"Does being a people of the book preclude being a people of a tradition? The Reformers set their principle of the priesthood of all believers in contrast to the older Roman Catholic notion that only official church officers could authoritatively interpret the Scriptures. Some evangelicals, perhaps under the influence of the modern notion of individual autonomy, misappropriated this principle, claiming “No creed but the Bible,” thereby confusing one’s personal responsibility to read Scripture with one’s right as an individual to say what one thinks it means. In response, some so-called “postconservative” evangelicals gave gone post-modern, emphasizing the rationality of community traditions rather than of autonomous knowers, and pointing out that the Bible itself represent “the self-understanding of the community in which it developed.” Others, too, in order to avoid collapsing the voice of the Spirit into that of the Bible, acknowledge that the Spirit guides individuals into the truth precisely by guiding the whole church. The open question, then, is whether, and how, evangelicals should affirm the priesthood of all believers, the authority of the Great Tradition or, somehow, both. Stated differently: Is “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures” functionally equivalent to “the Holy Spirit speaking to the church as she ‘’reads’’ the Scriptures”? The Spirit’s illumination is related to the clarity of Scripture as well: Is the perspicuity of the Bible an objective property of the text or the result of the Spirit’s work in readers? At any rate, there is renewed interest in recovering ancient traditions of interpreting Scripture, at least in part because of a recognition that, first, reader’s interpretive practices are formed by traditions and, second. Such traditions may be the Spirit’s work."