Podcast listener Josh in Kelowna, Canada writes in,

Hello Pastor John, do we have any indication that the authors of the Bible matured in

doctrine, ministry, or in their experience of the Christian life?

For example, should we expect to see a progression of clarity from the earlier writings of

Saint Paul to his later writings with this ongoing study of the Old Testament scripture,

combined with direct revelation he received from Christ early in his ministry,

have changed or altered his earlier opinions or viewpoints.

I'm not saying that his earlier writings would have been false or wrong,

but wouldn't greater clarity have come over time as he saw deeper meaning and more connections,

or does the doctrine of inspiration somehow hedge against this line of thinking?

What would you say to Josh?

Let me try to say something on a principle of reading or interpretation,

which I think helps us not go down unfruitful rabbit trails, and I'm relating this to a larger

issue that I see and we'll try to bore in on the particular issue of a maturing

biblical writer. What I have in mind with this principle that I'm talking about is the

tendency, a bad tendency, I think, to take our focus off of the text of scripture and put it

on influences that may or may not have shaped the biblical writers, but in fact, which we only

have access to through the text themselves, or in some cases, we may have some modest access

outside the biblical text to a cultural or a personal circumstance that may have influenced

a biblical writer, but whether in fact that externally known situation actually did shape the

mind of the writer, can only be known from the text that he wrote. So I have read far too many

unwarranted pronouncements that such and such was the situation at that time, and therefore

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