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II. Speech Act Theory and Scripture: A Summary and Evaluation

Vanhoozer emphasizes the significance of speech act theory for theology:

The most fruitful recent development for the dialogue between philosophy and theology about language is undoubtedly the emphasis on language as a species of human action: speech acts.[48]

If written and spoken words are speech-acts then the bible can be understood as speech acts. Indeed, Timothy Ward makes the bold claim that:

… a speech-act view of the Bible is the most appropriate overall description of the Bible’s nature and function – especially so, if we want to encourage Bible-reading which seeks above all to encounter God through that reading.[49]

Vanhoozer argues from an analysis of biblical covenants for seeing greater continuity between oral and written discourse than is sometimes allowed in contemporary philosophy and literary theory. He argues that it is clear from the book of Deuteronomy, for example, that the written covenant continues to have “determinative content and binding force” for the covenant community, showing that: “Written texts preserve the same illocutionary act potential as oral discourse”.[50]

A major attraction of speech act theory as a model for reading the bible for evangelicals, especially in the face of challenges from postmodernism and deconstruction, is that it tends to think of meaning at least partly in terms of authorial intention (what speakers seek to do with their words) rather than an open play determined entirely by reader response.

The usefulness of speech act theory in biblical hermeneutics

Writing in 2005, Brevard Childs notes that:

Within the last decade there has been an explosion of interest in speech-act theory as a means of developing a new understanding of biblical hermeneutics.[51]

Speech Act theory may also be an asset in the interpretation and application of Scripture. Some of the general usefulness of the theory has already been suggested above.

Vanhoozer suggests that the diverse genres of Scripture may be seen as performing different illocutionary acts: they do different things by warning, greeting, stating, questioning etc[52].

Richard Briggs argues that:

… on reflection it is startling just how many highly significant speech acts there are [in the biblical narrative], and in fact how much of the biblical story turns on ‘things done with words’.[53]

Similarly Thiselton writes:

In the case of the biblical writings, the persistence of the terms Old and New “Testament” serve to remind us of the covenantal context in which pledge and promise [for some, the paradigmatic speech act] feature prominently. The biblical writings abound in promises, invitations, verdicts, confessions, pronouncements of blessings, commands, namings, and declarations of love.[54]

Nevertheless, Briggs warns that “speech act theory cannot be a panacea for all one’s hermeneutical problems”[55]. He insists that he is not calling for Speech Act Criticism as if this should be an exclusive or overarching approach. Briggs argues (like Fish) that while all texts should be susceptible to a speech act analysis, the results will not always be especially insightful or interesting. It is “in texts which concern themselves with particular speech acts, especially performative acts and strong illocutions… [that] we may expect to find worthwhile insights from a speech act perspective.”[56]Briggs especially seeks to apply speech act theory to New Testament passages which involve confession of faith, forgiveness of sin and teaching[57].

Speech act theory may be used to analyse what is being said and done by participants in a narrative, by the narrator and by the human author of the biblical texts. Texts may also be regarded as God’s speech acts, both to their original recipients and to future generations of the church.

James Robson has recently drawn on speech act theory when employing the distinction between locution and illocution, what the bible says and what is done in saying it, when he examines “how the prophet Ezekiel’s oracles uttered against Jerusalem can function in the book that bears his name after Jerusalem itself has fallen.”[58]

Other examples of the application of speech act theory to the understanding of the Bible can be found inSemeia 41 (1988), ‘Speech Act Theory and Biblical Criticism’; Botha, J. E.,Jesus and the Samaritan Woman Novum Testamentum Supplements 45 (Brill, 1991); Berry, Donald K.,The Psalms and Their Readers: Interpretive Strategies for Psalm 18 JSOT Supp 153 (Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1993); Neufeld, Dietmar,Reconceiving Texts as Speech Acts: An Analysis of 1 John (Leiden, Brill [Bib Int Ser 7], 1994); Reid, Stephen B., ‘Psalm 50: Prophetic Speech and God’s Performative Utterances’ in Reid (ed.)Prophets and Paradigms: Essays in Honour of Gene M. Tucker JSOT Sup 229 (Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) pp217-230 and a number of works by Thiselton[59]. Briggs provides a survey in Briggs, Richard S., “The Uses of Speech-Act Theory in Biblical Interpretation”Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 9 (2001) pp229-72.

