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Do you believe that the Bible is inerrant?” the young man with the tape recorder asked.

There was a hush in the audience, for much more than a theological issue was at stake. The setting was the lecture hall at a seminary in Latin America. This particular seminary has done much for the cause of theological education, not only in its own denomination and geographical setting, but throughout Latin America and for several denominations. Much of its funding came from the United States, from a denomination that had recently been taken over by a rabidly fundamentalist faction. The faculty and administration had taken a risk in inviting me to lecture, for they knew that they were under serious scrutiny by some who wanted their funding to be discontinued. In consequence, I had been very careful to stick to church history, and to avoid any subject that might put the existence of the seminary in jeopardy. I had been particularly careful not to say a word about the Bible or its historical accuracy. But the young man with the tape recorder had been sent by representatives of the fundamentalist faction in the denomination, to check on what was being taught at the seminary. When the floor was opened for questions from the audience he saw his opportunity. I even imagined that I saw a glint of triumph in his eyes as he stood up with his tape recorder and asked: “Do you believe that the Bible is inerrant?”

Finally, after a moment of hushed expectation, I responded, “Yes! The Bible is inerrant. But the same cannot be said for any interpretation of the Bible. The error is not in the Bible, but in its interpreters, who often confuse their own words with the Word of God.”

“What do you mean? Can you give me an example?”

“Surely. As a matter of fact, I’ll give you two. In John 15:1, Jesus says that he is ‘the true vine.’ If I were to tell you that this means that Jesus has roots, and a trunk, and leaves, and needs dirt and fertilizer in order to live, you probably would say that I was mistaken. Jesus is not really and literally a vine. The text must be interpreted in some other fashion. You probably would say that the text is an allegory, that its language is metaphoric. Yet the text itself does not say that it is an allegory or a metaphor. There is no error in the text. The error would be in the interpreter who takes it literally when it is not intended to be literal. Isn’t that so?” I asked, as he nodded in agreement. Then I continued: “Now, then, in Genesis 1 we are told that God made the world in six days. Just as in the case of John 15, the text does not tell us whether we are to interpret it literally or not. If you insist that the text must be taken literally, that is your privilege, and there certainly is nothing in the text to contradict you. But there is also nothing in the text that says that it must be taken literally. Therefore your position, as well as the position of someone who says that text is to be taken as a metaphor, is based, not on the text itself, but on your interpretation of the text. If either you or that other person err, the error is not in the text itself, but in its interpretation. That is why I say that the Bible is inerrant, but the same cannot be said for any interpretation of the Bible. As a matter of fact, for me to claim that my interpretation is inerrant is to usurp the authority of the Bible. And the same is true of any interpretation, no matter whether literal or metaphorical.”

At that point, the young man sat down and turned off his tape recorder. I looked at the president of the seminary, who winked at me and sighed in relief.

Obviously, there was some sleight of hand in that argument. Inerrancy, as I defined it in that discussion, can be claimed with equal grounds for any text, for in the final analysis it is not texts that err, but their interpreters. If the young man had been quicker of wit, and had asked me, “Does that mean that the plays of Shakespeare or of Lope de Vega are inerrant?” I would have been forced to answer “Yes,” and my entire argument would have come tumbling down.

Yet the point remains—for the Bible as well as for Lope de Vega—that no reading of a text is completely and absolutely corroborated by the text itself. Reading is always a dialogue between the text and the reader. It is not only the text that speaks and the reader who listens, but also the reader who asks questions of the text, and the text responds.

There is a poetically mysterious dimension to any dialogue.¹ How is it that I, a center of being and consciousness that no one can fully understand—not even myself—can express my thoughts and sentiments in words that are themselves subject to interpretation, and hope to communicate with another center of being that is fully as mysterious as myself? When I say “God is love,” my understanding of “God,” of “love,” and even of “is,” is shaded and nuanced by myriad experiences, many of which I do not understand nor even suspect. The same is true of the person who hears my words. And yet, I believe—and I know—that dialogue is possible. Somehow, it is worthwhile to say to another “God is love,” even though our understanding of those words will never be exactly the same. Dialogue, mysterious and seemingly impossible though it might be, is the basis of our entire social life. It is the hope that communication might be possible that sustains me as I make a phone call, preach a sermon, or write a book. You, my reader, will certainly not read this book exactly as I intended it. Yet I persist in writing it presuming on the poetically mysterious miracle of dialogue, whereby, in spite of its impossibility, communication does take place.

