Scripture as language primer

October 9, 2015 at 11:18 am (Uncategorized)

If Scripture is where we hear the words of the Trinity and so learn what words to address them, then Scripture is most like a sort of grammar book or language primer. Part of the way in which it is not a language primer involves its making (some) historical claims, but the revelation need not become questionable when the historical claim is.  Whatever one thinks about the historicity of the conversion of Nineveh, the slaughter of the innocents, the pre-Abrahamic chapters of Genesis etc. they are no less exercises in and paradigms of the speech of the Trinity. For all we know, sacrificing the historical rigor might well make the language easier to learn. Perhaps we will never be able to determine whether Caesar gave a long ship to the great poet, but a Latin primer might well force the student to solemnly speak as though he did.