The Place of Scripture

The central tenent of my sermon this past Sunday was that the cultural crisis facing Western society and the relational/structural/theological crisis facing so many denominations is one of confusion.  Namely, confusion with regard to the locus of authority and confusion with regard to what we believe (about everything – what we believe to be true, what we believe to be the meaning and purpose of life, what we believe a healthy, productive live to look like, what we believe the role and function of government should be, etc.).  I would suggest that the natural consquence stemming from the dual losses of authority and belief is confused practice; resolve the first two issues and a way forward on the latter becomes both possible and more clear.

As a Christian I submit myself to the authority of God’s Word, written.  Now, I don’t always like what I read in Scripture.  I am, at times, personally offended by what I read.  I find my thoughts, my attitudes, my secret (and not so secret) desires, my actions and my attempt to “prove” myself – in any and every way, condemned.  I also, though, find that Scripture reveals to me the person and glory of Jesus Christ and a Story to which I am invited to join.  I find salvation, hope, purpose and meaning in Christ and this Story.

Rightly, and understandably, people asked me this week where they could find more – read more – about the place and role of Scripture, the manner in which Scripture informs our lives and how we might live our lives with a degree of integrity as we seek be shaped by that which we profess to believe.  So, in the midst of many books, a few book rise to the top of my current list on this topic:

Truth & Power: The Place of Scritpure in the Christian Life by J.I. Packer

Is the Bible Intolerant? by Amy Orr-Ewing

Beyond Opinion by Ravi Zacharias

The latter two we carry in our bookstore at St. Andrew’s, Common Grounds.  The Packer book is older and may be out of stock, though you can read it online here.

Here’s a snip from Packer on the matter:

You have heard of the battle for the Bible — who hasn’t? You have read quite a lot about it in the earlier pages of this book. You know what it is about — whether I can be a faithful, obedient, consistent Christian if I let go of the total truthfulness, that is, the inerrancy, of Holy Scripture. You know, I am sure, some of the history that lies behind today’s doubts as to whether we can trust the Bible or not. You know that for more than three hundred years God-shrinkers have been at work in the churches of the Reformation, scaling down our Maker to the measure of the human mind and dissolving the biblical view of him as the Lord who reigns and speaks. You know that in the rationalistic eighteenth century, Kant the fountainhead of most later philosophy, set the example of ignoring, as a matter of method, the possibility that Scripture is God’s instruction to us, and you know that many leaders of Western thought followed in his footsteps like a flock of sheep. You know that in the nineteenth century, dominated as it was by evolutionary ideas, the Bible was regularly downgraded, as reflecting times when religious thought was crude and unreliable in comparison with later notions. You know how scholars have labored to sort out the facts of Old Testament history from the “fancies” of Old Testament narrative, and to find the “real Jesus” amid the supposed New Testament distortions of him. You know how ordinary folk have boldly backed their judgment on all sorts of things against the witness of the written Word. You know that in our disillusioned age people are skeptical of liberal optimism and can no longer believe that everything is getting better and everyone is growing wiser and science tells us all we need to know. But you know, too, that neither biblical scholars nor philosophers nor the great mass of ordinary people have returned to the older confidence in Scripture as the revealed Word of God, true and trustworthy because of its divine source and ability to give us the basic certainties about life and death that we need. This belief has not been reestablished, despite all the efforts of Christians — call them conservatives, evangelicals, fundamentalists, orthodox, as you will, the name does not matter — who have sought to recall the church from worldly doubt to true faith at this point. These facts, which form the background of the battle, must by now be very familiar.

How should we regard this ongoing battle? It is a complex affair, carried on nowadays more by guerrilla tactics than by open frontal engagements. In some locations there continues a not-very-happy domestic debate among professed evangelicals as to whether or not we can keep in step with each other in proclaiming to the world and maintaining in our scholarship and ministerial training that Scripture is all true. My hope is that the fire that has caused the smoke here will prove to have been fueled by nothing more than attempts to avoid certain words (inerrant, error-free and other such), plus experiments by a few scholars who, having tried out in print their ideas about the Bible, will abandon them once they appear nonviable.

Read the rest.