Jan/Feb 1996

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"A Pathway into the Holy Scripture." Edited by Philip E. Satterthwaite and David F. Wright, Eerdmans344 pp.; $24.99, paper

Recently the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical and Theological Research held a meeting to commemorate the fiftieth year of its existence. The timing of the jubilee happily corresponded with the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of William Tyndale, the English Reformer from whom the research fellowship derives its name. Such was the occasion for evangelical scholars such as Carl E. Armerding, Anthony C. Thiselton, I. Howard Marshall, and Anthony N. S. Lane to present papers on a variety of biblical and theological issues. A Pathway into the Holy Scripture offers revised versions of these papers to a broader audience.

This volume represents the ripening of evangelical biblical and theological scholarship. Take, for example, Anthony N. S. Lane's "Sola Scriptura? Making Sense of a Post-Reformation Slogan." Lane's finely tuned article guides the reader through the relationship between Scripture and possible "rivals," such as ecclesial tradition, human reason, and culture. Lane rightly rebukes any attempt to "jump back to the Bible as if nothing has happened in the intervening millennia." He warns that to do so shows "the arrogance and folly of despising all that the Holy Spirit has taught over two millennia." The Reformers, Lane argues, neither wanted to replace the authority of the pope with private interpretation nor to exclude the teaching authority of the church. Instead, they rejected a dogmatic tradition "which prescribes credenda and agenda not contained in Scripture." As Lane puts it, the attempt to interpret Scripture "to the exclusion of creeds, clergy and even church represents one possible understanding ...