“Our Theological Vision:
Core Values: Deep Exposition of the Holy Scriptures”
2 Peter 1:19-21, Luke 24:13-32, 1 Corinthians 10:1-15
March 13, 2022
Faith Presbyterian Church – Morning Service
Pastor Nicoletti
The Reading of the Word
This morning, we come to the second Sunday of eight in which we will be discussing our theological vision as a church.
The goal is to give something of a picture of who we are as a church: why we exist, what is distinctively important to us, and then how do we want to intentionally seek to grow.
Last Sunday morning, we talked about why we exist as a church, and we said that Faith Presbyterian Church exists to be God’s instrument in making, maintaining, and maturing disciples for Jesus Christ.
Last Sunday evening, we talked about what a theological vision is, where it fits with our other beliefs and doctrines (including the basics of the Christian faith and the vitals of Reformed theology), and how such a vision it helps us in times of challenge and transition.
This morning we come to one of our core values – one of the distinctive ways we seek to make, maintain, and mature disciples for Christ. And our first core value is: Deep Exposition of the Holy Scriptures.
Deep Exposition of the Holy Scriptures.
This morning we’ll consider why the Holy Scriptures are so important to what we do, and this evening we’ll focus on some of the differences between deep exposition of the Scriptures and shallow exposition of the Scriptures.
So, with that in mind, we will hear from three texts this morning.
Please do listen carefully, for this is God’s word for us today.
First, from Second Peter 1:19-21. The Apostle Peter writes:
1:19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Second, we hear from the Gospel of Luke, chapter twenty-four. Now, we’ve printed more for you than I’m going to read right now, so that you can have it before you. This story comes after Jesus’s death and resurrection. Two of his followers were traveling away from Jerusalem, towards Emmaus. They knew Jesus had died, and they had heard some of the women claim that Jesus had risen. But they did not seem to believe it. The risen Jesus then joins them on the road, but they don’t recognize him. They tell him all that has happened, and then we read this, starting in verse 25:
24:25 And [Jesus] said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
28 So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, 29 but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
Finally, we hear from the Apostle Paul, as Paul summarizes and applies the Old Testament scriptures to the Church in Corinth. Paul writes:
10:1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
6 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. 7 Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” 8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. 9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, 10 nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. 12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.
This is the word of the Lord. (Thanks be to God.)
“All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” [1 Peter 1:24-25]
Let’s pray …
Prayer of Illumination
Lord, as we come to your Word,
we ask you to teach us the way of your statutes,
that we might keep it to the end.
Give us understanding, that we may follow your word
and observe it with our whole hearts.
Incline our hearts to your testimonies,
and not to our own selfish ends.
Turn our eyes and attention now from frivolous things,
and give us life through your Word.
Grant this for Jesus’s sake. Amen.
[Based on Psalm 119:33-34, 36-37]
Introduction
So we come, this morning to the first of our core values: deep exposition of Holy Scriptures.
Which leads us to ask: Why do we, as a church, value the Bible so much? Why do we spend so much time in it? Why are our sermons focused on digging deeply into the Scriptures, and what they have to say, rather than using them as a jumping-off point for more contemporary reflections?
Why is this so important to us?
Because it can feel irrelevant to many people – disconnected from our lives. It can feel like we must have more recent material to consider. So why do we stick with the Scriptures?
Why is one of our core values the deep exposition of the Holy Scriptures?
And the answer is that we value digging into the Scriptures the way that we do because we believe that the Holy Scriptures are God’s word, communicated, for us.
The Holy Scriptures – the Bible is God’s word communicated for us.
That belief is foundational in shaping us as a church.
And so, this morning, I want to break that statement down, and consider it in its three parts: What does it mean for us that the Bible is God’s word, communicated, for us?
[Note: I am drawing from a number of sources. I have not been detailed in citing them in the text that follows, though I have tried to include many of them in the bibliography at the end.]