When the miracle of dialogue really happens, the otherness of each party is respected; what one party says is not to be understood merely on the basis of the whims of the other. I must not allow myself to hear you saying whatever I please, whatever fits my presuppositions. Your words have a normative dimension that I must not violate. On the other hand, I can only hear them within my context and from my own perspective. And yet, dialogue takes place, and somehow we manage to communicate. Communication is that mysterious bridge where intimacy and otherness meet.

To read the Bible is to enter into dialogue with it. In that dialogue, there is a sense in which the text is normative, just as the interlocutor of any other dialogue is normative. Impossible though the task may be, I must strive to understand the ancient text in its own context. I know that I cannot jump back to the time of the Exile in Babylon, nor even to the time of the Roman Empire—living late in the twentieth century is difficult enough! No matter how much I study the original languages, I shall never understand the nuances of every turn of phrase the way a native speaker would have understood them. And yet I must take the text and its context in all seriousness. That is why the study of the biblical languages and of all the disciplines, which in various ways contribute to the historico-critical method, is so important. I must listen to the text as I would to another, respecting and trying to understand its otherness.

At the same time, the other pole of the dialogue is just as important. It is I, from my context and my perspective, who read the text. In order for there to be true dialogue, the text must engage me, not as I would be had I lived at the time of the Babylonian exile, but as I am here and now. It is not only the text that speaks to me, but I who speak to the text, demanding its responses in genuine dialogue.

Had the young man with the tape recorder asked me about Lope de Vega, I probably would have responded along the lines of these two poles of any dialogue with a text. First of all, I would have said that the question is not one of inerrancy, but rather one of authority. Texts do not err. It is writers and readers who err. But texts do have authority, and therefore the question is: How is the authority of the Bible different from that of Lope de Vega’s plays? Obviously, at an initial level, their authority differs in that it refers to different matters. Only a very confused person would go to the Bible in preference to Lope de Vega in order to learn about Spanish life at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. But the difference is much greater than that. The authority of the Bible is grounded on both ends of our dialogue with the biblical text. The Bible is authoritative both because we, its interlocutors, grant it authority, and because throughout the life of the church it has proven itself worthy of that authority—in other words, because when we enter into a dialogue with it, it responds with authority. This authority is not “objective” in the sense that it can be proven to all comers, no matter what their religious or philosophical stance. Nor is it “subjective” in the sense that it depends upon my granting it authority. It is rather dialogical. The Bible is authoritative because, when the church addresses it, it addresses the church with authority.

In the foregoing, I have often referred to the perspective of the interpreter. The question of perspective is important for two complementary reasons: first, because it cannot be avoided; second, because it should not be avoided.

First, perspective cannot be avoided. If there is anything we have learned during these last decades of modernity, it is that knowledge is always perspectival. We probably would have learned it much sooner had we really listened to Immanuel Kant, who showed that objective knowledge is a contradiction in terms. But the modern age was so enamored with the dream of objectivity that it has taken us two centuries to begin to understand the implications of what Kant was telling us. Kicking and screaming, shaken and poked by the likes of Freud and Marx, modernity has finally begun to awaken from its dream of objectivity, and the result has been the birth of postmodernity. (In a way, much of what I say here is based on the postmodern critique of modernity’s false sense of objectivity—or, in more technical terms, of the great modern metanarrative—for it is precisely that critique that leads to an insistence on the importance of perspective in any claim to knowledge. Yet, in some ways what I say here, rather than “postmodern,” hopes to express some of the “extramodern” experience of a community that was largely excluded from modernity—or rather, that was included as an object rather than as a subject.)²

Precisely because perspective cannot be avoided, when it is not explicitly acknowledged the result is that a particular perspective takes on an aura of universality. Thus it happens that theology from a male perspective claims to be generally human, and that North Atlantic white theology believes itself to be “normal,” while theologies from the so-called Third World or from ethnic minorities in the North Atlantic are taken to be contextual or perspectival.

Just as important for our purposes is the second point, namely, that the matter of perspective should not be avoided. The reason for this is not simply that we delude ourselves when we believe that ours is not a particular perspective. The reason is rather that, unless the text addresses us where we are, it does not really address us. If a black woman in Africa reads a biblical text in exactly the same way in which she was taught to read it by a white man from Nebraska, the text will most likely be addressing issues that were important for her teacher and for other white men in Nebraska, but will not be addressing other issues that relate more directly to that woman’s life. If I do not speak to the text, asking of it questions that are genuinely my own, the text will not really speak to me, and the dialogue will be undercut.

