Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of Scripture

What are Christians saying when they call the Bible the Word of God? How is that statement to be understood in relation to postmodernity's suspicion of meaning? Word and Supplement tackles these questions by bringing post-modern theory into critical dialogue with the often-neglected doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. The notion of the 'sufficiency' of a text, and the contrasting idea of the 'supplement(s)' which texts carry with them, together provide a sharp critical tool for analysing a variety of contemporary hermeneutical and doctrinal positions. Brought into this discussion are Derrida, from whom the idea of 'supplement' is borrowed, Barth, Frei, Fish, Hirsch, Hauerwas, Gadamer, Bakhtin, Fowl, Wolterstorff, Vanhoozer, Childs, and Warfield. Building especially on descriptions of language as action, Word and Supplement critically reconstructs 'the sufficiency of Scripture' as both a concept and a doctrine which must remain central to Christian theology and practice.