The Bible Made Impossible - Chapter 7(b)

Chapter 7 - "Rethinking Human Knowledge, Authority, and Understanding" (part b)

This is my final post for covering this book; next week I plan to share personal thoughts about why I believe the ideas presented in "The Bible Made Impossible" are important and how I have been affected by this book. I will also recommend some other books along similar lines for those of you that may want to investigate further.

Understanding Different Ways of Doing by Saying
In this section Christian Smith points out some principles of communication that affect how we humans understand. He distinguishes between "locutionary" acts, "illocutionary" acts, and "perlocutionary" acts. For the sake of brevity, I'll simply quote a couple of summary statements about what this means.

"In short, locutionary acts utter or inscribe words, illocutionary acts use uttered or inscribed words to perform communications concerning the purpose or disposition of the speaker or writer, and perlocutionary acts rely on uttered or inscribed words to accomplish a particular effect in the hearer or speaker...The point of distinguishing these three speech acts is to help us to recognize that the use of speech to communicate is not a simple matter of speakers intending to make clear propositional statements that, when properly interpreted, reproduce the original propositional meaning in the minds of those receiving the statements. It is more complicated than that..."

This section is enlightening in terms of helping us understand how easily we can misinterpret the Bible because of this reality of "speech acts". (See the book for more explanation on this...) Suffice it to say that not all speech communications in scriptures are straightforward. Smith goes on to say, "Given the richness of the variety of kinds of speech acts that appear to be at work in the Bible, it seems quite inadequate to try to describe or defend scripture's truthfulness, reliability, authority, and whatever else we might say on its behalf with single, technical terms like 'inerrancy.'" The word inerrancy, which is a favorite of evangelicals, is too flat and limited and weak to represent all the virtues of the Bible in terms of what God is intending to communicate through it.

Using the Genesis 1-2 creation account, Smith gives an example of a possible misinterpreting of what God intended the scripture to do in the reader: "...the intended perlocutionary force of the Genesis 1-2 creation accounts could well be to banish rival pagan accounts of the world's origins and place the reader in awe and gratitude for the good world that Yahweh created, whereas the actual perlocutionary force on modern biblicist readers could mistakenly be to motivate them to mobilize a political movement to oppose the teaching of evolution in schools." 

He concludes this section by saying that the point of this isn't to drive us to "exegetical despair" over reading scripture but to complicate it enough so that we move away from simplistic and overly confident readings of scripture. Being aware and more careful in our approach to scripture reading addresses the problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism by helping us be more cautious related to our fallibility in understanding the Bible and God's intended "speech acts" and helps open us up to alternative readings of scripture. This more open and humble approach to reading the Bible "puts us back into the position of being acted upon by God through the words of scripture."

A Historically Growing Grasp of the Meaning of the Gospel
In this section Smith goes on the assumption that the canon of scripture, for all practical purposes is closed (though he has an interesting footnote on this). But even with this assumption, the church has recognized historically that the progressive understanding and working out of the full meaning and implications of the gospel has never been and is still not complete. "The authors of the New Testament did not understand and work out all the long-term implications of the gospel for theological knowledge, human life, and society. They just didn't, and there is no need for us to have to say that they did." 

What the New Testament authors did do was to give us all that we need to know as a theological starting point and also modeled "the substantial beginnings of believers working out what the gospel means in a particular sociohistorical context." Smith says that this is absolutely crucial for us and is not the same thing as what biblicism says, which is that the NT authors did understand and work out all of the long-term implications of the gospel for theological knowledge, human life, and society.

In other words, the author is saying that we cannot go to the New Testament and expect to find fully-developed and precisely articulated doctrines about God and Jesus. Generations of believers throughout church history and up until now have been doing this; he gives as examples issues such as slavery, mutual personal love in marriage, full humanity and dignity of women, etc. "The apostles understood and preached the truth of salvation in Jesus Christ. But they did not know and teach the fullness of the many implications of that truth for doctrine, relationships, and society. That was a task given to subsequent generations of believers across history..."

Smith understands scriptures such as Jesus' talking about the development and growth of the kingdom (Mt. 13:24-33; Lk. 13:18-21), His promise of the Holy Spirit's coming and guiding into all truth (Jn. 16:13); His telling His disciples that He had much more to tell them but they couldn't understand it all then (Jn. 16:12), etc., are suggestions in scripture that it would take time and learning for God's people to grasp the fullness of His truth.

