Book Review

Looking for certainty: Craig L. Blomberg's Making Sense of the New Testament. Reviewed by Stephen Milton.

For many skeptical Christians, the Bible presents a problem. In the hands of Right-wing Evangelicals, the Bible has become a tool for condemning major facets of modern society. Some rely on the Bible to protest against gays and same sex marriage; others use it to forbid contraception or non-marital sex. The examples seem to multiply.

For liberals and skeptics alike, this poses a major problem. If the Evangelicals are correct about the Bible, then Christianity appears to be a backward, intolerant, almost medieval religion which will forever be out of step with modern society. The other possibility is that the Evangelicals are wrong about the Bible. They are misreading it, forcing it to appear intolerant when it is not. Or, they are investing it with a power and authority it lacks for applying to modern times.

The answer to this quandary is important, because what Christians think influences non-Christians as well. This is abundantly clear in the United States where President Bush has suggested introducing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. In other words, how one religion reads its book could be used to legislate the marital relations of peoples of all religions.

So what's the answer? Can the Bible be trusted, and is it being misread? These issues are explicitly addressed in Craig L. Blomberg's brief yet thorough book, Making Sense of the New Testament. Blomberg's book is an explicit attempt to answer three key questions which lie at the heart of many of the debates within Christianity. In the first section of the book , Blomberg goes into great detail to explain the debate over whether events in the New Testament are historically accurate. The latter two sections deal with whether Paul was the true founder of the Church, and lastly, how best to apply the Bible's lessons to everyday life.

Blomberg is not a skeptic. He is highly sympathetic to the Evangelical schools in the United States. As a result, the first section of the book argues strongly that we can trust most of the events in the New Testament. The discrepancies between the Gospels are ultimately minor, and can be explained by the state of literacy at the time, and by the audiences each Gospel writer wished to address. Being a scholar, Blomberg believes that ten examples are always better than one, so this section of the book can be pretty heavy going for a lay reader. However, the writing is quite clear, and many fascinating historical details are discussed which are of interest to anyone on the Christian spectrum.

For this reader, the most interesting part of the book was the third section, where Blomberg suggests ways to apply the Bible to modern life. We're all familiar with the way Evangelicals can use the Bible as a battering ram against their opponents, sounding harsh and judgmental along the way. So how does a scholar suggest the Bible be read within this tradition? The answer, ironically, sounds like much of the same advice that a liberal theologian might offer. Blomberg makes it clear that no one should simply quote the Bible at will without first carefully examining each passage. One should try to determine whether the words were meant to be applied only to a historically specific example or to a more general situation that applies in all ages. So, the injunction to turn the other cheek only makes sense when one realizes that a backhanded slap was a form of insult in Biblical times. So if one turns the other cheek, it means that one shouldn't reply to anger and insults in kind.

I was impressed by the caution Blomberg suggested, but also struck by the irony of his argument. For the first two-thirds of the book, he contends that the Bible is historically accurate, and certainly not an exercise in spiritual symbolism as its critics often suggest. However, Blomberg appears to be saying that even if the Bible is true, it can't be quoted easily. One needs to be very careful about taking passages out of context, to mistake a first century injunction for a transhistorical one. Don't get me wrong - I admire Blomberg's caution here, and I wish more Evangelicals would heed it. However, I don't think that they want to be told that the Bible is true, but it's hard to apply to real life. Rather, it appears that many Right-wing Protestants are looking for a rule book which can easily be quoted, to separate the right from the wrong, the moral from the immoral. The types of considerations Blomberg suggests are unlikely to be heeded by those who use the Bible as a bludgeon.

Making Sense of the New Testament may well be just the type of book liberals and skeptics wish Evangelicals would read. However, it is unlikely to convince too many skeptics of the authority of the Bible. Part of the problem is simply that the book is so laden with examples, yet with few quotes from opposing points of view. This makes it like sitting in trenches with an army, lobbing bombs at the other side, but without ever really seeing the enemy. It would have been more interesting to see both sides a bit more.