Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
London : SPCK, 2005.
Description
In Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, Widely respected Bible and Jesus scholar, N. T. Wright gives new life to the old, tattered doctrine of the authority of scripture, delivering a fresh, helpful, and concise statement on the current "battles for the Bible," and restoring scripture as the primary place to find God's voice. In this revised and expanded version of The Last Word, leading biblical scholar N. T. Wright shows how both evangelicals and liberals are guilty of misreading Scripture and reveals a new model for understanding God's authority and the Bible.
User reviews
LibraryThing member jd234512
What a great little gem of a book. A lot of ground is covered within this, but Wright makes every point quite cohesively and in a manner that really brings about thought. I really appreciate the thoughts he put in this and it is a very interesting subject. It is probably something that should be
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discuseed more often, openly, and with respect to each other. Show Less
LibraryThing member jontseng
Some very useful insights, particularly on the implicit shorthand involved in Evangelical venerations of "The Book".
LibraryThing member bmanderson
The discussion of the authority of scripture is an important discussion and this book is, overall, a disappointing contribution to it. It feels hastily written and the argument feels hastily assembled. As big a fan of Wright as I am, I just could not enjoy or appreciate this book.
LibraryThing member deusvitae
A well-written and well-presented discussion of the disputations regarding the role of the Bible in Christian life and practice.
Wright goes through the history of how the Bible was used and interpreted in order to explain how we have reached the current moment. He demonstrates well why there must
Wright re-emphasizes how the Scriptures are, at heart, a story-- the story of God's work of salvation as expressed through the creation, fall, Abraham, Patriarchs, Israelites, and Jesus the Messiah, and a foretaste of the ultimate demonstration of God's rule in His Kingdom for eternity. He indicates how we are in "act 5" of this story, and how we should use Scripture as our guide for faith and practice to live the Christian message in the 21st century.
Recognition that the Scriptures are authoritative because they are the message of the God who has all authority and His Son to whom He gave all authority is expressed and is quite important. It must never be forgotten that the Bible is designed to point to God's truth and is no substitute for God Himself as the authority.
Wright sensibly handles the different roles of tradition, reason, "experience," and scholarship in helping to define, describe, and illuminate our attempts to understand Scripture.
A book very worthy of consideration.
Wright goes through the history of how the Bible was used and interpreted in order to explain how we have reached the current moment. He demonstrates well why there must
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be a delineation between the Old and the New Testaments, and is as critical toward proof-texting conservatism as he is toward free-wheeling liberalism with the text.Wright re-emphasizes how the Scriptures are, at heart, a story-- the story of God's work of salvation as expressed through the creation, fall, Abraham, Patriarchs, Israelites, and Jesus the Messiah, and a foretaste of the ultimate demonstration of God's rule in His Kingdom for eternity. He indicates how we are in "act 5" of this story, and how we should use Scripture as our guide for faith and practice to live the Christian message in the 21st century.
Recognition that the Scriptures are authoritative because they are the message of the God who has all authority and His Son to whom He gave all authority is expressed and is quite important. It must never be forgotten that the Bible is designed to point to God's truth and is no substitute for God Himself as the authority.
Wright sensibly handles the different roles of tradition, reason, "experience," and scholarship in helping to define, describe, and illuminate our attempts to understand Scripture.
A book very worthy of consideration.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lothiriel2003
Beautifully and cogently written -- a timely reminder of how well-meaning Christians can mis-represent and mis-use the Bible when they pull 'proof texts' out of context and then conveniently ignore other, inconvenient passages. The book is an easy read, but addresses some weighty issues. I'll need
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to read it again at least once. Show Less
LibraryThing member nicholasjjordan
I started and finished reading this having begun Dale Martin’s *Sex and the Single Savior,* which takes an anti-foundationalist approach to reading Scripture. Martin provides some great critique to Wright’s focus on historical criticism, especially that at some level Wright’s emphasis is so
Wright indeed gives disappointingly scant attention to both premodern and postmodern readings of Scripture in this book. He also doesn’t address theological readings which are not his own model (Creation Fall Israel Jesus Church). Part of this has to do with the relatively narrow and non-exhaustive scope of Wright’s book, but I still wish he had treated those subjects more thoroughly.
What still brings this up to a 4-5 star book after those critiques is 1) that Wright is writing as a pastor to the Church, and this pastoral emphasis shapes every page and 2) the conversation about sources of authority in the church through the framework readers of Hooker and Wesley have given them (Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience).
As a United Methodist pastor turning to Wright while United Methodism appears to be flying toward schism, his writing about how these sources of authority interact is just terrific. He is especially helpful in speaking about how for Hooker and Wesley (and most of the Christian Tradition) reason is a particular kind of reason—not just the ability to think rationally, but reasoning within the Church, with its Scripture. Reason is thus a traditioned form of theological reasoning with the Scriptures. Experience, meanwhile, insists Wright, is no source of authority at all but rather the end of authority, if we take “experience” to mean that my individual experience determines my theology, rather than that experience is an important shaper and affirmer of our theology from other sources of primary authority.
Five stars not because it’s perfect but because it helps me think and understand and speak better of Scripture, theology, and God to the people of God.
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strong that it raises the question of how anyone read the Bible well and faithfully in the past, before the historical-critical method existed.Wright indeed gives disappointingly scant attention to both premodern and postmodern readings of Scripture in this book. He also doesn’t address theological readings which are not his own model (Creation Fall Israel Jesus Church). Part of this has to do with the relatively narrow and non-exhaustive scope of Wright’s book, but I still wish he had treated those subjects more thoroughly.
What still brings this up to a 4-5 star book after those critiques is 1) that Wright is writing as a pastor to the Church, and this pastoral emphasis shapes every page and 2) the conversation about sources of authority in the church through the framework readers of Hooker and Wesley have given them (Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience).
As a United Methodist pastor turning to Wright while United Methodism appears to be flying toward schism, his writing about how these sources of authority interact is just terrific. He is especially helpful in speaking about how for Hooker and Wesley (and most of the Christian Tradition) reason is a particular kind of reason—not just the ability to think rationally, but reasoning within the Church, with its Scripture. Reason is thus a traditioned form of theological reasoning with the Scriptures. Experience, meanwhile, insists Wright, is no source of authority at all but rather the end of authority, if we take “experience” to mean that my individual experience determines my theology, rather than that experience is an important shaper and affirmer of our theology from other sources of primary authority.
Five stars not because it’s perfect but because it helps me think and understand and speak better of Scripture, theology, and God to the people of God.
Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
2005-11-22
Physical description
xv, 107 p.; 20 cm
ISBN
9780281057221
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