Wright tackles the question of what might be called a pure postmodern reading of Scripture’s Story in which there seems to be a lack of need to see the historical by stating:

While history and theology work at their stormy relationship, there is always a danger, particularly in postmodernism, that literary study will get on by itself, without impinging on, or being affected by either of the others [history or theology]. The more we move toward a climate in which ‘my reading of the text’ is what matters, the less pressure there will be to anchor the text in its own historical context or to integrate a wider ‘message’ of the text with other messages, producing an overall theological statement or synthesis. (Bracketed material by present writer.) (N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 13).

We are, in fact, drawn irresistibly into the world of a story—and a story, moreover, which, like the modern ‘short story,’ invites us to share its world as much by what it does not say as by what it does. The questions posed are: How open is the story to new ways of being read? Or, what would count as a correct reading, and how important is it to try to achieve a correct reading? One might be left with the reality that there should be a distinction between things that can and must be right and things that must be left open to conversation. (N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 83)

Wright suggests, “What we need, then, is a theory of reading which, at the reader/text stage, will do justice both to the fact that the reader is a particular human being and to the fact that the text is an entity on its own, not a plastic substance to be moulded to the reader’s whim.” (N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 62) To Wright’s last statement I would whole-heartedly agree.

Gordon Fee says that if one reads the stories of Scripture from “in front” of them taking no care of what lies “behind them,” then they will read the stories from “over” the text having control of what the text says to them. If, however, one reads the stories of Scripture from “in front” of the text while giving due attention to what lies “behind” the text, then one will learn to live “under” what the text says. (Gordon D. Fee, Tyndale Lecture Series (Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Tyndale University College & Seminary), Tape 1: “The Reader As Interpreter”).

Wright argues in Scripture and the Authority of God “neither for a variety of modernism, nor for a return to pre-modernism, nor yet for a capitulation to postmodernism,” but for what he hopes is “a way through this entire mess and muddle and forward into a way of living in and for God’s world…, (Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God 6.) which sees story as the vehicle. (Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God, xiii.) Wright goes on to argue for a “totally contextual” reading of the Story and a fully “incarnational” reading of the Story. (Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God, 6). By “totally contextually” Wright says that “each word must be understood within its own verse, each verse within its own chapter, each chapter within its own book, and each book within its own historical, cultural and indeed canonical setting.” By “incarnational” he says that one should pay “attention to the full humanity both of the text and of its readers.”