“God’s Word …”
The first thing we believe is that the Bible – the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments – is, in fact God’s word.
The Holy Scriptures are God’s word.
And we see that in our text – particularly in the words of the Apostle Peter.
Peter, writing about the Holy Scriptures, says: “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Here we have the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. It affirms that that Bible – the 66 books that we have before us – while they were, indeed, written by human authors, were not only written by human authors … and actually, were not primarily written by human authors. But they were written by God through the Holy Spirit.
How that worked is something of a mystery. We do not think that God did it in a way that obliterated the individuality of the human authors, but rather in a way that worked through them in their individuality. And yet, through it all, as they wrote portions of this book before us, as the Apostle Peter tells us, they did not write of their own will, or their own human insights alone – but “they spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
The Bible is the Word of God. That is foundational to what we believe. It is foundational to who we are.
And that has some significant implications for us.
If you are not a Christian, then you need to understand that this is why we believe some of the strange things we believe. It’s not because we came up with them. It’s not because we think that people just generally knew better about the world in the first century than they do today. It’s not because believing these things necessarily makes our lives easier. We believe so much of what we believe because it is in the Bible, and the Bible is God’s Word. And if we’re right that the Bible is God’s word, then you should believe the things in there too – even if they seem a little crazy. Because God, the Maker of the universe, knows quite a bit more than you and I do. And if he has indeed made this world, we should not be surprised if there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our human philosophies.
If you are a Christian from a different church background than ours, this is why we have so much of the Bible in our Sunday services. It’s why we hear it in our call to worship, why it shows up in our hymns, why it is used in our liturgy, why it is the centerpiece and foundation of our sermons. It is because we really believe that the Bible is God’s word. And so, we know that the key way that we will persevere and grow in our faith – the key way that others will become disciples, is through God’s word – not our words.
And even if you agree with all that, I want to challenge you as to whether you act like you do. Do you treat the Bible like it is the word of God?
I’ve said this before, but it was Bart Ehrman, of all people, who helped make this point in a way that really struck me a few years ago.
Ehrman is a college professor and well known biblical textual critic and opponent of the Christian faith. He has written a number of books arguing for the unreliability of the Bible, and five of them have been New York Times best sellers.
Back in 2007 Ehrman gave a lecture in Washington DC, and he began by talking about the undergraduate students he teaches at Chapel Hill. He explained that his lectures usually have about 350 students, usually students who are 19 to 20 years old, most of whom have grown up in the Bible belt. He goes on to say this – he says: “This last year I did something I’d never done before with my class. I started the first day of class, […] by asking them the following question. I said, ‘How many of you in here would agree with the proposition that the Bible is the inspired Word of God?’ VOOM, the entire room raises its hand.” Ehrman goes on: “[So] I say, ‘Alright, great. Now, how many of you have read the Da Vinci Code?’” This lecture was given not too long after that popular novel came out. “VOOM,” Ehrman says, “the entire room raises its hand. Alright. Now, ‘How many of you have read the entire Bible?’ Scattered hands [go up].” Ehrman pauses and then continues: “So I say, ‘Alright, now I’m not telling you that I think that God wrote the Bible … you’re telling me that you think that God wrote the Bible. I could see why you might want to read a book by Dan Brown … But I mean … if God wrote a book … wouldn’t you want to see what he had to say?’”
If we believe that the Bible is really God’s Word, wouldn’t we want to know what he had to say? Wouldn’t we want to know that word well? Wouldn’t we want to read it, not just in little pieces, but in its entirety, even if it took us a long while to do it? Wouldn’t we want to read it over and over again? Wouldn’t we want to know it not just on the surface but deeply – reflecting on key passages of it, paying attention to sermons on it, and so on?
But is that how you treat the Bible? If God wrote a book (and he did), then don’t you want to attend to it – to know it, to meditate on it?
