The following provides a summary of six books written by evangelical and/or ex-evangelical authors regarding the bible (how to read it well – what interpretive pitfalls await those who read it a certain way, etc.). I also provide a summary of the strengths that each book brings to the discussion. These books are written on the popular level.
Inspired – by Rachel Held Evans
Of all of her books, this is one of my favorites. Many of her changing views of the bible mirror those of mine. She begins the book by describing the difficulties many people find when encountering the “origin stories” in the beginning of the bible. From there she winds her way through the various genres of the bible addressing how she has faced the inevitable conundrums when approaching an ancient text. She finishes with an epilogue that details her perspective on the nature and importance of story in our individual and collective lives. In particular, she draws our attention to the fact that most of the bible is comprised of “story,” and though we “may wish for answers” to our direct questions, “God rarely gives us answers. Instead, God gathers us up into soft familiar arms and says ‘Let me tell you a story’” [pg. 221].
In my opinion, the greatest strength in this book lies in Rachel Held Evans’ wonderful ability to weave engaging stories to illustrate her point. She often does this while sliding into a technical description of a theological point or presenting an ancient language nuance that sits so well within the story she tells. The result is a very pleasant reading experience from beginning to end.
The Bible Tells Me So – by Peter Enns:
In this wonderful book by biblical scholar Peter Enns, he lays out the choices that Christians need to make when reading an ancient text such as the bible. Enns’ major point throughout is that we should “let the Bible be the Bible, on its own terms” rather than “defending our version of it” (page 244) . In my opinion, the best parts of this book center around the stories Enns recounts of the major shifts over time that he was forced to make in his perspective on the biblical texts. He also takes us on a tour of some of the bible’s many and diverse stories and delivers helpful comments on what are often perceived as “problem” texts in the bible. After spending considerable time on the Hebrew scripture portions of the Christian bible, he then focusses on Jesus and how Jesus engages with scripture. Finally, he concludes with a brief section on the writings attributed to Paul and how they relate to the rest of the bible (particularly the Mosaic Law). I believe the strength of this book is Enns’ helpful encouragement to read the bible with less anxiety and more with a sense that the bible meets us in the midst of our messy lives. In meeting us there, it reflects much of our own mess in the stories it tells.
How the Bible Actually Works – by Peter Enns:
This other book by Peter Enns provides a wonderful companion to his previous books on the bible. In my opinion, this one is the most helpful of the 3 popular levels books that he’s written so far on the bible. In this book he seeks to “explore how [he] think[s] God intended the bible to be used and so to find deeper spiritual benefit in its pages” (page 5). Throughout, he stresses the fact that the bible is “ancient, ambiguous, and diverse,” and these characteristics have profound effects on how we need to read it if we are to glean the benefits that make for healthy development in our spiritual lives. He contends that “[r}ather than providing us with information to be downloaded, the bible holds out for us an invitation to join an ancient, well-traveled, sacred quest to know God, the world we live in, and our place in it” (page 10). He maintains that the biblical idea shaping everything about this quest is the notion of “wisdom.” This centrality of wisdom is spread throughout the bible itself in how the biblical writers themselves react to changing circumstances as they reframe their own engagement with earlier texts in the bible. Enns makes the point that “Christians, just like their Jewish ancestors, have always been reimagining God, adapting the sacred past to discern God’s presence here and now” (page 271). This, for Enns, is the “challenge of wisdom” (page 275).
The Blue Parakeet – by Scot McKnight
In this book by Scot McKnight, he sets out to describe how we tend to make assumptions when we read the bible and are often blind to those assumptions. He offers suggestions for how we can become aware of those assumptions. Once we become aware of those assumptions, he shows how to approach difficult and/or contentious passages and stories we find when reading scripture (what he calls Blue Parakeet passages – those that are different, difficult, and pose hard questions). He proposes three primary perspectives to guide our reading of the bible: being attentive to the nature of the text as a story, adopting a posture of listening, and attempting to read with discernment. In my opinion, the strength of this book centers on McKnight’s organized presentation and concise writing style.
What is the Bible – by Rob Bell
This book by Rob Bell seeks to show what his subtitle announces – “How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything.” He does this by taking his readers though a whirlwind tour of many stories withing the bible, and providing reading strategies for those stories that help shape his perspective of how those stories and the grand narrative arch of the bible can transform our view of the world. Two questions serve a guides to him when reading the bible: “Why did people write this down in the first place”, and “Why did this passage endure.” From these questions we can then seek answers to further questions that often inevitably rise up such as: “What do [these stories] say about what it means to be human” and “How do these stories help us to better understand our stories,” as well as a whole slew of others that he provides at the end of the book (pages 300 – 305). As with most of Bell’s writing, the questions he raises throughout provide his reader with very helpful onramps to pathways for new thinking.
The Last Word – by N.T Wright
In this book, New Testament scholar N. T. Wright offers his views on the place of the bible within the life of the church. In delivering his view he seeks to answer three underlying questions: “1 – In what sense is the Bible authoritative…2 – How can the Bible be appropriately understood and interpreted…3 – How can its authority…be brought to bear on the church itself let alone the world” (page 19). In using the term authoritative, he suggests that it really functions as “shorthand for the authority of the Triune God exercised somehow through scripture” (page 23). Wright believes that this view of the bible yields a “picture of God’s sovereign and saving plan for the entire cosmos, dramatically inaugurated through Jesus himself and now to be implemented through the Spirit-led life of the church precisely as the scripture-reading community” (pg. 114). That community will read the bible as though they are living into the fifth act of a five-act play. The first four acts consist of “creation, fall, Israel, [and] Jesus” (pg. 121). Living in the fifth act (the church” is to “presuppose” the other acts as part of our current story, but to then live into our current story by being guided by a sense of continuity with the previous acts as “God is at work through scripture (in other words through the Spirit who is at work as people read, study, teach and preach scripture) to energize, enable and direct the ongoing mission of the church, genuinely anticipating thereby the time when all things will be made new in Christ” (pg. 138). One of the major strengths of Wright’s treatment of this subject is his focus on the twin or mirror errors or “misreading” from both the left and right that readers make when engaging the bible. These insights spring from his critique of the Enlightenment and his related critique of the ways that both modern and post-modern thinking have contributed to the church’s various problems when reading scripture.
Todd Rivetti 