Let the witnesses correct our notebooks

I'd want to say more, but this is well put:

[the modern theologian or ordinary Christian] is not justified in comporting himself in relationship to those [biblical] witnesses as though he knew more about the Word than they... Still less is he a high-school teacher authorized to look over their shoulder benevolently or crossly, to correct their notebooks, or give them good, average, or bad marks. Even the smallest, strangest, simplest, or obscurest among the biblical witnesses has an incomparable advantage over even the most pious, scholarly, and sagacious latter-day theologian From his special point of view and in his special fashion, the witness has thought, spoken, and written about the revelatory Word and act in direct confrontation with it. All subsequent theology, as well as the whole of the community that comes after the event, will never find itself in the same immediate confrontation... For this reason theology must agree to let them look over its shoulder and correct its notebooks.

(pp. 31-32, Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology)