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Approaching the Bible as Scripture · Scripture-ish

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Ed Gallagher.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: I am reading my essay, Approaching the Bible as Scripture.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: And this is part four of the series on hearing the Word of God.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: I start with this quote.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: When ye received the word of God,
0:26
SPEAKER_00: which ye heard of us,
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SPEAKER_00: ye received it not as the word of men,
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SPEAKER_00: but as it is in truth,
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SPEAKER_00: the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 13.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: We should approach the Bible as scripture.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: We believers, Christian believers.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: You might think, duh, the Bible is scripture.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: True, but let's be more specific.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is our scripture because we're Christians.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: The Quran is also scripture,
1:11
SPEAKER_00: but I would not advise us to approach the Quran as scripture because
1:15
SPEAKER_00: the Quran is not our scripture since we're not Muslims.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: How would we approach the Quran?
1:25
SPEAKER_00: We would read it with some critical distance as a source of information on Muslim beliefs.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: We would not read it as a source of divine revelation, as a text through which God addresses us.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, that description needs nuance.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: God might address us through the Quran just as he might address us through any literature.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Whether Plato's Republic or Paradise Lost or Pride and Prejudice.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Not just literature but also great films or other media.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: For example, the heavens.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: God addresses us through the heavens as we'll see in a moment.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: One of the projects of my life is to hear what God wants to tell me.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: All truth is God's truth.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Is there truth in the Quran?
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SPEAKER_00: I presume there is some truth,
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SPEAKER_00: though I have not read much of the Quran,
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SPEAKER_00: and yet Christians have not regarded any of these other works as Paradise Lost,
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SPEAKER_00: Pride and Prejudice, Plato's Republic, the Quran.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Christians have not regarded any of these works as the word of God in
2:50
SPEAKER_00: the technical sense used for Christian scripture.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps God does address people through the Quran or Paradise Lost,
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SPEAKER_00: especially if they are seeking divine communication,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: but Christians regard their scriptures as the site from
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SPEAKER_00: which we can anticipate hearing God's voice Most often and most directly.
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SPEAKER_00: Indeed, it is the Christian scriptures that should offer the training to the reader
3:23
SPEAKER_00: to discern the voice of God so that his voice can be most fruitfully detected
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SPEAKER_00: in other media.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to call the scriptures canonical, normative.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: There is more to say about all of this,
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SPEAKER_00: such as the role of the Old Testament as canonical scripture within
3:44
SPEAKER_00: a Christian theological system and about differences in the biblical canon.
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SPEAKER_00: For instance, does God speak through the book of Tobit?
3:55
SPEAKER_00: And at some point,
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SPEAKER_00: perhaps I will address these topics on Substack or this podcast as I have done
4:16
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people read the Bible not as Scripture.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: That's what scholars do.
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SPEAKER_00: In large measure, that's what academic biblical studies is all about.
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SPEAKER_00: I would argue,
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SPEAKER_00: and I will argue in a later post,
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SPEAKER_00: Deo Valente,
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SPEAKER_00: That such a reading strategy is incredibly helpful for the purpose of reading
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SPEAKER_00: the Bible as Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: I work at a school that exists to train Christian ministers,
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SPEAKER_00: and a big part of how we do that is by training students
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SPEAKER_00: in academic biblical studies.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Now, the value of academic biblical studies to ministers is variegated,
5:02
SPEAKER_00: not simply But that is one way it is helpful to them.
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SPEAKER_00: Listen,
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SPEAKER_00: reading the Bible not as scripture means that you cultivate critical distance toward
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SPEAKER_00: the text and you read it as a source of information on Christian beliefs.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: It seems obvious to me that such a reading strategy would be helpful to
5:28
SPEAKER_00: a Christian reading of scripture, but it is certainly incomplete toward that end.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: At some point,
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SPEAKER_00: that critical distance that academic biblical studies requires needs to evaporate
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SPEAKER_00: for a fully Christian reading.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: To read the Bible as scripture requires that we not only read it as a statement
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SPEAKER_00: of beliefs from people long ago in a foreign culture,
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SPEAKER_00: but also that we read it as a revelation from God to us.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: By the way, this matter of reading the Bible as Scripture is very in vogue right now.
