I recently finished reading 3 books on biblical authority ( Bibelsyn och Bibelbruk by biskopsmötet 1964, Bibeltolkningens problematik by Sven Ingebrand and Texter och tolkningar by tryggve Kronholm, all in swedish).

I have since then been exploring the topic also in other spheres of our world like here on the web. I came over a fantastic article by N T Wright, called ; How Can the Bible be Authoritative? I found it through Rob Bells “Velvit Elvis” If you have 16 minutes today and you want to read a short and brilliant piece about the bible, about why and how it has Authority this is what you should read.

Rob Bell writes the following about it:

“The best thing I have ever read about the Bible is a transcript of a lecture given by the British Scholar N. T. Wright called….”( the above article)

Here is a sample;

“Evangelicals and Biblical Authority
It seems to be that evangelicalism has flirted with, and frequently held long-running love affairs with all of these different methods of using the Bible, all of these attempts to put into practice what turns out to be quite an inarticulate sense that it is somehow the real locus of authority. And that has produced what one can now see in many so-called scriptural churches around the world – not least in North America. It seems to be the case that the more that you insist that you are based on the Bible, the more fissiparous you become; the church splits up into more and more little groups, each thinking that they have got biblical truth right. And in my experience of teaching theological students I find that very often those from a conservative evangelical background opt for one such view as the safe one, the one with which they will privately stick, from which they will criticize others.”

he goes on to conclude this part of the article;

“My conclusion, then, is this: that the regular views of scripture and its authority which we find not only outside but also inside evangelicalism fail to do justice to what the Bible actually is – a book, an ancient book, an ancient narrative book. They function by turning that book into something else, and by implying thereby that God has, after all, given us the wrong sort of book. This is a low doctrine of inspiration, whatever heights are claimed for it and whatever words beginning with “in” are used to label it. I propose that what we need to do is to re-examine the concept of authority itself and see if we cannot do a bit better.”