Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship

Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine

by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

The rise of modern science and the proclaimed 'death' of God in the nineteenth century led to a radical questioning of divine action and authorship - Bultmann's celebrated 'demythologizing'. Remythologizing Theology moves in another direction that begins by taking seriously the biblical accounts of God's speaking. It establishes divine communicative action as the formal and material principle of theology, and suggests that interpersonal dialogue, rather than impersonal causality, is the keystone of God's relationship with the world. This original contribution to the theology of divine action and authorship develops a fresh vision of Christian theism. It also revisits several long-standing controversies such as the relations of God's sovereignty to human freedom, time to eternity, and suffering to love. Groundbreaking and thought-provoking, it brings theology into fruitful dialogue with philosophy, literary theory, and biblical studies.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction, God

539 pages, Hardcover

First published January 14, 2010

About the author

Kevin J. Vanhoozer is currently Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. From 1990-98 he was Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at New College, University of Edinburgh. Vanhoozer received a BA from Westmont College, an M.Div from Westminster Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, England having studied under Nicholas Lash.

Reviews

[Jack Hayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again, I’m surprised—borderline dismayed—by how little attention this work has received. Maybe I'm not hip enough to know where to look.

In this volume, Vanhoozer pushes back against the demythologizing impulses of Bultmann and Feuerbach and, in the background, Ricoeur. His wager is this: "We will come to a better understanding of God’s being by examining biblical accounts of God’s communicative action (i.e., naming, promising, declaring, etc.) (18)." The focal point is not abstract metaphysics but the nature of the dialogical relationship between God and humanity in his self-communication in Scripture and how this shapes the doctrine of God.

Vanhoozer frames the debate in three competing avenues of knowing God: myth, mythos, and metaphysics. He chooses mythos—not as fantasy but as the dramatic medium of divine self-communication in Scripture. Metaphysics, divorced from divine communicative action, collapses into mere phenomenology. This is where Bultmann's soft demythologizing leads: “questions of God and the question of myself are identical.” In his scheme, the myth becomes suspect, even if some transcendence is retained. Feuerbach takes it further: transcendence is an illusion, a projection of self. Theology becomes anthropology.

Against both stands Vanhoozer's remythologizing project, which:

1 Does not fall back into myth but springs forward into metaphysics,
2 Recovers the who of biblical discourse,
3 Attends to the Trinity as communicative agent,
4 Reconceives the God-world relation not causally but communicatively,
5 Recasts metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics in theodramatic terms,
6 Centers both Christ and canon as means of God’s self-presentation,
7 Recognizes Scripture's polyphonic nature,
8 Proposes a first theology rooted in divine discourse (27-29).

From this launch point, Vanhoozer navigates the doctrine of God, touching on divine being, varieties of theism, and critiques of ontotheology. Always circling back to this: theology must begin where God speaks and acts. Divine communicative action is not only the substance of revelation but the cornerstone of metaphysics. The root metaphor for God is thus author—an anthropomorphism, yes, but a theologically warranted one, for this is how God condescends to be known.

Vanhoozer tackles the perennial tension between Creator and creation, as well as divine impassibility and suffering. Regarding the divine-human relationship, Vanhoozer turns to providence and prayer. God authors the story while humans remain real participants. The analogy evokes Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy: the author is present in the story, shaping it, but not reducible. Prayer, then, is a meeting at a “causal joint." Not mechanistic causality but transformation by participation in divine address. This is a dialogical relationship: we speak, but God is not changed or flustered.

This leads to the question: Can God suffer? Can God change in response to human dialogue? (p. 400).

Vanhoozer notes that "emotion" is a relatively modern category, dating back to Descartes. The early church considered passions not irrational forces but "movements within the will." Vanhoozer critiques both physicalist and nonrational-cognitive theories of emotion. Instead, he proposes a narrative construal: emotions are belief-laden perceptions of situations. Applied to God, emotions are divine construals, as judgments of human response to his words and deeds. Because God’s construals are always just, his emotions are objective and covenantal, not arbitrary or changing (p. 412–413).

