Not all or nothing

Kevin Vanhoozer wisely warns against hermeneutical all-or-nothingism: “Interpretation is not an all-or-nothing affair. We need not choose between a meaning that is wholly determinate and a meaning that is wholly undeterminate. Neither need we choose between a meaning that is fully present and a meaning that is forever deferred . . . . There is something in the text that can be known, though perhaps not exhausively. We must therefore distinguish between the inexhaustibility of meaning and its indeterminacy . The former need not imply the latter; it is one thing not to know everything, quite another to know nothing.”