In good faith

FUDGE is definitely preferable to tablet, especially when you taste the theological varieties. Fudge is soft, yielding, melts away, and leaves you wanting more. Tablet is hard, unyielding, like the stone tablets on which commandments are written and cannot be changed. So when I tell you that the major report on the interpretation of Scripture, published this week by the Kirk's Panel on Doctrine, is a fudge, I hope you will understand that I mean it as a compliment.

The aforesaid report was overdue. Indeed it should have been published more than a year ago but it would have been the occasion of much recrimination. The convener, Rev Prof George Newlands, whose views are rather too liberal for many of the old stalwarts, opted to delay the report and present it as a fudge.

Indeed the report makes a virtue of necessity. Instead of the wearying war of words fought over whether parts of the Bible are infallible, inerrant, or incomprehensible, we have a report which clearly states that, while the Bible must remain the central source of Christian faith, not everyone must necessarily have the same view or interpretation of it. This will not go down too well with those who prefer their religion as rock-hard certainties. It affirms that by giving the Bible a special status involves ''an act of faith''.

''Reason alone could not lead us to the conclusion that one set of documents stands in a category of its own. Reason would suggest that we might find as much value, and more relevance in more recent illuminating writing - Shakespeare's plays, modern novels, manuals of psychology or whatever.''

Yet, despite this, the panel reject the idea that church services should mix readings from the Sunday newspapers with prophecies of Jeremiah. On the other hand they say: ''Knowing what God did once, 2000 years ago, is not much help if it does not open up some insights into what God has done since and is still doing.''

The report takes the example of how two different societies can see the Exodus from Egypt quite differently. A developed Western society might see it as the beginning of a long process in which God uses/chooses the Jews to carry the message of salvation. An oppressed people might equally legitimately see it as an enactment of their own struggle. Interpretation, says the panel, is not as simple as finding the ''true'' meaning of a text. Some texts might be allegory and others might be the product of contemporary situations. Modernity, treating biblical texts like other texts which are subject to errors and redactions, and post-modernity, which seeks to deconstruct texts to find out what the vested interest or the unconscious processes driving the writer, can open up new ways of looking at the Bible. But they also accentuate the distance which separates us from the original. This can be disturbing

for those who look for a simple truth in the Bible. However, the panel are optimistic that this can lead to a plural unity which characterises the Holy Spirit.

They offer guidelines for interpreting the Bible which are a brilliant but simple precis of their report. For example, readers should be aware of the kind of passage they are reading and how it fits into the overall storyline. They should be aware of their own prejudices, and the way that other ages have used it, and other cultures. Then, above all, bring a sense of worship and willingness to practise what is written. By interpreting properly, readers sift the elements (such as ritual sacrifice) which are not part of the holy message. Without interpretation the Bible becomes as useful as a radio set, treated as if all programmes which can be tuned in are news bulletins.

The panel report met with an interesting reaction from my colleague Robert Nowell, whose writing on religious affairs often appeared in the Tablet (considered fudge to Roman Catholics who read the ultra-orthodox Christian Order magazine). He combines leaning left politically with occasional riding to hounds, organic gardening, and a Celtic soul, and believes that the best theology comes after drinking malt whisky and that the best religious affairs writers are atheists. This man of catholic taste phoned me up after reading the report to declare that he saw nothing in it with which a practising Catholic like himself could disagree. ''What is keeping us apart?'' he asked.

In my next mail, I received the answer in a copy of Christian Order (April 1998) in which Michael McGrade castigates Cardinal Winning as a ''Great Pretender''. The man in the red hat we have come to know as a defender of Roman orthodoxy, according to the writer of two long articles, is nothing but an appeaser of the pro-abortion Labour Party despite all he has said or done. The article also, more pertinently in my view, criticises the way in which the Bishop Roddy Wright case was handled by the Cardinal. I mention the article to illustrate the point that having different interpretations of the same events can be a mixed blessing. That way you are liable to get people saying the Pope is not really a Catholic and Ian Paisley is a bit too liberal in his thinking.