That’s what we should do – both individually, and as a congregation – because the first thing we see here is that the Bible is God’s Word.
“… Communicated …”
Second, the Holy Scriptures are God’s Word communicated.
That word might seem unnecessary in the sentence, but it’s there to make a point.
Because some have questioned whether words are really sufficient to communicate something to us from or about God.
The reasoning often goes something like this: God is so transcendent, so other, that words simply cannot express him. Words are just inadequate. And so even if God has spoken, the words we receive cannot bear the weight of God’s self-revelation to us. And so, we are left as blind men.
We revert to the ancient parable that you have likely heard before: We are like blind men, who have found an elephant, and are touching it and trying to figure out what it is. “This creature is long and flexible like a snake” says one person, holding the trunk. “No, it’s thick and round like a tree trunk” says another, feeling the leg. “No, it’s large and flat” says a third, touching its side. [Keller, 8]
In other words, if God cannot communicate to us by words, then we are left to figure out what God is like simply by our experience … and even what we communicate to one another is suspect, because, again, we are using words. We are all in the same boat in the end – we have our experiences of God, others have theirs, the Apostles, ancient Israel, each had their own. But in each case, experience is all there is, words are insufficient for us to receive or to give knowledge of God.
On one level, this framework could have some validity to it … if God were dumb and passive, and if knowing and communicating him were up to us.
But the gospel tells us that the elephant in the parable is not dumb and passive. It’s more like a Narnian elephant. And he has turned to some of the blind men, and he has spoken. He has told them what he is. He has told them who he is. He has told them what he has done and what he will do, and what they should do. And his words have in fact communicated to us.
Because God is able to communicate.
It can sound really spiritual to go on about how words cannot communicate the reality of God – and of course on some level there is truth to that. God is beyond words.
But so, on a lesser scale, are human beings. The depths of our hearts and being cannot be summed up completely in words. We have feelings too deep for words. And yet, even so, I am able to communicate who I am to you with words, and you are able to communicate who you are to me with words. And if I am able to do that, and you are able to do that, then surely God is as well. For he invented language – along with our very minds which he is seeking to communicate with. Surely, he is capable of using the words he made, to communicate to the minds he made, as he wants to.
And we see that expectation in our texts this morning. The Apostle Peter, in verse nineteen, says that the word of God is to be for us a light in a dark world, that truly lets us see by it, in ways we could not without it.
In Luke 24, Jesus expects, in verse 25, that the two disciples on the road should have been able to understand the word of God given to them – and after he explains it, they really do understand it, as we read in verse 32.
And the Apostle Paul expects the believers in Corinth to be instructed by the Hebrew Scriptures. He expected them to be able to reason about God from those words, as he says in verse 15: “I speak as to sensible people.”
God had spoken – and he had spoken in the Scriptures in a way that really did communicate truth about him to those who would receive it.
And so let us not silence God. Let us not muzzle him by claiming his words can’t do what our own words can. God is beyond words, yes, but he is more than competent to use them to communicate what he wants to, to us.
And so we do not discard his word to us, but we come to it, confident that he will communicate through it.
The Holy Scriptures are God’s Word communicated.
“… For Us”
Third and finally, the Holy Scriptures are God’s word communicated for us.
It’s God’s word for us.
What do I mean by that?
Well, as we said at the beginning of this sermon, we can feel a sense of disconnection from the Scriptures. They can feel foreign and distant. And as we read them, it can be easy to think that they are not really for us.
And yet they are.
We see this in Luke 24. In verses 25 through 27, Jesus is saying that the Hebrew Scriptures, written centuries before the two disciples he’s speaking to were born – those Hebrew Scriptures still were written for those two disciples, so that they might discern what the Messiah would do.
Though on the surface those Old Testament texts may have been written to others, centuries earlier … on a deeper level, they were written for those two disciples, and with them the whole first century church, and with them, us, as well.