God’s affections are best understood as covenantal affections which are linked to his character and the covenant bond. Jealousy, for example, is not weakness but a faithful construal of covenantal violation. The result is that God is both impassible and the one who feels. The impassible feels (p. 414).

In Christ, this is displayed in communicatio idiomatum: Jesus is not an abstraction or a reduction but the divine Son in human mode. "The temporal experiences of Jesus Christ are to be assigned neither to an abstract human nature, nor to the divine nature, but rather to a divine person (viz., the Son) in his human mode of existence" (pp. 425–426). His suffering is neither an accident nor endured but a passion, a middle-voice action: both suffered and achieved.

Why does this matter? Because divine impassibility guarantees the trustworthiness of God's being-in-communicative-action (p. 433). His compassion is not passivity but power. He does not merely suffer with us; he acts to redeem. His compassion is not sentimentalism but covenantal hesed.

Vanhoozer contrasts this with empathetic theologies (e.g., Farley, Moltmann), which he critiques on several fronts:

1 They collapse the Creator-creature distinction,
2 They ignore the specificity of divine speech,
3 They make God a tragic figure—one more sufferer in the world process.
4 Balthasar’s critique of Moltmann is apt: “God becomes a tragic, mythological God” (pp. 460–461). Such a God cannot remain an author outside the story.

In contrast, Vanhoozer’s God is the sovereign-sufferer who withstands, not Whitehead’s "fellow sufferer who understands" (p. 466). Divine impassibility is not cold detachment but the unwavering fidelity of God.

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” Because God has spoken. Reality is divine rhetoric is God’s poetic act. "God is the author of everything other than Himself." The universe is not abstract being; it is a communicative work. Calvin reminds us that we must seek God where he renders himself "near and familiar" in the mythos of Scripture (p. 469).

In the end, Vanhoozer warns against two errors: turning God into a myth and approaching God as a mystical immediacy; both are too eager and too easy. Anthropomorphism, far from a liability, is a scaled mythos or a God-given form for divine address. Behind the form lies metaphysical reality, which is not one constructed through speculation, but revealed in speech.

98% Remytholgized

[David Goetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it, but not quite as much as I expected to.

First, the positives.

Physically, the book is excellent: binding is of high quality, type is consistent and clear without being shiny (like WJK's, e.g., tends to be), and margins give ample room for annotations. It's also clearly organized; I never felt uncertain of what Vanhoozer was trying to do or why.

Concerning the content, Vanhoozer writes lucid, often poetic, occasionally inspired prose. His gives helpful and, I think, accurate summaries of figures like Bultmann, Feuerbach, Moltmann, Polkinghorne, Phillip Clayton, et al. If one were not familiar with the theologians of the "new orthodoxy"--which Vanhoozer refers to as "kenotic-perichoretic relational ontotheology"--this book, especially Part 1, would constitute an excellent introduction. This was where Vanhoozer was clearest and where his gifts for close reading and clear exposition were most on display.

In Part 2 he unpacks his idea of communicative theism and of God as Author of the theodrama. In Part 3 he applies his analogia auctoris ("analogy of the author") to particular questions of theology. For example, questions of divine sovereignty and human responsibility and divine im/passibility get extensive treatment sub specie theodramatis. This helps explain his title: in promoting remythologized theology, he attempts to walk a middle road between demythology and mythology by drawing metaphysical conclusions about God on the basis of the biblical mythos. In more basic terms, he aims to let the contours of Holy Scripture--meaning content and form, i.e., the polyphonic speech of Scripture--determine how we speak of God. God communicates ("makes common") his light, life, and love in Christ by the Spirit.

