Another excerpt from Credo* by William Sloane Coffin:

No two Shakespearean actors have ever sounded exactly alike, and no two readers of the Declaration of Independence, or of the Constitution of the United States, or of the sixty-six books of the Bible, will ever understand those documents in exactly the same way.  Let Protestant fundamentalists claim, “The only safe interpreter of Scripture is Scripture itself.”  It’s a fine sounding claim, but it is pride masquerading as humility to believe that one can see so plainly revealed the mind and will of God.  Search for the truth we can and must, but own it – never.

Fundamentalists are no different from the rest of us.  Just as often as do we, they use a Bible as a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.  And consider this:  perhaps God approves the struggles of the human mind to try to interpret God’s designs.  “The unknown is the mind’s greatest need, and for it no one thinks to thank God” (Emily Dickinson).  So far from being a danger to it, difference of opinion is an essential ingredient of religious life, just as difference of opinion is no danger but an essential ingredient to a helathy political life.  So interpretation is not only inevitable; it’s desirable. (156)

*William Sloane Coffin.  Credo.  Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.