[...] But if one makes allowances for occasional excesses and extremes, the main course of Christian Bible reading has held true over the centuries to the plain sense of Scripture—its stories were read as (in the main) real stories about real people; its history, real history; its declarations about God and God's creatures as saying what they meant and meaning what they said. The Bible was not a code or cipher to be cracked; it was not a book of secrets; it was realistic, it spoke plain. This was (in Latin) the sensus literalis, the literal sense of Scripture. Yet plainness did not imply triviality, for as well as (or better, within) the plain sense there was what we might today call the point of that plain sense. (p 36) James Wm. McClendon, Jr. Systematic Theology, Doctrine II (1994: Nashville, Abingdon Press)
Explicit or not, Scripture is the tale God tells; it is God speaking; it is the word of God, not in part, not here and there, and not “within” or merely “in,” but “as” Scripture. As theology this may offend some, but I mean it in the first place as literary truth: We can make full sense of biblical narrative only when we see it is implied narrator not as the human author (who, to be sure, is fully involved at his or her own level), but as the very God of whom Scripture speaks. (p 41) James Wm. McClendon, Jr. Systematic Theology, Doctrine II (1994: Nashville, Abingdon Press)
McClendon is the most careful, articulate proponent of this view I've found. Many more crass, simplistic and vulgar examples exist. But if I'm going to go after a position, I'm going after the best version of it, not mucking about with straw men—I want Goliath, not a scare-crow set up to look like him. Thankfully, McClendon has done the work of making the implicit in the evangelical position very explicit, very clear and in sharp focus. Unfortunately, he has done it so well that I have my work cut out for me to counter his position.