This understanding helps deal with the problem of biblicism and pervasive interpretive pluralism because, unlike biblicism's limited belief about revelation and static view of knowledge that insists that all of the gospel's implications can only be found in the Bible, this view understands the Bible's presentation of the gospel to be "a dynamic, living, active force of truth in human life and history...the change in the frame of mind that this view involves entails a deemphasizing of Bible passages as collections of complete and final teachings on every subject imaginable."

Approaching the Bible in this way could help those taking different stands on issues to back away from "tightly wound arguments about the 'biblical' authority of their incompatible views. The debate could then be set within a larger, better theologically and historically informed, and hopefully more constructive framework of discussion."

Conclusion
Christian Smith acknowledges that his proposals in this book are not the complete answer to this need in evangelicalism, but he challenges American evangelicals to be willing to do the hard work together of coming up with a truly evangelical way of approaching scripture that is honest and edifying and unifying. I'll end this with one last quote from the book:

"Evangelicals need to realize that the Bible is not a 'how to' book. It is a 'HERE IS WHO' book. First and foremost it tells everyone: Here is who Jesus Christ is and therefore here is who you are and need to become in relation to him...the indicative must precede and define the imperative. What we need to do (the imperative) can only ever make sense in terms of the truth about reality (the indicative). The imperative must always be grounded on and operating from within the indicative. The indicative is the risen, living, and reigning Lord, Jesus Christ. Everything else, including imperatives, follows from there..."

The Bible Made Impossible - Chapter 7(a)

Chapter 7 - "Rethinking Human Knowledge, Authority, and Understanding (part a)

This is the final chapter of the book, "The Bible Made Impossible." In it Christian Smith proposes that part of the way we read the Scripture in a truly evangelical way is by reconsidering how we think 1) about human knowledge, 2) about the authority of the texts, and 3) about what it means as humans to understand anything. So in large part, it's a brief study of humans and how we hear and learn.

Breaking from Modern Epistomology
Smith begins the chapter with a challenge to American evangelicals, saying that the "motive to use biblicism to domesticate and control scripture and the gospel, rather than to open ourselves to be shaken and altered by its message, comes directly from a modern outlook, from modernity and the Enlightenment." 

He contends that although we evangelicals claim a modernity-resisting identity, we have unwittingly bought into Enlightenment thinking lock, stock and barrel, especially related to how we understand the way humans learn and know. This is called "epistomological foundationalism" and Smith defines it as "a conviction that rational humans can and must identify a common foundation of knowledge directly up from and upon which every reasonable thinker can and ought to build a body of completely reliable knowledge and understanding." In other words, we assume that the way to gain reliable knowledge is easy and certain if we build on a common foundation.

The evangelicals' argument has been that this foundation of sure knowledge to build upon is the Bible text and nothing else. "Without realizing it, evangelicals embraced a view of scripture that was more driven by Cartesian and generally modern preoccupations with epistemic certainty than by scripture itself and a long tradition of scriptural interpretation..." He is proposing that our modern obsession with the "certainty of knowledge" (more than gospel concerns) has been the driving factor in our approach to scripture.

The author is quick to warn that the answer to this is NOT to go the way of radical postmodern relativism. However, the legitimate fear of postmodern relativism shouldn't keep us stalled out in Enlightenment "foundationalism." He says there are alternatives and briefly touches on one: "critical realism". He goes on to explain this approach to learning as one which takes into account the variables there are in the way humans know - while insisting on objective reality so that the learners pursue truth as it is and not as they wish it to be. "Critical realism brings to the table a number of crucial meta theoretical understandings about reality and knowledge that tend to foster openness and humility in inquiry...", as opposed to taking polarizing positions that make it difficult for genuine learning and growing together in truth. (See more on this in the book.)

Not Starting with a Theory of Inspiration
In this section Smith touches on the issue of the authority of the Bible, pointing out that it wasn't until after the Reformation that Christians even tried to elaborate on a "deductive theory" of inspiration..."The doctrine of inspiration came to play an especially important role in conservative American Protestantism in the 19th century, in response to the same threats to religious authority (higher criticism, modernism, etc.) that prompted Catholicism to promulgate the doctrine of papal infallibility."

After listing four points in the doctrine of inspiration, the author says that his point isn't that the doctrine of inspiration is necessarily wrong but that it isn't a helpful place to start the discussion of biblical authority since scripture itself doesn't start there. (He goes on to deal with the one passage in 2 Timothy 3:16,17 that uses the word "inspiration" related to scripture.)

