This compact little book is a collection of three lectures given in Canada by Howard Marshall with responses by Kevin Vanhoozer and Stanley Porter. Marshall, Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Aberdeen, will be well known to readers of Themelios, not least as a frequent contributor to these pages. Marshall seeks to offer his hearers and readers an evangelical hermeneutic so that they can move with confidence and care form the text of the Bible to the contemporary world and church. For many writers the conjunction of Bible and contemporary world means ethics and morality, but Marshall rightly directs his hearers to doctrine, to which ethics is inseparably linked. In the first chapter Marshall demonstrates the growing recognition of the importance of hermeneutics in evangelical biblical scholarship. In the second chapter he tackles what might be called the assumption that evangelical biblical interpretation follows the principle that ‘Paul says it, that settles it’. Marshall shows how theology, ecclesiology and ethics have developed since New Testament times, and how they can be seen to be developing within the Bible itself. The third chapter addresses the obvious question that arises from such an observation: ‘how, if at all, can we go on developing doctrine beyond what we find has already happened in Scripture?’ (55). In response to this question Marshall examines the development of doctrine within Scripture, from Old to New Testaments, from Jesus to the apostles, and within the early church. Scripture itself, then, provides a number of principles by which we may assess the development of doctrine in our own day.

The difficulties in Marshall’s proposal are exposed with considerable perception by Kevin Vanhoozer, and his response is far more devastating than Marshall suggests in his brief introduction to the book (9). Vanhoozer identifies Marshall’s proposals for moving beyond the text as a form of ‘redemptive trajectory’ where timeless principles discerned in the Bible, such as love and peace, can plot a development within the biblical texts. This may provide a way to resolve the question of slavery in the Bible, but it is vulnerable to our own cultural hubris, for where are we in this trajectory? And the logic of trajectory provides no help in discussion about the ordination of homosexual clergy, for example, since both sides of the debate can appeal to it. Vanhoozer also rightly senses that there is more than a sniff of Marcion in the proposals, particularly when Marshall tackles subject such as divine judgement.

Stanley Porter’s essay is less a response to Marshall’s lectures and more an account of different approaches to the problem of text and theology. This includes an analysis of historical criticism (which Porter senses cannot move beyond historical particularities), a critical discussion of speech-act theory, as well as are (very brief) discussion of Marshall’s developmental theory. In conclusion Porter considers the kinds of theological judgements that Apostle Paul makes and the central principles of his thought.

The book retains some of the characteristics of the original lectures, particularly in Marshall’s first chapter. There are occasional biographical vignettes and the footnotes that are kept to a minimum. Consequently this is an accessible introduction to some of the issues raised by the on-going application of Scripture and will prove useful for those who have never given much consideration to these issues. On the other hand, those who have done a little reading in the field will find many difficult issues of biblical interpretation brushed over too quickly in Marshall’s chapters. For me, I regret to say, the value of the book lies in Vanhoozer’s effective criticism of a flawed biblical hermeneutic.

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