The issue of the authority of the Bible is urgent and perennial. How can Scripture be read with integrity and so as not to undermine its authority? Challenging the traditional meaning of Scripture is not easy, even in the face of issues that call into question those traditional interpretations. Brueggemann writes on six facets of biblical interpretation and writes that the Bible, as the live word of the living God, will not submit to the accounts we prefer to give of it. The Bible’s inherent, central evangelical proclamation has greater and more permanent authority than our inescapably provisional interpretations. Placher notes that taking the Bible most seriously means struggling to understand its meaning as well as affirming its truth. Blount distinguishes what some may claim as a “last word,” which is necessarily a dead word, from the living word that is God’s word to us today. Westminster John Knox Press.
