R. W. L. Moberly

Summary: Explores how one can privilege the Bible over other texts, ultimately as a way of encountering and believing God in Christ.

R. W. L. Moberly asks a basic question in this book: why may we trust the Bible and privilege it over other books in disclosing what it means to believe and know God? He sets himself a challenging task, turning aside from the apologetic approaches that appeal to evidence for the trustworthiness of scripture. He sees this as a modernist project in a post-modern age where the question of why particularly study the Bible over other books is a live issue. He takes as a point of departure Benjamin Jowett’s advice that we read the Bible as we would other books.

He contends that there are three ways to read the Bible: as history, as a classic, and as scripture, looking for it to disclose God to us. He models an exercise in such reading in a comparison of the Aeneid and Daniel 7. The real question then is what warrants the move from the second to the third type of reading. He explores why few of us read the Aeneid as scripture leading us to faith in Jupiter.

He draws on the work of Peter Berger, Leslie Newbigin, and others to observe the importance of plausibility structures and that the ones we heed and are shaped by will determine whether or not we privilege scripture. In reading scripture with the church, we read within an interpretive tradition, we approach a canon of scripture, of books whose authority has been recognized by the church. This implies an openness to what we will find and a willingness to act wholeheartedly to the truth.

What is attractive in what Moberly says is that I think he describes how many people come to faith. It is not through evidentialist proofs but a personal journey of reading, often with other Christ-followers, and finding the “ring of truth” in what they read that brings them to a moment of decision, a step of trusting not only what they are reading but that these are God’s words for them. There is a kind of “faith seeking understanding” that one exercises.

While a persuasive case may be made vis a vis the Aeneid, the harder test case is the Qur’an. There is equally an interpretive community and plausibility structures that may guide one “open” to affirm belief in Islam. One could equally follow the process of reading the Qur’an as history, as a classic, and as scripture leading to belief. I don’t think Moberly has answered the question for me of why privilege one religious text over the other where there are active plausibility structures supporting each? What he does do is explain why such structures have so much influence on the belief of individuals embedded in those structures.

This aside, Moberly concludes the work with a well-stated plea for biblical literacy, citing the lapses scholars and commentators who ought to know better have made. The approach Moberly advocates certainly encourages that literacy. He offers an alternative to evidentialist approaches that fail to resonate that may appeal to some. But I think Moberly needs more to truly contend for the privileging of the Bible over other extant religious texts.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Speakeasy.… (more)

Reliability of an historical text is often the touchstone for the belief in its contents and this is a popular approach to the Bible. This approach is certainly apropos in light of the historicity claimed by the NT; however, the author has another path in mind which is his thesis that the Bible is unlike any other book by exploring the differences between it and other ancient writings. Our disenchanted age has come a long way since 1860 but there are valuable lessons to be learned from Benjamin Jowett's essay "On the Interpretation of Scripture" wherein he criticized reading the Bible in two popular ways during his age, that is, either in a reactionary manner as the Bible was under educated attack or in a popular, fanciful, and undisciplined way. Instead, he proposed to "Interpret the Scripture as any other book" (p. 13). Jowett faced bitter opposition but his proposal is soundly based in a collection of documents that itself offers two accounts of Creation, two of the Decalogue, and four Gospels.The contemporary scene has dramatically changed from Jowett's day and it must be noted that the Bible no longer enjoys the privileged position it once held in Western society.

As a result, the author is pressed to pose the problem. Subsequent to Jewett, a key factor is the modern diminution of the Bible's scope and reliability. In modern life God has been marginalized and the Bible is seen as a human production. So why should the modern disenchanted consider God and the Bible?

The author posits a case study: the Aeneid versus the Book of Daniel. In the Aeneid the Roman Empire under Augustus should be understood as the sovereign deity's long-term gift to the world. Daniel is resistance literature, written for second-century Jews could understand their struggles and face suffering with confidence in their ultimate vindication by their God. The two works are similar thus why should the vision in Daniel be treated differently than the Aeneid?

Regardless, there are compelling reasons why the Bible should still be seriously approached: the Bible is ancient history and the Bible is a cultural classic. Within these confines the author proposes comparing and contrasting Daniel and the Aeneid.

