the Bible as witness are crucial in any redefining of the discipline. The role of the Bible is not being understood simply as a cultural expression of ancient peoples, but as a testimony pointing beyond itself to a divine reality to which it bears witness. To speak of the Bible now as scripture further extends this insight because it implies its continuing role for the church as a vehicle of God’s will. Such an approach to the Bible is obviously confessional. Yet the Enlightenment’s alternative proposal