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 PrintableVersion Scripture and the authority of GodThe Bishop of Durham and the BibleSCRIPTURE AND THE AUTHORITY OF GOD ‘Writing a book about the Bible is like building a sandcastle in front of the Matterhorn. The best you can hope to do is to catch the eye of those who are looking down instead of up, or those who are so familiar with the skyline that they have stopped noticing its peculiar beauty.’ So begins Tom Wright in the preface to his latest book. Dr. Wright’s aim is to get people to ‘look up once more and this time with fresh eyes’. This he manages to do most admirably. The book does not directly address the issues of inerrancy and infallibility, which are crucial, but within its own terms is extremely helpful. With his usual clarity of thought and mastery of expression, Dr. Wright takes his readers on one of the most refreshing and insightful tours of what the Bible itself presents as the relationship between its authority and God’s authority and how that works itself out in the life of the Church. Bishop Wright begins with a brief sketch of the place of the Bible within the church, rightly underscoring the fact that it has never simply been a book which is referred to when certain issues are discussed but is integral to its life as a worshipping community. With the historical high points in place, Dr. Wright considers the relation between Scripture and today’s world, since what is happening in the wider culture invariably shapes and determines the sorts of questions raised about the Bible. The significant shift from modernism to the postmodern scene is skilfully tackled, as are matters of politics, philosophy, theology and ethics. These form some of the backcloth against which the three following questions are discussed: 1. In what sense is the Bible authoritative in the first place? 2. How can the Bible be appropriately understood and interpreted? 3. How can its authority, assuming such appropriate interpretation, be brought to bear on the church and the rest of the world? AuthorityIn answer to the first question, it is argued that ‘the authority of Scripture’ is a shorthand expression for ‘the authority of God exercised somehow through Scripture’. Such an authority is not only exercised through commands, exhortations and the like contained in Scripture, but also through much of its constituent parts which, when put together as a whole, form a story. And so we see the true God as a communicative agent — a God who speaks — doing so through Scripture not simply to ‘inform’ but to ‘transform’ — engage in his work of salvation. Through the writings he has inspired, we have God’s ‘speech acts’ whereby his divine purposes are achieved under the operation of the Holy Spirit (see Isaiah 55.11ff). The climax of God’s dealings with his world is in the person and ministry of Jesus. He is the one who accomplishes that to which all Scripture has pointed, not in the sense of a few isolated prophecies but the fruition of the entire storyline. This understanding helps us to see why Jesus could both uphold the authority of Scripture and at the same time appear to relativise it (e.g. insisting on the commandment to honour father and mother and yet ignoring his own mother in favour of his followers (Mark 3.31). The same ‘performative’ work of Scripture is seen in the writings of the apostles, which, argues Dr. Wright, carried the ‘same authority in action’ as the OT Scriptures. Because of the ‘promise-fulfilment’ relation between Old Covenant and New Covenant, a ‘multi-layered’ reading of the Old Testament took place. This does not render certain parts of the Old Testament as ‘uninspired’ or having no divine authority, but is a simple acknowledgement that they belong to a different part of a story which has now reached its climax. InterpretationThe answering of the second question regarding biblical interpretation involves a whirlwind tour of biblical interpretation from the second century through to the 17th! The challenges posed by the Enlightenment are brilliantly dealt with. This includes an expose of the strengths and weaknesses of both the modern and postmodern approaches to the interpretation of a text. In particular there is a helpful treatment of the relation between ‘Scripture, reason and tradition’ — the ‘three-legged stool’ so beloved by modern Anglicans (now there is a fourth leg added — ‘experience’). It is rightly pointed out that they were never equal sources of divine authority. ‘Tradition’ was simply the legacy of the church reflecting on Scripture and ‘reason’ the proper use of rational discourse to distinguish legitimate interpretations from flights of fancy. Wright uses the illustration that Scripture, reason and tradition are not like three different book shelves each of which can be ransacked for answers to key questions. Rather Scripture is the shelf full of books, tradition is the memory of what the people in the house have already read and understood, and reason is the set of spectacles people use to make sense of what they have read (some spectacles have been rather out of focus!). To place one’s hope in experience is, according to Wright, to produce the chaos of the times of the Judges. Experience is ‘the context in which we hear Scripture’, but not a separate source of authority. Today’s worldThe final question of how the Bible’s authority can be brought to bear on the church and the world is answered by a negative and positive treatment. Negatively there is a listing of what are considered misreadings of the theological ‘right’ and theological ‘left’. Positively, Dr. Wright makes a plea for an integrated view of Scriptural authority which highlights the Spirit’s role as a transformative agent, the centrality of the Kingdom of God, and the ‘church as characterised …by a prayerful listening to, strenuous wrestling with, humble obedience before and powerful proclamation of Scripture, particularly in the ministries of its authorised leaders’ (p.84 ). Here there are some real gems: the vital importance of historical exegesis, awareness of historical theology and a ‘total contextual’ reading of Scripture (which would include biblical theology and sensitivity to the different literary genres). Wright refines a model he proposed several years ago, which sees the Bible drama consisting of five acts — creation, fall, Israel, Jesus and the church. As we live in the fifth act we must be true to all that has gone before — there can be no re-writing of the story — and live under God’s authority as it is mediated through Scripture. However, the detailed outworkings of what that authority implies will vary without giving in to the ‘free for all’ relativism of the postmodern critics. For the reviewer the book would have been complete if there had been a chapter giving one or two worked examples of this understanding of Scriptural authority, for instance on the subject which is vexing the worldwide Anglican Communion at the moment — homosexual practice. However, as it stands, this volume deserves to be taken seriously and is a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate over ‘the Battle for the Bible’. Melvin Tinker,
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