James Baisinger's List: Reformed Theology

How Can The Bible Be Authoritative?

(The Laing Lecture 1989, and the Griffith Thomas Lecture 1989. Originally published in Vox Evangelica, 1991, 21, 7–32. Reproduced by permission of the author.)
N.T. Wright

I am very grateful for the invitation to give this particular lecture, I should perhaps say that my reflections here arise not so much from reading lots of books about the authority of the Bible—though I have read some of the recent ones—but from the multiple experience I find myself having, of studying and teaching the New Testament at an academic level, of regular liturgical worship in which the Bible plays a central part, and of evangelistic and pastoral work in which, again, though not always so obviously, the Bible is at or at least near the heart of what one is doing. What I want to offer to you has therefore something of the mood, for me, of reflection on reality. I am trying to understand what it is that I am doing, not least so that I can do it (I hope) less badly, in a less muddled fashion. But I hope that this will not give you the impression that the issues are private to myself. I believe that they are highly important if we are to be the people that we are supposed to be, as Christians in whatever sphere of life.

The question before us, then, is: how can the Bible be authoritative? This way of putting it carries deliberately, two different though related meanings, and I shall look at them in turn. First, how can there be such a thing as an authoritative book? What sort of a claim are we making about a book when we say that it is ‘authoritative’? Second, by what means can the Bible actually exercise its authority? How is it to be used so that its authority becomes effective? The first question subdivides further, and I want to argue two things as we took at it. (1) I shall argue that usual views of the Bible—including usual evangelical views of the Bible—are actually too low, and do not give it the sufficient weight that it ought to have. (2) I shall then suggest a different way of