Book Review – Can we still believe the Bible?
Emmanuel Surendra, The Malaysian Insider
The Bible has always generated doubt since its inception, with its defenders and sceptics debating just about everything under the sun. But such is the fate of any religious text, more so this as it is the bedrock of Christianity.
New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg writes that the Bible is still believable or authentic based on generalisable and not idiosyncratic points, and posits responses to six of the most important questions he believes he has in-depth answers to.
Or so he says in his latest title, “Can we still believe the Bible? An evangelical engagement with contemporary questions”.
Evangelical here of course refers to the tradition within Protestant Christianity which emphasises what it calls “the authority of the Bible” – explaining this phrase would take more space than this review can afford.
Simply put, it’s placing an emphasis on the Bible being the arbiter of human belief and conduct, as well as the belief that the Bible is to a certain extent accurate in matters of history and science.
Anyhow, “Can we still believe the Bible?” is written for the average Joe. Blomberg says in a six-part YouTube video about the book that he hopes “a lot of people will find help in my book”.
Well, he is just about right: it’s not a fat book, it’s well-organised with each chapter divided into subdivisions and it’s written in easy-to-follow phrases with technical terms explained along the way.
Among others, topics include textual criticism, the proliferation of English-language Bibles and their trustworthiness, the different genres present in the Bible and the inerrancy of the Bible.
Yet while its casual approach would make anyone interested on the subject – from the novice to the armchair theologian – to pick it up, Blomberg loses points on two issues: his personal attacks against staunch critics and a strong evangelistic, preachy tone that may turn off many.
But respect goes to the author for packing as much material into a decently-sized book. Some titles would average 400 or more pages.
