"Heresy......................"

“Listening to Your Life” is a devotional, a collection of excerpts taken from Frederick Buechner’s earlier works, most of which already occupy my shelves here at home, his ability to paint a picture with the Gospel attracting me from my first introduction to several of his sermons. Within the first forty-six pages of this particular offering, however, the author has twice referred to the Bible as being the “incarnate word” and to hear it defined in such terms sounds strange to me. It seems to suggest that the Book somehow possesses within its composition the Spirit of God. While Peter declares it as “a more sure word of prophecy” that came to us through men who were “moved by the Holy Ghost” and Paul, unto Timothy, describes it as being “inspired”, in as much I understand such element of faith, the “indwelling” abides within the believer, not the Scripture, itself. Indeed, I find us in error when we assign chapter and verse any sort of deification. It is not OUR sword, but His; and when we begin to see it as such, perhaps our theology, held in our heads, can grasp better the necessity of continually being subjected to the reality of the Third Person of the Trinity whom we claim to now live in our “belly”. The Bible, as I see it, is an intermediary between the what was once spoken by Divinity through a human vessel and a present human vessel who must now return it unto He Who originally birthed it, all the details worked out in as much as we involve Him in the nuts and bolts of the journey as it comes unto us.