DEL TRABAJO PEDAGOGICO

The presence of the kingdom presents God as the speaker and doer in terms of a divine speech act which entails the idea that God constantly communicates with humankind in human language through Scripture in everyday life. Wolterstorff164 proposes an authorial-discourse model that focuses on certain illocutionary acts according to the particular intention in what was done with words that authors communicate to the reader through a text.165 In this sense,

164 _{Wolterstoff has applied SAT to facilitate a more practical understanding of Scripture that God speaks to us}

through Scripture. “Why Animals Don’t Speak” in Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987), pp. 463-485; idem, Divine

Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1995); idem, “The Promise of Speech-Act Theory for Biblical Interpretation” in: CG Bartholomew, Colin JD Greene and Karl Möller (eds.), in After Pentecost: Language and Biblical Interpretation. Vol. 2 (Grand Rapid, Mich.: Zondervan, 2001), pp. 73-90; idem, “True Words” in: Alan G. Padgett and Patrick R. Keifert (eds.). But Is

It All True? (Grand Rapids, MI: WB Eerdmans, 2006), pp. 34-48.

165 _{Wolterstoff (1995:13) writes that, “Once illocutionary acts are thus distinguished from locutionary acts, then}

it immediately occurs to one that though of course such actions as asking, asserting, commanding, and promising, can be performed by way of uttering or inscribing sentences, they can be performed in many other ways as well… Even more interesting: one can tell somebody something by deputizing someone else to speak on one’s behalf. In short, contemporary speech-action theory opens up the possibility of a whole new way of thinking about God speaking: perhaps the attribution of speech to God by Jews, Christians… should be understood as the attribution to God of illocutionary actions, leaving it open how God performs those actions.”

167

the reader should try to discover what the author really intended at the locutionary level of the text as a communicative act between them. In the context of the biblical text, this author-centred model, as opposed to a textual-sense method, offers to bridge the gap between the human locutionary act and revelatory illocutionary act. It means that the Bible written by humans contains both a human aspect as locutions and divine discourse as illocutions which refer to a dual divine-human agency that helps humans to communicate with the divine.How then could God speak through the Scripture from the perspective of its human authors? How can the Scripture be regarded as true? How it is possible for a hearer to determine what God meant to say? In response to these questions, Wolterstorff suggests a “double-agency discourse”166

wherein one person, namely a biblical author, says something with words as a locutionary level that is used by God to perform an illocutionary act according to its force. Wolterstorff (2001:83)

therefore explores speech act theory as an alternative way of support his notion of “double- agency discourse”:

Speech-act theory… enables us to understand Scripture as the manifestation of God speaking by way of human beings speaking, and then of interpreting accordingly… It enables us to understand Scripture as the manifestation of God having performing illocutionary acts by way of human beings having performed locutionary and illocutionary acts, and then of interpreting according by the employment of a double hermeneutic.

Wolterstorff’s use of the double agency discourse as the mode of communication is a person’s performance of an illocutionary act by means of another person performing a locutionary act. In a double agency discourse, one person A authorizes or delegates another person B to speak in order to deliver his/her specific message (intention) to someone C on his/her behalf, using his/her name and referring to A’s authority and position. It does not simply indicate that the authorized agent B from A conveys A’s message to C as a communicative act. Rather A him/herself communicates with C by means of the speech of A’s deputized agent B. On this issue, Wolterstorff (1995:42) writes:

It should be noted that to deputize to someone else some authority that one has in one’s own person is not to surrender that authority and hand it over to that other person; it is to bring it about that one exercises that authority by way of actions performed by that other person acting

166 _{Wolterstorff (2001:83) points out that, “What I have in mind is those cases in which one person performs some}

illocutionary act by way of another person performing either some locutionary or some illocutionary act.” This point helps us to understand Scripture as the manifestation of God speaking by way of human language.

168

as one’s deputy.

Overall, a successful communication entails the performance of illocutionary acts which contain an asserted proposition p, that is, what is said. However, in the context of a double agency discourse, one person says something (proposition p) with words which he/she has not uttered or inscribed personally (Wolterstorff 1995:38). One person (A) executes a speech act by means of words without uttering or inscribing those words. For example,167 if a secretary writes a letter on behalf of his/her manager to a buyer, that document is regarded as an illocutionary act by the manager in relation to its purpose. The letter becomes a medium of the manager’s own discourse if the manager signed it (or the manager can ask the secretary to sign it for him/her), even though the manager never spoke to the buyer or wrote the letter himself/herself. How can this be? The manager, as an effective speaker/doer, empowers the secretary to write a letter to a buyer on his/her behalf which the manager signs, thereby showing that what the secretary says at a locutionary level counts as the manager’s illocutionary act, that is, the letter written by the secretary carries equal authority as the manager’s own communication. In such a double agency discourse, one person’s locutionary act serves as another person’s illocutionary act since the one person has been deputized to speak on behalf of the other. If following the order of the manager the secretary writes, “As you know, I have sent a Debit Note to you. If you do not respond appropriately to it as soon as possible, I will prepare to go to court”. The note will count as the manager’s illocutionary act and as a warning. The warning is the manager’s communicative act (illocutionary act), not the secretary’s, even though it is the secretary who has written the document that is regarded as a warning. Moreover, the manager does not need to dictate or indicate all the words of the message or the content of the letter to the secretary in order to communicate with a buyer. Rather, the secretary, knowing the intention of the manager who does not need to spell out everything in words, renders the letter as an effective medium of the manager’s discourse as an illocutionary act according to its intentionality to a buyer. It is not simply the secretary’s letter at the locutionary level. What the secretary says counts as the manager’s illocutionary act. The double agency discourse can be illustrated as follows:

