I have excerpted a portion on his views on the authority of Scripture. I am a big fan of this man and his writings.
… I’ve been trying to stress that the risen Jesus does not say to the disciples, “All authority on heaven and earth is given to the books you chaps are going to go off and write.” He says, “All authority on heaven and earth is given to Me.” So that if we say that Scripture is authoritative, what we must actually mean is that the authority which is vested in Christ alone is mediated through Scripture.
That’s a more complicated thing than simply having a book on the shelf, full of right answers that you can go and look up. It’s more a way of saying that when we read Scripture and determine to live under it, we are actually saying we want to live under the sovereign lordship of Jesus mediated through this book.
But no, the authority of Jesus Christ is there to transform and heal and save the world, to make the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. So the question then is, how does the authority of Scripture serve that purpose?. And that’s actually much more interesting than simply using Scripture to settle or raise indeed doctrinal disputes within the church.
Thanks to Jason A for the notice on his blog: Subverting Mediocrity
Posts
2 comments:
So are we in line at my church when we raise the bible over our heads and say, "I believe the bible is God's word, AUTHORITATIVE, relevant, infallible, inerrant, and by God's grace I will apply it to my life today?" We say something close to this before each sermon. It was kind of weird at first.
Yeah, that's ok. We just need to be sure that the focus of our faith is not on the Bible but on Jesus and I think that is what Wright is saying. Too many of us speak without realizing that we sound like we are worshipping the Bible. The Bible points us to Christ and informs us in our relationship with Him and with each other as the words of Jesus (in the Bible) teach us how to live.
Post a Comment