Dear Editor,
May I make further comment on two of the men referred to in your kind response to my letter in your August issue?
First, your surprising description of the unnamed Arthur Peake as being ‘relatively’ liberal belies all the evidence. He did not believe the OT was history as we understand it – Abraham was not an actual historical figure – nor did he believe that NT writers could be authoritative interpreters of the OT. His influential one-volume Commentary on the Bible has been described as undermining its authority. As the architect of the 1932 Deed of Union which brought together the different streams of Methodism, he introduced the notion that the Bible is the record of revelation, not the revelation itself. This distinction has muddied the waters of Methodist debates right up to the present day.
