David Opderbeck of Through A Glass Darkly and I have run out of steam on the “postmodern apologetics” series, so we’re starting a new one on “Reading the Text(s) of Scripture.” David and I both were educated in (me: Philadelphia Biblical University; he: Gordon College), and worship and fellowship in, the evangelical world, so we’re both aware of the hornet’s nest any discussion of the doctrine of scripture can stir up. We’re hoping, though, that this will not be taken as another set of broadsides in the “battle for the Bible,” or as picking fights, but rather that it will represent the reflections of two textual scholars from outside the theological guild (he: literature and literary theory; me: case law, statutes and constitutions), with a missional sensibility, on the nature of the Biblical texts.

We’ll approach this as follows: we’ll first offer a quote from a systematic theology text / book / article on the doctrine of scripture and/or Biblical hermeneutics, or a passage directly from scripture about scripture, and then we’ll offer our personal reflections on the quote.

David has come up with a mediating tone for our series: we are both very imperfect, but serious, Christians, and so we both take the Bible to be “scripture.” Whatever precise statements, definitions, qualifications, and such we each might feel comfortable with concerning the doctrine of scripture and hermeneutics, at the end of the day we both seek to submit to and be transformed by God as He speaks through scripture. If there are any elements of “deconstruction” of any of the definitions we discuss — and we're not prejudging that there necessarily will be — that is only for the purpose, we hope, of understanding more fully, expressing more articulately, and representing more faithfully and truthfully the power and majesty of the scriptures. ... more

"Why must holy places be dark places?" This is the bitter question that epitomizes Orual's complaint against the gods in C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Written from the point of view of Psyche's sister, the book is Orual's accusation against the god of the Grey Mountain for his cruelty in taking away one of the few people she ever loved: Psyche. Yet even more heinous than that is the gods' crime of veiling themselves. Orual speaks of the gods' injustice: