"Theology aims to preserve the integrity and vitality of the drama of redemption and to equip the saints rightly to play their respective parts. The transmission of the faith from one generation to the next requires more than translations of the biblical text. Canonical-linguistic theology sets out to transmit biblical faith by nurturing the way, the truth, and the life identified with the person and history of Jesus Christ in his body, the church. Right participation requires more than the right information; we need right ways of processing the information, right ways of feeling the information. We need, in short, right minds, right imaginations, right hearts. The purpose of canonical-linguistic theology is to enable the Spirit to minister the language and literature of the Bible so that it shapes not only our thoughts but our imaginations and our desires as well. Knowledge without love profits nothing. Theology must do more than make cognitive contact with divine reality; it must make covenantal contact. Covenantal contact--relating rightly to the covenant Lord--encompasses knowledge and action, propositions and persons, science and wisdom. Covenantal initiative remains, of course, with God; it remains for us to respond accordingly or, to use the terms of the present argument, to participate fittingly. We do so when we learn covenantal virtues--faith, hope, love--by participating in canonical practices."
[Kevin Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 240-1]
[Kevin Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 240-1]