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SPEAKER_00: A lot of people like to talk about it.
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SPEAKER_00: A few times a year,
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SPEAKER_00: it seems like,
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SPEAKER_00: a book comes out promising to look at a portion of the Bible as Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe it started with Brevard Childs, who was a Yale professor in the 20th century.
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SPEAKER_00: In 1979,
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SPEAKER_00: Fortress Press published his seminal book called Introduction to the Old Testament
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SPEAKER_00: as Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: But now you can find books on reading the Gospels as Christian Scripture or reading
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SPEAKER_00: the Prophets as Christian Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: These are book titles.
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SPEAKER_00: Or 1 Samuel as Christian Scripture or Theological Hermeneutics and the Book
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SPEAKER_00: of Numbers as Christian Scripture or reading the Psalms as Scripture or reading
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SPEAKER_00: the Psalms and Wisdom as Christian Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: There is also the classic book by Sandra Schneider's The Revelatory Text,
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SPEAKER_00: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, as helpful as these books sound,
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SPEAKER_00: I haven't read many of them,
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SPEAKER_00: though I have read the book by childs that I guess got it all started.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: Let me nuance that statement a little.
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SPEAKER_00: What Childs got started was not reading the Bible as scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: Christians have been doing that since Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: But what he got started was academics talking about reading the Bible as scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: Since I haven't read most of the books that claim to be doing it,
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SPEAKER_00: I don't really know how they think we ought to go about the project of reading
8:00
SPEAKER_00: the Bible as Scripture or even what they think it means to do so.
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SPEAKER_00: But here again is my understanding of the goal of a Christian reading of the biblical text.
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SPEAKER_00: It means to attend to the divine voice in the text, to desire and seek God.
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SPEAKER_00: To read the Bible for the purpose of hearing God speak,
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SPEAKER_00: to encounter the living and active word of God.
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SPEAKER_00: That is what I mean by approaching the Bible as scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: To read the Bible not as scripture is to read it without this purpose.
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SPEAKER_00: It is to read the Bible like any other book.
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SPEAKER_00: In the phrase made famous by the Anglican clergyman Benjamin Jowett in 1860.
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SPEAKER_00: We'll get to Jowett some other time and how reading
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SPEAKER_00: the Bible like any other book might be good and helpful.
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SPEAKER_00: Indeed, invigorating, spiritually edifying.
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SPEAKER_00: But for now, we want to know how to read the Bible like no other book.
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SPEAKER_00: What is it that we want from the Bible when we read it as Christian scripture?
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SPEAKER_00: I have already given my answer a few times.
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SPEAKER_00: We want to hear the voice of God.
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SPEAKER_00: And many writers say the same thing.
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SPEAKER_00: The formulation is not at all unique to me.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: As I have mapped out a path toward spiritual growth using the traditional,
9:38
SPEAKER_00: at least in Churches of Christ, the traditional
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SPEAKER_00: Five-fold formula called often the plan of salvation.
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SPEAKER_00: The first step is hear.
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SPEAKER_00: And the voice of God is my way of formulating what it is that we want to hear.
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SPEAKER_00: You could say that people should hear the gospel or the message of Christ
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SPEAKER_00: or scripture or But I prefer to say that people should hear the voice of God
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SPEAKER_00: because it suggests that God mystically continues speaking through the ancient text.
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SPEAKER_00: That the word of God is truly living and active.
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SPEAKER_00: That God is indeed speaking directly to us in our own situation.
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SPEAKER_00: If only we had ears to hear.
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SPEAKER_00: If only our hearts were softened.
