The Art of Reading Scripture

The Scripture Project, “Nine Theses on the Interpretation of Scripture” in The Art of Reading Scripture, Ellen Davis & Richard Hays, eds.

• Thesis One: Scripture truthfully tells the story of God’s action of creating, judging, and saving the world.
  
• Thesis Two: Scripture is rightly understood in light of the church’s rule of faith as a coherent dramatic narrative.
• Thesis Three: Faithful interpretation of Scripture requires an engagement with the entire narrative: the New Testament cannot be rightly understood apart from the Old, nor can the Old be rightly understood apart from the New.
• Thesis Four: Texts of Scripture do not have a single meaning limited to the intent of the original author. In accord with Jewish and Christian traditions, we affirm that Scripture has multiple complex senses given by God, the author of the whole drama.
• Thesis Five: The four canonical gospels narrate the truth about Jesus.
• Thesis Six: Faithful interpretation of Scripture invites and presupposes participation in the community brought into being by God’s redemptive action — the church.
  
• Thesis seven: The saints of the church provide guidance in how to interpret and perform Scripture.
• Thesis eight: Christians need to read the Bible in dialogue with diverse others outside the church.
• Thesis nine: We live in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet” of the kingdom of God; consequently, Scripture calls the church to ongoing discernment, to continually fresh rereadings of the text in light of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work in the world.