefits. We are left, then—as we always have been, with the theological presuppositions in the pulpit to frame the contributions of ancient interpreters to TIS for the everyday Christian.

I found far more compelling his engagement of Vanhoozer’s work on performance of Scripture. For several years I have been teaching this aspect of interacting with the text to my beginning hermeneutics students as a central part of their term exegesis project and found that this is quite doable, once I am able to draw the appropriate analogies using speech-act theory as both a heuristic and to underscore the importance of the Word of God in eliciting suitable “perlocutions” or performances from the people of God, even in this postmodern era.

I think Billings does a masterful job of explaining the basic concepts and foregrounding their critical importance for all the people of God. Hence, I believe he does more justice to the title of his book for his target audience than most recent attempts to outline an entryway to TIS like those of Trier and Bowald. In a nutshell, the theological interpretation of Scripture cannot be “hermetically sealed” from the work of the Spirit in the very interpreter charged with responding appropriately to the “illocutionary force” of the locutions comprising the Word of God.

Along these lines, I have one minor quibble with Billings’ definition of perlocution, which doesn’t adequately capture Vanhoozer’s emphasis (he relies heavily on Vanhoozer’s Drama of Doctrine): In footnote 16 of the final chapter (pp. 207-8), Billings tries to distinguish between an illocutionary and a perlocutionary act as, respectively, one performed “in or through the locution” and “an act performed by saying something.” This is confusing, because there is no substantive difference between the prepositions in, through, and by; i.e., Billings simply defines perlocution in the same way as illocution and misses a golden opportunity to identify perlocutions—as does Vanhoozer—with “suitable performances.” Similarly, he also misses the opportunity to identify his earlier notion (chap. 4) of “the Spirit’s varied yet bounded work” (emphasis mine) with the “suitable performances” that comprise the bounded range of perlocutions for the people of God in response to the Word of God in any particular historical period. Hence, only some perlocutions respond “suitably” to the Word of God. Others clearly do not—even taking into account dramatic differences in contextualization, which gives the lie to most reader-response criticism “out there” in the field of postmodern hermeneutics, as Vanhoozer has so brilliantly set forth in Is There a Meaning in This Text?

For those interested in the substantive application of speech-act theory to TIS I have reviewed Vanhoozer’s work in precisely this light.

In my experience its difficult to get “everyday Christians” (at least in my circles) very interested in figures like Augustine, Calvin, Aquinas, etc – even as aids in biblical reading rather than as theoretical theologians.

I’ve always thought that at least part of what a pastor is doing in giving a sermon is modeling biblical engagement for a congregation – giving them some tools to enter the texts themselves. So perhaps a suggestion might be that pastors should interact with historical exegesis in sermons a bit more, but that’s a difficult thing to do without coming off as if you’re giving a lecture rather than a sermon.

I interviewed Billings on The Word of God for the People of God a while back here if you’re interested.