To be an evangelical is to seek to be true to Scripture because of the conviction that to be true to Scripture is to be true to Christ. A contemporary evangelical approach to Scripture has the possibility of combining appropriate pre-modern, modern and postmodern elements.

1. It will be pre-modern in the sense that it submits to the will of God as revealed in the text and thus puts the human will and its capacity for detached reason or local special pleading under that authority. Underlying this is the fundamental conviction that revelation is a precondition of salvation. God must reveal himself or we cannot know our true state or destiny.

2. On the other hand, it will be modern in its conviction that texts which reveal the actions of God in history are, by definition, open to historical investigation …

3. An evangelical approach to Scripture can also be post-modern, not by accepting postmodernism’s radical relativism and reduction of truth claims to power plays, but by a heightened awareness of the significance of hermeneutics and of the reader’s context.

Graham Cray, The post-evangelical debate, 12f. (emphasis and numbering added)