An extra-biblical category or a biblical view of language?

On the opening page ofHoly Scripture: A Dogmatic sketch , John Webster criticizes Ward for depending too much on an extra-biblical “philosophical theory of communicative action” (speech acts) rather than properly dogmatic material[60].

Vanhoozer seems aware of this sort of danger. In his essay on speech acts and scripture acts, Vanhoozer wants to avoid speech act categories dominating and argues that:

On the contrary, we will see that Christian convictions concerning, say, divine authorship, the canon and the covenant will lead us both to modify and intensify the typical speech act analysis. My goal is to let the “discourse of the covenant” (Scripture) inform and transform our understanding of the “covenant of discourse” (ordinary language and literature).[61]

Rather than being an illegitimate alien element in theology, Vanhoozer claims that:

speech act philosophy commends itself as perhaps the most effective antidote to certain deconstructive toxins that threaten the very project of textual interpretation and hermeneutics.[62]

Ward guards against a charge of selling out to speech act theory:

It is important to note that the use of ‘speech-act’ as a controlling concept for the Bible does not represent the illicit importation of a non-theological category into theological description. Instead, it gives us the conceptual apparatus to discern more clearly the view of language to which the Bible regularly bears witness.[63]

As Vanhoozer says:

Of course the idea that humans do things in speaking was well known to the very earliest biblical authors, even without the analytic concepts of speech act philosophy.[64]

Ward argues that:

… a strong case can be made from exegesis of numerous biblical texts that the Bible itself holds a clear speech-act view of language in general and of God’s speech in particular

citing Gen 1; Jer 1:9-10 (where it seems Jeremiah is commissioned to break down and build by the words of the LORD); Is 55:10-11 and Rm 8:28-30 (on the efficacious call of God) so that:

A speech-act model of language is not imposed on the Bible, but is discerned, from a particular interpretive standpoint, already to be there.[65]

In addition, when Isaac blesses Jacob in Genesis 27 it is clear that he has done something in or by speaking that cannot be undone. James 3 speaks of the power of the tongue. Acts demonstrates a dynamic view of the word of God growing (e.g. Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20). Hebrews 4:12 describes the word of God as living and active. Psalm 107:20 attributes the actions of healing and delivering to God’s word (c.f. Acts 10:36).

The Genesis account of God’s creating the world by his word (Genesis 1:3 etc.) is a particularly striking and foundational instance of a speech act. Man’s capacity for language and verbal communication are often seen as components of what it means for man to be in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Beginning to exercise his vicegerency, man performs the speech act of effectively naming the animals (“And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.”, Genesis 2:19).

In a sense the incarnation of the Word, his act of becoming flesh, (John 1:14) may be seen as a theological basis for speaking of revelation in terms of speech acts, at least to the extent that it is an act described in verbal categories. Jesus exercises the power of God by speaking when he commands the wind and the waves (Mark 4:39), casts out demons (Mark 1:25) and forgives sins and heals with a word (Mark 2:5-12).

Speech Act and Liturgy

Writing as an Evangelical, David Hilborn argues that:

… speech act theory has considerable potential for the analysis of liturgy. Its stress on language as a means to action; its sensitivity to performance, ritual and local ‘rules’ as components of linguistic meaning; its acceptance on these premises of ‘empirically unverifiable’ statements – these commend it for the study of religious discourse in general and sacral discourse in particular.[66]

Some attempts have been made to apply speech act theory to the study of liturgy[67].

Ladriere sets out such a view:

It [liturgical language] is characterized in that it is a certain form of action; it puts something into practice: in short, it possesses an “operativity”. It is not merely a verbal commentary on an action external to itself; in and of itself, it is action…. The enunciation of the sentence is a veritable action. In order, therefore, to express the operative (non-descriptive) nature of liturgical language, we may use the term “performativity”, as proposed by Austin.[68]

A speech act analysis of liturgical texts (e.g. such as the absolution) may aid clear thinking about exactly who is doing what to whom in the speech acts of the service.

