Take and read: O'Donovan on reading Scripture
"No collective spiritual exercise, no sacrament, no act of praise or prayer is so primary to the catholic identity of the church gathered as the reading and recitation of Scripture."
- Oliver O'Donovan, "The Reading Church:
Scriptural Authority in Practice".
This morning I had a supervision meeting with Professor O'Donovan that was (largely due to his graciousness) not the train-wreck I had been somewhat anxiously anticipating (this in itself was quite ironic, since the topic at hand was some of my work on, well, anxiety - more on that soon).During the course of our meeting, he mentioned somewhat dismissively a lecture he gave recently, and which I had heard about, but not read. It is a lecture reflecting upon the "Scripture" clause of the recent Jerusalem Declaration delivered at GAFCON (and partially composed by some of my former teachers at MTC):
We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.The lecture is itself an exercise in careful attention to this text, but becomes far more than simply another comment on a recent highly publicised declaration. Having now read his lecture, I can assure you that his estimation of its worth is as far off the mark as my anticipation of our meeting this morning. Take and read. Not just the lecture, but, of course, the Scriptures which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
NB Reading will take time, but that is the point: "Acts of reading that refuse the text patience invariably miscarry."
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