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SPEAKER_00: As the psalmist said, today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your heart.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: In Richard Foster's book,
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SPEAKER_00: Celebration of Discipline,
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SPEAKER_00: the very first discipline discussed is meditation,
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SPEAKER_00: which is presented as a sine qua non of the Christian.
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SPEAKER_00: Foster quotes Bonhoeffer's explanation for the reason he meditates,
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SPEAKER_00: and I quoted this same thing last essay.
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SPEAKER_00: The reason Bonhoeffer meditates is because I am a Christian.
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SPEAKER_00: But what is meditation?
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SPEAKER_00: Here's how Foster answers the question.
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SPEAKER_00: Christian meditation is the ability to hear God's voice and obey his word.
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SPEAKER_00: So maybe what I'm talking about is a meditative or contemplative approach to the Bible.
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SPEAKER_00: Meditating on Scripture is for those who want to be like God.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, Foster briefly explores other forms of meditation,
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SPEAKER_00: other ways of hearing God's voice besides meditation on Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: We might think of Verses in scripture that substantiate the point.
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SPEAKER_00: Have you heard this one?
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SPEAKER_00: The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament show with his handiwork.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 19.
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SPEAKER_00: Or what about this one?
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SPEAKER_00: The voice of the Lord is upon the waters.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 29 verse 3.
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SPEAKER_00: The earth, nature, creation provides testimony to God.
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SPEAKER_00: And Paul said the same thing in Romans chapter 1 verse 20 or even Acts chapter 14 verse 17.
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SPEAKER_00: Foster also has a chapter on what he calls the discipline of guidance.
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SPEAKER_00: And he says that the point of such guidance is to hear the voice of the Lord in community.
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SPEAKER_00: But meditation on scripture is the preeminent way to encounter God's voice.
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SPEAKER_00: According to Foster, quote,
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SPEAKER_00: for all the devotional masters,
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SPEAKER_00: The meditation upon Scripture is the central reference point by
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SPEAKER_00: which all other forms of meditation are kept in proper perspective.
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SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned earlier,
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SPEAKER_00: it is through Scripture that we hear God's voice primarily and most distinctly.
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SPEAKER_00: In a previous essay,
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SPEAKER_00: I talked about how reading the Bible is not the same thing as meditating on
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SPEAKER_00: the Bible.
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SPEAKER_00: And it's meditation that we really need.
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SPEAKER_00: Let me illustrate it a little further.
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SPEAKER_00: I bet you have had the experience of reading Scripture,
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SPEAKER_00: maybe a set number of chapters, according to a daily reading program.
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SPEAKER_00: And at the end, you had no idea what you read.
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SPEAKER_00: Not because the text was confusing, but because you were only halfway paying attention.
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SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't say that that experience was one in which you heard the voice of God.
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SPEAKER_00: In a similar vein,
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SPEAKER_00: our Lord echoed the prophet Isaiah in accusing people of honoring God
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SPEAKER_00: with their lips while their hearts were far away.
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SPEAKER_00: That's Matthew 15.
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SPEAKER_00: Been there, done that.
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SPEAKER_00: Which is why I get a little nervous telling God to listen to our hearts
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SPEAKER_00: and every beat will say,
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SPEAKER_00: thank you for the life, thank you for the truth, thank you for the way.
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SPEAKER_00: Merely going through the motions is such an easy thing to do that it's hard not
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SPEAKER_00: to do it sometimes, a lot of times.
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SPEAKER_00: People were doing it in Jesus' day and long before that in the time of Isaiah.
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SPEAKER_00: Admittedly,
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SPEAKER_00: in that criticism about praising God with the lips but not with the heart,
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SPEAKER_00: Jesus was not commenting on Bible reading, but the principle applies.
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SPEAKER_00: And Jesus did,
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SPEAKER_00: in fact,
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SPEAKER_00: spend plenty of time criticizing people for knowing a bunch of Scripture
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SPEAKER_00: but not recognizing the meaning or significance of those Scriptures,
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SPEAKER_00: knowing the Bible without knowing the voice of God.
