@GJDS
Kevin VanHoozer (a Reformed theologian who interacts very deeply with postmodern philosophy of language) has written some interesting things along these lines about what he calls “theodrama” and divine speech act. The idea is that the whole of Scripture is God actively doing something with human language. He sees the Christian life as entering and continuing “God’s story.”
Here is a CT summary of his stuff if anyone is interested: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/june/kevin-vanhoozer-drama-king.html
The article says:
[quote] "The stories, poems, letters, and visions in the Bible aren’t simply the products of human authors who were infused with divine insight. Instead, says Vanhoozer, the Bible is God’s way of addressing and guiding the church, of administering his saving covenant with us. Studying the biblical books in their historical contexts is, of course, vital. But the Bible achieves its present purpose—of making us all like Christ—because of how God speaks through it, present tense…
By saying that all of Scripture was “without error,” evangelicals risked implying that all of Scripture came in the form of “true or false” statements. How, then, to understand an exclamation of praise in the Psalms? Or what could the cry of “Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!” mean if it could only be slotted into a “true” or “false” box?
“To read always for the proposition is like always listening to a Brahms symphony only for the melody,” Vanhoozer says. “My motivation for saying that [is] to hold Scripture up high, to let it be everything it’s supposed to be.”
In short, Vanhoozer shook up evangelical thinking about Scripture at just the moment when it could have calcified. He insisted that evangelicals were right to keep a high view of Scripture’s authority. But he was equally firm that God does many things with the Bible: God prompts lament, incites adoration, urges repentance, wounds pride, and announces forgiveness and new life. Of course, Scripture also asserts truth statements to be believed, but that’s not the only thing it does.
The biblical canon doesn’t just make claims about the world. It seeks to reinvent that world—and remake us in the process.[/quote]