Scripture and the Authority of God

Scripture and the Authority of God
N. T. Wright (Bishop of Durham)
SPCK
ISBN 0-281-05722-2

The back cover starts “What sort of 'authority' does the Bible have? What does it mean for an ancient, complicated and sometimes strange book to be 'authoritative' in the life of the church or individual Christians?” If you don't have a ready answer for the question and would like one, the I suggest you read on. I read it, not because of the back cover, but because it is a set book in my training course. If it hadn't been I might have missed out on a stimulating and thought provoking book. Looking at Scripture in our own time and throughout Christian history, and the way that various different movements have dealt with it, in particular for me the discussion on the enlightenment was most interesting. Some of the other interesting questions answered are What is tradition? What does literal reading really mean? What is the place of 'reason'? What is the place of experience?

Bishop Wright also deals with the misreadings briefly, go through the list and pick the top five that apply to you.

At 107 pages this is very much an introduction to the main topic, and there are plenty of references if you want to dig deeper. My only criticism is that some of the chapters are rather too compressed, and I had to read them very carefully to make sure that I was getting the meaning.