Written for us: receiving God's words in the Bible

That’s more like it!

WRITTEN FOR US
Receiving God’s words in the Bible
By Peter Adam
IVP. 258 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978-1-84474-208-0

Peter Adam is Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, and this book could well be described as his third book on the Bible, after Speaking God’s Words and Hearing God’s Words.

This book expounds Adam’s convictions about the Bible by taking one summary phrase, ‘Receiving God’s words written for his people by his Spirit about his Son’, unpacking this large phrase one smaller phrase at a time. In doing so, he deals in some detail with an impressive number of Scriptures (Exodus 19-25, Isaiah 55, Ezra 7, Nehemiah 8, Psalm 1, Matthew 22, Mark 7, 1 Corinthians 10, Romans 15, for example, in just two sections).

He does this because he wants to unpack what the Bible says about itself in the Bible’s own terms, rather than imposing terms from theological disciplines on the Bible.

He largely succeeds; theological students will find it a helpful introduction, while preachers and other church members will find it stimulating. For me its weakness is that, in trying to stay within biblical categories, he does not explain clearly enough what he means by ‘inspiration’, nor deal with the question of ‘inerrancy’, and I wish he had.

A helpful book, and the kind of presentation of Biblical Orthodoxy that IVP ought to be doing.

Gary Benfold
Moordown Baptist Church, Bournemouth

© Evangelicals Now - May 2009
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Main Articles

• Surfing for God
• The Commentary
  Pomo Gangland
• Conversations that count
• How does creation reveal God?
• Arguing for Christian education
• Big church bloomers
  A challenge to large congregations
• Faith and finance
  Dr. Philip Sampson looks at the current financial disaster, part 2
• Cinderella ministry
  Mission to FE and sixth form colleges
• Monthly media and arts column
  No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
• Letter from America
  Fighting the previous battle?
• The Music Exchange
  To play or not to play ...
• Monthly youth leaders column
  Is it time?
• The Third Degree
  The Word in the Welsh sunshine
• James Hudson Taylor III, 1929-2009
  Obituary
• James Philip, 1922-2009
  Obituary
• Darwin and ID

Other articles

• The damned united
• Wicked
• This is my story: Mike Mellor
• Journeys of hope: 12 lives changed by God
• The undercover revolution
• Religulous
• We become what we worship
• Journey: Psalms for pilgrim people
• Total recall: how direct democracy can improve Britain
• Written for us: receiving God's words in the Bible
• Intelligent design 101
• Highway code for happiness
• A spiritual history of the Royal Mile
• Jesus in college
• The good Samaritan
• Revelation - the triumph of Christ
• Junkie meets Jesus in a trash can
• The skeptic's guide to global poverty
• Systematic theology, vol. I
• Tamar, Bathsheba & Tamar
• Christmas Evans - no ordinary preacher
• Light, salt and the world of business (Didasko Files)
• Discipline with care