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See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. (1 Peter 2.6)

It is to the living Word, Jesus Christ, the ‘chief cornerstone’ (Psalm 118.22; Matthew 21.42) that we too go to be taught, and from whom we learn, by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the one who offers us the gift of learning: ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’ (Matthew 11.29,30).

So it is to the Bible that we turn to find what Christians agree is a uniquely authoritative account of who Jesus is, how he lived and what he taught. It sets the story of Jesus in the story of God’s revelation and saving activity through the people of Israel and celebrates God’s work in the creation of the world. The Bible is central to the life of the whole church community and to the lives of individual Christian disciples. This collection of history books, poetry, wisdom literature, stories and letters contains everything that we need for salvation, for receiving the gift of abundant life together. It show us how to flourish truly as human beings in the complex, confusing and changing realities of our everyday lives.

Just as the Bible permeates the life of the Church and the lives of Christian believers as it is read, taught, studied, sung and prayed, so the Bible permeates this book. Telling the story of the God of Israel who becomes flesh in Jesus Christ, it becomes the cornerstone of our learning together as we return to it again and again, confident that in its pages we will find the resources that we need for perceiving together the mind of Christ for his Church.

As we do so we will discover that making connections between what we read in the Bible and the questions we bring to it about identity, sexuality, marriage and relationships is not a simple matter. We will need to explore how the identities and contexts of the Bible’s many human authors shape the texts we read and how our own contexts and the questions we put to the Bible affect our interpretation of it. As with all human understanding, our knowledge of the Bible is provisional and our understanding partial. We need to read it responsibly, paying attention to the voices of reason and mercy. We need to read it together as the people of God, listening to the wisdom and perspectives of others, including those who have spent their lives studying the Bible. We need the help of experts to understand the complexities of translating the Bible and of appropriating its historical context to that of our contemporary world. We need help to understand how the Church has interpreted the Bible through the ages. Above all, we need to listen to the Spirit of Christ as together we search the Scriptures for wisdom and guidance.

Much more will be said in Part Four about the different ways in which Christians interpret the Bible in relation to human identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage, and about the different conclusions we reach. These differences are important precisely because of the particular place that the Bible has in our Christian faith: we profess a ‘faith that is uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures’.⁶¹ They are deeply felt because the subject matter is so personal to our understanding of who we are and who God is. And they make new demands on us in calling us to listen well to voices that we may not have attended to before as we seek together to follow Christ, especially the voices of LGBTI+ people. This book will challenge us to not shy away from these differences. It invites us to find the courage to explore our different and inevitably partial perspectives and biases, of which we will not be aware, with humility and with love, trusting in the faithfulness of the God who travels alongside us. Engaging with this book invites us to find God afresh within and amidst our differences.

The Bible is central to the life of the Church. It was the Church that saw how some early Christian writings seemed to be so God-given that they could be received in the same way as the God-breathed Scriptures (2 Timothy 3.16 (NIV)) of their Hebrew heritage. A living tradition of interpretation of these writings soon emerged, expressed in rules of faith and creedal statements, giving rise to liturgies, canons and formularies, explored in the Church’s worship, witness and common life. Our learning in this book, therefore, is set against this backdrop of centuries of Spirit-inspired wisdom as we seek to live faithfully as the body of Christ in the twenty-first century. This is about more than being true to the past: it is about the belief that the same God who has been faithfully active among his people through the centuries continues to be so today. As with the Bible, however, disagreements are likely to arise about the nature and interpretation of this inheritance of faith – and these disagreements will have consequences for the way that Christian faith is lived out in the life of every church today.

As we attend to the Bible and to the Church’s living tradition, we use God’s gift of reason to help us understand and find meaning in both the Bible and the doctrines of the Church. This, too, is integral to our learning, enabling us to read and analyse texts, making connections between one text and another, and between texts and our observations, knowledge and experience of the world around us. Reason infused with the Spirit of Christ, applied to the Bible and accompanied by the godly reflection of Christian believers past and present, leads us into the wisdom that we seek for our particular situations and circumstances. We desire nothing less than to ‘be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds, so that [we] may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect’ (Romans 12.2).

All this was articulated in the originating documents of the Living in Love and Faith initiative which committed those involved

to work prayerfully, attending faithfully to holy Scripture and acknowledging its authority, within the community, tradition and pastoral practice of the church in the reality of the world using God’s gifts of reason and wisdom shaped by the Spirit, in order to seek and discern the mind of Christ for the church and the world.

See Chapters 13 and 14 (here–here) for more detailed discussions about the place of the Bible and the church in Christian deliberations about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage.