Drill Sergeant
I’m reading an essay (How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?) by the British theologian N.T. Wright. I’m not familiar with the range of his work or where he fits into the larger theological spectrum, but I can appreciate his thought provoking points.
Let me ruin the suspense right away and say that Wright’s argument concludes that evangelicals actually give too little weight to Scripture—this isn’t a thought that is intuitive to me given my experience and insider knowledge of an evangelical’s approach to the Bible (those last 5 words sound like some sort of self-help manual). It’s comforting to know that he’s affirming the “authority” of scripture—it’s intriguing to know that he’s re-thinking the definition of “authority.”
But much of what we call the Bible—the Old and New Testaments—is not a rule book; it is narrative. That raises a further question: 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”?
More as I read more.
