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Re-enchanting the Text: Discovering the Bible as Sacred, Dangerous, and Mysterious
In an age when the Bible has been stripped of its sacredness and functional biblical illiteracy reigns, this book makes the case that we must work to re-enchant the text in order to return the Bible to its rightful place in the lives of Christians.
Cheryl Bridges Johns explains how the Enlightenment's turn to the rational human subject made it possible to objectify the Bible and has distorted our interpretations of Scripture. This move generated a belief that studying the Bible was primarily a means of supporting facts and providing evidence of competing visions of reality. This "modern" version of the Bible does not trouble our nights with apocalyptic images. It has been stripped of its power. She also shows that both "liberal" and "fundamentalist" interpretation are failed forms of disenchanted readings.
Johns argues that we must rediscover the Bible as a sacred, dangerous, mysterious, and presence-filled wonderland to counteract biblical illiteracy in an increasingly post-Christian landscape.
Cheryl Bridges Johns explains how the Enlightenment's turn to the rational human subject made it possible to objectify the Bible and has distorted our interpretations of Scripture. This move generated a belief that studying the Bible was primarily a means of supporting facts and providing evidence of competing visions of reality. This "modern" version of the Bible does not trouble our nights with apocalyptic images. It has been stripped of its power. She also shows that both "liberal" and "fundamentalist" interpretation are failed forms of disenchanted readings.
Johns argues that we must rediscover the Bible as a sacred, dangerous, mysterious, and presence-filled wonderland to counteract biblical illiteracy in an increasingly post-Christian landscape.
184 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 16, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 5, 2023
Confused and confusing.
Johns decries the de-enchanted perspective that modern, secular people have on the Bible, in which the text a mere object to be studied. But she doesn't quite define her desired alternative in any way I could follow. She jumps from vague idea to vague idea, never stopping to explain what she means. She throws out block quotes and citations from a myriad of different sources, but these sources (apart from Charles Taylor) don't feel like they've been fully integrated.
It's also hard to tell exactly who her models are. In one moment, John Calvin might be a champion of enchanted Christianity, while in the next he's one of the key figures who ushered in our disenchanted age. The same goes for figures throughout history from Augustine to Hans Boersma. What does she want? She accuses most of the Reformed tradition of perpetuating disenchantment, but I just can't agree. It seems to me her reading is just shallow -- perhaps that's why her sources are so poorly integrated.
In the end, I came away not knowing exactly how the author would have me do differently. For a book that is so clearly trying to motivate me to do something, I think that's a total failure.
[I received a free ebook through NetGalley.]
Johns decries the de-enchanted perspective that modern, secular people have on the Bible, in which the text a mere object to be studied. But she doesn't quite define her desired alternative in any way I could follow. She jumps from vague idea to vague idea, never stopping to explain what she means. She throws out block quotes and citations from a myriad of different sources, but these sources (apart from Charles Taylor) don't feel like they've been fully integrated.
It's also hard to tell exactly who her models are. In one moment, John Calvin might be a champion of enchanted Christianity, while in the next he's one of the key figures who ushered in our disenchanted age. The same goes for figures throughout history from Augustine to Hans Boersma. What does she want? She accuses most of the Reformed tradition of perpetuating disenchantment, but I just can't agree. It seems to me her reading is just shallow -- perhaps that's why her sources are so poorly integrated.
In the end, I came away not knowing exactly how the author would have me do differently. For a book that is so clearly trying to motivate me to do something, I think that's a total failure.
[I received a free ebook through NetGalley.]
February 2, 2025
I am sympathetic to this highly suggestive work but in the end, it suffers from imprecision of key terms (ie ‘enchantment’ and ‘imagination’) and scattered argumentation and use of evidence. It seems Johns tries to do too much, cover too much ground in a mere 170 pages. With this, there is not much room for nuance, too many broad sweeping statements, which almost makes it hard to engage her core claims…
Perhaps it is a matter of rhetoric, but I still don’t see how the text, as container/agent/conveyer of real presence, needs to be re-enchanted… it’s our perception and hermeneutic that require this correction. That’s why her section on pneumatic imagination seemed most promising.
