How does God work?

For my Intro to Old Testament class, we have to give brief responses to questions on an online discussion board. Here's the question and my response:

"Discuss among yourselves whether it matters theologically if the Bible is a composite text with a developmental history as this week's reading suggest. What is at stake theologically in this discussion? What can be gained or lost by whatever option you take?"

I think what is at stake is our understanding of how God interacts with humanity. From what to us would be a “traditional” understanding in which the texts are not composite, God inspires individuals and then they write. What they have written then becomes authoritative for the rest of us. Then it is essential that the author’s original meaning is understood and that nothing else is added on, since it was that individual who was divinely inspired. The human necessity to interpret then becomes a part of our fallen natures, since ideally we would all read and understand exactly the same thing. Diversity of opinion in the church is much less possible, since there is one proper meaning. The church then becomes a fragile alliance based on general agreement on what that one meaning is. Division is then an ever-present threat.

On the other hand, if the text is composite and developed over time both as a reflection of and a partial answer to the community’s theological struggles, then we would probably have to conclude that God does not work like that at all, or God is a defeated God, since we don’t even have the original texts. Further it would seem that God can only reach the (best) scholars and the lucky (elect?), if anyone at all, since the tools necessary to get to the original intent are the tools of scholarship.

But what if, instead of God working primarily by investing himself in individuals, God invests himself in the community as a whole? In this case, we can readily deal with the idea of scripture as a composite text. We can see God working in the various dissonant voices, and we are free to see God working in dissonant voices in the community of faith today. Rather than being driven apart by a desire to get the text right, we are driven together by the knowledge that it is only in the community as a whole that God promises to work. And rather than being motivated to oversimplify the text and resolve tensions, we are motivated to read the individual voices as faithfully as we can while still seeing the voice of God in the whole.