Scripture plays a foundational role in the Christian faith on both an individual level and a corporate level. In fact, the centrality of scripture to the Christian faith is hard to argue. It is a self-revelation of God, so Christians believe. The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne has written a short book to describe his general approach to scripture:   Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible. The first two chapters of this book look at Scripture, that is the nature of scripture, and Development, the way the story and doctrines develop from Genesis through Revelation.

Dr. Polkinghorne is not an evangelical – and he certainly does not subscribe to the US evangelical view of biblical inerrancy. Neither, however, is he a (whisper it) liberal, denying incarnation and resurrection and rationalizing away the miracles. His views on scripture are outlined in the first chapter:

At the heart of the Christian faith lies the mysterious and exciting idea that the infinite and invisible God, beyond finite human powers to conceive adequately, has acted to make the divine nature known in the most fitting and accessible manner possible through the life of a first-century Jew in whom humanity and divinity were both truly present … The Word of God uttered to humanity is not a written text but a life lived, a painful and shameful death accepted, and divine faithfulness vindicated through the great act of Christ’s resurrection. Scripture contains the witness to the incarnate Word, but it is not the Word himself. Its testimony is that “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only Son, full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14) (p. 2-3)

As a witness to Christ, scripture contains multiple layers – and a central task for the interpreter is to separate the lasting witness of God’s work in the world  from the incidental features of each passing age from Abraham or earlier, through Moses, David, Isaiah, Paul and John to select just a few. As Dr. Polkinghorne points out, and as Scot wrote a book exploring (The Blue Parakeet), no one can eliminate this task of interpretation and separation. The multi-layered view of scripture has been a common one in the New Testament era and through the early centuries of the church. The insistence of a single appropriate interpretation of any specific passage runs counter to history. The New Testament writers made use of the OT scriptures in ways that oppose the notion of a universal unique interpretation. The early church fathers looked at literal, moral, symbolic, and spiritual levels of scripture.

Is Dr.Polkinghorne right to emphasize the Word of God as Jesus?

Is scripture the Word of God or the witness to the Word of God?

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