Anyway, too short-winded for what it tries to accomplish but still engaging for a conversation that the Modern Church needs to have.
Perhaps it is a matter of rhetoric, but I still don’t see how the text, as container/agent/conveyer of real presence, needs to be re-enchanted… it’s our perception and hermeneutic that require this correction. That’s why her section on pneumatic imagination seemed most promising.
Anyway, too short-winded for what it tries to accomplish but still engaging for a conversation that the Modern Church needs to have.
October 9, 2023
Cheryl Bridges Johns very compellingly brings the riches of the Pentecostal tradition (and beyond) to theology of Scripture. She lets the text breathe, disrupt, and invite.
January 12, 2024
I know I only gave it 3⭐ but I did really like this book. As someone who gravitates toward the more intellectual and literary aspects of Scripture, I was thankful to have a push toward the divine that animates it. The author is wicked smart and I had to look up multiple words in the dictionary lol.
Main critiques are: I feel she oversimplified both Conservative and liberal approaches to Scripture. She also didn't define her terms. What qualifies as conservative and what qualifies as liberal? She doesn't say. I could spend a lot of time picking apart her critiques of both sides' approaches but suffice it to say I feel they were oversimplified.
I would also have LOVED to have an example of how she encounters passages in the Bible in the paradigm she uses. What does this look like in the book of Leviticus for her? Many people can talk a big talk of God meeting them through the Bible, but few can show how this works for a lay person while they are in the thick of Jeremiah. I have no doubt that the author (brilliant as she seems to be) can in fact encounter the Holy Spirit in the midst of drier books of the Bible, I just want to see it in action!
Main critiques are: I feel she oversimplified both Conservative and liberal approaches to Scripture. She also didn't define her terms. What qualifies as conservative and what qualifies as liberal? She doesn't say. I could spend a lot of time picking apart her critiques of both sides' approaches but suffice it to say I feel they were oversimplified.
I would also have LOVED to have an example of how she encounters passages in the Bible in the paradigm she uses. What does this look like in the book of Leviticus for her? Many people can talk a big talk of God meeting them through the Bible, but few can show how this works for a lay person while they are in the thick of Jeremiah. I have no doubt that the author (brilliant as she seems to be) can in fact encounter the Holy Spirit in the midst of drier books of the Bible, I just want to see it in action!
November 30, 2023
A very necessary book: Bridges Johns seeks to rescue the Bible from the Weberian modernism, a rationalized text where we simply read it to extract rules or principles, and instead restore it to its rightful place as an enchanted text that we inhabit, mediated by the Spirit of God. At the same time, it suffers from a genre problem. It’s too technical to be truly accessible to the lay reader and yet too short and surface-level to be a major scholarly contribution. If it were one or the other, it would be a five-star text, but the hybrid model disappoints both audiences.
August 18, 2023
I wanted more from this. Sorry.
It starts well, the closing chapter is good, and there are plenty of great paragraphs between. But, overall, I don’t feel it resolves the problem addressed.
As a pentecostal who also champions the sacramental—especially the sacramental aspects of creation and bodies—I whole-heartedly applaud Johns highlighting that both fundamentalism (on the right) and progressive liberalism (on the left) have tendencies to desacralise Scripture in our desire to ‘master’ an understanding of the text, purposefully or inadvertently. Johns argument that we need to ‘re-enchant the text’ and be open to a Spirit-Word-led approach when reading certainly needs to be made and applied.
Having said this, there were two problems I had.
Firstly, there’s too much generalisation in the examples of how differing schools of thought approach the Bible, primarily in the matter of the Spirit’s role when reading Scripture. I certainly see the candidates these generalisations are aiming to highlight, but reality is more nuanced. Maybe such generalisations are prolific in the academic circles this book is written to, but on the ground, in pews and pulpits as a whole, they aren’t. I can imagine my fundamentalist and progressive liberal friends reading this and replying, ‘that’s not true of me.’ This, of course, does not mean that Johns is wrong—she isn’t. It’s just that we are all, myself included, more muddled than the contrasts espoused.