Smith suggests four alternatives for approaching the topic of authority, and I'll list his suggestion without explaining them:

1. Begin with the content of the texts themselves, being as unprejudiced as possible by a preconceived theory of inspiration.
2. Learn about how the texts that make up the NT canon came to be there in the first place. (He points out that the early church was without the Bible as we know it for almost 400 years.)
3. Begin by paying close attention to ways that the church has interpreted scripture for the last 2,000 years.
4. Start to pay much greater attention than we have to how Christian believers read and interpret scripture in other parts of the world.

"...listening to and learning from the interpretive approaches to scripture of other (but not necessarily only) evangelical Christians from very different parts of the world can help to reveal blind spots, challenge parochial views, offer insightful perspectives on the same texts, and suggest helpful ways to resolve differences of understanding within the American evangelical world..."

I'll complete this chapter in a day or so...

The Bible Made Impossible - Chapter 6

Chapter 6 - "Accepting Complexity and Ambiguity"

The essence of this chapter is that we should accept that there are complexities to the Bible that are beyond our ability to figure out and that we learn to be content with ambiguity as followers of Jesus. I'll attempt to hit some highlights in the chapter...

Embracing the Bible for What it Obviously Is
Quoting Peter Enns, the author writes that we should "confess at the outset, along with the historic Christian church, that the Bible is the word of God (written). That is our starting point, a confession of faith, not creating a standard of what the Bible should look like and then assessing the Bible on the basis of that standard...Once we confess that the Bible is God's word, we can look at how it is God's word."

So for example, instead of saying, "Here is what God must have given us in the Bible, so let's make it so," it would be better to say, "Here are the Scriptures that God in his wisdom has delivered to us. Bless his name. How ought we best to read and understand them?" This is a humble and trusting attitude towards God and His wisdom and love for humans in giving us the Bible.

I was blessed by this quote from Gordon Fee (respected Bible teacher and theologian): "God did not choose to give us a series of timeless, non-culture-bound theological propositions to be believed and imperatives to be obeyed. Rather, he chose to speak his eternal word this way, in historically particular circumstances and in every kind of literary genre. By the very way that God gave us this Word, he locked in the ambiguity. One should not...insist that he give us his Word in another way or...rework his Word along theological or cultural prejudgments that turn into a minefield of principles, propositions or imperatives but denude it of its ad hoc character as truly human. The ambiguity is part of what God did in giving us the Word in this way."

The author recommends that we evangelicals embrace a view that has been in the church's history - the view of God's accommodation or condescension to human limitations concerning scripture. In other words, many church fathers and theologians throughout church history (see Smith's note recommending books on this topic) have believed that God took seriously the "qualitative difference" between created and fallen humanity and his own absolute transcendence. "It suggests that in the process of divine inspiration, God did not correct every incomplete or mistaken viewpoint of the biblical authors in order to communicate through them with their readers. That would have been distracting. The point of the inspired scripture was to communicate its central point, not to straighten out every kink and dent in the views of all the people involved in biblical inscripturation and reception along the way."

Living with Scriptural Ambiguities
The reality is that scripture is sometimes confusing and incomplete and ambiguous, but the biblicist insists that it is clear, easily understood, coherent and complete as God's revelation of His ways and will for humans. The truth is that Bible doesn't have all the information that we'd like it to have and some of the information it has is difficult to make sense of at times. "There is no reason whatsoever to openly acknowledge the sometimes confusing, ambiguous, and seemingly incomplete nature of scripture. We do not need to be able to explain everything all the time. It is fine sometimes simply to say, 'I have no idea' and 'We really just don't know.'"

The one greatest truth of all that we do need to know (that God in Christ came to earth and lived and died and rose to new life in order that we can rise to life in Him) is abundantly clear in the Bible! The revealing of this truth is God's primary purpose in giving us the gift of scriptures.

Smith goes on to confront our compulsion to force harmonization of scriptures, saying that we do better to allow for the tensions and inconsistencies. "Harmonization is usually not necessary. A postbiblicist, genuinely evangelical approach to the Bible can be content simply to let the apparent tensions and inconsistencies in scripture stand as they are. God is not shaken from heaven. Christ is not stripped of authority..."

Distinguishing Dogma, Doctrine, and Opinion
A key element in dealing with scripture is that of distinguishing between what is true dogma, what is doctrine, and what is mere human opinion. "Some Christian beliefs are nonnegotiable for any believer...The most central, sure, and important of these beliefs we may call 'dogmas'. Those occupying the middle range of centrality, sureness, and importance are in this scheme called 'doctrines.' Those which are the least of these let us call 'opinions.'"

Smith gives some examples of confusing these categories such as the pushing of some Christians of the "penal satisfaction doctrine of atonement" to the level of dogma to the point that they see those who don't adhere to that as outside the bounds of orthodoxy. Or the charismatic/Pentecostal/holiness streams' belief in a second experience that tends to view those who don't agree with this as lesser or second-class Christians.

"Doctrines" carry less weight than "dogmas", and "opinions" carry less weight than doctrines and dogmas. Learning to distinguish between these will save us from dismissing and excluding and ignoring brothers and sisters who see things differently than we do and will foster greater unity in the body of Christ. (I recommend again a great talk on this by Greg Boyd: http://whchurch.org/blog/3819/toppling-the-house-of-cards.)

The biblicist belief and assumption that scripture is simple and clear on all points to all people at all times makes it difficult to let go of our doctrines and opinions for the sake of sincerely loving and accepting our brothers and sisters who do agree on dogma.

Living on a Need-to-Know Basis
This final section of the chapter brought to mind again the contrast between the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. As fallen humans, and particularly western "enlightenment" people, we don't like to be in the "dark" about anything. Living by the tree of life means dependence on God for our "knowing" and implies trust in His unfailing and perfect love for us. Can I trust that He will make known to me what I need to know when I need to know and be at peace meanwhile with not knowing when that is His way? Smith says that "academics and intellectuals, perhaps especially evangelical biblicist ones, are particularly keen on getting answers to their questions, providing research findings, figuring out the systems, nailing down the loose ends, getting all the pieces on the table and put together...The problem is, God often does not cooperate with us. In his wisdom, God has chosen to reveal some of his will, plan, and work, but not all of it." 

The author challenges us to accept and enjoy that there is mystery in God, saying that this doesn't mean embracing problematic forms of subjectivism or mysticism..."It means readily embracing the awesome, sometimes partially understood, often known-yet-still-inscrutable story and reality of God's work in history and the cosmos through Jesus Christ."

We'll tackle the next chapter ("Rethinking Human Knowledge, Authority, and Understanding") next week. Grace and blessings on you this week!

The Bible Made Impossible - Chapter 5(b)

Chapter 5(b) - "The Christocentric Hermeneutical Key"

This is the continuation and conclusion of chapter 5 in which Christian Smith presses the point over and over again of the importance that we see all Scripture in light of Jesus and that any internal harmony in Scripture derives from its core purpose to tell us about Jesus; such harmony doesn't come from its propositions and stories fitting together in a perfect, neat puzzle.

"It (the Bible) witnesses to the incarnate person and work of Christ. It offers apostolic theological reflections on Christ for the church and the world. It shows the difference that Christ made in human life during the earliest years of the church. It tells us who and what we really are in light of Christ. And it sends us on a mission in life in response to the good news of Christ..."

The author quotes Geoffrey Bromiley: "...the Bible can serve as a means of Christian unity only when Jesus Christ is placed at its center..."

Before there was a recognized canon, the early church had what they called a "rule of faith" which was a summary of Christian truth containing "apostolic teaching" and "tradition" and "sound doctrine" and "the faith"; at the very center of this "rule of faith" was the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Later this rule of faith was used in determining which books should be included in the canon, meaning that the centrality of Jesus was the core determining issue in the formation of the canon.

Smith acknowledges that some official statements and declarations of American evangelicals have the "germ" of this Christ-centered insight, but he adds, "...such short, isolated Christocentric statements are rarely strong enough to counter the implications of the many other declarations about complete coverage, the handbook model, and so on, which tend to lead to a flat, centerless, biblicist reading of scripture...Nobody ends up explicitly denying that Christ is the purpose, center, meaning, and key to understanding scripture. But in actual practice Christ gets sidelined by the interest in defending every proposition and account as inerrant, universally applicable, contemporarily applicable..."

A Christ-centered approach to reading the Bible means that we see all of our daily issues through the "mind-transforming lens" of the big story of Jesus and of God's reconciling the world to himself in Jesus. Once we are gripped with the stunning good news of Jesus Christ, "...perhaps God wants us to figure out how Christians should think well about things like war, wealth, and sanctification, by thinking christologically about them, more than by simply piecing together this and that verse of scripture into an allegedly coherent puzzle picture." 

