Words and The Word

Description: Christians confess faith in Jesus Christ, the living Word of God ‘according to the scriptures’ – the Word of God written. Yet sharp differences today over how these scriptures are used are dividing churches, not least across the Anglican Communion. Words and the Word speaks to this situation through four ‘case studies’. The first explores what the scriptures are physically – words, communicated via material artefacts, changing over time from scrolls to smartphones. How do these changes affect our ‘reading’ the scriptures? The other case studies focus on topics in current debate. How do the scriptures use war-words and male and female terms for God? What does the biblical motif of blood mean today, whether in the human experiences of menstruation and circumcision, or in relation to sacrifice and atonement? How do the scriptures speak of God’s ‘no’ and ‘yes’, and how does this shape our discerning of what is ultimately true, right and good? Words and the Word takes readers through a wide range of biblical texts, exploring them with a strong grounding in awareness of context, pastoral experience and scholarly work. This readable book is based on the 2012 Moorhouse Lectures given by Dr Charles Sherlock in St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne.