Lourdes Loren C.

Cruz 1BLM

Gerald O’ Collins – Chapter 10

The chapter basically had 3 parts: (1) The saving truth of bible, (2) The canon of
scriptures, (3) Interpretation of the Bible. this chapter reflects on how Christian readers in the
period of dependent revelation have experienced, understood, and been shaped by the Bible.
biblical truth is a major result or consequence of inspiration. The Bible was written under a
special impulse of the Holy Spirit and, therefore, is true. This chapter also engaged in the
formation of the canon, the closed nature of the canon, and canonical authority. Furthermore,
faced with the vast literature on biblical interpretation, the author suggested one scheme for
interpreting and appropriating the Scriptures in life and theology: the intentio auctoris and the
world of the past author; the intentio textus and the world/history of the text; and the intentio
legentis and the world of the present readers.

The verses of the Bible are inspired or written under the special guidance of the Holy
Spirit. But that does not mean that all the verses of the Bible are in the business of making
judgements that correspond to the facts. In that sense of truth, inerrancy is not co-extensive with
inspiration. We cannot deal with the whole Bible as if it offered a series of propositions to be
checked for their conformity with the facts and so declared true.

Meaning becomes simply what the reader makes of the texts. Theories of reader-oriented
and reader creative meaning that almost inevitably become reader-manipulative are even less
appropriate in the case of the Scriptures. They also become self-destructive

When we interpret, it must attend to the original authors, the history of the reception of
their texts, and the context and questions that contemporary readers bring to their interpretation
of the Bible. It should also make room for both reason and faith, the right use of historical reason
and the appropriate attention to the transformative guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Scriptures set up the conditions by which God speaks to us and enables us to
acknowledge and practice the truth. The truth of the Bible is something to be lived. This truth is
known by living in it and living by it. Biblical truth is to be experienced and expressed in action
as much as (or even more than) it is to be seen and affirmed in intellectual judgements. Through
doing and ‘speaking the truth in love’ we will be in a position to know and understand, at least
partly and provisionally, what this truth is.