John Frame’s stature in the evangelical world is approximately proportionate to his physical stature. He raised many prominent scholars: the only one I’ll mention here (as you can guess) is Kevin Vanhoozer. It is not everyday that someone can impress Kevin Vanhoozer, but John Frame did. Vanhoozer related an anecdote that explains why in the Festschrift to Frame:
Thirty years ago I sent out requests to various theology professors around the United States, asking them to recommend their seminaries to me, a prospective MDiv student. Some didn’t understand my parody of the genre (viz., application forms) or the manner in which I had turned the tables. They informed me that it was usually the student, not the seminary, who provided letters of reference (duh!)
You, however, entered into the game with relish. To my question, “What are the strengths and weaknesses of the applicant?” You praised your faculty colleagues for their scholarship and saintliness, and then added, “Except me–I’m totally depraved.” I knew then that I had found a kindred spirit, and my mentor.
You did not disappoint–well, at least not until you left for Westminster California at the end of my first year. Still, you went the extra mile by agreeing to supervise my MDiv honors thesis on “The Special Status of the Bible in James Barr, Brevard Childs, and David Kelsey” (and thanks, by the way, for introducing me to Kelsey; I still require his Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology for my theological method course). (lxxix)
I would kill to have a copy of Vanhoozer’s MDiv honors thesis. But I thought it’d much more civilized to do a worldcat search, and when I failed, I phoned Westminster Seminary about it. Hopefully they get back to me.
Vanhoozer giving a talk on Augustinian Inerrancy
Anyway, this post is about the problem Frame seems to have with Vanhoozer’s approach. This is from a comment made in William Edgar’s piece, Frame the Apologist. Edgar first listed the similarities between the two:
An interesting aside: it would appear that the work of Kevin Vanhoozer bears a certain to John [Frame’s]. My guess, informed somewhat from John’s own recollections, is that when Vanhoozer was a student at Westminster, he was influenced by John’s way of thinking. Like John, Vanhoozer argues for the “theodrama” of Scripture, which includes the various ways it carries meaning. Vanhoozer argues that the propositional (“locutionary”) content of Scripture, that is, what it teaches, points to, or argues, [are] often communicated in an “illocutionary” manner…Both theologians want to help the evangelical community get back to more solid doctrinal footing. Like John Vanhoozer critiques Charles Hodge for his “biblical empiricism” and seeks a more canonical way to tell the whole story, rather than to amass data. Intriguingly, too, Vanhoozer’s view of “trianguation” somewhat resembles John’s triperspectival approach…
Then he goes on to describe the differences, and from Frame’s own words:
I do suspect that John is not altogether comfortable with Vanhoozer’s apparent underplaying of the primary exegetical work needed to get to the story, nor, perhaps, of the seeming neglect of the more normative aspects of the Bible’s instructions. Indeed, in discussing his relationship with Vanhoozer and his high respect for him, John has nevertheless expressed doubts about the usefulness of largescale models and pleads for simply working more with Scripture–its teachings and implications.
This, in a way, can be seen as simply a difference in emphasis. At the same time, it is interesting and important to think about why these two great evangelical theologians diverge at precisely these points. That’s for a different post, though.
reformed notebook 