As an excursus, the author pauses to show how the Western world, exemplified by Darwin, lost its faith with the implausibility of a biblical world view. The traditional Christian world view of a loving, just, and kind God came under increasing scrutiny and ultimately implausibility during the Victorian era. As Darwin himself lost a treasured child, death was a common intruder for centuries which could be combated by medical advances and the Scientific Revolution. In early Christian times the female life expectancy at birth was 20-25 years, life expectancy at age 10 was 34.5-37.5 years. Before the 20th Century still the chances of a newborn baby surviving to its fifth birthday were normally less than 75% or even lower. Some 25-30% of Victorian English babies would have died. In the case of a plausibility structure the Augustine aphorism: "Ego vero evangelio non crederem nisi me catholicae ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas" (I would not believe the gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me, p. 98) lost its hold on Western thought. In a disenchanted age a modern plausibility structure would have to break through the modern inundation of social media, alternative lifestyles, and a plethora of non-Christian alternatives.

One path for the disenchanted world is to examine a biblical passage that demonstrates the Christian goal of faith seeking understanding. In John 7:16-17 the import of the passage is that an individual has to be open to the idea that the Bible is reliable coupled with a subsequent existential and personal engagement of faith.

With the pairing of the Aeneid and Daniel the author makes the point that God is at work outside of revelation; the secular world also aspires to goodness, justice, and wisdom. Value can be found in God's world anywhere it can be found (p. 165-6).

Darwin and many modern thinkers mistake the design argument as enunciated by Pierre Simon de Laplace as irrevocably connected to Christian doctrine but it is not. The author notes that typical of modern thinkers is Dawkins but he points out that "argument from design is a corrupt mutation of Christian belief in creation" (p. 169). The author points out an analogy. The creation of a person analogy is not a magician's trick but a biological process; birth also entails origin and destiny. As we understand individuals seriously in this combination of biology along with our origin and destiny so too can the Bible be understood as important for our origin and destiny.

A crucial point is the limitation of many moderns and their lack of biblical literacy. People who read the Aeneid or King Lear as rubbish, mistaken, or boring are revealing a great dal about themselves but nothing about the text. On the other hand, many moderns make "sweeping negative judgments" when reading the Bible and think nothing of it (p. 174). They are displaying biblical illiteracy.

The disenchanted do not read the Bible seriously. The author posits that the Bible is trustworthy but not inerrant as commonly understood. Biblical seriousness is to take the text as an important work that addresses the quality of individual life. The Bible can be read like anyone other book; but similar to any non-ordinary book it should be read in a serious manner and better understood. If the Bible is read seriously then the modern mindset possesses "the existential openness that is necessary for finding God, or being found by God" (p. 186). Unless understanding how the Bible addresses existential questions of life the disenchanted will not understand how there is an enduring possibility of Christian faith.… (more)

How can we justify taking the bible seriously today? This is a book designed to encourage people to consider the possibility that the bible is significant even in today’s society.
I found his OT Theology book helpful so looked forward to this book.
He does not approach things using “proofs” from the Bible itself. Apostolic authority and promises of inspiration of certain texts by the Holy Spirit are not on offer here.
He starts by comparing the texts of the Aeneid and Daniel 7. Both talk about the significance of what were then current events and relate them to the future. He shows that both did in fact have some effect on their audiences and explains the processes of privileging and the need for a plausibility structure before such books can have lasting significance.
Obviously Roman society has gone and no one takes Jupiter seriously any longer. The Aeneid did not give rise to a continuing plausibility structure like the church, and the Empire vanished.
He then moves, perhaps rather quickly to “faith seeking understanding” and Jesus saying that he is transparent to God and the importance of being personally committed to the search for truth. It is not something that can be sorted out by appeals to ‘evidence’, and that was a mistake of writers like Paley, and before him of Newton and Descartes. He has a chapter devoted to Dawkins’ approach to faith.
He has a rather impressive account of how Dan 7 is fulfilled by Matthew 28, something I had not noticed till he pointed it out.
What he is I think really appealing for is a willingness to take the Bible seriously for its witness, for the fact that the church has chosen these documents as permanently relevant, and that people should be prepared to consider the central character of the Bible, that is Jesus, as someone worth considering trusting in a search for wisdom.
In the process he says some helpful things about interpretation, genre, inerrancy, and tells us why camels in Genesis (perhaps a few hundred years before they were domesticated) should not put us off reading the Pentateuch.… (more)