Over the past few days, I have been reading the collection of essays that comprise the book, Reading Scripture with the Church: Toward a Hermeneutic for Theological Interpretation. Kevin Vanhoozer, in his contribution to the book, makes note of three convictions he holds to when approaching Scripture and its interpretation:

1. Dealing with texts is ultimately a mode of engaging persons and with what persons have done by means of writing.
2. As biblical interpreters, we are ultimately dealing with the Holy Spirit speaking and presenting Jesus Christ in the Scriptures.
3. As biblical interpreters, our task is to discern what the Spirit is saying by means of what the human authors of Scripture have said.

These are helpful convictions to hold as we ourselves approach Scripture. It can be a particular temptation of those who hold to a high view of the inspiration of Scripture to ignore the personal aspect, viewing the human authors almost as robots. But we miss something significant if we don't recognise the contribution of the whole person to the corpus of Scripture. The authors did not lose their personalities or individualities when writing, nor were they removed from their particular stories. All this needs to be kept in mind as we work to understand the revelation of the Bible.