Saving the Bible From Ourselves Learning to Read and Live the Bible Well Book Review
The back comprehend of Glenn Paauw'sSaving the Bible from Ourselves: Learning to Read and Alive the Bible Well asks in all caps, "DOES THE BIBLE Demand TO Exist SAVED?" As reflected in the rather audacious title, the author's reply to this question is yes.
Over the centuries, and especially in recent years, the church building has chaotic Scripture with capacity, verses, cross-references, footnotes, written report helps, and all manner of non-inspired materials. This endeavor to assist Bible reading has, Paauw argues, had the negative effect of impoverishing Christians by discouraging immersive reading in large chunks of Scripture at a fourth dimension (especially whole books of the Bible). Fifty-fifty more than, Paauw believes recent generations of Christians take lost sight of how to read the Bible.
Recovering Healthy Reading
Paauw is executive manager of the Biblica Institute for Bible Reading. The brunt of his book is to encourage Christians to engage with the Bible as nosotros were meant to—reading information technology communally (non in isolation) as a historically rooted (not de-historicized) story (not series of platitudes) that calls u.s.a. to participate in its drama (rather than office as passive spectators). Leaning heavily on N. T. Wright, Paauw swivels back and forth between a chapter identifying a fault in our typical approaches to reading Scripture and a chapter offer an culling.
The strategy works well and the cumulative event is a expert reminder of what the Bible is and how Christians unwittingly fail it. We read it piecemeal, chewing on brief nuggets of inspiration but declining to integrate these micro-readings into a macro-reading of the entire sweep of Scripture. Such an impoverished diet cannot sustain true depth of Christian discipleship.
Paauw wishes to reorient Christians to the Bible as it was originally written—namely, equally a collection of books to exist read (or heard) at one time, locating their readers (or hearers) in a groovy redemptive drama culminating in Jesus Christ but continuing downwardly into our own day and beyond. Paauw helps us map ourselves onto homo history as God'south Word gives it to us, recovering the wonder of the Bible and its grand narrative of earthy redemption. This approach usefully reinforces the past two generations' recovery of the bailiwick of biblical theology and a resistance to facile, artificial applications of individual texts to one's ain life.
Along the mode, Paauw rightly addresses not only the content of the Bible but also its formatting by Bible publishers. With all the clutter and additions over the centuries, the most important book in the world is in many instances the hardest one to actually read. Paauw's push button toward simplicity and elegance of presentation is a word in season to the Bible publishing world, a world presently afflicted with the crass proliferation of niche Bibles (17–18).
Imitation Disjunction?
For all this we can exist grateful. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, Paauw'southward reminder could have landed with greater force had he acknowledged and even historic the merits of reading smaller portions of Scripture. The Lord of the Rings is and then masterful and engrossing not simply because of the great story and plotline, simply also because of the individual sentences and particular expressions that make up the large story. Paauw is right to commend reading big portions of the Bible—and doing so mindful that it's a story about our history. Simply who isn't helped by having a few cardinal verses to ponder on a given day, to pore over slowly with the mind? Many of us have found certain specific texts to exist of vital support in a particular crisis moment. And who can deny the profound virtues and blessings of noticing and relishing the very words and sentences of Scripture, one afterward another, in unhurried meditation?
Saving the Bible from Ourselves: Learning to Read and Alive the Bible Well
Saving the Bible from Ourselves: Learning to Read and Alive the Bible Well
Glenn R. Paauw
One, therefore, feels something is being left behind when Paauw writes:
The Scriptures change us because the story they tell is infused with the ability of Jesus and the Spirit, who bring renewal. This is what we should mean when nosotros say that the Give-and-take of God has ability. It'southward not that each little scrap is a kind of magic rune or potent piece of juju. The power is in the drama equally information technology witnesses to Christ and invites us to enter into his journey of new life. (107)
The power of Scripture comes in part, to exist sure, from the story information technology tells; but as and inescapably the power of Scripture comes from the very words and sentences that brand upwardly that story. It's a both/and, non an either/or. How practise nosotros actually, on a given day, experience this power of Jesus and the Spirit in the Scripture? By reading 1 sentence at a time—word past word, phrase by phrase. "Man shall not live by staff of life lone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:iv; cf. two Tim. 3:16–17). 1 case of the value in micro-reading is the Puritans' penchant for taking a single verse and writing a whole volume on information technology.
Perchance a final business organisation lies closer to the book'southward title,Saving the Bible from Ourselves. Is the Bible "save-able" through the means Paauw sets forth? His encouragements to format and read the Bible as a story, in customs, reflecting history, and so on are seasonable reminders. Simply nosotros should remember his suggestions are kindling, not burn down. The renewal and reviving of the church building's reading of the Bible will come not as nosotros do something to the Bible simply as God does something through the Bible. Nosotros can hoist the potent canvas of beautiful Bibles and a more than story-oriented reading arroyo, merely God must give the wind of true transformation. Only and so is the Bible saved from ourselves.
Electric current State of Bible Publishing
Happily, much of what Paauw sees missing in the world of Bible reading and publishing is already being addressed. Paauw himself oversaw the cosmos of Zondervan's The Books of the Bible, which strips out poetry and affiliate numbers and arranges the Bible books according to historical progression. Likewise, Crossway is publishing several clutter-complimentary reader'due south editions of the Bible, including a one-volume Reader's Bible, Reader'south Gospels, and a 6-volume fix of the Bible—all of which seek to nowadays the Scripture in a way that reflects the inherent value and nobility of the contents.
But as helpful as these editions are in getting swept upwardly in the storyline of Scripture, nosotros'll also ever want a "cluttered" Bible on our shelf—retaining the verses and chapters and cross-references and various notes—to help u.s.a. savour the Bible discussion by discussion. More fundamentally, we'll always need to ponder not simply the big story of Scripture but also the very words of God, for "every word of God proves true" (Prov. xxx:5).
Source: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/saving-the-bible-from-ourselves/
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