Letter: The word of God

Sir: What on earth do these bishops mean, or think they mean, by the word "Scripture"? Perhaps we should have another Lambeth Conference to talk the matter out. When Bishop Chukwuma (for example) quotes 1 Corinthians 6:9 to your reporter Clare Garner ("How I felt the wrath of a bishop", 6 August) and again at Jeremy Vine and Richard Kirker on BBC2's Newsnight, what particular translation is he thinking of? Translation it must be, for the original Greek has not one word that might comfort his aggressive and rather comical, bigotry.

Historically, the tap root of Anglican values was a measured protestant carefulness in the use of Scripture. Richard Hooker, the first codifer, and to a great extent the founding father of Anglicanism, wrote: "We must take great heed, lest in attributing to Scripture more that it can have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which indeed it hath most abundantly to be less reverently esteemed. I therefore leave it to themselves to consider whether they have in this point overshot themselves."

Hooker's English has toughness and difficulty. To some bishops this passage may be all Greek. But is it possible that to Bishop Chukwuma the Greek in which his own sacred Scriptures are written is as impenetrable as Hooker's English?

MICHAEL HALLS

Christow, Devon