First, that we make our most insistent claims and then that we relinquish our pet interpretations and, with our partners in dispute, fall back into the joy of apostolic faith that runs past our partisan interpretations. Regarding ideology, he said every passionate interpretive voice has a vested interest behind it, every vested interest has a high measure of anxiety and is shaped by that anxiety based on old fears and deep pain. And it is that pain which is really at the center of the dispute.
Nobody has a monopoly.
Reading and interpreting the Bible is important because the world needs access to the Word of God, said Brueggemann. The church's disputatious anxiety is sorely tempted to 'thin' the Bible . . . to reduce what is rich and dangerous in the book. Across the widest spectrum of these beliefs, we have to draw a line somewhere between what is presented and how it is presented. For example, Paul's remarks about slavery should not be taken in support of the institution, but as a lesson about the transformation of human relations, said Placher. The two best-known commentaries on Romans 1, Karl Barth and Martin Luther, don't mention sex at all, he added.