The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God – Getting Beyond the Bible Wars

Scripture is God’s true story. It not only tells the truth about God, but also renders the true God truly with us. The God thereby rendered is not the product of ancient fertile imaginations, not a projection of the highest and best aspirations of human spiritual striving, not some mythic configuration of the human psyche. This God is the stranger who comes to us and speaks to us Luther’s “external Word.” If not then we would have had absolutely no means of knowing this God. The primary agent of scripture is God; the primary author of scripture is God; the concern of scripture is God. This suggests that our toughest challenge in reading the Bible is not that it is ancient and written in foreign tongues but rather that we live in a narcissistic, self-obsessed culture that has a myriad of ways of deluding us into thinking that we can be gods ourselves.

Proclamation and Theology, William Willimon

Today we begin a study of NT Wright’s book, The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God – Getting Beyond the Bible Wars. NT Wright, Bishop of Durham, England, is one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world. He is definitely someone worth reading, and you can check out the unofficial NT Wright page online. It has a lot of free Wright stuff.

“Writing a book about the Bible,” Wright quips in the preface, “is like building a sand castle in front of the Matterhorn.” That is almost certainly true, but Wright’s The Last Word is one fine little ‘sand castle’ – and is worth our exploring as we continue to discuss the role and nature of the Bible for Christians. We might do well to consider Wright’s next comment: “The best you can hope to do [when building such a ‘sandcastle’] is catch the eye of those who are looking down instead of up, or those who are so familiar with the skyline that they have stopped noticing its peculiar beauty.” While we study about the Bible, let’s not even for a little while stop reading the Bible. That would be a travesty. It is not my intention to take your eyes off the Matterhorn, but rather to consider what it is about the majestic peak that moves us to approach it and blesses us when we do. It is in the reading and in the praying words of scripture that we come to understand God’s way and will for the world and thus for ourselves.

I began this post with a quotation from William Willimon not because it’s the best summary of what the Bible is or how it functions. It’s not. It does not deal with issues of inspiration or anyone's claims of inerrancy. It says nothing about how the Bible functions as authority for the church. It provides nothing for those who wonder how we got the Bible and little for those who wonder why we should believe it. But it does make a couple of enormous claims about the Bible, ones I think the church can ill-afford to forfeit, but which we are, in surprisingly large numbers surrendering, or at least never coming to terms with in our reading, our devotional lives, our community’s mission, and our ethics. I encourage you to return to Willimon’s words (but the Church’s claim from the beginning) as we discuss Wright’s book:

The primary agent of scripture is God; the primary author of scripture is God; the concern of scripture is God.

Continuing with the Preface (I usually skim or skip the Preface of books altogether , but not when the book is NT Wright’s) we find several great questions that Wright believes are crucial for our conversation.

How can what is mostly a narrative text be authoritative? It’s one thing to have commands, instructions on what to do or not do. But when we are dealing with stories, narrative, there tends not to be much explicit "ought, must or should." No direct address or orders. No stated guidelines for living. How does a story function authoritatively?

Wright also asks how we can consider the Bible our authority when Jesus says (in the Bible), “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”? What does it mean to say that “the authority of Jesus is somehow exercised through the Bible”?

That’s a lot to chew on for one night, so I’ll end as Wright does, with this prayer from the Anglican tradition:

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all scripture to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life which thou hast given us in thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.