Williams says the Bible invites listening not dogmatism
By staff writers
18 Apr 2007

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan WIlliams, has told a mixed audience at a public lecture in Canada that both hyper-liberal and ultra-conservative readings of the Bible are ‘rootless’ and are limited in what they can contribute to the life of the church.

In the Larkin Stuart lecture, delivered on 17 April 2007 at an event hosted jointly by Wycliffe and Trinity theological colleges in Toronto, Dr Williams said that Christians need to reconnect with scripture as something to be listened to and heard in the context of Jesus’s invitation to the Eucharist and to work for the gracious kingdom of God.

He declared: “... The Church’s public use of the Bible represents the Church as defined in some important way by listening: the community when it comes together doesn’t only break bread and reflect together and intercede, it silences itself to hear something. It represents itself in that moment as a community existing in response to a word of summons or invitation, to an act of communication that requires to be heard and answered.”

This, the Archbishop argues, is crucial in the way in which the communities of Christians are informed by what the Scriptures say: “Take Scripture out of this context of the invitation to sit at table with Jesus and to be incorporated into his labour and suffering for the Kingdom, and you will be treating Scripture as either simply an inspired supernatural guide for individual conduct or a piece of detached historical record - the typical exaggerations of Biblicist and liberal approaches respectively.” the rest