The Bible: Word of God in Human Words

The practice of reading from a lectionary presupposes that God speaks through the Bible to a community of faith. That is why the Bible has special authority for the believing and worshiping community.

In our previous discussion,^a we found that some locate this authority primarily in a confession of faith (or theological statement) and from this vantage point read selectively from the ancient biblical literature. Others locate authority in experience, for instance in women’s experience, as with modern feminist interpretations, or in the experience of the oppressed poor, as with Latin American liberation theology.

These views place authority outside the Bible. Many people, however, have found that the Bible itself speaks with its own authority—authority that judges our theologies, experiences and traditions.