Secondly, there were many times when this felt repetitive and lost in academic terminology. Yes, it’s from an academic publisher for an academic audience. And although I’m not the latter, I have some nous. Some sections seemed convoluted, I couldn’t see the point they were making to the present chapter nor the overall argument, and some chapters felt like a repeat of the previous chapters, restating the problems in a different way. I got to the end wondering, ‘what’s the answer then?’ If the answer was to be found in these denser passages, I missed it. I’m certainly not anti-intellectual, and I appreciate that Johns isn’t either. And yet, this book’s highly-academic name-dropping lingo leaves one feeling that the text remains locked behind the purely academic approach of human mastery.
Admittedly, this could have been the point Johns is precisely arguing against.
As an alternative, if the answer is purely, ‘listen and be more attentive to what the Spirit is saying through Scripture’—and I’m not suggesting this is the answer Johns offers (again, I couldn’t see what was being offered)—then both a fundamentalist and progressive liberal approach can merely reply, ‘Amen! We’re doing that.’ After all, both schools profess Scripture as something through which the Spirit manifests and speaks.
As someone else has said in their review, ‘[Johns] asserts that in a Spirit-filled community, reading the Bible becomes a dynamic activity, where participants inhabit the story-world of the Bible and experience God as narrated by the biblical text.’ Yes, I would respond, Johns is asserting this. But again, fundamentalists and progressives alike would say they are doing this. So, how does this look in contrast to those schools?
It’s for this reason why I don’t feel ‘Re-enchanting the Text’ resolves the problem it addresses. I’m left wondering what re-enchanting the text looks like.
It starts well, the closing chapter is good, and there are plenty of great paragraphs between. But, overall, I don’t feel it resolves the problem addressed.
As a pentecostal who also champions the sacramental—especially the sacramental aspects of creation and bodies—I whole-heartedly applaud Johns highlighting that both fundamentalism (on the right) and progressive liberalism (on the left) have tendencies to desacralise Scripture in our desire to ‘master’ an understanding of the text, purposefully or inadvertently. Johns argument that we need to ‘re-enchant the text’ and be open to a Spirit-Word-led approach when reading certainly needs to be made and applied.
Having said this, there were two problems I had.
Firstly, there’s too much generalisation in the examples of how differing schools of thought approach the Bible, primarily in the matter of the Spirit’s role when reading Scripture. I certainly see the candidates these generalisations are aiming to highlight, but reality is more nuanced. Maybe such generalisations are prolific in the academic circles this book is written to, but on the ground, in pews and pulpits as a whole, they aren’t. I can imagine my fundamentalist and progressive liberal friends reading this and replying, ‘that’s not true of me.’ This, of course, does not mean that Johns is wrong—she isn’t. It’s just that we are all, myself included, more muddled than the contrasts espoused.
Secondly, there were many times when this felt repetitive and lost in academic terminology. Yes, it’s from an academic publisher for an academic audience. And although I’m not the latter, I have some nous. Some sections seemed convoluted, I couldn’t see the point they were making to the present chapter nor the overall argument, and some chapters felt like a repeat of the previous chapters, restating the problems in a different way. I got to the end wondering, ‘what’s the answer then?’ If the answer was to be found in these denser passages, I missed it. I’m certainly not anti-intellectual, and I appreciate that Johns isn’t either. And yet, this book’s highly-academic name-dropping lingo leaves one feeling that the text remains locked behind the purely academic approach of human mastery.
Admittedly, this could have been the point Johns is precisely arguing against.
As an alternative, if the answer is purely, ‘listen and be more attentive to what the Spirit is saying through Scripture’—and I’m not suggesting this is the answer Johns offers (again, I couldn’t see what was being offered)—then both a fundamentalist and progressive liberal approach can merely reply, ‘Amen! We’re doing that.’ After all, both schools profess Scripture as something through which the Spirit manifests and speaks.
