From chapter 5, "Toward a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture" (pages 110-111)
…the weight of interpretive gravity needs to shift decisively and irreversibly in the hermeneutically Christocentric direction. The centrality of Jesus Christ and the gospel of reconciliation make sense of all of scripture. But we must also consider the meaning and relevance of various parts of scripture that do not clearly fit its gospel message centered on Jesus Christ—such as, for example New Testament passage that assume and grant the legitimacy of human slavery or say nasty things about Cretans. …
Unfortunately for some evangelical authors and publishers, once this Christocentric hermeneutic is grasped and embraced, more than a few of the popular books they write and publish will become sadly inappropriate and embarrassingly misguided. The Bible is not about offering things like a biblical view of dating—but rather about how God the Father offered his Son, Jesus Christ, to death to redeem a rebellious world from the slavery and damnation of sin. The Bible is not about conveying divine principles for starting and managing a Christian business—but is instead about Christ on the cross triumphing over all principalities and powers and so radically transforming everything we to be our business. Scripture, this view helps us to see, is not about guiding Christian emotions management and conquering our anger problems—but rather about Jesus Christ being guided by his unity with the Father to absorb the wrath of God against sin in his death and conquering the power of sin in his resurrection.
From chapter 6, "Toward a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture" (pages 127-128)
We ought in humble submission to accept the real scriptures that God has provided us as they are, rather than ungratefully and stubbornly forcing scripture to be something that it is not because of a theory we hold about what it must and should be. One of the strangest things about the biblicist mentality is its evident refusal to take the Bible at face value. Ironically, while biblicists claim to take the Bible with utmost seriousness for what it obviously teaches, their theory about the Bible drives them to try to make it something that it evidently is not. Presumably God knew what he was doing in providing his covenant people, through inspiration, with the written testimony of his redemptive work in history. Presumably God is confident—to speak in quite human terms—that the actual scriptural texts he has given his church are sufficient for communicating well the message of the gospel. ... (p 127)
…Regardless of the actual Bible that God has given his church, biblicists want a Bible that is different. They want a Bible that answers all their questions, that tells them how to have marital intimacy, that gives principles for economics and medicine and science and cooking—and does so inerrantly. They essentially demand—in God's name, yet actually based on a faulty modern philosophy of language and knowledge—a sacred text that will make them certain and secure, even though that is not actually the kind of text that God gave.
