With the new Kindle Lending Library, you can borrow one book from Amazon per month if you are a Amazon Prime Member.
I have decided that I am going to experiment with books that I might not otherwise read. But I am also going to take advantage of the 1 book per month rule and if I have not finished it the book is going back to Amazon.
So I returned The Origin of the Bible at the end of December even though I only read about a quarter of the book. I often spend two or three weeks reading a book because I read between 5 and 7 books at a time. I am going to try to read a few less books at once, but that is just part of my reading style.
I just did not get into this book. I was looking for a traditional defense of the theology of scripture. This book does that, but I was unconvinced. I am convinced that scripture is important and that we as Christians need to be seeped in it. But I think debate over the term inerrency is missing the point. NT Wright’s book on scripture was right, scripture has authority because God has authority, and it is his word.
Much of the debate of the last half century seems to be focused on scripture as authoritative apart from God. That minimizes both the role of the Holy Spirit in helping us to interpret scripture and how much we bring our own culture into the reading process. Carl Henry’s chapter in particular seemed to be focused on precisely this point.
This book also seems to embrace several of the issues that Christian Smith was writing about when he described ‘Biblicists’.
Reading reviews, I probably quit too early. There were several people that suggested the essays at the end were better than the ones at the beginning. But I did not get to the end to find out.
Purchase Links: Kindle Edition