In Part 1 of this mini-series, we discussed how our reading of Scripture always takes place within a reading tradition. We may be conscious or unconscious of that tradition, but it will influence us in either case. Anglican Catholics read the Scriptures in interaction with the tradition of the ancient Church and what became the Christian West. In the last post, we explored how the New Testament itself bears witness to a tradition of reading the Scriptures as fulfilled in the Person of Jesus Christ, through whom the Scriptures are read as either anticipation or remembrance. As we turn now to the Middle Ages and beyond, we will look at how a unique spirituality emerged in the English Catholic Church, which became, in its time, the patrimony of the Anglican Catholic expression of the Christian life and its approach to the Scriptures.

Everyone reads Scripture after a tradition. Sometimes, that tradition is frightfully novel and idiosyncratic, even egotistical. Most of the time, however, when a person reads Scripture, they are reading it after the manner of someone who came before them, who initiated them into that tradition. The person who teaches us to read traditions us in a way of reading. The parents, pastors, teachers, mentors, and friends among whom we have read the Scriptures are all influences that have contributed to our reading tradition.

The ambient Christianity of Southern California tends to be evangelical and non-denominational. In these churches, Bible exposition comprises the entirety of Sunday service, and individual reading forms the main activity of Christian daily life. Reading the Bible is seen as the primary occasion for encountering God, and this encounter with God has a transformative effect. There tends to be, as well, a focus on the power of extemporaneous reading. I have often seen a numinous application of that Augustinian exhortation to “take up and read!” Within these communities, there is often a dichotomy in practice between expositional preaching, which scrupulously follows the literal sense of the Scriptures, and private devotions that attempt to derive God’s will simply by opening and reading in any given place. This Biblicist emphasis can incline one to believe that anything less than this predominant presence and authority of Bible study in a church’s practice presents a dangerous diversion from the solely reliable stream of divine truth.