In this short book, N.T. Wright outlines a visionary model dealing with the term “the authority of Scripture,” and its role within the Church, a role he seems convinced the Bible is not being allowed to properly play. The implicit claim seems to be that the so-called “Bible wars,” in which conservatives and liberals resort to name-calling and “guilt by association” tactics rather than relying properly on charitable dialogue, unpacking the shorthand “authority of Scripture” to examine what that concept really means, have inhibited a view of the Bible in all its richness. He writes,
Shorthands…are useful in the same way that suitcases are. They enable us to pick up lots of complicated things and carry them around all together. But we should never forget that the point of doing so…is that what has been packed away can then be unpacked and put to use in the new location. Too much debate about Scriptural authority has had the form of people hitting one another with locked suitcases. It is time to unpack the shorthand doctrines, to lay them out and inspect them. (pg. 24-25)
The term “locked suitcases” is particularly apt, and plays implicitly on the unwillingness of many Christians to think deeply about what is meant by the “authority of Scripture.” The threat of liberal Christianity, in the mind of the Evangelical, is so great that the absolute inerrancy of the Bible must be asserted for Christianity to survive in any meaningful capacity. On the other side of the fence, the parts of the Bible that seem incompatible with postmodern concepts of justice, and the narrow dogmatism that those passages occasionally engender in the more conservative members of the faith lead some to reject the usefulness of the entire Bible in guiding the Christian to a moral life.
Wright does not explicitly tackle issues of inerrancy, which seems a wise decision in a book that seeks to transcend the Bible wars: assertions of total inerrancy alienate “non-fundamentalists,” while anything but such assertions makes enemies of conservatives. Instead he undertakes a detailed “unpacking” of the term “authority of Scripture” and, in a fascinating and gripping chapter, outlines the attitudes towards the Bible of the Church historically, and attempts to point out “where we went wrong.” For Wright, narrative is the key concept, and the Bible, for him, is predominantly a narrative of human history, God’s role in it, and where we hope to end up. As a first step, he points out that a proper understanding of the Bible’s authority is as a vessel through which God’s authority is exercised: “scripture itself points – authoritatively…away from itself and to the fact that final and true authority belongs to God himself, now delegated to Jesus Christ. It is Jesus, according to John 8:39-40, who speaks the truth which he has heard from God” (24). The Bible, then, is not a list of rules or a reference book of true doctrines (though Wright does not ignore that it contains both), but an authoritative story, which must be understood in its proper historical and cultural context and recognized for the rich narrative that it is before its authority can be properly recognized in the Church. This is a vast over-simplification of a much richer book that cannot but compel one to agree with the endorsement of it given by Open Source Theology: “anyone interested in the discussion on the authority of Christian Scripture should read and discuss this book.” Wright’s prose is lively and compelling, and the clarity of insight secures Wright’s place as one of Christianity’s most essential voices. Here we have a unique diagnosis of the problem, and the most helpful prescription yet for restoring vibrant faith in effective churches, based on a correct understanding of the authority and role of the Bible. In line with neither John MacArthur nor John Shelby Spong, Wright’s clear vision should strike readers as the most obvious and effective way forward, freeing us of the strict literalist dogmatism of the one, and the “toothless Christianity” of the other. This is truly an essential book.
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