Valediction
S. M. Hutchens at the End of a Road
If there were a single piece of advice that I, now near the end of my life on earth, would press upon those who aspire to become the teachers of the faith, it would be that they retain the ability to regard the Bible in all its variety—the appointed medium of their magisterial labors—as the work of a Single Mind, perfectly coherent, each part related to the others intentionally and organically (as in St. Paul’s metaphor of the Church as a Body), the genius of the teacher being to discover for the advantage of the saints what those parts are and how they hold together.
I was trained to conceive of this solemn respect for the Scriptures as an objective, scientific attribute of the Bible itself, when in fact such a realization is an article of faith that follows only upon prior involvement in an infinite existential matrix in which the divine use of these writings (inspiration) is established in minds open to their reception as the Word of God through childlikeness and abandonment of all that opposes it. This recognition is not presented by the Master as a dogmatic premise, which as such is knowable by every fully furnished intellect, but as present in all those who are saved as a condition of their existence.
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S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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