Abstract

Starting with the puzzlement M O.C. Drury and Rush Rhees felt about Wittgenstein's admonition that believers ought not to pick and choose among the passages of the bible, this paper seeks to clarify the sense of scriptural authority in the Judeo-Christian traditions. This paper argues that (1) picking and choosing, imposing certain criteria external to the Scripture, is grammatically constitutive of accepting the authority of Scripture and (2) such a picking and choosing is guided by a tradition and its grammar. It notes that Wittgenstein's stance on Scripture is itself based on (1) and (2).