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SPEAKER_00: You might remember him telling the Sadducees that, quote, ye know not the scriptures.
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SPEAKER_00: Also in the same chapter in which Jesus quoted Isaiah about going through
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SPEAKER_00: the motions,
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SPEAKER_00: he says that the Pharisees were violating God's command so
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SPEAKER_00: that they could preserve their own tradition.
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SPEAKER_00: That sounds again like knowing scripture but not listening
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SPEAKER_00: to Not letting it penetrate, not hearing God's voice.
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SPEAKER_00: The goal is hearing God's voice, not reading the Bible.
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SPEAKER_00: Or as Bonhoeffer says, what we want is to encounter Christ in his own word.
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SPEAKER_00: We come to the text anxious to hear what Christ wants to say and give us today through his word.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote from Bonhoeffer.
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SPEAKER_00: We are, perhaps,
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SPEAKER_00: like the young Samuel who, quote,
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SPEAKER_00: did not yet know the Lord,
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SPEAKER_00: neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him, 1 Samuel 3, verse 7.
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SPEAKER_00: But he was taught to say, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.
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SPEAKER_00: It is not a question of whether God is calling, but whether we recognize the call.
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SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul provides a fruitful example of someone attending to God's voice in the text.
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SPEAKER_00: What this meant for Paul was discerning the significance,
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SPEAKER_00: the meaning, hitherto unperceived in the text of familiar passages of Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: How many times must Saul of Tarsus have read Habakkuk 2 verse 4,
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SPEAKER_00: the righteous one shall live by faith.
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SPEAKER_00: Without plumbing the depths of its meaning,
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SPEAKER_00: not in the way the apostle Paul would come to do as he reflected on the significance
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SPEAKER_00: of the word faith and the word live and the word righteous.
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SPEAKER_00: Or to take another example,
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SPEAKER_00: there is the promise from God to Abraham in the account of the birth of his son
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SPEAKER_00: through Sarah.
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SPEAKER_00: When Abraham was distressed about his first son,
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SPEAKER_00: Ishmael,
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SPEAKER_00: God assured him in the words of Genesis 21 verse 12,
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SPEAKER_00: in Isaac shall thy seed be called.
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SPEAKER_00: For the writer of Hebrews in chapter 11 verse 18 says,
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SPEAKER_00: This verse helped explain Abraham's thought process during the Akedah.
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SPEAKER_00: Abraham was willing to slaughter his son Isaac according to the divine command
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SPEAKER_00: because he trusted so firmly in God's promise of seed through Isaac that
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SPEAKER_00: the patriarch assumed that God would resurrect his dead son.
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SPEAKER_00: And in his letter to the Romans,
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SPEAKER_00: Paul understood the promise of seed through Isaac in Genesis 21 as indicating that,
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SPEAKER_00: quote, they are not all Israel which are of Israel, Romans 9, 6.
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SPEAKER_00: That is,
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SPEAKER_00: the children of the promise and not the children of the flesh are counted for
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SPEAKER_00: the seed, Romans 9, verse 8.
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SPEAKER_00: Paul and other New Testament writers perceive in the text of Scripture the voice
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SPEAKER_00: of God speaking in new situations.
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SPEAKER_00: They allow Scripture to challenge their assumptions, to put pressure on them.
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SPEAKER_00: Through Scripture,
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SPEAKER_00: God wants to fill us with hope and awe,
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SPEAKER_00: amazement at His beauty and the beauty of His creation.
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SPEAKER_00: And he wants to prod us into action.
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SPEAKER_00: This is what Scripture did for Paul because Paul attended to the voice of God in the text.
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SPEAKER_00: Like Samuel, he opened his ears to the divine call, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.
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SPEAKER_00: To learn to read the Bible as Scripture,
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SPEAKER_00: a good strategy would be to pay close attention to how
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SPEAKER_00: the Jewish Scriptures are interpreted in Paul's letters.
