Periodical Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 128:510 (Apr 1971)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Periodical Reviews

“What Shall We Do With The Bible?” Gordon D. Kaufman. Interpretation, January, 1971, pp. 95-112.

“What Do Evangelicals Believe About The Bible?” Klaas Runia, Christianity Today, December 4, 1970, pp. 3-6; December 18, 1970, pp. 8-10.

The article by Kaufman, professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School, appears in the twenty-fifth anniversary issue of Interpretation, “A Journal of Bible and Theology” published by Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. The entire issue is devoted to “The Future of Bible and Theology.” In a way Kaufman’s article, both in its title and its content, voices the dilemma most contemporary churchmen face. They recognize that they are inexorably involved with the Bible by virtue of their Christian heritage and their Christian profession. But they feel like Coleridge’s ancient mariner with the Bible as the albatross hung about their necks from which they futilely strive to escape by one hermeneutical ploy after another, all the while plaintively crying, “What shall we do with the Bible?”

The one answer to his question which Kaufman is unwilling to consider is the historic Christian view of the Bible “as the very word of God to man.” He states that “for centuries” this was the position that prevailed. “But all this is over with and gone,” he insists; “the Bible no longer has unique authority for Western man. It has become a great but archaic monument in our midst…. It is no longer the word of God (if there is a God) to man” (p. 96). He is convinced that “only in rare and isolated pockets—and surely these are rapidly disappearing forever—has the Bible anything like the kind of existential authority and significance which it once enjoyed throughout much of western culture and certainly among believers.”

Either Kaufman is grossly ignorant of the resurgence of theological

conservatism since the midpoint of the century with its emphasis upon the Bible as the authoritative Word of God or else he is afflicted with liberalism’s myopic pride that refuses to take cognizance of any view but its own. Theological liberalism is often amazingly provincial and insular in its outlook and awareness, which is ironic in the light of liberalism’s emphasis on broadmindedness. Kaufman exhibits this fact in his interjection in this sentence: “The central theological question for any modern is not whether God did this or that as claimed by the Yahwist or Isaiah or Paul—no one believes that any longer—but rather whether there is any God at all” (p. 101).

The consideration of Runia’s series in conjunction with Kaufman’s art...

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