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John Burgess's Why Scripture Matters: Reading the Bible in a Time of Church Conflict is not an abstract account of biblical authority (though some such account is presumed). It is not a book on hermeneutics (Burgess does not propose a particular method of interpretation). Rather, Burgess wants to re kindle a passion for Scripture among Christians—mainline Protestants in particular. He wants them to return to their first love. Neither more books on biblical authority nor more sophisticated hermeneutics can accomplish this act of reconciliation. Instead, Burgess seeks to revive what he calls a "piety of the Word."
Burgess's concern is that apart from a renewed piety of the Word, the Bible will primarily function as a weapon in the hands of warring parties within the church:
We must become much more intentional about resisting the temptation to wield Scripture simply as a weapon— to lift it up and wave it at our opponents—and more intentional about learning instead how to open Scripture as we would a good gift, standing before it together and in anticipation of hearing God's voice.
Having laid out these sorts of challenges, Burgess then goes on to diagnose the reasons behind mainline Protestantism's Scripture-weariness and illiteracy. This is perhaps the least satisfying chapter in the book. The rise of technology and the priority of information in Western culture, Burgess suggests, have undermined our sense of the poetic. This has led Christians to treat Scripture as a book of information, instantly accessible and straightforwardly applicable. While the chapter purports to offer something of a diagnosis, both eccleisal and cultural, of the mainline's scriptural malaise, this never really comes to pass.1
By emphasizing the "poetic" aspect of Scripture, Burgess seeks to show that Scripture has both a definite content and multiple layers of meaning. Scripture cannot be made to mean absolutely anything. It does, however, have "layers of meaning" which "find their ultimate embodiment in the mystery of Christ." It is here that Burgess seems to delve into a sort of hermeneutics, presenting an account of the power of poetic language. I suspect that many will find this account inadequate. Moreover, it is unnecessary. Premodern interpreters (including Calvin and Luther), in the absence of a theory of poetic language, fully understood that it was theologically crucial for Scripture to be multivoiced without lapsing into silly forms of interpretive relativism.
Following his discussion of Scripture's poetic qualities, Burgess goes so far as to call Scripture a sacrament. This claim is slightly misleading in that Burgess is referring primarily to various activities performed in relation to Scripture—that is, prayer, preaching, liturgy, and ethics—where Scripture can function as "an audible signal of an inaudible grace." The Bible on its own is not a sacrament in the same way that bread and wine on their own are not a sacrament. But in the end, this may turn out to be a terminological quibble, for, terminology aside, the thrust of this chapter is to assert that "Scripture sets forth the living Christ. In his presence, we find ourselves transformed into his image and incorporated into his body, the church." Ultimately, it is this fundamental conviction that will enable the piety of the Word to flourish in the lives of Christians.
Given this fundamental conviction, there are four disciplines that Christians must cultivate in order to develop a piety of the Word: reading Scripture aloud, reading Scripture in community (not individualistically), reading Scripture in context (both canonical and liturgical), and memorizing Scripture. Each of these disciplines has ancient (often monastic) bases, which Burgess outlines. He then notes how these disciplines might operate in contemporary situations. The practice of these disciplines, Burgess writes, will "open us to this Word, so that we may receive its compelling power, however it comes. Drawing on the wisdom of the Christian tradition, they nurture a piety deeply rooted in the Word as a sacrament of Christ."
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