"These notes use the Qur'an to help shed light on the Biblical narrative. The notes suggest (albeit only by implication) that the Qur'an is somehow, and to some extent, authoritative and useful in Bible study, as it sheds new light on God's Word. The Bible is not to be understood only in its own terms, but also in light of the Qur'an."
I'm finding myself increasing irritated by the slurring involved in this kind of argument. In principle, the notes referred to are probably not doing anything different from using, say, the poetry of Tennyson (or Paul's use of Greek poetry or John's use of stoic ideas) as dialogue partners for considering our own scriptures. In fact we all do this all the time: we interpret the scripture through the lens of our own experience, concerns and pre-understandings. This doesn't mean we are elevating such things to the same status as the Word of God; merely that we are seeking to integrate the Word into our thought patterns more thoroughly and to give the space for scripture to help us to view the world around us more insightfully and wisely. In principle this is what we should be doing, cannot avoid doing, in fact.
I therefore take issue with the sly implication that to do this is to subordinate scripture to something else. The implication of this passage is that the Bible should be hermetically sealed off from other areas of experience, thought or nurturance. To take someone else's designation of something as a source of reflection or authority seriously is not necessarily to agree with them. It merely means recognising that it is so for them. Unless we do that, we cannot do the work of trying to make connections between what we believe to be important and what 'they' believe to be important.
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