In First Corinthians 10, Paul makes the same point. He summarizes what the Hebrew Scriptures tell us about the Israelites in the exodus, centuries earlier, and then he says, in verse 6: “Now these things took place as examples for us.” He elaborates in verse 11 and says: “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”
On the surface, Moses may have been addressing the second exodus generation as he wrote … but those same words, God was also writing for the first century Christians in Corinth, and for many others – including us.
And this same idea is repeated in the Bible [Romans 15:4, 1 Peter 1:10-12, Romans 4:23, and others]: The Holy Scriptures are written for us, as God’s people.
“For Us” How?
But what does that really mean? What connects us to these books and these people and these stories, over such a vast distance of time and place? What unites us with this book?
That’s what we’ll spend the rest of our time on this morning. And what we’ll see is that uniting us and the Bible are:
- one Lord
- one community
- and one story.
One Lord
First, what unites us and the Bible is that we share one Lord.
The Lord we read of in the Scriptures, and the Lord who is active in our lives, is one and the same.
Think about this in 1 Corinthians 10 – one of our texts.
Paul tells the first-century Christians in Corinth that they are connected to the biblical story of the exodus of Israel by the one Lord who is active in both their lives, and the life of ancient Israel.
For, Paul says in verse nine, when the Israelites rebelled, it was Christ they were putting to the test. When they were provided for, he says in verse four, it was Christ providing for them. Just as Jude tells us [Jude 5], it is Jesus who we read about saving, providing for, and judging Israel in the books of Exodus and Numbers.
And that Jesus – that Lord – Paul is saying to the Christian in Corinth and to us, is the same one who was born in Bethlehem, and died for our sins on the cross outside Jerusalem. He is the same Lord who accomplished our salvation in his death and resurrection.
He is also the same Lord who applies salvation to us in our lives, right now. He works in our hearts individually, and he promises to be with us corporately. He is the same Lord who, today, will bring blessing as we turn to him in faith, and who also will bring judgment if we put him to the test.
Finally, that same Lord is also the Lord we look to for the future. He is also the same Lord who will one day make all things new, when he returns, and will bring an end to sin and death, and will dwell with his people forever.
The Lord who is described in Exodus and Numbers, is the same Lord who accomplished our redemption on the cross, the same Lord who is applying his redemption now in our lives and in the life of the Church today, and the same Lord who will bring his saving work to its consummation on the last day.
And that truth unites us with the Bible, because on every page it is speaking about our Lord, who saved us, our Lord, who is with us and at work in us now, our Lord, who we will dwell with forever.
And so every text can tell us not only about what Christ has done in the past, but about what he is doing among us now, and what he will do in the future. [O’Keefe and Reno]
And so the first thing uniting us and the Bible is one Lord.
One Community
The second thing uniting us and the Bible is one community: the covenant community of the people of God.
We may feel a lot of distance from the church in Corinth, or the Jews in Nehemiah, or the Israelites in Numbers, but we are part of one, continuous community across time and space. And so the stories we read in the Bible are the stories of our people – of our community. And that fact, again unites us with every story of Scripture. [Jensen, “Hermeneutics,” 97-98]
That’s what we see in First Corinthians 10:1. Paul is writing to both Jewish and gentile believers. But he says to them all that the Israelites in the exodus were “our fathers.” They are our people – our fathers in the faith.
When we hear a story from, say, World War II, we tend to experience it differently if it is a story about some random soldier, versus if it is a story about a relative of ours – even a distant relative. Because then it becomes then a story of “our people.”
And the people of God are even more “our people” than our familial ancestors.
And so we are united to the Scriptures because it is about one community of which we are a part.
But it’s also more than that. Because we are also united to the Bible because the Bible, as a whole, is written to one community, of which we are a part.
It is true that in every book of the Bible, a human author is writing to a particular human audience – a group of people he has in mind at a particular time and in a particular place.
