The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture
Published on 18. June 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
277 pages
978-1-4813-0609-6 (ISBN)
Description
In 1517, Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Wittenberg's castle church. Luther's seemingly inconsequential act ultimately launched the Reformation, a movement that forever transformed both the Church and Western culture. The repositioning of the Bible as beginning, middle, and end of Christian faith was crucial to the Reformation. Two words alone captured this emphasis on the Bible's divine inspiration, its abiding authority, and its clarity, efficacy, and sufficiency: sola scriptura.
In the five centuries since the Reformation, the confidence Luther and the Reformers placed in the Bible has slowly eroded. Enlightened modernity came to treat the Bible like any other text, subjecting it to a near endless array of historical-critical methods derived from the sciences and philosophy. The result is that in many quarters of Protestantism today the Bible as word has ceased to be the Word.
In The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, Iain Provan aims to restore a Reformation-like confidence in the Bible by recovering a Reformation-like reading strategy. To accomplish these aims Provan first acknowledges the value in the Church's precritical appropriation of the Bible and, then, in a chastened use of modern and postmodern critical methods. But Provan resolutely returns to the Reformers' affirmation of the centrality of the literal sense of the text, in the Bible's original languages, for a right-minded biblical interpretation. In the end the volume shows that it is possible to arrive at an approach to biblical interpretation for the twenty-first century that does not simply replicate the Protestant hermeneutics of the sixteenth, but stands in fundamental continuity with them. Such lavish attention to, and importance placed upon, a seriously literal interpretation of Scripture is appropriate to the Christian confession of the word as Word-the one God's Word for the one world.
In the five centuries since the Reformation, the confidence Luther and the Reformers placed in the Bible has slowly eroded. Enlightened modernity came to treat the Bible like any other text, subjecting it to a near endless array of historical-critical methods derived from the sciences and philosophy. The result is that in many quarters of Protestantism today the Bible as word has ceased to be the Word.
In The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, Iain Provan aims to restore a Reformation-like confidence in the Bible by recovering a Reformation-like reading strategy. To accomplish these aims Provan first acknowledges the value in the Church's precritical appropriation of the Bible and, then, in a chastened use of modern and postmodern critical methods. But Provan resolutely returns to the Reformers' affirmation of the centrality of the literal sense of the text, in the Bible's original languages, for a right-minded biblical interpretation. In the end the volume shows that it is possible to arrive at an approach to biblical interpretation for the twenty-first century that does not simply replicate the Protestant hermeneutics of the sixteenth, but stands in fundamental continuity with them. Such lavish attention to, and importance placed upon, a seriously literal interpretation of Scripture is appropriate to the Christian confession of the word as Word-the one God's Word for the one world.
Reviews / Votes
"Iain Provan's new work is an impressive and timely book with an ambitious purpose-nothing less than an elucidation and defence of a reformed hermeneutic of Scripture in relation to the whole history of Bible interpretation, both pre- and post-Reformation. In it he defends a literal reading of Scripture, which he defines in terms of the dynamic relation of both the letter of the text and the communicative intentions of its human (and divine) authors." - Simon Burton, Expository Times"In the Reformation, the inspiration and authority of the Bible--its perspicuity, efficacy, and sufficiency--came to the fore. For the present generation that has lost its confidence in the Bible, Iain Provan's book has recaptured and recovered the internal structure and logic of the Reformation hermeneutic, with its emphasis on the literal sense" - Dennis Ngien, Renaissance and Reformation
"As a source for learning about the history of biblical interpreta-tion, this book covers an impressive amount of material. Ten chap-ters examine interpretive issues addressed by Christians in the early church and the Middle Ages, five chapters cover the interpretive goals and methods of the reformers and early modern Protes-tants, and six chapters evaluate contemporary movements in bib-lical hermeneutics such as form criticism, narrative criticism, and the canonical reading of scripture." - Martin Lohrmann, Lutheran Quarterly
"...Nothing short of a tour de force." - Roger L. Revell, Journal of Reformed Theology
"The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture is a laudable attempt to reform and revive Protestant hermeneutics by bringing contemporary biblical interpretation into conversation with the core convictions of both the reformers and their medieval and patristic antecedents." - Jonathan Reimer, First Things
"On the whole, Provan's work is an admirably broad and serious attempt to define and recover the literal interpretation of Scripture. He displays a wide-ranging and impressive knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation that one wishes were found among more biblical scholars. Indeed, Part I of Provan's book could easily be required reading in a graduate-level course on hermeneutics or the history of exegesis." - Erik Lundeen, Themelios
"In this massive, well organized volume, Provan argues in an erudite, all-sweeping way what he calls the 'seriously literal interpretation' of Scripture (20, 639), namely, a 'reformed' (lowercase) approach of reading the Scripture which is 'consistent with magisterial Reformation principles and practices' that are 'both rooted in pre-Reformation biblical hermeneutics and embraced in post-Reformation, non-Protestant Christianity' (21). The right way of reading the Scripture, which Provan identifies as the 'fifth way,' is to read the biblical text according to its literal sense given that we properly understand what 'literal' means in each biblical instance." - Vincent Kam, Concordia Journal
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Waco
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
4 figures - 4 Figures
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 43 mm
Thickness: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-4813-0609-6 (9781481306096)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Iain Provan (PhD, Cambridge University) is Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of commentaries on Lamentations, 1 and 2 Kings, and Ecclesiastes & Song of Songs; co-author of a major history of Israel; and co-editor of an important collection of essays in honor of H.G.M. Williamson. His books cover topics like the "myths" of the Axial Age and the Dark Green Golden Age (2013) and the real meaning and significance of the Old Testament (2014). Most recently he has published a major work on the Reformation and the Bible (2017). He is an ordained Presbyterian minister, a qualified ARA rowing coach in the UK, and a B-Provincial level soccer coach in Canada. His hobbies include fly-fishing.