Perspective, however, does not mean fragmentation. Whenever one speaks of theology being contextual, there are those who raise the question of the possibility that the contextualization of theology may lead to the fragmentation of the church. This is a legitimate concern, and one that must be addressed, for history shows that contextualization may indeed lead to divisiveness. Such was, for instance, the principal root of the long-standing schism between the Latin West and the Greek East. Over the centuries, each of these two branches of the church contextualized the gospel in its own culture, and the time came when each accused the other of heresy. To say, however, that contextualization is what led to schism is to miss an important distinction. What led to schism was not contextualization itself, but unconscious contextualization. The inculturation of the gospel in the Greek-speaking East was a positive and necessary result of the evangelization of the East. And the inculturation of the gospel in the Latin-speaking West was also a positive and necessary result of the evangelization of the West. The problem lay in that neither the Greek-speaking East nor the Latin-speaking West was willing or able to acknowledge that its own understanding and expression of the gospel were contextual. On the contrary, each of them insisted that its own theology was nothing but “the faith once delivered to the apostles.” On that basis, there was no option left but to reject and condemn all different understandings of any aspects of the faith, as well as any practice of the faith that did not agree with one’s own. Precisely because contextualization had taken place, but was not acknowledged, contextualization resulted in schism.

The same is true today. Contextualization may certainly lead to fragmentation; but that is not necessarily its result. Unconscious contextualization, on the other hand, will certainly lead to fragmentation, because it is by nature sectarian, not recognizing that it is but part of the whole. What leads to fragmentation is not the existence of a black theology, a Hispanic³ theology, or theologies that explicitly take into account the theologian’s gender. What leads to fragmentation is the lack of recognition that all these theologies, as well as all expressions of traditional theology, are contextual, and therefore express the gospel as seen from a particular perspective. None of them can claim to speak for the whole. Any theology that claims universality is by definition sectarian and divisive—even if it is what the church has traditionally taken as normative and universal.

It is for these reasons that I prefer to speak of “perspectives” in theology. It is not a matter of each particular group having its own truth, quite apart from all the rest. On that basis, since any group can be further subdivided, we would come to the conclusion that truth in theology is a purely individual matter, and would thus fall into a radical solipsism in which no dialogue is possible.

To speak of “perspectives” is to imagine that we are all looking at a landscape. The landscape itself is the same for all of us. Yet each one sees it from a different perspective, and will thus describe it differently. Since we are dealing with the interpretation of the Scripture, it may be well to spell out some of the implications of this image of a landscape with a multitude of observers.

First of all, it is important to remember that we are all looking at the same landscape. We may certainly see it in myriad different ways; but we still are all speaking of a single landscape, of a common text. This is part of what binds us together. The primary subject of our conversation is not our varying perspectives, important as they are. Our conversation is about the landscape, and how it is illumined from each of our various vantage points. This means that, although what we seek here is an interpretation of the Bible as seen through Hispanic eyes, it is still an interpretation of the Bible, and not simply of our experiences, good or bad.

Second, although we are speaking primarily of the landscape, we do not stand as outsiders to it. We are not outside observers, as if we were watching a movie. We stand within the landscape. We are affected by the landscape. Since we are people of faith, we can even say that we are defined by the landscape. We are also part of the view that other observers see, from their own perspective. And they too are part of the total landscape that we see. Part of the beauty of a landscape is that it draws me, the observer, into it, so that I am engulfed and in a way defined by its greatness. In the case of biblical interpretation, we are people who stand in faith, who believe that the Bible speaks to us, and who therefore are quite conscious that what we are describing is not simply a landscape “out there,” but rather something that is at the very heart of our lives. We are not speaking of the biblical text as if it were dead letter, ancient history, distant memories. We are speaking of a text in which we find ourselves, our very lives.