But, as Robert Jensen highlights, the human author is not the only author. God is also the author of all Scripture. And he too has an audience in mind. And that audience is the people of God across time and space. It is the covenant community – rooted in the promises of Genesis 3, formed in the covenant with Abraham, and passed on from there, generation to generation, century to century, millennia to millennia, up until today, and then beyond. [Jensen, “A Second Thought …” 395-396]
As believers, we are a part of that community. Which means, on a deeper level, this book really is written to us. Paul may have especially had the first century Corinthian church in mind as he wrote. The Lord did as well. But the Lord also had the third century Christian communities of Egypt, and the fifth century churches of Africa, the seventh century churches of Rome, and the tenth century Christian communities of France, the 16th century churches of Geneva, the 18th century churches in America, the 20th century churches in China, and so many more in mind. He even had in mind a gathering of Presbyterians in Tacoma in 2022. And he had yet others in mind who will not be born for a thousand years.
The Lord wrote the Scriptures for the whole people of God – one community, spread over continents, spread across centuries, united by the covenant of grace. And we are part of that community.
The second thing that unites us and the Bible is one community.
One Story
Third and finally, what unites us and the Bible is one story.
Several theologians have described the story of the Bible as being like a six-act play: one unified story in six parts. [e.g.: Bartholomew & Goheen]
Act one is Creation. God makes a good world. He makes creatures – humans, male and female – in his image. He gives them the task of ruling his good world and serving him as their good and benevolent king.
But then comes act two: Rebellion. These creatures, given all these good things, rebel against their Maker. Humanity chooses to oppose God, the very One who gave them existence. They attempt a coop. But the coop fails.
Conflict and disarray take over the story.
But then we come to the third act: Israel. God decides that rather than destroying his rebellious creatures, he will redeem them. And he begins by calling to himself a people. He calls Abraham and Sarah, and promises through them to begin the work of making a new humanity – one that will fulfill God’s intention for humankind. But even as God calls them, he is not content just to call this one family, but he tells them that his plan is global in scope – that through them he intends to bless all families of the earth. And Abraham’s descendants grow into a great nation. And while they sometimes strive to live out their calling, they also often fail. And it soon becomes clear that they are not sufficient to achieve God’s purposes.
And that is where we reach the fourth act: Jesus. Jesus enters the scene, lives as the new Adam, the Messiah, the Son of God. He dies for the sins of his people, and rises again! He ascends to the right hand of God. And the story seems to have taken a major turn. Something big is happening.
And then the fifth act: the Church – the continuation of Israel on the other side of Christ’s resurrection. But here is where the story gets tricky. Here we only have one scene written out for us. We see the beginning of the Church’s life together in the Book of Acts. We see the young Church instructed in the Letters of Paul and other apostles and leaders. But the rest of the fifth act is blank – it’s unwritten.
And beyond it, we jump ahead to the sixth act: Restoration. Though the sixth act we are given often feels more like a series of glimpses rather than a fleshed out full narrative. But we at least see clearly a picture of God completing his work of making all things new, restoring his people and all of his creation and dwelling with them forever.
Creation, Rebellion, Israel, Jesus, the Church, and Restoration.
The Bible tells one story – but it is not a story that ended thousands of years ago. It is a story that has not yet ended at all – a story which we are still in even now. The sixth act has not yet occurred, and we are living in the fifth act.
We are called to live in the unfinished fifth act of this six-act play. And the parts of this story, found in the Bible, is what should give our lives orientation.
A couple theologians have put it like this [Wright (Kevin Vanhoozer has also used this analogy, along with Jensen, “Scripture’s Authority …”, 30-32)]:
Imagine you are a stage actor. And you are accepted to play a role in a production being put on by a prestigious Shakespeare company. But the whole audition process is done with a lot of secrecy. And they choose the cast, and bring them in, and sit you all down and this is what they explain.