Ladriere argues that liturgical language not only expresses certain attitudes but also acts as an “existential inductor” affecting and bringing them about. Thus verbs such as “to ask”, “to pray” and “to give thanks”:

express illocutionary acts presupposing certain attitudes: trust, veneration, gratitude, submission, contrition, and so on. These attitudes come into effect at the very moment when, by virtue of the enunciation of the sentence, the corresponding act takes place. The performative verb is not a description of the attitude which its enunciation presupposes; its function is not to indicate the existence of this attitude, but is, so to speak, the attitude itself: it makes it exist in an effective manner by virtue of the illocutionary act underlying its enunciation.[69]

Ladriere also argues that liturgical language performs the speech act function of “instituting” the church:

The participants meet in a kind of objective space determined by their speech acts. The community is initiated in this meeting. Here one may speak of an induction effect. Language is not the expression of a community constituted before it and apart from it and is not the description of what the community would be, but the locution in which and the instrument by means of which the community is constituted. In so far as it gives to all participants – as co-locutors – the chance to take on the same acts, it establishes between them that operative reciprocity which constitutes the reality of a community.[70]

Even if there may be overstatement here, and though the Reformed will want to insist that the church is constituted by faith[71]in Christ and that entry to the visible church is marked by baptism, there is truth in what Ladriere says:  the Lord’s Day liturgy may be seen as an actualisation or manifestation of the local congregation. By their participation in the liturgy, the members of the church make their unity and fellowship apparent and strengthen them.

Similarly, Briggs comments that the New Testament confession that Jesus is Lord (Rm 10:9; Phil 2:11) and creeds in the church today are performative speech acts which creates (or recreate, sustain, or modify) “the world in which the speaker stands under the lordship of Christ.”[72]

Some speech act accounts of liturgy have focused especially on the Lord’s Supper[73]and these are discussed further in chapter 4 which considers the Lord’s Supper in the light of the Scriptures, since speech act theory is primarily a linguistic approach.

The contribution of speech act theory to the doctrine of Scripture

Words and deeds of God

Some theologians have attempted to privilege God’s saving acts over his word, relegating God’s word to a witness to revelation rather than revelation itself. Since it maintains that words are deeds, speech act theory helps to relate more adequately the words and deeds of God.

As Briggs points out: “As long ago as 1932 Karl Barth wrote of “The Speech of God as the Act of God””[74].

In this vein, Kevin Vanhoozer has argued that viewing the Bible is God’s mighty speech-act:

          allows us to transcend the debilitating dichotomy between revelation as ‘God saying’ and ‘God doing’. For the category speech-act acknowledges that saying too is a doing, and that persons can do many things by ‘saying’…. Scripture is neither simply the recital of the acts of God nor merely a book of inert propositions. Scripture is rather composed of divine-human speech-acts which, through what they say, accomplish several authoritative cognitive, spiritual and social functions…. I propose the model of communicative action for the Scriptures as the revelatory Word of God. The Bible… is a diverse collection of God’s mighty speech-acts which communicate the saving Word of God.[75]

  As Vanhoozer says: “An evangelical theology need not choose between God speaking and acting.”[76]The Bible is not merely testimony to God’s saving acts but rather is “itself one of those redemptive acts ”[77]. Such an account of the Bible helpfully emphasises its salvation-oriented purposes.

Objective and Subjective Revelation

Vanhoozer suggests that speech act categories can be helpful in preserving the distinction between objective revelation in Scripture by the Spirit’s inspiration and its subjective appropriation by the illumination of the Spirit. In contrast to a Barthian doctrine of Scripture, Vanhoozer argues that:

… given the distinction between illocutions and perlocutions, there is no reason why one could not speak of divine discoursesimpliciter to refer to what God is doing in speaking (illocutions), whether or not it is received and understood (perlocutions).[78]

In contrast to a Barthian doctrine of scripture, Vanhoozer maintains that:

the Bibleis the Word of God (in the sense of its illocutionary acts) and to say that the Biblebecomes the Word of God (in the sense of achieving its perlocutionary effects).[79]

The Bible is God’s words whether or not there is illocutionary uptake on the part of the readers. Though the perlocutions will depend on whether or not God’s word is received with faith, leading to salvation or rejected, leading to judgment, God’s word will never be without effect.