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SPEAKER_00: If we succeed in following Paul's example,
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SPEAKER_00: our reading of Scripture will often conclude with the exclamation, Wow!
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SPEAKER_00: There may be some preachers who read the Bible primarily to remind themselves
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SPEAKER_00: of what the text says, So that they can quote it accurately in their sermons.
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SPEAKER_00: In other words, perhaps they do not read in order to learn something or to be challenged.
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SPEAKER_00: At any rate, I feel like I have heard sermons that give this impression.
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SPEAKER_00: Perhaps in my religious tradition,
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SPEAKER_00: the Churches of Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: this is an inheritance from the early days of the Restoration Movement.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't mean that this is what Alexander Campbell did or his father or Barton Stone.
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SPEAKER_00: Quite the opposite, I am sure.
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SPEAKER_00: They routinely read the Bible looking for truth previously hidden from them,
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SPEAKER_00: obscured by tradition.
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SPEAKER_00: That was the entire point of the movement,
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SPEAKER_00: a return to the Bible and an attempt to see new things in it.
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SPEAKER_00: But I suppose as with any movement,
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SPEAKER_00: subsequent generations receive the new truth as a deposit to be protected.
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SPEAKER_00: They guard the results and not the method.
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SPEAKER_00: And so they cease to look for new truths or to feel the challenge of scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: I recognize I'm painting with a very broad brush and I do so not to accuse anyone.
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SPEAKER_00: But only to admonish us to recognize and avoid such a trap.
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SPEAKER_00: Let's continue to allow scripture to apply pressure to our lives.
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SPEAKER_00: Let me talk about pressure for a moment and I'll illustrate with one of my own anxieties, money.
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SPEAKER_00: Not the lack of it, but the abundance of it.
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SPEAKER_00: The Bible has a lot to say about money and a lot of what the Bible says is negative.
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SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16?
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SPEAKER_00: What is the reason that the rich man is in torment?
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SPEAKER_00: Here is the answer that Abraham provides.
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SPEAKER_00: Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus
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SPEAKER_00: in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.
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SPEAKER_00: Luke 16, 25.
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SPEAKER_00: Why is the rich man in torment?
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SPEAKER_00: Because he enjoyed his life.
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SPEAKER_00: Quote, during your lifetime you received your good things.
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SPEAKER_00: End quote.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, now Lazarus and the rich man have experienced the great reversal brought about by death.
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SPEAKER_00: Is this one of those times you want to say, the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, probably not.
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SPEAKER_00: Probably you want to push back and say, no,
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SPEAKER_00: the reason the rich man is in torment is
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SPEAKER_00: because he didn't use his money appropriately, not because he had money.
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SPEAKER_00: Okay, but that is not what Abraham says.
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SPEAKER_00: He doesn't tell the rich man, During your lifetime you used your money inappropriately.
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SPEAKER_00: He says, during your lifetime you received your good things.
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SPEAKER_00: And neither does Jesus in the parable say that the rich man used his money inappropriately.
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SPEAKER_00: I will grant that there might be that implication in the first few verses of
23:58
SPEAKER_00: the parable, but it is not made explicit.
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SPEAKER_00: The point of the parable seems to be to make rich people uncomfortable with their wealth.
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SPEAKER_00: And that especially seems to be a right reading when you recall that a couple
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SPEAKER_00: of chapters earlier in Luke,
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SPEAKER_00: Jesus had said,
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SPEAKER_00: So therefore,
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SPEAKER_00: none of you can become my disciples if you do not give up all your possessions.
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SPEAKER_00: Luke 14, 33.
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SPEAKER_00: And a couple chapters before that, Jesus had said, Sell your possessions and give alms.
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SPEAKER_00: Luke 12, 33.
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SPEAKER_00: And we haven't even mentioned the rich young ruler.
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SPEAKER_00: Luke 18, 22.
