What Bible Reading Is For

In the epilogue to An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis opined that reading good literature enlarges our being: "In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself."

Reading Scripture rightly yields an even greater good, becoming like one man, Jesus Christ, through a transformation of the self.

Theologically speaking, a reader's ontology or deepest identity—what defines a person at the core of one's being—is a function not of ethnicity or culture or social location, but of creaturehood and covenantal location: in Christ (or not). 

—Kevin Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics, 19-20.