ness to Jesus Christ. In other words, Christian interpreters recognize that
nothing in the sacred texts is “crooked or perverse,” and, unlike those who
have not yet been trained in the ways of the gospel, they see through the
many apparent contradictions, variances, and quandaries to the divine unity
and coherence of the scriptures. Second, peacemakers know how to make
peace with the scriptures, reconciling the seeming contradictions within
the texts—and the real contradictions between themselves and the texts 5 —
as well as discerning the deeper, hidden signifi cances of diffi cult passages.
Third, as they are carried along in the work of learning the peacefulness of
the scriptures and making peace with the biblical texts, Christian interpret-
ers fi nd that they are also making peace with their neighbors , discovering
together the peace of God that dwells among them, making them one in
their witness as well.
In the middle of the passage, Origen takes up a remarkable analogy,
describing scripture as “the music of God,” a composition with strange,
unexpected, and perplexingly intricate harmonies that bewilder and frustrate
ill-equipped and untrained readers. This is why, Origen says, that unskilled
“hearers” hear in the scriptures only dissonances, as if the Old Testament
confl icts with the New, or the Prophets with the Law, or the apostolic writ-
ings with the Gospels. If they hope to appreciate the divine harmonies of the
scriptures, then they have to be trained for it; the required sensibilities and
skills must be inculcated in them. At this point, Origen transposes the anal-
ogy into a new image: scripture is also the instrument of the Spirit. Believers
can only “hear” the scriptural harmonies that they can “play,” and so they
have to be made like “another David,” gifted with the abilities needed “to
bring out the sound of the music of God.” 6 Such readers develop the nec-
essary knack for performing the divine sound; they know “the right time
to strike the chords,” playing the Law, the Gospels, the Prophets, and the
Apostles so as to make the “certain sound” that is the “one saving voice” of
God’s Word. In this performance, peacemakers become like David, whose
music “laid to rest the evil spirit in Saul, which was choking him,” “implant-
ing” in the spirits of their neighbors the very peace of God that all so deeply
desire. 7
I NTERPRETATION AS MAKING AND BEING-MADE
Origen’s twinned musical analogies attune us to the aesthetics of
interpretation. 8 Following Origen’s lead, we can see that the only way to
discover the peacefulness of the scriptures is to make them one through
104 C.E.W. GREEN