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SPEAKER_00: When you consider what Jesus says about money in the Gospel of Luke,
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SPEAKER_00: and when you realize that you are living in the richest country
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SPEAKER_00: that has ever existed in the history of the universe,
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SPEAKER_00: The proper response for somebody hearing the voice of God in the text is crap.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean by pressure or challenge.
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SPEAKER_00: That's not all, of course.
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SPEAKER_00: As I said in a previous essay, Scripture is for doing, not just hearing.
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SPEAKER_00: And part of what it means to feel the pressure of the text is to conform our lives
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SPEAKER_00: to its message.
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SPEAKER_00: Then again, there is also pressure from competing passages.
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SPEAKER_00: Reflect on Jesus' teaching at the end of Matthew 25 when he says
25:38
SPEAKER_00: that final judgment is Will be based on how you treated poor people.
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SPEAKER_00: That is, those without food, drink, clothing, homes, or those sick or in prison.
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SPEAKER_00: Here it is about using your resources appropriately, meaning on behalf of others.
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SPEAKER_00: The assumption seems to be that you do have resources,
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SPEAKER_00: that you haven't given all your money away.
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SPEAKER_00: And there are other biblical passages about money to consider,
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SPEAKER_00: not to mention biblical commands on other topics that have bearing on what we do
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SPEAKER_00: with our money, such as about providing for our families.
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SPEAKER_00: If I give away all my money, would I be able to provide for my kids?
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SPEAKER_00: Or am I allowing fear to rule my life instead of faith?
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SPEAKER_00: The interpretation of these passages should not be simple and should not aim
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SPEAKER_00: at making us comfortable.
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SPEAKER_00: If the Bible is our scripture, then it should exert pressure on us.
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SPEAKER_00: One more point, and for this one I quote Jesus and then Augustine.
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SPEAKER_00: It was Jesus who said that the command to love God Found in Deuteronomy is
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SPEAKER_00: the most important command in all of Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: And the second most important is the one about loving the neighbor.
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SPEAKER_00: Found in Leviticus.
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SPEAKER_00: According to Matthew's account,
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SPEAKER_00: Jesus also said that all Scripture,
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SPEAKER_00: or in his words, the Law and the Prophets, depend on these two commands.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, listen to what Augustine does with this point.
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SPEAKER_00: This is from his work on Christian doctrine.
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SPEAKER_00: So anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part
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SPEAKER_00: of them,
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SPEAKER_00: but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor,
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SPEAKER_00: has not yet succeeded in understanding them.
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SPEAKER_00: Anyone who derives from them an idea which is useful for supporting this love,
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SPEAKER_00: but fails to say what the writer demonstrably meant in the passage,
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SPEAKER_00: has not made a fatal error and is certainly not a liar.
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SPEAKER_00: Augustine's point is that a reading of the Bible as Scripture should conform to
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SPEAKER_00: the summary statement of our Lord,
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SPEAKER_00: That everything in the Bible depends on the love of God and of neighbor.
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SPEAKER_00: If you haven't arrived there, you haven't yet understood Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: Now there are other ways to think about what it means for the Bible to serve as our Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: One might reflect on ancient reading practices.
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SPEAKER_00: The Jewish scholar James Kugel has summarized four assumptions It would be valuable
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SPEAKER_00: to read his explanation of these four assumptions and reflect on the extent
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SPEAKER_00: which we should adopt them or have adopted them ourselves.
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SPEAKER_00: Also, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the nature of the Bible
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SPEAKER_00: as sacred scripture means,
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SPEAKER_00: and here it quotes the dogmatic constitution called Dei Verbum from,
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SPEAKER_00: I think, 1965, that says that,
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SPEAKER_00: The nature of the Bible as sacred scripture means that it must be read
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SPEAKER_00: and interpreted in the light of the same spirit by whom it was written.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, this entails three principles according to the catechism.
