Holy Scripture, theology, and life

The Bible is not a collection of timeless principles offering a gentle thought for the day. It is not a resource for our self-improvement. Rather, it is a dramatic story that unfolds from promise to fulfillment, with Christ at the center. Its focus is God and his action. God is not a supporting actor in our drama; it is the other way around. God does not exist to make sure that we are happy and fulfilled. Rather, we exist to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life, 26

Events stand open to multiple perspectives. The meaning or sense of an event lies in the ability of the onlooker to gather the appropriate data and evaluate it from a certain vantage point. In narrative texts, however, readers are given a privileged perspective on an event. They have the advantage of the author’s guidance and perspective on the event… For the evangelical the privileged perspective of the reader does not so much rest in the fact that one has only the perspective of the author to go on. That would be only making a virtue of necessity. Rather, it lies more importantly in the theological fact that the text, which gives the privileged perspective, is inspired.

John Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative, 22

It requires little imagination to hear a New Testament scholar say, “Good heavens, Piper totally ignores two hundred years of critical quests for the historical Jesus!” I would understand the response. It isn’t quite right, however. “Ignores” is not the right word. It would be more accurate to say that I estimate most of the fruit of those quests to be unreliable and unusable to accomplish what Jesus aims to accomplish in the world…

The conviction was growing in me that life is too short and the church is too precious for a minister of the Word to spend his life trying to recreate a conjectured Jesus. There was work to be done–very hard work–to see what is really there in the God-given portrayal of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels.

John Piper, What Jesus Demands from the World, 29, 32

Nevertheless, my whole energy of interpreting has been expended in an endeavor to see through and beyond history into the spirit of the Bible, which is the Eternal Spirit. What was once of grave importance, is so still. What is to-day of grave importance–and not merely crotchety and incidental–stands in direct connexion with that ancient gravity. If we rightly understand ourselves, our problems are the problems of Paul; and if we be enlightened by the brightness of his answers, those answers must be ours.

Karl Barth, Preface to the First Edition of The Epistle to the Romans, 1

The Bible is both the authoritative version of the drama of redemption and the authoritative script for the church’s ongoing life. As a collection of authoritative stage directions for performing the Christian way of life in the truth, the script calls not only for responsive reading but for responsive action and embodiment. The script demands to be played out; the literary forms of Scripture call for forms of life. Sola scriptura is ultimately the name of a practice to be performed by the church in the power of the Spirit.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 115

“Christian theists seek transforming engagement with the active word of God. To this end we not only seek to listen to the biblical text with openness and expectancy, but we also seek to understand at ever deeper levels what it is to interpret Scripture, to reflect both upon Scripture and on our own processes of engaging with it, and to be transformed by the formative impact of Scripture in thought, life, and identity.”

Anthony C. Thiselton, Reading Luke, 17.

“Scripture serves as authority for theology, then, because it is caught up in the triune economy of communicative action: locution, illocution, and perlocution. The ultimate authority for Christian theology is the triune God speaking in the Scriptures.“

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 67.

“… since the world truly rendered by combining biblical narratives into one was indeed the one and only real world, it must in principle embrace the experience of any present age and reader. Not only was it possible for him, it was also his duty to fit himself into that world in which he was in any case a member… He was to see his disposition, his actions and passions, the shape of his own life as well as that of his era’s events as figures of that storied world.”

Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 3.

“If you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. if what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information of you have exercised only your memory. You have not been enlightened. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.”

Mortimer J. Adler, How To Read A Book, 11.

“… we are able to embrace the role of Model Reader the more easily because (1) so much of our humanity is shared with the world within which this text found its origins; and (2) the text itself, when read closely and with respect for its difference, as in intercultural exchange more generally, unveils much of its own socio-cultural horizons. More challenging is our developing the habits of life that make us receptive to the vision of God, God’s character and God’s project, textualized in and broadcast through these pages.

The Model Reader… must come to the text with a disposition of openness to a reordering of the world, repentance for attitudes of defiance of the grace of God’s self-revelation and a conversion of the imagination.”

Joel B. Green, Learning Theological Interpretation from Luke, 61.

“Readers and interpreters of the Bible are not simply passive observers but addressees. The act of reading the Bible draws the reader into the theo-dramatic action and solicits a response.”

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 67