Word and Spirit

It's been a few weeks since I've had time to sit and put together another blog post. There's a lot we've read through in the last few weeks. I'm going to try to take a big sweeping crack at a summary in these next few posts, highlighting what I see as the important details.

He starts the chapter by talking about the root of the problem in the doctrine of Scripture. In short, the problem is that theologians and the Church haven't done a great job historically at balancing the fact that the Spirit actually works in and through Scripture, with the fact that the Spirit also cannot be bottled up in Scripture, personal experience, or the Church. As soon as the Church tries to bottle up the Spirit, be it in an inherently inspired understanding of Scripture(think evangelical-type the-Bible-is-the-infallible-inspired-word-of-God), the ambiguity and individual exclusivity of personal experience (think mysticism), or in the structure, teaching, office, or sacraments of the church (think Catholic understanding of papal infallibility, official teaching on par with Scripture, etc.), it has misunderstood the Spirit all together. This is what is at heart and what is at stake in a proper understanding of Scripture.