As someone else has said in their review, ‘[Johns] asserts that in a Spirit-filled community, reading the Bible becomes a dynamic activity, where participants inhabit the story-world of the Bible and experience God as narrated by the biblical text.’ Yes, I would respond, Johns is asserting this. But again, fundamentalists and progressives alike would say they are doing this. So, how does this look in contrast to those schools?
It’s for this reason why I don’t feel ‘Re-enchanting the Text’ resolves the problem it addresses. I’m left wondering what re-enchanting the text looks like.
December 2, 2024
Worth the read for this paragraph alone.
God's life as relational and personal defines the parameters of Scripture's role in the economic life of God. The end goal of God's mission is restoration of divine-human fellowship. Thus the type of relationship facilitated by Scripture is one of both communion with and personal experience of the triune life. Following the Protestant Christocentric reading of Scripture, Evangelicals place the Bible in service of leading people to experience a deeper, personal relationship with Jesus. This view of the Bible leaves little room for the expansive fullness of a relationship with Jesus existing in trinitarian communion. Often the Holy Spirit is marginalized to the role of a nonintrusive agent guiding people in personal Bible study. In this model, the presence of the Spirit is secondary to the power of the human subject. The presence of the Father is remotely transcendent.
What an insightful and troubling observation. This is a great challenge for anyone who claims the Scriptures are God-breathed and then spend hours acting as if they were written in stodgy academic halls in the 17th century. If you struggle in the first few chapters keep going chapters 7 and 8 really build and bring so much light.
God's life as relational and personal defines the parameters of Scripture's role in the economic life of God. The end goal of God's mission is restoration of divine-human fellowship. Thus the type of relationship facilitated by Scripture is one of both communion with and personal experience of the triune life. Following the Protestant Christocentric reading of Scripture, Evangelicals place the Bible in service of leading people to experience a deeper, personal relationship with Jesus. This view of the Bible leaves little room for the expansive fullness of a relationship with Jesus existing in trinitarian communion. Often the Holy Spirit is marginalized to the role of a nonintrusive agent guiding people in personal Bible study. In this model, the presence of the Spirit is secondary to the power of the human subject. The presence of the Father is remotely transcendent.
What an insightful and troubling observation. This is a great challenge for anyone who claims the Scriptures are God-breathed and then spend hours acting as if they were written in stodgy academic halls in the 17th century. If you struggle in the first few chapters keep going chapters 7 and 8 really build and bring so much light.
September 9, 2025
In essence this book explores the loss of mystery during the Enlightenment period and how that relates to the quality of our relationship with the Biblical text today… or lack therof.
The author suggests the Bible and other texts written by those immersed in pre-enlightenment mystery require an approach that embraces the esoteric and otherworldly nature of the world and humanity.
Applying rational, non-mystical mindsets to texts steeped in mystery can lead to misinterpretation and a departure from the original intent.
And that’s about all I can say.
In keeping with the point of the book the author has to abstract a lot.
That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of good scholarship.
… there is …
The main point, however, is to turn down the dial on the rational and turn up the dial on the esoteric.
You have to experience some of the prose and poetic musings in order for the work to have its effect.
I found this book quite interesting and helpful.
The bible is magic.
November 2, 2023
As a nonscholar I struggled a bit to keep pace with the author in the early chapters but I was grateful for them and they came into more clarity for me as I read the final three chapters. I really liked this book and am pretty interested in its implications for how we might remove barriers to enchantment in how we engage the Scriptures and more generally how we participate in the life of the Trinity and the mission of God. I’ll return to this book a fair bit, I expect.
November 27, 2023
Good first half, explaining the major players in the theology of revelation and scripture. The second half is fine, but suffers occasionally from the theologians disease of the etymological fallacy, saying things like dabar is always relational or yada is always intimate. As a language teacher and Biblical scholar these things drive me nuts.
August 2, 2023
I so appreciate this take on Scripture. Both fundamentalism and its extreme opposite disenchanted the Bible: one removed the human and the other the Divine. An incarnational approach to Scripture holds both dimensions together and challenges us to view the Bible as a subject, not an object.
September 3, 2023
Intriguing & fantastic
The need in my own life and the world around me for re enchantment is so deep. This book is a call back to something so precious that has been all but lost. Highly recommend!