Third, as in the case of a landscape, it is absolutely impossible for two people to stand at exactly the same place at the same time. Some will stand so close to each other that their views will be virtually indistinguishable. Others, standing at a greater distance, will have widely differing perspectives. This means that, while it will be possible to classify various perspectives, all such classifications will be provisional, and may shift according to the issue at hand. We may say, for instance, that there is a group of people looking at a landscape from hill A, others from hill B, and still others from the bottom of the valley. Generally speaking, those on hill A will share a common perspective, which will be distinguishable from those on hill B. Yet there will be among those on hill A some who are on top of the hill, others who are lower down the slope, some who are standing to the right, others who are sitting to the left, some who are looking at the horizon, others who are more interested on the river at the bottom of the valley, and so on. Thus, those who share the common perspective of hill A could also be divided into various subgroups, according to a variety of criteria. Likewise, when we speak of “a Hispanic perspective,” we must immediately acknowledge that this is just one of many possible ways of classifying perspectives, and that even among Latinos there is a wide variety of perspectives. There are Hispanic males and females, poor, rich, and in between, liberals and conservatives, young and old, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and others. This is why, in a conversation such as this, we are always tempted to spend so much time trying to define who we are—what our common perspective is—that we never get to look at the landscape itself. The only way to move beyond such an impasse is to speak of “a Hispanic perspective,” making an effort to be as inclusive as possible and hoping that such a perspective resonates with other Hispanics, but knowing that it must never claim to be the Hispanic perspective.

At the same time, it is important to remember that Latinos stand together with many others who speak out of similar experiences of marginalization, suffering, and poverty. While we must learn to read the Bible through our own eyes, we must constantly stand in solidarity with those who, out of similar experiences, read it in a similar fashion. From them we have much to learn. To them—and to the church at large—we offer the insights of our perspective, as resources for our common struggles.

Fourth, a variety of perspectives enriches everyone’s appreciation of the landscape itself. If I stand on hill A, someone from hill B can point out features in the landscape that I would never have noticed on my own. If I am interested in the way light bounces off of rocks and rivers, I can contribute something to my neighbor, whose interest lies in the various shades of green in the forest below us. Through conversation, we can amplify each other’s experience of the landscape—and thereby we can enhance each other’s lives. Thus, I affirm my own perspective, not in order to claim that it is only I who understand the landscape, but rather in order to enrich the entire community of observers around me. And I am also much impoverished if I do not listen to what they have to say about the landscape as they see it from their own unique perspectives.

Finally, and most important, all of this is worth doing only because we believe in the miracle of communication. Thanks to communication, I do not stand alone in the landscape. Thanks to communication, those others who stand with and around me, both near and far, are much more than silent features in the landscape. They address me in their otherness. They speak to me, both of themselves and of their own vistas as they look at the landscape. They enrich my enjoyment of the landscape, forcing me to move around, to shift into their perspectives, to see the towering rock or the small bush I had missed. Some of the great landscape artists owe their greatness precisely to their ability to present in a single picture a vista that is subtly yet coherently enriched by a variety of perspectives. Likewise, our interpretation of the biblical text will be enhanced as we take into account the variety of perspectives offered to us by the entire church catholic.

Such a variety of perspectives is not only valuable; it is absolutely necessary. Although in the preceding paragraph I have used words such as “enhancing” and “enriching,” we are not dealing here with an optional enhancement to Christian theology—like chrome trimming on an automobile. We are dealing rather with something that belongs to the very nature of the church, and without which the church cannot be true to its own nature—more like the four wheels on a car. To say that the church is “catholic” means that it includes within itself a variety of perspectives.⁴ To say that it is “one” means that such multiplicity, rather than dividing it, brings it closer together. This is the miracle of communication, which in Christian theology we ascribe to the Holy Spirit.

Significantly, in the book of Acts the first consequence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples—men and women, the Twelve as well as the others—is their ability to communicate. Thanks to the Spirit, these disciples can communicate with a variety of peoples; and their communication is not centripetal or imperialistic. The Spirit does not impose on all the language of the original disciples, but rather makes it possible for various people to understand “each in their own native language.” From the very outset, the Spirit makes the church truly catholic by including in it a variety of languages and cultural perspectives—even though, as the rest of the book of Acts and the entire history of the church show, on this score Christians have constantly and repeatedly resisted the Spirit.

Thus, if I dare offer to the church at large these reflections on “the Bible through Hispanic eyes,” it is first of all trusting in the Spirit of God, who will create communication while respecting our differences, and build intimacy while affirming our distinct identities. And it is also trusting that the Spirit, who enriched the church with Elamites, Parthians, Cappadocians, Greeks, Anglo-Saxons, and all the rest, will also see fit to enrich the church and its understanding of the Scripture with the gifts and perspectives that we Latinos offer to the whole.