Mark L. Strauss > Quotes

“Living “biblically,” I would suggest, means recognizing our place in God’s story and living in such a way that we reflect his nature and purpose in the world.”
― Mark L. Strauss, How to Read the Bible in Changing Times: Understanding and Applying God's Word Today

“Genre identification can make or break the proper interpretation of a biblical book or passage. Enormous controversy surrounds the opening chapters of Genesis concerning whether the heavens and the earth literally were created in six days or whether the creation took place over a much longer period. This is not so much a debate between those who take the Bible seriously and those who don’t but rather a question of genre identification. What literary genre is the author of Genesis using to describe creation?”
― Mark L. Strauss, How to Read the Bible in Changing Times: Understanding and Applying God's Word Today

“A myriad of contemporary social, ethical, and theological questions are not addressed in the Bible, either because they were not part of the world in which the Bible arose or simply because they never come up in biblical contexts.”
― Mark L. Strauss, How to Read the Bible in Changing Times: Understanding and Applying God's Word Today

“Jesus does not fit easily into these categories. He is certainly round rather than flat, a multifaceted and complex figure. Yet he is also in some sense static and predictable, for he always represents God’s evaluative point of view. The implied reader never has a doubt that Jesus will act according to God’s will.”
― Mark L. Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus, 2nd Edition: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels

“Discerning when and how these commands apply to us involves discerning the heart of God behind the text.”
― Mark L. Strauss, How to Read the Bible in Changing Times: Understanding and Applying God's Word Today

“Much of the theology of the Bible is what we could call “task theology.” It is theological truth brought to bear on specific life situations. Since biblical authors seldom deal comprehensively with a particular topic, we must be cautious before assuming that we have the whole truth or the last word in any particular passage.”
― Mark L. Strauss, How to Read the Bible in Changing Times: Understanding and Applying God's Word Today