EAVESDROPPING!

I am still buying books. The “disease” is incurable. Besides, now I have a good excuse—I need them for research!

One of my more recent acquisitions was Models of Interpretation of Scripture, by John Goldingay. I purchased this one off the web, from an online used-book store in the US. Thinking I wouldn’t need it immediately, and not wanting to incur the high cost of shipping to the UK, I had them send it to the home of a friend, Dave, in Dallas. But I was mistaken: I did need it sooner than I realized, and so Dave FedEx-ed it to me.

The tome was in great condition for an item that was second-hand. And second-hand it was, for on the flyleaf was another’s name.

And that’s what caught me by surprise. It was a name I recognized!

“Walter M. Dunnett”

Probably doesn’t mean much to most folks, but I know that name. Prof. Dunnett is a fairly well known theologian who used to teach at Moody Bible Institute (and elsewhere). In the late 80s, he was President of the Evangelical Theological Society. Author of several books (and I have at least one of them).

Fancy that, I thought. Dunnett’s personal copy of Goldingay. I flipped through the pages with interest, hoping for annotations and marginalia that would be revelatory. However, not everyone, I realized, reads books the way I do, visibly interacting with the author by means of scribbles and scratches, staining and scarring the pages as I go through them! Walter was a more gentle reader. Underlining—discreet and discriminating. Lines in the margin to demarcate paragraphs of interest. A few check marks on other pages.

Still, to go through a book owned by a scholar was quite an experience. I felt I was eavesdropping on a personal conversation between Goldingay and Dunnett. A private correspondence. A confidential communiqué, now violated by the barbaric invasion of a used-books junkie armed with a pencil. Eavesdropping!

There are many who claim that’s what we do when we read the Bible. It’s simply a correspondence from someone to someone else in some other situation in some bygone era, they assert. Eavesdrop, by all means, they urge. Just don’t take it seriously, because it’s got nothing to do with you, they declare. Paul wrote to the Romans, not to the Texans; and, of course, those polemics directed to the Israelites, Edomites, and Ninevites, those epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, all rightly belonged to those respective worthies. Spurgeon once wished the Hebrews had kept the book to themselves!

But they didn’t. Neither did any of the other recipients, thank God!

Not only were these writings inspired, God by fiat appropriated these utterances as His own and they were recognized as such by His people. Personal notes they might have been. But “divine discourses” they are now. (Check out Nicholas Wolterstorff’s terrific book Divine Discourse.) The New Testament is replete with instances of “eavesdropping” upon Old Testament “conversations.” At the same time, it perpetuates this practice of “listening at keyholes” (“I adjure you by the Lord to have this letter read to all the brethren,” writes Paul in 1 Thess 5:27). For what was written aforetime is now applicable to us.

All Scripture is inspired by God
and profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction,
for training in righteousness;
so that the man of God
may be adequate,
equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 (NASB)

Let’s keep “eavesdropping.” For God is talking—divinely discoursing—to you, to me!