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SPEAKER_00: Number one,
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SPEAKER_00: the reader needs to especially be attentive to the content and unity of
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SPEAKER_00: the whole scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: Number two, the reader should read scripture within the living tradition of the whole church.
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SPEAKER_00: And the reader should be,
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SPEAKER_00: number three,
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SPEAKER_00: the reader should be attentive to the coherence of the truths of the faith.
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SPEAKER_00: I think all of this makes good sense and it would be good for us to reflect on each principle.
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SPEAKER_00: But for now, I simply summarize the main points I have emphasized here.
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SPEAKER_00: We are approaching the Bible like Scripture if we feel the pressure of the text,
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SPEAKER_00: if we follow the example of Paul in finding previously unperceived implications of
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SPEAKER_00: the text,
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SPEAKER_00: if our reading compels us to sit back in awe,
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SPEAKER_00: and if our encounters with Scripture produce in us the double love for God
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SPEAKER_00: and neighbor,
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SPEAKER_00: That is at least part of what it means to hear the voice of God in Scripture.
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SPEAKER_00: I conclude with a long quotation from Thomas Akempis,
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SPEAKER_00: his work, The Imitation of Christ from the 15th Century.
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SPEAKER_00: And I'm reading from the 1955 translation by Harold C. Gardner.
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SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
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SPEAKER_00: This is The Imitation of Christ, Book 3, Chapter 2.
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SPEAKER_00: I read the whole chapter.
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SPEAKER_00: Speak, Lord, for I, your servant, am ready to hear you.
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SPEAKER_00: I am your servant.
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SPEAKER_00: Give me your wisdom and understanding to know your commandments.
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SPEAKER_00: Bow my heart to follow your holy teachings and The
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SPEAKER_00: children of Israel said to Moses,
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SPEAKER_00: Speak to us,
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SPEAKER_00: and we will hear you,
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SPEAKER_00: but let the Lord not speak to us, lest perhaps we die for dread.
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SPEAKER_00: Not so, Lord, not so, I beseech you.
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SPEAKER_00: Rather, I ask humbly with Samuel the prophet that you vouchsafe to speak to me yourself.
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SPEAKER_00: And I shall gladly hear you.
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SPEAKER_00: Do not let Moses or any of the other prophets speak to me,
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SPEAKER_00: but you yourself, Lord, the inward inspirer and giver of light to all the prophets.
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SPEAKER_00: You alone without them can fully inform and instruct me.
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SPEAKER_00: They without you can profit me little.
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SPEAKER_00: They speak your words, but they do not give the spirit to understand the words.
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SPEAKER_00: They speak fair.
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SPEAKER_00: They show forth fair letters, but you interpret the sentence.
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SPEAKER_00: They reveal great high mysteries, but you open the true understanding of them.
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SPEAKER_00: They declare your commandments, but you help to their performance.
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SPEAKER_00: They show the way, but you give strength to walk in it.
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SPEAKER_00: They do all outwardly, but you illuminate and instruct the heart from within.
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SPEAKER_00: They water only externally, but you give the inward growth.
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SPEAKER_00: They cry all in words, but you give to the hearers understanding of the words that are hard.
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SPEAKER_00: Do not let Moses speak to me.
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SPEAKER_00: Therefore,
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SPEAKER_00: but you,
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SPEAKER_00: my Lord Jesus,
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SPEAKER_00: who are the everlasting truth,
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SPEAKER_00: lest perhaps I die and be made like a man without fruit,
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SPEAKER_00: warmed from without but not inflamed within,
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SPEAKER_00: and so receive the harder judgment, because I have heard your word and not done it.
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SPEAKER_00: Known it and not loved it, believed it and not fulfilled it.
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SPEAKER_00: Speak therefore to me yourself, for I, your servant, am ready to hear you.
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SPEAKER_00: You have the words of eternal life.
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SPEAKER_00: Speak them to me for the full comfort of my soul and give me amendment
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SPEAKER_00: of all my past life to your joy, honor, and glory everlastingly.