169

Diagram8: The double agency discourse

On the other hand, the manager might dispatch the secretary as a negotiator who speaks on behalf of the head of the company. When the manager authorizes the secretary as a negotiator to speak in his/her name, the manager as the real speaker takes responsibilities for having issued the warning or promise in the conversation between the negotiator and the buyer which contains the implication that the negotiator only acts as the deputy on the manager’s behalf. Thus, “the deputy has, as it were, power of attorney” (Wolterstorff 1995:44). In this situation, the buyer encounters not simply the locutionary acts of the negotiator, but the manager’s illocutionary acts performed by the negotiator. The manager performs illocutionary acts through the negotiator’s locutionary acts. At this point, we are faced with a curious point: in the speech between the negotiator and the buyer, does the negotiator (ambassador) perform illocutionary acts through his/her locutionary acts, that is, does the negotiator engage in the discourse in his/hers own voice? Wolterstoff’s (1995:45) answer to this question claims that:

It might sometimes be the case that the very same utterings count both as the performance of speech actions by the ambassador and as the performance of speech actions by his head of state; these might be the very same speech actions, or somewhat different. Probably the most common occurrence, though, is that in the course of issuing the warning, the ambassador moves back and forth between speaking in the name of his head of state and speaking in his own voice; and sometimes part of what he does when speaking in his own voice consists of communicating a message from his head of state.

170

divine words (in a representative illocutionary form). As the example of an ambassador shows, a prophet or biblical author could also be authorized by God to speak in God’s name and communicate a message as God’s illocutionary act. This means that sometimes God appoints a biblical author to present God’s intention (Word) to convey messages on God’s behalf to people. Certain illocutionary acts that are intrinsic to the locutionary act by a biblical author count as divine speech according to their force. Accordingly, the idea of double agency discourse can help readers of the Bible to see the Scripture as the living Word of God and to interpret it. This is because the locutionary acts written by biblical authors in Scripture contain God’s illocutionary force. This view helps us to understand the Word of God as a speech act having divine force.

In essence, the double agency discourse enables us to rethink the presence of the kingdom in the Christian life and in the present world. Even though the Bible was written by human hands and biblical authors proclaim the Word of God (Jesus’ teachings) on God’s behalf as proxies to the people, the human words count as divine communication, as God’s own discourse which has power to do something and produce an effect on the hearer/reader when it is revealed. For example, Jesus commands his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another” (Jn 13:34), “Teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). Then, one of Jesus’ disciples, John, as a deputy of Jesus writes a letter to the people of God which says, “I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment” (1 Jn 2:7-8). Again, it says, “For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 Jn 3:8). The words of John follow the commands of Jesus at the locutionary level, but the words also constitute a performative act as an illocutionary act based on the utterance of Jesus (Jesus’ own discourse). This implies that the simple utterance by John as a locutionary act can be seen as the presence of the kingdom (words of Jesus, Jesus himself) since in the present he proclaims the words of Jesus to the people on Jesus’ behalf in accordance with the language force across the time and place.

171

The human locutionary acts in John’s writing168 depend on Jesus’ divine illocutionary acts which refer to the presence of the kingdom at the same time. In this sense, the author(s) of the Johannine literature, who are human authors mandated to present Jesus’ message to the people of God, are deputies of God who is the primary communicator. In addition, its illocutionary energy and its intention are continuously being echoed (beyond the historical period of the deputised authors) as a reality in the present world, and it is up to the reader (hearer) to respond to the divine illocutionary act. Jesus’ divine force according to the illocutionary acts empowered John’s proclamation as John presented Jesus’ teaching that we should love one another. This means that John was authorized to speak the message of Jesus to the intended readers, and by virtue of the cannon of scripture, it could be argued that it is intended for contemporary readers. Thus, the people (readers) encounter not only the locutionary acts of John but also Jesus’ illocutionary acts performed in terms of the presence of the kingdom in ordinary life (John’s locutionary act counts as Jesus’ illocutionary act). This perspective naturally focuses on the action of the hearer/reader in a perlocutionary act which causes a certain response or effect in the hearer, of persuasion or repentance, that is, through the speaker’s illocutionary act in specific ways in contemporary life.

When a reader reads 1 John, for instance, if the reader decides to love others, then the decision is the result of the perlocutionary act which refers to the condition and power of receiving John’s utterance. However, it is actually the utterance of Jesus as the outcome of Jesus’ illocutionary act. Thus, the double agency discourse as Jesus’ illocutionary act in terms of the presence of the kingdom can produce perlocutionary effects on the believer or the believing community in the form of moral human behaviour or an ethical response (perlocutionary

ethical response: PER) in everyday life. From this viewpoint of the double agency discourse,

the Christian life can be understood from the perspective of SAT as the effect of a certain intended divine perlocutionary act. The presence of the kingdom as a divine speech act (God’s illocutionary act) represents the medium of encounter with God’s illocutionary divine force

168 _{The authorship of the Johannine corpus is a matter of some scholarly debate. It is not possible for this complex}

and nuanced discussion to be presented in full in this dissertation. The complexity is acknowledged, and the reader is encouraged to take the complexity of authorship into consideration. However, for the sake of communicative ease, the Johannine corpus will be referred to by the collective naming as ‘John’s writing’.

172

through the Scriptures written by humans which create norms for the Christian life in the present world. It means that the presence of the kingdom in terms of the double agency discourse refers to what God means to say (intent) and how to respond to the Word of God as Christians from the point made by its human voice. Therefore, the Christian life must be guided by the divine illocutionary act of the Bible in terms of the presence of the kingdom and according to the double agency discourse in ordinary life.

4.5 The Kingdom of God as Divine speech act and three basic Christian Ethical