More Words of Life

I posted some first impressions of Timothy Ward, Words of Life: Scripture as the living and active word of God (Nottingham, IVP, 2009) a while back and I've posted a couple of other bits along the way. I’ve read it and written the review for Ecclesia Reformanda now. Here are some further jottings.

Doctrine of Scripture not a dispensible preface or appendix to Christianity. (p18) – “part of the heartbeat of theology itself” not “a kind of theological throat-clearing” (p18)

“I want to demonstrate how a proper doctrine of Scripture can and should make the way a Christian approaches Scripture day by day more fruitful, dynamic and life-giving.” (p19)

B. B. Warfield’s “writings on Scripture have set the agenda for many debates on Scripture in the last century, especially in the United States” (p20)

“Overall, then, this book intends to describe the nature and function of Scripture in explicitly biblical and theological terms, as well as doctrinal ones. I aim to offer an outline of the doctrine of Scripture that stands firmly in line with the best of the theological traditions that have come down to us, and that is also expressed in (p21) a form appropriate for the twenty-first century. If it turns out that this will help some readers to understand God’s actions in and through Scripture in a little more depth, and so worship the God of Scripture with greater assurance and joy, then my aims will have been fulfilled.” (p21)

“God creates by speaking” (p23) – “Following humanity’s creation by means of an act of speech, it is tragically fitting that humanity’s fall should also be precipitated partly by language.” (p23)

The Bible is fundamentally the book of the covenant (p56).

God is “semantically present in Scripture, and personally present in the person of the Spirit.” (p67)

Bavinck: Scripture as the handmaiden or servant of Christ (p74)

“this kind of analogy between Scripture and incarnation is of very limited value” (p77) – uniqueness of incarnation

Bible more as word or message less text or object (p79)

“… while ‘verbal’ inspiration is basically correct in what it affirms, its focus is not quite in the right place. It is the speech acts of Scripture (its units of meaning: sentences, paragraphs and books) that have their origin in divine authorship, because authors primarily author speech acts. The individual words are inspired (spoken out by God) to the extent that they come together to express these speech acts.” (p88) – p92 this helps with the problem of lost autographs and the corruption of copies & translations

“The Spirit acts to minister the meaning of the words of Scripture, not to manipulate or modify it.” (p96

Sola Scriptura – endorses Mathison’s formulation that “our final authority is Scripture alone, but not a Scripture that is alone”

“Sola scriptura means ‘Scripture supreme’” (p153)

‘Anabaptist’ approach of the Bible only solo scriptura which exalts individuals’ interpretations of Scripture over the consensus of the church down the years.

The canon of Scripture itself, the Bible’s contents page, is a result of tradition.

Individual believers private reading of Scripture “derivative of, and depenadant on, the corporate reading and proclamation of Scripture in the Christian assembly” (p173)

Willing to risk sounding “too Catholic” to some if it means being “more in line with the consistent views of the church fathers and the Protestant Reformers than modern evangelicalism often is.” (p174)

Our aim in coming to the Bible determined by what the Bible is and what God intends to do through it (p176)