Includes bibliographical references (pages 469-485) and indexes.

Introduction: Theology and Literary Theory -- 1. Faith Seeking Textual Understanding -- pt. 1. Undoing Interpretation: Authority, Allegory, Anarchy -- 2. Undoing the Author: Authority and Intentionality -- 3. Undoing the Book: Textuality and Indeterminacy -- 4. Undoing the Reader: Contextuality and Ideology -- pt. 2. Redoing Interpretation: Agency, Action, Affect -- 5. Resurrecting the Author: Meaning As Communicative Action -- 6. Redeeming the Text: The Rationality of Literary Acts -- 7. Reforming the Reader: Interpretive Virtue, Spirituality, and Communicative Efficacy. Conclusion: A Hermeneutics of the Cross -- 8. Hermeneutics of Humility and Conviction.

"Is there a meaning in the Bible, or is meaning rather a matter of who is reading or of how one reads? Does Christian doctrine have anything to contribute to debates about interpretation, literary theory, and postmodernity? These are questions of crucial importance for contemporary biblical studies and theology alike." "Kevin Vanhoozer contends that the postmodern crisis in hermeneutics - "incredulity towards meaning," a deep-set skepticism concerning the possibility of correct interpretationis fundamentally a crisis in theology provoked by an inadequate view of God and by the announcement of God's "death.""--BOOK JACKET.