ABSTRACT
In the history of Christian thought, there have been many ways of trying to hold together an awareness of both diversity and unity. That the biblical canon contains diversity is obvious to most readers; that it is nevertheless a unity is the conviction of those for whom it functions as holy scripture. Despite the best efforts of biblical theologians and canonical critics to show that the Bible exhibits, or can or should be read as if it exhibited, an impressive unity, anyone who has engaged in the detail of modern biblical study is likely to have a stronger sense of its variegated and untidy character. The unity that is to be looked for in the canon may quite well be a complex unity: the Bible is multi-faceted, not simple. But Christian readers qua Christian are not at liberty to expound this multi-faceted character as evidence of a basic disunity or inconsistency.
