Abstract
Christians should ‘take the Bible seriously, not literally’ (p. 3; cf. p. 150), so argues Whitaker in this timely book. For her, such seriousness requires setting aside the encultured tendency to quote or otherwise appeal to the Bible by rote. Instead, readers should pursue ‘flexible, adaptable, and highly contextual’ interpretation, which Whitaker persuasively demonstrates scripture itself models (pp. 5, 83–102). Following Matthew, Augustine, and others, Whitaker builds a coherent case for such reading with love as the ‘hermeneutic’ or ‘interpretive lens’ (p. 5; cf. ‘key’ on pp. 139–43) over seven swiftly but shrewdly argued chapters.
Whitaker’s book deserves praise. It expertly strides with transparent conviction and pastoral sensitivity through contemporary theological and cultural debates. It is overtly ethical, identifying ‘deeper principles’ (p. 122) that should shape the Bible’s (love-marked) reading, including openness, humility, mercy, compassion, empathy, and generosity; all underpin Whitaker’s noble, Hippocratic demand that interpreters ‘do no harm’ (p. 155). And it is refreshingly honest throughout, recognising, despite the implications, that ‘[n]ot everything in the Bible is good or there for us to imitate’ (p. 80) and that ideologies continue to skew Christian interpretation of the Bible (p. 149).
Key to Whitaker’s argument, though, are claims that others might dispute. These include the suggestion that the Bible has but one ‘central message’ and ‘overarching ethic’ (p. 4), which again for Whitaker is love (p. 129). She contends that this summons is shot through the New Testament (p. 139), but large portions of it do not mention love at all. What love can or should look like today is, of course, contested, as Whitaker initially acknowledges in passing (pp. 126–27) before vigorously affirming LGBTIQ+ people later (pp. 144, 157–58). Whitaker similarly recognises but sidesteps the methodological challenge of reconstructing the ‘historical’ Jesus from data preserved in the Gospels (pp. 105, 107, 112), whilst appealing to Jesus’s practice of ‘anti-fundamentalist’ biblical interpretation (p. 106), itself ostensibly reflected accurately by the Gospel writers, as something that Christian readers should ‘follow or learn from’ (p. 105), ‘mimic’ (p. 122), and ‘imitate’ (p. 123). A related, albeit more provocative, charge rings throughout the book: ‘let the Bible speak on its own terms’ (p. 34; cf. pp. 4, 37–38, 40, 58–59). Setting aside the question of whether the Bible, or any text for that matter, can so ‘speak’ without readers interpreting it, as poststructuralist hermeneuts have denied for decades, the fact is that many of the traditional exegetes against whom this charge and Whitaker’s wider argument are implicitly positioned believe themselves to do precisely what she calls them to do, namely read the Bible ‘on its own terms’. They just read differently, to different ends.
Although some such readers might remain unconvinced by it, Whitaker’s proposal ultimately evinces a realistic, sophisticated, and textually and ethically warranted manner of framing and doing biblical interpretation. Undergraduates new to exegesis and postgraduates engaged in comparative hermeneutics will find this book instructive. Those beyond the classroom and even the church who are frustrated with simplistic, threadbare, supposedly ‘scriptural’ arguments will find it invigorating. Admittedly, some critics may not follow Whitaker where she says reading the Bible for love leads. But the charitable among them must admit that she makes a strong case.