J. Todd Billings
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6235-8

Take up and read!
I was at a prayer retreat some time back with about 40 local pastors from a diverse set of theological and denominational backgrounds. During the course of the retreat, several of the pastors got up to give a “word from the Lord,” in which they read a verse from someplace in Scripture and talked about the enlightened insight they had.

As may be guessed, most of them took what J. Todd Billings calls in his book, “The Word of God for the People of God,” a smorgasbord approach, yanking passages from their canonical context in Scripture, and attaching their own subjective “This-applies-to-us-Americans-who-are-God’s-top-priority-here-and-now” meanings to the text. Their pontifical conclusions were unsettling and quite self-serving.

I rehearse this event to show the desperate need for pastors to take up and read Billings’ levelheaded book, The Word of God for the People of God slowly and meditatively. This 253-page paperback was written with pastors and seminary students in mind to “help readers gain a clarity about the wide and spacious yet specified way of approaching Scripture as readers who belong to Christ” (xvii).

Approaching Scripture
One of the primary premises espoused in this book is that there is a proper way to approach Holy Scripture. To begin with, the Bible reader needs to come with humility. The reader is not a technician who manufactures meanings out of Scripture, or manipulates and controls the outcome of this Word of God, but one who understands that through Scripture God “reads” us, reshaping us into Christ’s image by the Spirit’s power” (80). Instead of Christians owning the truth, we are owned by the One who is the truth (82), which means that, as the Word of God comes to inhabit us and our cultural context, it will often critique and challenge us and our cultural context (108). Therefore, coming to Scripture in this expectant humility, there is renunciation and transformation, for “reading Scripture is about being mastered by Jesus Christ through a Biblical text that functionally stands over us as the word of God, not under us as a word we can control, rearrange, and use for our own purposes” (203).

A second, and extremely important, aspect of properly approaching Scripture is reading the Bible through the lens of the rule of faith. Though this may sound strange to modern Protestant and Evangelical ears, Billings makes a strong case that (1) we already come to Scripture with theological presuppositions (neutrality is a mythical assertion, 11-17), and (2) there is a wholesome, ancient, longstanding rule of faith that comes from Scripture that must guide our reading of Scripture (17-26). This rule of faith is external to us, something that we receive and pass on. As the Apostle Paul says, it is “our common faith” (Titus 1:4), or he says in another place, “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6-7). Though this rule of faith is not the sum total of what a particular Christian believes, it is the central framework through which he reads the Bible (23-24).

As Billings points out, the rule of faith, specifically as it is laid out in a tool like the Apostles’ Creed, is overtly Trinitarian, announcing how God was active in Jesus Christ. Embracing this rule of faith in reading Scripture gives us the Jesus-authorized (Luke 24) go-ahead to appropriate the Old Testament in such a Jesus-shaped way that “Christians do not receive the Old Testament as a generic “word from God” to be received apart from Christ; it is because of Christ that Christians read the Old Testament as Scripture at all. […] Christians receive Israel’s Scripture as their own because of “the new covenant made by God in Christ,” into which they are grafted by God’s covenant with Abraham” (168).

In The Word of God for the People of God Billings defines and fills out his point of reading Scripture with this theological hermeneutic.  Each chapter builds on the previous, and smoothly takes the reader, chapter by chapter, subject by subject, further and deeper into a way of reading Scripture with all the Church throughout the ages. He also addresses alternative exegetical notions on the market, whether the Deistic model, the “religion of Socrates” construction, or the consumer-driven brand, but always returns to the healthy Trinitarian format he is championing. The author draws in interesting and intriguing support from such divergent partners as Kierkegaard, Calvin, Nietzsche, Rich Mullins, Bavinck, and Irenaeus of Lyons, to name a few. He does so in skillful way so as to keep the reader’s attention and bring him or her to surprising conclusions.

The value I found from The Word of God for the People of God has come out in several different routes, from my recent conversation with an Orthodox Jew from Canada who asked me how Christians interpret Scripture, to my sermon preparation. But the primary profit I have gained from this work has been on a more personal level – primarily, in being reminded repeatedly that I am not the master of Scripture, but rather Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, through Scripture is mastering me! This is something I believe every preacher and pastor must return to.

Though there are places where Billings goes that some may find discomforting, nevertheless, the thoughtful reader will be engaged, challenged, encouraged, and helped in reading, preaching, and being reclaimed by this Word of God.

If more pastors took the time to read and absorb what this author is advocating, there would be far less of the messy misreading of Scripture I mentioned at the start of this review. I highly recommend The Word of God for the People of God by J. Todd Billings.

Dr. Michael Philiber is pastor of Providence Presbyterian Church in Midland, TX. He is also the President of the Midland Ministerial Alliance.

The Word of God for the People of God is available at our online bookstore.