My Last Word

As Erik asked in the comments of the last post, I suppose I should express my opinions on this book. If you recall from the first post in this series, my goal was not just to talk about the book, but to actually develop my understanding of the role and function of Scripture in the life of the church today. How are we to understand words like inerrancy, infallibility, authoritative, inspiration, etc.? Are these modern creations and categories that would not even make sense to the original writers?

What I appreciated about Wright's book, like most everything he writes, is the balanced approach that he takes toward the questions. He makes it his goal to step away from the heated controversy in order to approach Scripture in meaningful ways, without getting caught up in minutia. I appreciated the historical look at the function and role of Scripture throughout church history. I also appreciated his continual emphasis upon the fact that any authority that Scripture possesses is God's authority working through Scripture which results in kingdom mission being fulfilled. This missional outlook forces us to stop treating the Bible like a theological answer book and more like a living, active, life-giving channel for God to speak into the church. The final chapter in this book with the description of the five acts was especially helpful.

There were two places that I struggled a bit with Wright. First, as an Anglican bishop, Wright's high church perspective definitely seeps into much of what he writes. This is not such a big deal as it isn't difficult to contextualize his ideas into a low church mindset. Second, and somewhat surprising to me, Wright came down particularly hard on postmodern approaches to Scripture. He allowed that postmodern thinking has been mildly corrective by highlighting other ways that Scripture can be read, but he claims that the end result has been negative because the end result is nihilistic and relativistic. I think that he has not given enough credence to the necessary corrective to modern approaches to Scripture (both fundamentalist and liberal) and has not given postmodern perspectives enough of a chance to develop.

Apart from those two critiques, the book is fantastic. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who is wrestling with the issues of how to approach Scripture. I would also strongly recommend the article that I linked to in the last post.