This book has addressed two related questions. The first and more general question is carried by the title of Wilfred Cantwell Smith's book, What Is Scripture? Smith intensifies his question by positing a human propensity to “scripturalize,” and he concludes, from the recurrence of scriptures in diverse human cultures, that “no theory of language is complete that does not include, and serve to elucidate, scripture.” It is hoped that this book offers some answers to his question and responds in a helpful way to his request for a more general theory of language and textuality that would account for the widespread standing and role of scriptures for persons and peoples.

The second and more specific question, which turns attention to the scriptural standing and role of the Bible, is whether or not the divide between two kinds of contemporary readers or readings of it can be reduced. How can those who read it as they would read any other ancient text and those who read it as having particular and even unique relevance to and effects on their lives be brought more closely together?

In this conclusion I shall, while keeping in view my response to the first question, comment further on the second and more specific of these questions, namely, the divide between two ways of regarding the Bible. An important point to keep in mind, as we return to this question, is that the gap that I illustrated by describing an exchange during a Bible study hour between the pastor and the woman should not be solved by discounting one or the other of the two sides. Both approaches carry legitimate claims that should be affirmed and brought into closer relation to one another. As I have suggested, the falling out of these two sides is anticipated by the dual nature of texts themselves. Texts are compounds of two elements, and recognizing the dual or compound nature of texts will question the assumption that the two ways of reading the Bible are irreconcilable. When we recognize the relation of the two views of the Bible to the two sides of texts, we can appreciate more fully Calvin's insistence that one can know Christ only in and by scripture because Christology has some analogical relations to the compound nature of biblical texts.