BEYOND THE BIBLE
Moving from Scripture to theology
By I. Howard Marshall. Paternoster. 136 pages. £9.99
ISBN 1 84227 278 0
Tell me. Do you ‘greet the brothers with a holy kiss’? No? You follow respected commentators and replace the kiss with ‘a culturally acceptable gesture’? This is certainly going beyond Scripture, but is it acting unscripturally or just making an allowable extension of what the Bible says? That is the question Dr. Marshall sets out to answer in this book, and to keep company with a devout, Bible-loving and hugely-learned mind wrestling with an inescapable problem is a delight — even should we finally think there must be something more or something different to be said.
Marshall’s three Hayward Lectures at Acadia Divinity College are here expanded into three chapters. In ‘Evangelicals and Hermeneutics’ the basic questions are raised; ‘The Development of Doctrine’ explores suggested instances within the Bible itself of the same sort of extension of basic truth; and ‘The Search for Biblical Principles’ offers Dr. Marshall’s proposals for controlling developments so that extending does not become distorting, misapplying or adding to Scripture.