The need in my own life and the world around me for re enchantment is so deep. This book is a call back to something so precious that has been all but lost. Highly recommend!
August 11, 2024
The author does a great job of showing how the Bible has been disenchanted, deprived of its mystery and power. We have domesticated the Bible by reducing it to propositions and moral lessons. However, the author was lacking in explaining how we can reenchant the Bible. The author researched very well and cited dozens of sources. So,etimes the scholarly got in the way of the practical.
September 11, 2024
Johns proposes the modern era took the enchantment out of Scripture. She brings a host of proof for this and does a good job of presenting the proof. What she doesn't do well is instruct HOW to read Scripture that puts the enchantment back into the living Word of God.
April 19, 2025
Poorly written
June 29, 2023
It is easy to underestimate the influence the Enlightenment has had on Western thought, the Church, theology and our view of the Bible. Cheryl Bridges Johns argues that this has left us with a modern version of the Bible that is devoid of power, life and mystery. Both Liberalism and fundamentalism, formed in either response to, or rejection of the Enlightenment, have robbed the Bible of its sacred “otherness” and left behind a lifeless shell. Pentecostalism, however, arose outside of these two dominant streams of Western Christianity, and offered a path back to a “re-enchanted” Bible that valued its life, power and mystery. Unfortunately, as the author argues, Pentecostalism also quickly became influenced by fundamentalism.
The author observes that many of our current generation are restless with where Evangelicalism has left us. Dissatisfied and disillusioned with views that reduce scripture to a natural, disempowered text, many younger evangelicals are hungry for a better way to approach scripture. Humans are instinctively aware that there is more to this world than materiality. Cheryl Bridges Johns speaks to that dissatisfaction and longing by helping the reader to reawaken the ancient view of the cosmos where, like the Möbius strip, the natural and supernatural are inseparably woven together.
The first three chapters of this book alone make this a book worth buying. These chapters define the problem and how this problem arose. These chapters are accessible and flow well. The rest of the book is more dense and takes some effort to walk through. I am now waiting in eager anticipation of authors next book that she hints of.
As an ordained Pentecostal minister, I have learned a great deal from the disciplines of modern Biblical and Theological study, but the study has also left me nagging suspicion that something had been left out, or maybe even that something had died and been forgotten. Occasionally, through the writings of the likes of Eugene Peterson and a few others, I would hear the distant echoes of what I had sensed but without enough clarity to define it. Cheryl Bridges Johns has given language to what I and many others of my generation have intuitively sensed.
I recommend this book to all who are dissatisfied with where the Enlightenment and its children, liberalism and fundamentalism, have left us. You will enjoy this book if you love to think deeply, theologically and spiritually.
The author observes that many of our current generation are restless with where Evangelicalism has left us. Dissatisfied and disillusioned with views that reduce scripture to a natural, disempowered text, many younger evangelicals are hungry for a better way to approach scripture. Humans are instinctively aware that there is more to this world than materiality. Cheryl Bridges Johns speaks to that dissatisfaction and longing by helping the reader to reawaken the ancient view of the cosmos where, like the Möbius strip, the natural and supernatural are inseparably woven together.
The first three chapters of this book alone make this a book worth buying. These chapters define the problem and how this problem arose. These chapters are accessible and flow well. The rest of the book is more dense and takes some effort to walk through. I am now waiting in eager anticipation of authors next book that she hints of.
As an ordained Pentecostal minister, I have learned a great deal from the disciplines of modern Biblical and Theological study, but the study has also left me nagging suspicion that something had been left out, or maybe even that something had died and been forgotten. Occasionally, through the writings of the likes of Eugene Peterson and a few others, I would hear the distant echoes of what I had sensed but without enough clarity to define it. Cheryl Bridges Johns has given language to what I and many others of my generation have intuitively sensed.
I recommend this book to all who are dissatisfied with where the Enlightenment and its children, liberalism and fundamentalism, have left us. You will enjoy this book if you love to think deeply, theologically and spiritually.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews