Authority

I recently started to read a book by N T Wright titled 'The Authority of Scripture'. One area of the Bible that I've always struggled to understand is the relevance of the Old Testament in light of the New. My old excuse and still one that I use in part is that of contextualisation of verses but that (in my opinion) doesn't go far enough. I've always had the opinion that the bible is and has to be an authority in my life but I’ll avoid a discussion into an infallible text for now.

Wright talks about the Old and New Testament as being the overriding story of God. A biographical narrative that illustrates an amazing, living God. He points out the importance of not reading parts out of the context of the narrative just in the same way we wouldn’t pick up a novel and read chapters 11 -12 and expect to know what’s going on.

The interesting thing I found about this view is that it helped me to find a place for the Old Testament in my life today. One of the beauties of having the narrative paradigm is that chapters and 11-12 aren’t devalued in any way but find there full meaning and purpose when read in the context of the whole story.

With this view it brings a new angle to issues of fornication, tattoos etc into a 2005 setting. I’m not sold out on this whole idea but yet it sits well with me when reading the Old Testament.

I guess I’m looking for to resounding destroy this idea for me and reaffirm it. Regardless of my thoughts what’s your take on the Old and New Testament and the issue of relevance?