The author touches on how this would change preaching, making the good news about God's love in Jesus the central theme rather than focusing primarily on issues and problem-solving and secondary doctrinal matters.

Smith tackles the issue of biblicism bordering on idolatry by acting and talking as if the Bible were God's highest self-revelation. "The Bible is of course crucial for the Christian church and life. But it does not trump Jesus Christ as the true and final Word of God. The Bible is a secondary, subsidiary, functional, written word of God, the primary purpose of which is to mediate, to point us to, to give true testimony about the living Jesus Christ. The Bible did not and could not exist or have any meaning without the higher, truer, more final Word of God, Jesus Christ."

Though there is much more in this chapter, I'll conclude with Christian Smith's words as to how this way of reading and interpreting Scripture helps deal with the problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism within biblicism. He suggests three things:

1. It keeps us from turning the Bible into an idol.
2. It provides an interpretive center to direct our scripture reading.
3. If done well, it can have the healthy effect of disarming us of arguments and thereby foster more humility and openness in dialogue with others with whom we disagree.

This chapter alone (on the centrality of Jesus) makes getting this book well worth it!  Grace and peace to you this week. Next week we'll go on to chapter 6, "Accepting Complexity and Ambiguity."

The Bible Made Impossible - Chapter 5(a)

Chapter 5 - "The Christocentric Hermeneutical Key"
 This chapter begins the second part of this book in which Christian Smith proposes ways "toward a truly evangelical reading of Scripture." For me this chapter is the most wonderful chapter of the book; however, its beauty in enhanced by the chapters before it because those chapters help remove certain mindsets about the Bible that get in the way of seeing Jesus in Scripture. Because this chapter is lengthy, I will cover it with two posts.

The author  is addressing those who want to find a way (other than biblicism) to approach Scripture that is essentially faithful to the sensibilities of the evangelical tradition. He begins the chapter by defining what it means to be "evangelical": the word evangelical is the joining of two Greek words which mean "good" and "message." "To be evangelical, then, means having one's life centered on the terrifically good message that God is reconciling the world to himself in Jesus Christ... The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing we will ever need to hear and know, and it has the power to reframe and transform everything else...Biblicism too often traps, domesticates, and controls the life-quaking kerygma (proclamation) of the gospel in order to provide the Bible reader with the security, certainty, and protection that humans naturally want."
(We fallen humans like the security we feel in knowing things for certain; by making the Bible an easy handbook to go to - as opposed to doing the difficult work of getting to know an unpredictable and strange Person - biblicism provides answers that are easily accessible, certain and safe.) 

Smith goes on to challenge American evangelicals' "natural historical tendencies toward entrepreneurial, activist, pragmatic, immediate problem-solving, and instead spend time needed to think through matters carefully, creatively, and in interaction with the larger, longer Christian tradition." 

The Centrality of Jesus Christ 

Most of this chapter is dedicated to Jesus being "the purpose, center, and interpretive key to Scripture." Although this reality should be obvious to evangelical believers, the truth is that we have tried to make the Bible be a divine instruction manual that is universally applicable on just about any topic it seems to address; and in doing so, we miss the point of God's giving us the Scriptures, which is "all and only about the work of God in time and space in the person of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world."

Following are quotes from other writers pertaining to this:

 Keith Ward
"For a Christian, every part of the Bible must in some way point to Christ, to the living person   of Jesus who is the Christ, and to the unlimited, liberating love of God which is revealed in Christ. To put it bluntly, it is not the words of the Bible that are 'the way, the truth, and the life.' It is the person of Christ, to whom the Bible witnesses." 

Peter Enns
"The unity of the Bible...is a unity that should ultimately be sought in Christ himself, the living word...We believe not only that the Bible is the word of God, but that Christ himself is the word...The written word bears witness to the incarnate word, Christ...The Bible bears witness to Christ by Christ's design. He is over the Bible, beyond it, separate from it, even though the Bible is his word and thus bears witness to him. Christ is supreme, and it is in him, the embodied word, that the written word ultimately finds its unity..."

John Stott
"Whenever we read the Bible, we must look for Christ. And we must go on looking until we see and until we believe."

