How can human discourse mediate divine discourse when the human discourse in question propounds error or expresses morally offensive attitudes? That question has sounded like a ground bass throughout a good deal of our discussion; and often, when it wasn't actually sounding, it was implied. Already in Chapter 3 I observed that when double agency discourse takes the form either of deputation or appropriation, it will typically be the case that not everything said by the agent of the mediating discourse is also said by the agent of the mediated discourse. And in Chapter 12 I took note of some of the general patterns of difference which emerge when we interpret the human discourse of the Bible for the divine discourse which it mediates, given the assumption that God speaks only what is true and conducive to love.

I want now to discuss one more aspect of this general theme. Since it concerns the genre of the Bible's mediating discourse, it would have been appropriate to discuss it earlier. But if one accepts the suggestion I will be making, one will find that some of the wax-nose anxiety which I discussed in the preceding chapter is thereby alleviated; that makes it appropriate to discuss it here. Up to this point in my discussion, my concern with interpretation has been entirely hermeneutical, that is to say, methodological and second-order in character.