How the Bible Actually Works Review

This last month I received an advanced copy of Peter Enns’ new book, How the Bible Actually Works, from HarperOne and now I offer any willing reader my review.

To put it succinctly, this book looks at what it means to be in a creation that is still unfolding and in the process of becoming and how the Bible’s faith tradition can continue to meet our present circumstances.

To offer a brief overview, Pete looks at the Bible not as an abstract set of rules to follow or answers to solve life’s problems, but as a book that shows the sacred path of wisdom and thus has the potential to teach its readers to enter into that journey too. He points out that as a book of wisdom, “the Bible funnels us toward taking responsibility to remain open and curious about what it means to live life in the presence of God.” (p. 38)

He shows that on this path of wisdom we share in the sacred responsibility to reimagine God for our time and place. This is not reimagining in the sense of making God up, but seeing what God’s presence looks like in our here and now. Pete illustrates how in the Bible the people of God had to understand God from their time and place, be it the early primitive stages of understanding, or re-understanding God in exile, or rethinking what God is like in light of a co-suffering Messiah.

So what’s left? Enns suggests that in light of our 21^st century cultures and civilizations and present knowledge we too have to do our part in coming to reimagine God by following the same wisdom tradition.

Much of this is to reinforce his point that the Bible did not just fall out of the sky, but is always birthed out of people’s experience and their subsequent faith tradition. As a sacred text, the Bible has a much more important role in our lives than sola authority which we only tend to use for managing each other’s behavior anyway.

In How the Bible Actually Works, Pete does what he sets out to do which is to explain how this ancient, ambiguous and diverse book leads its readers into a better tradition. In typical Enns’ fashion it is humorous, insightful, yet does not shy away from looking at the most problematic questions about the Bible, faith, human experience or even his own struggles. It is a good addition to the wider conversation about Biblical interpretation, but this book is also for a broad (non-academic) audience so I also highly recommend it to anyone who is ready to read the Bible in a more meaningful way.

Pre order your very own copy here or here!