Below is a quotation that providess an important perspective on what the Bible is, how the Christian community is to read it and live in it and through it – or rather, how through it's reading of the Bible, the Christian community is to live in Christ. The extract comes from Arthur McGill's slim but profound account of how Christians might seek to do theology in a world where suffering is interwoven in the textures of existence. The book, Suffering. A Test of Theological Method, was originally written in 1968 so the language is not gender inclusive:
"If the Christian in his existence and in his thought focuses on Christ, this is because Christ is present to him. And Christ is present to him because of Holy Scripture…Above and beyond the various details that they contain, the Biblical documents mean to point – or witness – to Jesus Christ as the power and wisdom of God. The books of the Old Testament point in expectation and those of the New Testament point in fulfilment… "the Scriptures are not a witness among others [to Jesus Christ], but the witness without parallel".
It is not as a history book or as a scientific book or as a book of events or even as a record of man's religious beliefs that the theologian reads the Bible, but as a witness to Christ. The Scriptures function as a servant of their Lord. We are meant not to rest in them but to move through them and beyond them to the One they serve.
Theology is often tempted to rest in the words of Scripture and to read these books as if they transcribed God's life and light for man into words. But theology must resist this temptation. The Bible as such is not the light of the world; nor is the Bible as such the principle of openness which no darkness can overcome. In all its investigations theology must move beyond the Scriptural statements and seek to discern the form of Jesus Christ himself."
Arthur C. McGill, Theology. A Test of Theological Method (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1982) pages 29-30.
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