A Brief Review of N. T. Wright's "The Last Word"

I've recently finished reading through a magnificent little treatise (short book) by N. T. Wright entitled The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God--Getting Beyond the Bible Wars.  If you're not familiar with Wright, he is an extremely accomplished New Testament scholar (taught at Oxford, Cambridge, and McGill) and a prolific author--in fact, I'm not sure how he has time to write all the books he has because he's also a bishop in the Anglican Church.  Read more about him HERE at his (unofficial) website.

In The Last Word Wright attempts to answer a fundamental question: How can we, in any meaningful way, speak of the Bible, which is mostly a collection of narrative and poetry, as "authoritative"?  Before I continue, let me make clear that Wright does not say we cannot speak of the Bible as "authoritative"; he simply asks "how?" this can be.  In his introduction, Wright asks “the question of how we can speak of the Bible being in some sense ‘authoritative’ when the Bible itself declares that all authority belongs to the one true God?” (xi)  The central thesis of the work is put forth on page 23: “the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ can make Christian sense only if it is a shorthand for ‘the authority of the triune God, exercised somehow through scripture.’”   To live under the authority of Scripture, then, ultimately means to live under the authority of God as exercised, in some way, through Scripture.  In order to accomplish this, Wright proposes that our reading of scripture must be “(a) totally contextual, (b) liturgically grounded, (c) privately studied, (d) refreshed by appropriate scholarship, and (e) taught by the church’s accredited leaders.” (127f.)  

I especially appreciate Wright’s emphasis that corporate reading of scripture within the church must take precedence over individual readings if we are to resist fragmentation and truly be the church through which God’s Kingdom is breaking into the world. (133–34)   He proposes a model for the Church's relationship to Scripture (one which he has reprinted in numerous publications) called the "5 Act" model.  In it, Wright proposes that we understand the Bible as the first four acts of a five-act play.  Obviously the fifth act of a five-act play cannot be completely different from the previous four--it must be a continuous story; but, on the other hand, we cannot rigidly repeat the previous acts and expect to bring the story into any sort of completion.  Therefore, our acting out of the "fifth act" (during the life of the earthly church) must be continuous with the narrative already contained in Scripture, but it must also, in some meaningful way, be innovative insofar as we are moving forward in the story of God's redemptive work in the world, not backward.

As a whole, Wright’s central thesis—that the scriptures are “authoritative” only insofar as they are understood within the whole work of God’s Kingdom on earth—is a much needed counterweight to both the fundamentalism and liberalism that characterizes North American biblical studies and exegesis. If you are interested in a short work on biblical authority that is both scholarly and very accessible (Wright is the master at this combination), and which goes beyond the simple bickering between conservatives and liberals about "the authority of the Bible," then you would be well-served to pick up this book (which you can find for about $6 on Amazon.com right now).


I'd love to hear from you on the blog if you've read the work, would like to read it, or have comments on Wright's work in general, or the issue of biblical authority . . . or really about anything.  :-)