The Last Word
26 January 2006 by Gil
For those of you who found the conversation on the authority of Scripture interesting, N.T. Wright’s The Last Word may be worth a look. I haven’t read it but I have a feeling I should. I think that a good chunk of the article I referred to a couple of days ago may be in here. I am still pondering (Dale & Jerry) some of the questions about an ‘open canon’ so we’ll see if Wright has any thoughts on that. I like his attempt to take the Bible seriously while challenging some of the evangelical assumptions about it. I especially like his idea that many evangelicals have too low a view of Scripture because they are reading as if it were the kind of book that they wished they had rather than the one they have.
As far as I can tell our library has ordered this one but who knows when it will arrive. I’m encouraged by the conversation on this one. This seems to be an issue that matters to a lot of people. That’s a good thing I think.
Well, I just finished this book and I can highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in more profitable ways of reading, and understanding the nature of Scripture. He doesn’t really address anything like an open canon - he is pretty much just making the case for his “five act” sort of view of history. It definitly does open up doors to looking at authority in new ways though…
I like your comment Gil: “many evangelicals have too low a view of Scripture because they are reading as if it were the kind of book that they wished they had rather than the one they have.”
Wright demonstrates how true this is. There are many things I could say about this book, but I was especially challenged (and Dale, I suspect this will ring painfully true for you in your involvement in the Coaldale church) by his charge that many evangelical churches use the Bible to serve their own agendas, rather than allowing a constant engagement with it (even the nasty bits) to change and form the life of the church.
Speaking about the the importance of scripture to the worship of the church Wright says the following:
“To reduce this to one lesson, or to a short reading simply as a prelude to the sermon (and perhaps accompanied with half an hour or more or ‘worship songs’), is already to damage or even deconstruct this event, and potentially to reduce the power and meaning of scripture, instruction, or exhortation… There has been a tendency in some quarters to prune the length of readings - and to use that as an excuse for cutting out parts which might not serve as the kind of AURAL WALLPAPER (!) people are used to, but might instead shock them into listening with alarmed attention.”
That sounds uncomfortably familiar to one who has sat through many such services…
You know Rayn one of the things that I will advocate coming out of this discussion is more scripture reading in our gatherings. Dale Dirksen said, “It’s amazing how we adamantly state our position as Biblically based churches and the Scripture rarely get read publically.
If the Bible is medicine we need to take it in alrge dosage format…
good insight!