They tell you that a previously unknown play by Shakespeare has been discovered. And that is the play you are going to be putting on. But there is something unusual about it. We have the first few acts of it, which bring us through the climax of the story. We have the final act, so we know how the story ends. But for the second-to-last act, we only have the first scene written out, and then the rest us missing.
And the director has decided, rather than hire one person to write the rest of the unwritten act, they are going to do something different. Instead, you all as a group are going to study the written acts of the play that you do have, you’re going to learn them as best as you can, you’re going to reflect on the characters, and the outcomes of various scenes, and the overall story arch … and then you’re going to put on the play. And when it gets to the end of the first scene of that unwritten act – when it gets to the spot where the rest of the act is missing – then the cast, together, will improvise the story, until they get to the final act.
That improvised act would not simply be a repetition of what came before, but it would certainly be deeply connected to everything else that had been written of the story, because while it was a different and an unknown act in the story, it was still part of the same overall story of what they had read.
And that is, in many ways, how we are called to live our lives. We’re not given a script. But we are given a story. We don’t know what comes in the next scene, but we know what came in the previous acts, and we know how the story ends – we know the covenant community we are called to be a part of, and we know the Lord who is at the center of it all. Our calling, then, is to live faithfully, united to the story that we have been given and that we are, in fact, a part of. In the Bible we have a lot of information about that story. Our calling is to know it well, and to then strive to live out our scene well, in light of all we are told – both about what has happened and about what is to come.
And that makes the Bible essential for us. We need to know the other characters in the story – especially God, who is at the center of it all. We need to know what has happened before we walked on the stage. We need to know how the story ends. And we need all of that information to decide what kind of characters we should be, and how we should play our role.
The story of God’s work in the world didn’t end when the Bible was finished being written. Instead, another act was just beginning – an act where Jesus would continue to work, and teach, and conquer the world – through his Word, his Spirit, and his people. That is the act we are living in.
Taken together, the Bible is the story of our God, it is the story of our people, it is the story of our world – it tells us of the key events of the same unified story that we are living in right now, today.
And so, the Bible really is for us.
Conclusion
The Bible is God’s Word, communicated for us.
That’s why we hear from it so often here. That’s why we attend to it so deeply. That’s why we are so committed to the deep exposition of the Holy Scriptures. That is core to who we are as a church.
And so, let us give thanks for what God has given us – what he has given us each individually, and what he has given us as a church.
For he has given us the Bible – the Holy Scriptures.
And Holy Scriptures truly are God’s Word, communicated, for us.
Amen.
—
This sermon draws on material from:
Bartholomew, Craig G. and Michael W. Goheen. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. Second Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2014.
Boersma, Hans. Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011.
De Lubac, Henri. History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen. Translated by Anne Englund Nash. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2007. (Written in French in 1950)
Ehrman, Bart. “National Cathedral Lecture – Misquoting Jesus.” August 6, 2014. Accessed October 14, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz-z8j67Ids
Jensen, Robert W. “Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church.” In Reclaiming the Bible for the Church. Edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jensen. Pages 89-105. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995.
Jensen, Robert W. “The Word and the Icons.” In Systematic Theology: Volume II: The Works of God. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Jensen, Robert W. “Scripture’s Authority in the Church.” In The Art of Reading Scripture. Edited by Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hayes. Pages 27-37. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003.
Jensen, Robert W. “A Second Thought About Inspiration.” Pro Ecclesia. Vol 13, No. 4. November 2004. Pages 393-398. (This one is a good place to start with Jensen on this topic, I think.)
Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York, NY: Dutton, 2008.
Leithart, Peter J. Deep Exegesis: They Mystery of Reading Scripture. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009.
O’Keefe, John J. and R.R. Reno. Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible. Baltimore, MA: John Hopkins University Press, 2005.
Wright, N.T. “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?” Originally published in Vox Evangelica 1991, 21, 7–32. Accessed at: https://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/how-can-the-bible-be-authoritative/
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