So God speaks, and Vanhoozer does an admirable job of taking God seriously as one who communicates. His speech constitutes the human heroes of the theodrama: we are the embodiment of God's "voice-ideas" and possess integrity as characters in the drama of which God is Author. The Son is God's "corporeal discourse," and the Spirit is the perlocutionary power of God such that those to whom God speaks are internally persuaded in an efficacious manner, though not a coercive manner, to bring their wills into alignment with God's perfect will. In short, this is a subtle form of compatibilism. We are free to be ourselves, yes, but we do not constitute ourselves; only God sees and knows our respective beginnings, and only God knows our respective ends, so only God knows the true meaning of any particular life. (As an aside, that train of thought brought to mind Colossians 3:1-4 and the thought that our real lives are "hidden with Christ in God.") The dialogical relationship we have with God is the means by which God consummates us, for judgment or for salvation. All of this is provocative, richly allusive, and ultimately helpful in wrestling with these questions.

I also enjoyed the focus towards the end of the book on answering to God's speech as the calling of humanity. In fact, if one wanted to read this book quickly, Part 1 and the final chapter of Part 3 would give a good 215-page summary of the theological landscape and Vanhoozer's alternative proposal.

Next, the negatives.

First, as Paul Helm has noted, the title does seem an odd choice. Why put a word ("remythologizing") in your title that you'll need to spend the first 30+ pages of your book explaining?

Second, for all the lucidity of Vanhoozer's prose, it was at certain points surprisingly insubstantial. I don't have the book with me at the moment and so can't adduce any particular examples, but I was struck occasionally by the thought that Vanhoozer seemed only to be seeking a new way to say what other theologians have already said in plainer language. At other moments he seems to try so hard to write beautifully that he ends up actually saying very little.

Third, Vanhoozer talked a lot about the biblical mythos (meaning the text itself in its polyphonic canonical form) but actually gives the reader very little interaction with Scripture itself. He still, in this volume, seems to have methodology on the mind.

Fourth, I wish the bibliography were complete rather than "select."

All that said, I do want to affirm that I enjoyed the book. Vanhoozer is a good writer, and different in style from most theologians in a way that refreshes me.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Vanhoozer on doctrine of God. This, like Drama of Doctrine however, feels as if it could've used a little bit of editorial work. Nonetheless, reading Vanhoozer is always personally edifying and instructive.

[Mats Winther · Rating 1 out of 5]

“Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship” by Kevin J. Vanhoozer is a complex and densely argued work. The author challenges Bultmann’s concept of demythologization and proposes ‘remythologization’ as an alternative approach. This framework views Christianity as a ‘theodrama’, requiring both a new ‘communicative ontology’ and theodramatic metaphysics: “Remythologizing is a matter of rendering explicit the implicit ‘metaphysics’ of the biblical mythos” (p. 183).

Since the divine drama unfolds not in heaven but in the world, Vanhoozer leans towards panentheism, which holds that God exists both within and beyond the world. This position suggests the controversial notion that God experienced the Fall alongside creation. This interpretation would suggest a division within divine nature itself, a concept that echoes Gnostic dualism and departs from orthodox theological understanding.

According to Vanhoozer, God’s existence manifests through communicative action. However, the notion of God’s self-communicative action as a metaphysical principle seems to depreciate God’s existence, as we experience little of this self-communication. Nevertheless, he maintains that communicative action is what makes the world go round (p. 227).

The author favours the term mythos over myth, arguing that “mythos pertains to this-worldly rather than other-worldly events, to ordinary as well as heroic stories and histories” (p. 5). This mythos serves to illuminate the realm of divine communicative action in the world. Rather than embracing Christianity’s traditional transcendent and celestial perspective, Vanhoozer aligns himself with contemporary theological trends that emphasize divine immanence.

We partake in God’s nature through theodramatic participation: “We participate in God as we actively image God — as we dramatize theos” (p. 283). Like biblical narratives, remythologizing theology examines reality through the lens of interpersonal drama. At its core, this theodramatic perspective highlights the fundamental human conflict: deciding whom to serve and whose voice to heed.

