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The People of the Book?

Author:	John Barton
Published By:	SPCK (London)
Pages:	120
Price:	£9.99
ISBN:	978 0 281 06378-9

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

Any publication which is reprinted every 15-20 years is an important one. Barton is a mainstream Oxford theologian writing about the authority of the Bible, and what that really means. He rewrites today because Christian fundamentalism continues in the ascendant and because the rise of the new atheists (Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, et al) threatens to corner Christians into a false choice between literalism and unbelief. In such an arid climate, we need good thinking about this resource we call the Bible. Barton attacks what he calls ‘biblicism’ - a form of Christian fundamentalism in which the Bible is taken as a (quote) “finished ‘text’ with literary and religious power”- an authoritative ‘canon’, a rule book, to be obeyed literally and to be appealed to as the final arbiter in matters of life and faith (Sounds pretty much like one of those ‘statements of faith’ we are so fond of!).  So are Evangelicals the book’s intended target, or can we learn something positive from it?

First I’ll admit I don’t like the title. As Barton points out somewhat acerbically in the preface to the 3rd edition, the phrase ‘people of the book’ is from the Q’ran. It is my personal bugbear that we are not people of the book (the written word), but people of the Living Book/Word, Jesus. If my Bible had a mouth, it would say, with John the Baptist, “He must increase, I must diminish!” The Bible is a pointer, more precisely: one of God’s three given pointers to himself - the heavens, the law and the Gospel of forgiveness (see Psalm 19). The Bible is not true in a literalistic sense, or else we would have to take ourselves and the world back in time and become ancient Hebrews or Hellenistic Corinthians or something. We, I trust, are not Christian Taliban!

On the other hand, the title does have a question mark! So are we going to find ourselves agreeing with Barton? Perhaps. I found much that was challenging. It is important to remember the notion of the biblical ‘canon’ is a recent one, and that considerable fluidity existed in New Testament times and in the period of the church Fathers. It is sobering to think that, as inheritors of the Reformation, we Protestants may have, in Barton’s phrase, done little more than replace a human pope with a paper one. It is rather near the bone to speak of our fondness for “the all-too-human delusion that someone, somewhere, has all the answers” (p.98). The heart of Barton’s argument actually goes back to Luther: that it is the Gospel, not the Bible, which is the rule of life and faith. Sola Scriptura was a metaphorical way of saying that the Gospel is God’s and that to identify it with human traditions, whether Papal Bulls or NIVs, is to domesticate it and rob it of its power to stand over and against us, to challenge us, our culture and our tradition. Of course we appeal to the Bible when we are asking the acutely probing questions of the day - in Barton’s case, as an Anglican, concerning the place of women in ministry - in our case whether monogamous lifelong gay and lesbian relationships may be celebrated alongside heterosexual ones. But we do so by allowing the golden thread of scripture, the Gospel - and the Living God to whom it belongs - be the arbiter: not single verses, or authors interpreted from within ossified denominational traditions, and with little or no eye on the world God himself made. I don’t agree with everything Barton says (in what sense is the Bible not finished?), but I was taught to do theology in a reflective trialogue: where answers are found at the intersection of thinking about the World, Christian tradition, and above all the Gospel (Psalm 19 again!) - what these three say about an issue is what counts, with the proviso that our puny minds are always shadowing the true reflective trialogue, which is found in the mind of God alone!

Read this book. It shakes you up and then reminds you what the heart of it is all about. One proviso is necessary, however. You and I and Barton really need to know what we mean by ‘The Gospel’. He doesn’t expound much on that: it’s a biggy, but get it wrong and you warp the entire project. Fortunately we have not just the book, but the Living Word for that question!