Customer Reviews

Christ and the Bible

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Did God only inspire the faith and ethics of the Scriptures, or is all of it true? What about difficult passages? And how did we get the Bible we have today in its present form?

Wenham does a great job, beginning with a good look at how Jesus himself regarded the Scriptures of His own day, of showing how God guided the whole process of forming and preserving the written Scriptures upon which Christianity is built.

It gets a little technical in places, but is written for the general reader; the few places that were too difficult or detailed I just skimmed over.

The Bible has never, least of all now, fit the standards of the world; it consistently gives a clear call to come out from the world's way of living and follow Christ. So it is of vital importance to know if we can trust it. Wenham does a masterful job of showing that we can.

Anglican theologian John Wenham seeks to place the doctrine of inerrancy on a sound theological footing; namely, not by grounding it first on empirical investigation, but on Jesus Christ himself. Wenham's theory is rooted in a concern that the contemporary church has lost its confidence in Scripture due to an over-reliance on human reason and logic as the foundation of the doctrine of inerrancy. Wenham seeks in this book to uproot this doctrine from the malnourished soil of Enlightment humanism and to replant it in the rich loam of Christ's person and teaching. The only exception to this rule is the final chapter, a tightly-written defense of the Bible's textual integrity and, in particular, that of the Byzantine text-form. As well-constructed as this chapter is, it feels a bit out of place as the subject matter demands a scientifically empirical approach and cannot be resolved by appeals to the teaching and person of Jesus.

Wenham's prose is clear enough, but packed so densely that it requires careful and deliberate reading. This is certainly not a weakness, but the reader should recognize this before plunging in. Wenham argues his case well, but presupposing the reality of Christian experience as a prerequisite for Christian doctrine (p. 14) is only likely to convince the convinced. In that sense, this is a book best-suited to stimulate and encourage those already firmly established in the orthodox Christian tradition. Those outside the church, or Christians seeking a justification of faith that transcends experiential validation, will likely be disappointed.

AMAZING! This Bro. pulls no punches. What an insightful look at our Lord and His "Bible". I would love to see a list of this author's work!