Faithful Reading Quotes

When you read the Bible, you are reading the Holy Spirit and not history books. When you read history books, you are reading about events, but the Bible is not an event. So, when you are reading the Holy Spirit, you are supposed to be carried along by it.

Until the Bible begins to talk to us, we really have not been reading it.

Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.

What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

The Book of Books Within this ample volume lies The mystery of mysteries. Happiest they of human race To whom their God has given grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch, to force the way; But better had they ne'er been born That read to doubt or read to scorn.

Taking the Bible too literally is a mistake. It should be read as a guidebook of wisdom and insight.

Logically, taking Scripture seriously means being passionately concerned about interpreting it correctly and thus welcoming any evidence that exposes erroneous understandings of the biblical text. Unfortunately, many zealous Bible students and teachers confuse their favorite interpretations of the Bible with the Bible itself.

The true Christian delights to read the Scriptures, because they tell him about his beloved Savior.

Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy scriptures ever have the pre-eminence, and, next to them, those solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the scriptures, and next, credible histories, especially of the Church... but take heed of false teachers who would corrupt your understandings.

God has condescended to become an author, and yet people will not read his writings. There are very few that ever gave this Book of God, the grand charter of salvation, one fair reading through.

I know not a better rule of reading the Scripture, than to read it through from beginning to end and when we have finished it once, to begin it again. We shall meet with many passages which we can make little improvement of, but not so many in the second reading as in the first, and fewer in the third than in the second: provided we pray to him who has the keys to open our understandings, and to anoint our eyes with His spiritual ointment.

I do not deal with the text [of the Bible] scientifically. I read it, I'm interested in its layers of meaning, but my relation to it is much more an emotional one.