Can we trust Scripture when there are so many interpretations? (Guest interview with Ian Paul)

I’ve been fascinated for a long time by the question of what it means to read the Bible as Scripture. There’s lots of ways people can read the Bible – maybe for historical curiosity, or to appreciate the literary dimension, or even an oppressive text to be resisted. But it seems to me that to read the Bible as Scripture means you’re holding two things in tension. Here I have an authoritative text, but at the same time it is a text whose meaning is continually relevant to me in new ways. What’s more, we seem to have a great deal of difficulty agreeing on what the Bible actually says. My subject matter, hermeneutics, is about taking a step back and asking ‘What is going on here?’