To read Scripture in a Christ-centered way is to help us read it better but also to provide help in revising our theological mindset and method by putting God at the center, not our own ways of knowing. This brings to mind the two trees in the garden of Eden, representing two ways of knowing: through God in Christ or through independent soulish knowing apart from God.


I will complete this chapter in a day or two...

The Bible Made Impossible - Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - Subsidiary Problems with Biblicism

In previous chapters Christian Smith has made his case for the problem of "pervasive interpretive pluralism", which he believes is the biggest problem with biblicism (see chapter one for his definition of biblicism). In this chapter he tackles several other problems with biblicism that are lesser but real.

He gives nine different problems that he sees; I'll list five and give a short summary of them here:

1. Blatantly ignored teachings:  though biblicists believe that we are to obey all direct and repeated and unambiguous teachings of Scripture, there are myriad passages that we don't obey or feel no obligation to obey, such as:
• "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (five times repeated in the NT)
• "Women should remain silent in the churches" (I Cor. 14:34; 1 Tim. 2:12)
• "Do not resist an evil person" (said by Jesus Himself in Matt. 5:39)
• "...you should also wash one another's feet" (Jesus in John 13:14,15)
• etc.
2. Arbitrary determinations of cultural relativism: biblicists rightfully say that not all difficult passages should be applied to our time and culture because of historical and cultural differences, but what is not consistent or honest is the fact that biblicists typically offer no coherent explanation about which Bible passages a) are culturally relevant,  b) remain in effect in principle but may be applied in different ways depending on the particular culture, and c) remain universally binding in their specifics for all believers at all times. Examples:
• Is the passage about women being silent relevant for women and churches today?
• May God's people never eat rabbit or pork? (Lev. 11); should those who blaspheme God be stoned to death? (Lev. 24); should Christians hate those who hate God? (Psa.139:21,22); does much wisdom really bring more sorrow? (Ecc.1:18)
• Should all Christians share their material goods in common? (Acts 2:44,45); is it wrong for men to cover their heads? (1 Cor. 11:4); should unmarried men not look for wives? (1 Cor. 7:27)
• etc.
3. Strange passages: given biblicist principles, all Scripture is for our learning, but the fact is that there are some very strange passages in the Bible that are hard to know what to do with. One example is what Paul wrote to Titus (biblicists assume Paul wrote this book) about Cretans (Titus 1:12,13). What he says sounds racist and violates many of his moral teachings in other letters. So in what sense is this part of God's revealed truth and what are we supposed to learn from it today? Some other strange passages the author mentions are Gen. 6:1-4; Judges 11:29-39; I Sam. 16:23; II Chron. 18:22; Psalm 137:8,9; Deut. 21:10-14, etc.
4. Lack of a biblicist social ethic: although most evangelicals would say they believe "Jesus is the answer", not only for personal needs but for social, political, economic problems in society, "biblicism is unable to deliver one coherent, much less comprehensive, social ethic to guide a compelling 'biblical' response to contemporary social problems." One major reason (among others) for this is that the New Testament has practically nothing in it to suggest the idea of Christian political influence or social action. There are some general principles in Scripture that  can be used, but the problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism again makes a coherent Christian social doctrine impossible. "When theorists who take a basically biblicist approach try to derive a systematic Christian social ethic from scripture, they end up offering an incredibly wide range of proposals." (Smith gives examples of writings by Christians that range from one end of the political spectrum to the other...)
5. Setting up youth for unnecessary crises of faith: the author makes the point that the indefensibility of biblicism's beliefs causes unnecessary crises of personal faith for some young people when they realize that what they have been taught (the biblicist approach to Scripture) doesn't work. These young people then become prey to the teachings and influence of college and university professors who challenge the truth of the Scriptures. "Biblicism often paints smart, committed youth into a corner that is...impossible to occupy for many of those who actually confront its problems." In other words, when a young person sincerely and honestly faces the problems within biblicism, he finds himself in a place that forces him to make a decision; often that decision is to leave the faith in order to maintain integrity. (A wonderful 35-minute talk by Greg Boyd is very helpful on this topic: http://whchurch.org/blog/3819/toppling-the-house-of-cards)

 "Biblicism is not the way forward for evangelicalism. There must be a better way to understand and read the Bible. What might that be?" With this question, Smith's segues into the second part of the book, "Toward a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture."

Next week we'll cover chapter 5, a wonderful chapter on the Christ-centeredness of Scripture. Grace and peace to you this week!