The turn of the kaleidoscope confronts us at last with questions of epistemology. After distinguishing various modes of speaking, and offering an account of its nature, I went on to argue that, from a theistic perspective, God could speak; there is nothing impossible in that. From those issues of discourse theory and of philosophical theology, we moved on to issues of interpretation. Here I singled out for near-exclusive attention that long-enduring, though now intensely controverted, practice within the Christian community of reading the Bible so as to discern what God said by way of authoring it. I defended the legitimacy in general of authorial-discourse interpretation; and I considered how one ought to go about interpreting scripture if it is the single divine voice that one is looking for. Now at last we are face to face with the question: does God speak?

Our situation is not that we and a few others have recently begun to entertain the proposition that God speaks, and are now wondering whether to accept or reject that proposition. Countless human beings, down through the ages, and on into our own time and place, have in fact believed that God speaks. Let us, then, pose our question in full recognition of that fact; let us ask how such beliefs are to be appraised.