Deep Thoughts from Graeme Goldsworthy

This may be the single most awesome paragraph I have read in a long while from a sheer depth of thought.

So, the long and the short of it all is that somehow the biblical theologian and the dogmatic theologian are both confronted with the same unavoidable “chicken and egg” dilemma of the question of priority? Is priority in God as the source of reality; in Jesus as the mediator of the knowledge of God; in Scripture as our only source of God’s inspired testimony to Jesus; or in the Holy Spirit’s enabling of the once incapacitated human mind and spirit to know the truth? The answer is clearly, “yes; all of the above.” Thus we can make the distinction between the ontological priority of the Trinity, the hermeneutical priority of the incarnate Christ, the material priority of the Scriptures, and the epistemological priority of the Spirit’s inner testimony to the regenerated heart of man. These all coinhere, are interdependent, and relate in the hermeneutical spiral. This interdependence is no greater a burden on our subjective knowing than is the coinherence of the three persons of the Trinity, or the coinherence of the divine and human natures of Christ, or of the divine and human natures of Scripture, or of the relationship of the divine Spirit’s indwelling of the believer and our own humanity. Not only is it no greater burden, it is also of the same importance.

via The Ontological and Systematic Roots of Biblical Theology – Graeme Goldsworthy.