Vanhoozer follows his own prescription for doing �first theology� through the organization of his book. He begins with three chapters on God, follows with two on Scripture, and concludes with six on hermeneutics. The first section, on God, deals with his understanding of God through three different avenues: the first is in a theology of religions, the second is with regard to love and impassibility, and the third is in relation to election. In his chapter on a theology of religions, he asserts that we must include God as Trinity as central to our approach to other religions. This means respecting and recognizing the alterity of the other, while at the same time minding the distinctives of the Christian faith. The thrust of this chapter is that God�s identity is fundamentally Trinitarian, and that God is not rightly known apart from this Triune identity. Further, we cannot neglect this fundamental aspect of God as we dialogue with other faiths, because it both provides a basis upon which genuine relationship can occur, and it is central to identifying who God is, and keeps us from the temptation to, say, de-specify the Spirit from being Christ�s Spirit to being simply a force, so as to encourage commonalities with other faith traditions.
His second chapter on God focuses on God�s love and divine impassibility. In formulating his own understanding, he recognizes the connection between the traditional formulations of divine impassibility and Greek philosophy, but asserts that openness theology, which is attempting to redefine our understanding of God�s nature, especially on this point, is merely updating the philosophy to which they are connecting God�s nature, so as to be formulating simply a new �perfect being� theology of a different sort, where relatedness is held in highest esteem. Vanhoozer centers his own understanding on love as being a divine communicative action, oriented to communion. This means that love is eminently personal, while also perfect. He connects his understanding back to traditional ways of formulating the debate, saying, �God�s love is best viewed neither in terms of causality nor in terms of mutuality but rather in terms of communication and self-communication.� This communication seeks to bring about understanding and faith, and does so through communicating both information and energy, as truth and Spirit. This leads him to redefine impassability as meaning that, instead of God being unfeeling, God is never �overcome� or �overwhelmed� by passion. He is never subject to His own feelings, for God is free.
In his final chapter on God, Vanhoozer extends his understanding through a discussion of �effectual call or causal effect.� He focuses on the traditional and panentheistic understandings of God�s activity, paying especially close attention to the understanding of mind-body workings and its analogy for freedom and divine calling. He is led to conclude that God�s action in calling is a �communicative� action, following the central theme of his book, and that this means that it is not causal. �The call exerts not brute but communicative force.� Although he interacts with the panentheistic notion of supervenient grace, as well as the more Thomistic or Arminian notion of prevenient grace, he asserts that instead we should understand God�s grace as �advenient,� in saying that God comes to us in his self-communicative action, but comes to it where and when the Spirit wills. This leads him to conclude that �one who has been illumined is both passive and active: being made to understand, one understands.�
In the second part of the book, Vanhoozer fore fully constructs his understanding of communicative action, as he asserts that Scripture is a �speech act.� This means that scripture is not either God saying or God doing, but instead is God doing something in His saying. In connecting this understanding to Scripture, he interacts with the history of Bibliology, highlighting the �received� view and verbal inspiration, as well as the Barthian view of the Spirit�s role in making the Scriptures the Word of God. Vanhoozer moves forward out of this backdrop by asserting that God�s communicative action cannot be dichotomized as either personal or prepositional. Instead it is a �set of human-divine communicative actions.� He connects his understanding of communicative action to the Trinity, as well, asserting that the Father�s action is locution, uttering, begetting and sustaining the words. The Logos is illocution, �what one does in saying,� both in content and intention. The Spirit is the perlocutionary act, meaning the effect that the illocution has on the hearer. This understanding leads Vanhoozer to conclude, with Warfield, that Scripture is not merely a record of God�s redemptive actions, but is one itself. His next chapter on Scripture is essentially his outworking of this concept as it relates to understanding scripture, and what this means for interpretation.
Vanhoozer then spends the balance of the book, the final six chapters, focusing on matters of hermeneutics. The first chapter highlights the importance of the Spirit to understanding, and the Spirit�s role in enlivening the text. He then turns to questions of the role of the reader, interacting with historical criticisms focusing on the nature of the reader in interpreting Scripture. Vanhoozer asserts that the reader should be disciple, meaning that the reader should not only analyze the text but receive it, �according to its nature and intention,� appropriating the text on its own terms.
Another important theme Vanhoozer uplifts especially in chapter 9, is the theme of witness or testimony. Testimony is a distinctive type of speech act, where the speaker is truly doing something in speaking. It challenges the reader to listen to the other, without reducing the other�s voice to our own. Dealing again with the question of the role of the reader, he asserts that in order to properly view scripture, we must take it as testimony, accepting the truth of what is spoken, and letting the text be what it is.
The theme of testimony is also carried through to his last chapter, on the nature of truth and the hermeneutical endeavor. He takes his cues from Kierkegaard, and the contrast between the apostle and the genius, and asserts that there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Evangelical truth claims are not to be made by teachers, but by witnesses. The truth is not merely doctrine, but is lived out in life. This means that the theologian is to be an �interpreter-martyr,� for �We can stake claims with humility and conviction and show their reasonableness and wisdom by enduring trials and critical testing, but it is ultimately up to God to validate them. �The trial of truth may admit of no worldly resolution.� Staking a truth claim with humility, and with hope, then is the task of a theologian, who seeks not to tell the truth, but �to be a truth to one�s neighbor.�
Vanhoozer lays out through this series of essays a developing picture of God as communicator. It would seem that in some ways he is reworking Barth�s categories of revelation with the idea of communication, a subtle yet important shift. This allows the Biblical witness to be understood not merely as text, but as an act of God for us. This develops a picture of God as one who is fundamentally communicating Himself to us, in both word and deed. As readers, it is our responsibility to listen to the act of witness by the authors and the texts, and hear them as the speech act of God. His book, Is There Meaning In This Text?, most likely lays out a more specific outline of how this understanding impacts Biblical interpretation, but here he has laid the foundation for his understanding of God, Scripture and hermeneutics that underlies it. His assertions certainly warrant attention, and his evenhanded approach to issues such as impassability and effectual call attest to a Biblically and theologically sensitive understanding of God and God�s activities.
