already receiving from the beautifying God whose Word the scriptures are.
In other words, we “work out” the saving beauty of the scriptures just as
God’s likeness is “worked into” us. We cannot hear the testimony of the
scriptures unless and until we have the Father’s word abiding in us (Jn.
5:38) 16 ; we must be attuned to God and in God to all reality. 17 The divine–
human music of God must be in us, so to speak, before we can fi nd it in
the biblical texts or create it in our readings of those texts. “God is a great
fugue” 18 ; therefore, “to be a creature is to belong to the counterpoint and
harmony of the triune music.” 19 Only so can we bring out the sounds of
the divine symphony. Only in his light can we see light (Ps. 36:9).
BAPTIZED INTO TROUBLEDNESS
All that said, qualifi cations immediately have to be made. First, we do not
always feel the attunement. In fact, it may be that we are most in tune
with the Spirit when we are least sensibly aware of the harmony. Second,
we must not think that the harmonies we make in our readings of the
scriptures are in any sense fi nal. Our readings never exhaust the possibili-
ties of the texts’ meanings, meanings the Spirit leads out for other readers
in keeping with their particular needs in their concrete contexts. Third,
not everything in scripture is meant for us, at least not directly. 20 Some
passages remain closed and dark, testifying to the fact that we are not the
only readers of these texts. Fourth, there is a kind of harmonizing that we
must reject, ways of “beautifying” that we must refuse. Perhaps above all,
we must refuse sentimentalizing readings, 21 and overcome the temptation
to “explain away” diffi cult texts. We must not expect revelatory insights
to come easily or regularly. Instead, we have to come to terms with this
hard truth: God is not going to save us from the trouble of interpretation,
but through and by that trouble. 22 After all, if “Jesus Christ is the revealed
form of divine beauty,” 23 then God’s beauty is necessarily cruciform , and it
should come as no surprise that the scriptures beautify us just by working
at cross purposes with our expectations and ambitions, our unspoken fears
and hidden wounds. 24
Refl ecting on the diffi culties forced on those who try to read poetry,
George Steiner distinguishes four types: contingent, modal, tactical, and
ontological. 25 These types apply to readings of scripture as well. Too often,
our hermeneutical theorizing regards only the fi rst two, as if the primary
trouble with reading scripture is that it requires extensive and particular
knowledge of when and why and by whom a text was written, as well as
106 C.E.W. GREEN