This little volume should be on the reading list of anyone committed to the divine authority of Scripture. Though written for seminarians, it is easy to read. Its subtitle, The History of Interpretation in the Light of Current Issues, introduces the reader to the challenge to scriptural authority the church faces from the disciplines of philosophy, literary criticism, linguistics, history, science, and theology.
In the chapter on obstacles, Silva delineates some of the difficulties we find in accepting scriptural authority:
1. The Bible is divine, yet it has come to us in human form.
2. We are dependent only on the Holy Spirit for instruction, yet scholar ship is surely necessary.
3. The Scriptures seem to presuppose a literal and historical reading, yet we are also confronted by the figurative and non-historical.
4. Proper interpretation requires personal freedom, yet some degree of external, corporate (church) authority is also needed.
5. The objectivity of the biblical mes sage is essential, yet our presuppositions seem to inject a degree of subjectivity into the interpretive process.
The author discusses these obstacles in their historical setting, promising to take a closer look at them in later volumes of the series he is editing.
As Silva points out, some of these biblical tensions began as early as the second and third centuries after Christ. This was when the church was influenced by the hermeneutics of Philo, the Jewish scholar, and Origen, one of the brightest theological luminaries within the Christian community. Other tensions arose over the authority of Scripture during the Reformation with its emphasis on a more literal reading of the Bible. Later tensions came from the onslaught of rationalism against miracles and the supernatural, and today still more are coming from modern science and literary criticism. These tensions, Silva says, must be addressed if the church wishes to retain a degree of credibility in an age of research.
I wish the author had given a running commentary on the history of biblical interpretation by centuries, rather than grouping his content into topics forcing him to repeat the effect of Origen and others on each problem area. But Silva does give an objective view of the overall problem of biblical interpretation and a brief, balanced view of its history.
When perusing this volume, the reader is impressed with the realization that scriptural authority has always been at the center of controversies throughout the history of the church. Anyone wishing more knowledge about the challenge now confronting the church, especially in the context of Christ's second coming, will find this book well worth reading.