The Propositional and the Personal

As Vanhoozer also notes, he notion of Scripture as God’s speech-act helpfully preserves its propositional content, its effect and its personal nature[80]. Indeed, Vanhoozer suggests that: “Speech-acts are arguably the main currency of personal relationships.”[81]

As Ward puts it: “In the Bible, God himself, his actions and his words are intimately related.”[82]. God establishes relationships with people by speaking his Word to them and responding to the Word is responding to God himself. As Ward points out, Jesus’ words and Jesus seem to be used interchangeably in John 15:1-12 as practical synonyms: “The words of both the Father and Jesus, then, are a kind of extension of themselves.”[83]

Paul Ricoeur suggested supplementing a standard speech act analysis by considering what he calls the “interlocutionary act” which focuses on the utterance as an act of communication addressed by someone to someone else[84]. Vanhoozer has taken up this category of interlocutionary acts to capture the fact that “communicative action is essentially an interpersonal affair”. The interpersonal relationships that speech acts produce between speaker and hearers mean that “an interlocutor – either an agent or a recipient of communicative action – [can be called] acommunicant .”[85]

The Personal Presence of God by his word

Vanhoozer speaks of God as present with his people by his word:

The principal mode in which God is ‘with’ his people is through speech-acts. I find it difficult to conceive how one could discern God’s presence, or know anything whatsoever about God, without a communication on God’s part.[86]

Self-involvement and transformative reading

Just as God is thus personally involved in his word, Thiselton[87]and Briggs[88]have developed Donald Evans’[89]argument that speech acts are also self-involving for readers. The biblical texts confront readers with claims that God is the creator and that Jesus is Lord in ways that are not merely descriptions of fact but which require dispositions, commitments and consequent actions on the part of readers to live in God’s world in God’s way with Jesus as ruler. Thiselton and Briggs call for a “a hermeneutic of self-involvement” in which “we invest ourselves in the text and in the process we are changed; acted upon by its speech acts”[90]such that Bible reading is transforming.

God’s efficacious word

Secular speech act theorist Vanderveken and Susumu comment that: “Because of His supernatural powers, God can use performatively many more verbs than we can.”[91]

Searle speaks of a special category of supernatural declarations: “When, e.g., God says “Let there be light” there is a declaration.”[92]Unlike other declarations, this requires no extra-linguistic institution or convention to make it affective. Simply by saying, God is able to make it so.

As Ward argues from Isaiah 55:11, it is particularly appropriate to speak of God’s effectual word as speech acts:

God promises that his word will infallibly perform the purposes for which he sent it. This verse reveals something to which the whole Bible bears witness: God’s words fundamentally perform actions.[93]

Similarly, Vanhoozer argues that God’s divine speech acts are infallible in this sense: “Scripture’s diverse illocutionary forces will inevitably achieve their respective purposes.”[94]

The Bible as God’s covenant promise

As Vanhoozer points out, Searle and Alston see the promise as the paradigmatic speech act and he concurs with Thiselton and Wolterstorff others in emphasizing its central importance in Christian theology[95].

Austin identified making a covenant as an example of a speech act with commissive[96]illocutionary force.

Vanhoozer suggests that all language as communicative action between sender and receiver is inherently covenantal[97].

Whilst the polygeneric nature of the Bible must not be lost sight of, a speech act account of the Bible as covenantal promise may give an insight into Scripture as a whole. Vanhoozer comments:

God appears to his people as an agent who performs promissory speech-acts which commit him to continuous activity…. According to speech-act philosophy, an agent signals an intention by invoking the appropriate linguistic and literary conventions…. The Bible is God’s covenant “deed”, in both senses of the term. It is an act and a testament: a performative promise wherein certain unilateral promises are spoken, and a written document that seals the promise. The canon is a collection of diverse speech-acts that together ‘render’ the covenantal God.[98]