as sui ipsius interpres, the text is not simply inert until activated by human readers. ‘Texts, like dead men and women, have no rights, no aims, no interests.’67 Qua texts, of course not; but, as instruments of divine action, texts are prevenient, determining the shape of our reading not only by passive resistance but also by active presentation of the speech of God. In a similar vein, the claritas of the Bible is not a material textual attribute but a spiritual event. Clarity is not the same as