RENEWING BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION
Editors: Craig Bartholomew, Colin Green and Karl Moller
Paternoster. 366 pages
ISBN 0 85364 034 3
This is a serious and far reaching attempt by some notable academic scholars to engage with the crisis in biblical interpretation which is the result of recent developments in postmodern hermeneutics.
The opening words of the introduction sound a warning to what might be a sleeping church unaware of what has been taking place: 'When it comes to the Bible, there is a lot at stake for the church and for the world. The God and Father of Jesus Christ who speaks and addresses us through the canon of Scripture by the Holy Spirit is utterly central to Christianity. Without the voice of the Living God addressing us through Scripture, Christianity collapses into such empty rhetoric, and the world is left without the redemptive, recreative Word of God.' As the writers point out, the plurality of approaches which exist regarding biblical interpretation within the academy results in the predominant feeling that biblical interpretation is inescapably subjective.
