There is no one right way to read the Bible. That is the first thing to say about interpreting Scripture. There are as many fitting ways to read the Bible as there are ends of the Bible; indeed, there are as many fitting ways to read the Bible as there are occasions and persons to do such reading. That does not mean there are no unfitting ways to read the Bible. It only means that to exclude some does not mean to exclude all but one, or only a handful. That would presume a finite number of ways of reading the Bible. On the contrary, “we have no warrant for putting a limit to the sense of words which are not human but divine.” And if the sense is unlimited, then so are the ways by which to arrive at it. Like other complex activities—especially games: chess, basketball, tennis—there are rules, norms, and predictable patterns. But there is always development and innovation within the ongoing tradition of the practice. We will never reach a time when the possibilities of chess are exhausted, or when a coach can no longer draw up a new out-of-bounds set play. So for interpreting Scripture: new ways of reading, new readings of Scripture, will continue so long as Scripture endures in the church. Which is to say, until the End.
This is such a key point. I tried to gesture at this reality here. My sense is that as potentially liberating as this perspective can be for some, many Bible-believing (or, perhaps more precisely, biblicist) Christians are often resistant to such notions. Raised on inductive Bible study methods (which are ‘scientific’ and thus potentially repeatable by anyone), they are uncomfortable with the thought of such open-ended ways of reading. So far from liberation, this approach seems to them to unleash anarchy.