Biblical reasoning functions as theological dramatics, encompassing three dimensions of understanding: interpreting God’s words and actions in the historical narrative of Israel and Jesus Christ; discerning God’s present communication through Scripture and determining how contemporary readers should participate in this ongoing divine drama; and understanding God’s nature by moving from divine narrative (theo-mythos) to divine knowledge (theo-logos) (p. 479).

These requirements place considerable burdens on Christian believers. They must not only participate actively in this divine drama but also develop sophisticated theological understanding, transitioning from narrative (mythos) to rational comprehension (logos). This raises questions about how ordinary working people can meaningfully engage with such complex theological demands.

Given that both approaches aim to interpret biblical anthropomorphic imagery, one questions how substantially Vanhoozer’s position actually differs from Bultmann’s. Despite their apparent differences, both methodologies seem to accommodate secular worldviews. This book was a great disappointment.

[Mitch Bedzyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vanhoozer is a brilliant writer whose clear, clever, and exceptional prose shines brightly even in a rather long and dense academic work. His goal of remythologizing theology is to consider how one's doctrine of God, Scripture, and hermeneutics should be developed and go together based on what the triune God has communicated to us in Jesus and the Scriptures. Rather than ignoring the narrative of Scripture ("demythologizing"), or seeking to simply project human thoughts onto God ("mythologizing"), Vanhoozer wants us to take seriously the "theodrama," which is his term for God's actions in redemptive history. In other words, he wants Scripture, God's own revelation of himself to us, to shape how we think about who God is, what he has done, and what he has said.

A few sections in particular stand out:
• His discussion and refutation of the kenotic-perichoretic-relational view of God—which views God as limiting himself, becoming vulnerable, and opening himself to potential suffering and failure—is incredibly helpful.
• In chapter 5 Vanhoozer develops a doctrine of the Trinity which includes a beautiful and edifying section on God as light, life, and love.
• The last section of the book (chapters 6-9), which deals with divine sovereignty and impassibility, is an absolute gold mine and is arguably worth the price of the book.

[Joel Gn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's always a delight to read Vanhoozer - if one believes Is There a Meaning in This Text lent much hermeneutical muscle to our reading of Scripture, then Remythologising Theology would be the sequel that contains the central argument, namely that God's being is in communicating, both within the Trinity and to us as his creation. Vanhoozer packs a great deal into this work, by bringing together ideas from theology (e.g. Aquinas, Barth), philosophy (Aristotle, Nussbaum) and even literary studies (Ricoeur) to develop a comprehensive rubric for 'biblical reasoning' that neither collapses God's speaking to abstract metaphysics, nor projected myth.

[Aleana · Rating 5 out of 5]

To "see" what God is "saying."
As if he hadn't done enough for the field of theological hermeneutics, Vanhoozer offers insight on God’s communicative intentions by reading everything through the Christological matrix of the incarnation AND within a canonical reading of God's activity.
An incredibly charitable theologian who gives us a beautiful theological interpretation of communicative divine action. Woah.

[Richard Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vanhoozer’s book is one of those too-long books. He could have made his argument in half the number of pages. He does do a fine job of walking between the removing God from essentially all interaction with humans and the other extreme of remaking God into a human, albeit superhuman. I don’t think he’s entirely successful in describing this unauthored author, but it was a valiant attempt. I’m not upset I read the book, but it’s not one that I will return to read anytime soon, if ever.

[Brittany Petruzzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly not quite well-read enough to give this gook a proper review. Thankfully, this book is intensely footnoted for your research pleasure. I’l [robably return someday for more. I found his modification of the analogia entis to the analogia auctoris to be truly enticing, but that may be my dramatic leanings talking. He does have a habit of reading Thomas with less charity than he deserves—a rather annoying feature.

[Scott Bielinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant. Didn't love all of it. But I loved the overwhelming majority of it.