Robert Trawick … is on target. If Scripture is read as if frozen in time, it is indeed a dead letter.

Down through the years, the church has come to see — sometimes painfully late — that some of what is contained in the Bible should no longer be operative for us: our rejection of slavery defies Scripture’s own tacit acceptance of it, for example. … The authors of the Bible were themselves interpreting events, utilizing quite a number of different literary genres, no less than we who read the Bible are ipso facto interpreting its contents.

Trawick did not go far enough, though. One of our Protestant and Presbyterian diseases is to simply assume that our own subjectivity cannot be overcome, that the best we can do about the assumptions we bring to the text is merely to recognize and acknowledge them. Are we thus inevitably doomed never to be able to truly get at an author’s intention, or be able to grasp the meaning and truth of a text and its implications with any degree of consensus among ourselves? I hardly think so, if we will be serious in the attempt. Doing so will require us not only to admit our own a priori assumptions, but to intellectually suspend them, so that we may truly understand what the Bible has to say to us on its own terms.

The theological work involved in interpreting Scripture enjoins us to do our best to study the historical circumstances, cultural setting, literary style being employed, and to reconstruct as best we can the theology at work in a given Scriptural text. … The next step is to re-interpret and apply the truth of the text to our own circumstances, striving to be true to the “heart” of the message, assuming that a given passage is indeed still operative for us today.

We cannot divorce the Bible from real life. To do so is to render it impotent. The Confession of 1967 says plainly that Scripture must be approached with literary and historical understanding. This includes keeping abreast of what the sciences have to teach us, as well. Our Book of Order only states the obvious in asserting that people of goodwill may well disagree about something. On the other hand, I see nothing in our Constitution extolling the benefits of ignoring information or obstinately refusing to make use of the tools at our disposal. We may appropriately regret not coming to a new insight sooner than we did, but to refuse new insights is nothing less than the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit.

Jack Moriarty, pastor

First Church

East Brady, Pa.