God has given us the fascination and mystery of irrational numbers, as one aspect of a rich world

Communion with God does not imply turning off your mind but turning it on - to be renewed in our minds. We're to love God with all our mind as well as heart. So true communion with God empowers hard work with the Bible, rather than bypassing work in favor of pure passivity.

Sometimes differences arise partly from incomplete information. We are finite. And we should admit that there are cases of uncertainty. But often the differences become exacerbated because of sinful inclinations underneath the surface, which incline us to prefer our own ideas and not to submit to what is less comfortable. We must be cautious about accusing anyone else of sin. We don't know people's hearts. But we must also avoid being naïve about the subtlety of sin and the corrupting effects of sin on the mind - our own minds, not only the mind of the other fellow.

Christ is Lord of all. This truth implies that he is lord of language, lord of grammar, lord of history, and lord or interpretive principles. We cannot just take things over unchanged from the world around us. We should be thinking through and living through the implications of Christ's lordship in every sphere of life.

Communion with God as we hear his voice is rich. We receive his meanings; we submit to his authority; we grow by his power that is at work in our lives through his words; and we experience the glory of his personal presence as we hear him. These aspects go together, though we may sometimes be more conscious of one aspect.

The desire to have meaning and messages in a neutral way, independent of religious commitments, corrupts scholarly work on the Bible, because it suppresses the reality of the presence of God as the key to biblical understanding.

Letting the Bible speak for itself, that is, letting it speak in its own terms, includes letting the Bible speak from within its own worldview rather than merely our own.