This sort of false ontology of canonical texts can be overcome by spelling out the ontological implications of talk of the canon as a ‘witness’ or ‘means of grace’. At the core of both these notions is an assertion that the texts of the canon are human realities annexed by divine use. By emphasizing that the function of the texts is the clue to their ontology, these notions shift out of the quasi-materialist idiom of those accounts which are dominated by the concept of inspiration. Crucially, however,