Yesterday I introduced a paper by NT Wright called “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?” (By the way, this lecture was delivered in 1989 at Dallas Theological Seminary). Today, I want to summarize his conclusions.

After showing that the commonly taught methods of Bible study actually undermined the inspiration and authority of Scripture, Wright argues that since the Bible is a narrative, we must read it as a narrative. And as we read, we must see ourselves as part of the ongoing narrative as well. In other words, our part in the story is to continue the narrative. Our purpose in reading Scripture is to learn what has happened before, so we can continue the story in a similar way, with similar themes.

He likens it to a five-act Shakespearean play in which we are the actors, but we only have scripts for the first four acts. After reading, studying, and acting out the first four acts, learning the themes, plot struture, and knowing what has gone before, we we are to improvise the fifth act.

People who try to go back and do what was done before (like churches to try to return to the “early church days”), are like actors who, when they get to the end of act 4 in they play, rather than start in on improvising act 5, decide that the best thing to do is just repeat act 4.

Wright puts it this way:

…The five acts [are] as follows: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus. [The book of Acts and the Epistles] would then form the first scene of the fifth act, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Cor 15, parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end. …[This] would of course require sensitivity of a high order to the whole nature of the story and to the ways in which it would be (of course) inappropriate simply to repeat verbatim passages from earlier sections.

Reading the Bible this way does not require extensive training or knowledge of hermeneutical rules or Bible study methods so that the “timeless truths” can be extracted and sytemmatized. Reading the Bible as a story is available for anybody and everybody, and as a way to see what part in the ongoing narrative they can perform.

In this way, Bible reading becomes thrilling, rather than scary and confining, because you are afraid of making a wrong step.

The little boxes in which you put people and keep them under control are called coffins. We read Scripture not in order to avoid life and growth. God forgive us that we have done that in some of our traditions. Nor do we read Scripture in order to avoid thought and action, or to be crushed, or squeezed, or confined into a de-humanizing shape, but in order to die and rise again in our own minds.

So try it! Pick up your Bible, and for now, put away your study notes and guides. Pick it up and read it as a story. Forget that you have read it before and know all the timeless truths that have been extracted from the text. Read it as a story - a story that is ongoing, and in which you play a part. Here is what Wright says in conclusion:

So what am I saying? I am saying that we mustn’t belittle Scripture by bringing the world’s models of authority into it. We must let Scripture be itself, and that is a hard task. Scripture contains many things that I don’t know, and that you don’t know; many things that we are waiting to discover; passages that are lying dormant waiting for us to dig them out. Awaken them.

…We must determine – corporately as well as individually – to become in a true sense, people of the book. …People who are being remade, judged and remolded by the Spirit through Scripture. It seems to me that evangelical tradition has often become a bondage to a sort of lip-service Scripture principle even while debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Instead, I suggest that our task is to seize this privilege with both hands, and use it to the glory of God and the redemption of the world.

For many months now, I have been developing a new approach to reading and studying the Bible. It’s still in the “theoretical” stage, so I won’t stick my neck out yet by explaining what it is. I’m pretty excited about it though, because it has really helped in my understanding and application of various passages which have troubled me for many years. It drastically simplifies the “rules of Bible study” which few people can grasp and remember. People can get excited about reading Scripture, rather than worried about “reading it wrong.” Furthermore, all the various systems of theology seem to have their own rules for how to understand Scripture, which is not only confusing, but seems to suggest that theologians develop their rules of Bible study based on what they want the Bible to say rather than on some external, literary standard.

In other words, I am developing a Bible reading strategy that truly puts the Bible back into the hands of the people. Despite claims to the contrary, modern seminaries, scholars, and pastors have effectively set themselves up as the gatekeepers of biblical information. If you really want to know what the Bible means, you have to go to them. I think this is terribly wrong, and am working on a way to reverse this trend.

So it was with great excitement and interest that I recently read an essay by N. T. Wright called “How Can The Bible Be Authoritative?” I believe Wright is wrong with his “New Perspective on Paul” idea, but I think he is right on target with this essay and helped confirm some of what I have been thinking about a new (or old) approach to reading the Bible. Here are some quotes from his essay:

After reviewing the various popular views on biblical authority, he says,

When people in the church talk about authority they are very often talking about controlling people or situations. They want to make sure that everything is regulated properly, that the church does not go off the rails doctrinally or ethically, that correct ideas and practices are upheld and transmitted to the next generation. …[But] is that really what the Bible is for? Is it there to control the church? Is it there simply to look up the correct answers to questions that we, for some reason, already know?

Have you noticed this? Generally, “the authority of Scripture” is brought up in cases where leaders or teachers want to control people who are under their own personal authority, and bring them back in line with what they believe are the proper beliefs and/or proper behavior, but which generally originated, not from careful study of Scripture, but from their preconceived theology or foundational culture.

Wright continues:

But much of what we call the Bible – the Old and New Testaments – is not a rule book; it is narrative. …How can an ancient narrative text be authoritative? How, for instance, can the book of Judges, or the book of Acts, be authoritative? It is one thing to go to your commanding officer first thing in the morning and have a string of commands barked at you. But what would you do if, instead, he began “Once upon a time…”?

This is the fundamental problem in Bible study. How is a story authoritative? Wright explains three different ways that this question has typically been answered. I wish I could review all three for you, but I don’t have the space. Suffice it to say, in my Bible college and seminary training, I learned to use all three as ”proper Bible study” methodology. And I always had a feeling that something was a bit askew with such methods. Wright basically shows that such methods make the results of Bible study authoritative, rather than the maintaining the Bible itself as authoritative. So in such cases, it is not really the Bible that is authoritative, but something else. Here is how he puts it:

The problem with all such solutions as to how to use the Bible is that they belittle the Bible and exalt something else. Basically they imply that God has, after all, given us the wrong sort of book and it is our job to turn it into the right sort of book by engaging in these hermeneutical moves, translation procedures or whatever.

This is what I was taught! Though never said in such a way, the basic view of “Bible study methods” is that the Bible cannot be taken as authoritative “as it is.” To truly apply it authoritatively, we must first use tools, rules, principles, and methods to boil it down, cut it up, slice, dice, flavor, rearrange, and systematize it. Only then, when we have our “timeless truth” can we apply the Bible authoritatively. I agree with Wright: This is a low view of inspiration, and it implies that God gave us the wrong kind of book.

What kind of book is the Bible? How should we read it? How can it be read authoritatively? Well, this post is already way too long, so I will tell you tomorrow what Wright suggests. Or, if you just can’t wait, you can go read it for yourself at the link I gave you above.