Customer Reviews

God's Holy Fire: The Nature and Function of the Scripture

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This is an amazing book written by those who are trying to foster faith AND understanding. That said it is not for the Biblicist or anyone with a narrow, flat view of the Bible -like the previous commentator who says he is "a member of the churches of Christ" instead of the "Churches of Christ". That commentator was obviously pejorative and possibly had a chip on his shoulder. He also does not understand Jesus and the evangelists' use of the prophets or Paul's use of Torah. It is precisely this arrogance and vanity the authors are trying to avoid and give an honest depiction of the tensions that exist in the Bible AND they strive to show the word is still alive, vibrant and relevant. God's Holy Fire. This is a great work and is an excellent contribution to the series. It also includes study questions at the end of every chapter which are great places to start when reading this book in a book club or house church (-which I recommend doing for all of them in the series).

So if you really want to go "back to the Bible" but want a fair treatment that is going to challenge your preconceived ideas taught from your well-meaning Sunday School teacher from when you were in grade school then you need to get this book. It is worth much more than $15 and could light the fire in you to really study scripture.

This book does a wonderful job of making much of mainstream scholarship on the nature of the biblical texts available for a Church of Christ readership. In many church Bible classes, it is typical for the class to be a verse-by-verse study of favorite biblical books done in a yearly cycle. If not supplemented by simplistic or shallow materials, the exposition of texts often comes from the think-so's of the preacher or members that have been informed only by their own reading of the biblical texts or warmed-over comments from previous classes on the subject.

The Scholars who wrote God's Holy Fire make us familiar with insights for understanding the texts that have come from the best of interpreters past and present. They tell us how the genre of literature the biblical authors employed effects their meaning and other considerations for recovering the author's and God's intended meanings. This includes the blossoming science of biblical criticism that has flourished in the past couple of centuries, unexplored by many church-goers. I could have wished that the chapter covering biblical inspiration would have been more in-depth and helpful. The challenges posed by newer methods of reading the Bible require equally sophisticated models for understanding the inspiration and authority of Scripture. One would think that responsible scholarship would not want to raise to the common, non-intellectual church-goer interpretive problems without a more adequate proposal for working through them.