Opening Prayer:
O God, we ask you to meet us in the pages of scripture. Teach us how to understand and live by your word. Instruct us that we might act as vital participants in your ongoing story. Amen.
Points to Ponder:
What the Bible DOES: “Unfortunately, battle over the Bible have gotten in the way of people using the Bible for all that its worth, and have kept people from really integrating their reading of the Bible with every other aspect of their Christian life.”
Becoming Agents: “It’s about becoming agents of God’s new world – workers for justice, explorers of spirituality, makers and menders of relationships, creators of beauty. If God does indeed speak through scripture, he speaks in order to commission us for tasks like these.”
The Biblical Text: “It needs to be stressed that our evidence for the text of the New Testament is in a completely different league than our evidence for every single other book from the ancient world”.
Inspired Human Writers: “When we think about the overlap of heaven and earth, we see that the personal characteristics of the individual writers and the inspiration, the breathing of God’s Holy Spirit, were designed not be an either/or, so that it’s EITHER a human book or a divine book, but to be a both/and. The joy of biblical study for me is, not least, that when I’m in touch most with the individual ideas and character of particular authors, then I’m aware of the presence of God with that person and the presence of that same God with me”.
For Reflection & Discussion
1. Differing approaches to the Bible can yield nearly opposite conclusions, especially concerning vexing moral issues.
• What factors shape a person’s understanding of the Bible?
• Might two people of equal integrity come to very different conclusions about the application of the Bible to a particular issue? Why?
• Is one interpretation of scripture as good as another? What controls ought to govern out interpretation of scripture?
• Does anything about Bishop Wright’s approach help you to deal with the fact that Christians sometimes disagree about the Bible?
2. Can you think of examples of the Bible’s power to change lives?
