When I first read this book, I was impressed with it and intended to review it long before now. I trust that my delay will not distract from the significance of this book for anyone who really wants to study the Bible. We included a review a couple of issues ago on a book that summarizes the Bible’s message, book by book. As we stated, it was a quick helpful reference book. The Symphony of Scripture will also enable the reader to see how God’s word, written by so many different people from so many different times and places, all support unifying themes throughout the Scripture. If we were to admit to a glaring weakness among Christians concerning the Bible, it’s that we either do not know the Scripture or we know it eclectically. The average Christian struggles to see how one part of Scripture relates to another part and how the whole impacts his or her life at every level. Christians have the tendency in studying, teaching, and preaching, to read a passage outside the immediate and overall setting; therefore it is easy to moralize, legalize or over-spiritualize the Bible’s message.

As you will see in this issue’s In Case You’re Asked article, we do an injustice to Scripture and ourselves by making its message too simplistic. However, we can help ourselves along if we have some kind of thread or threads to help us see the grand narrative in the Bible. Mark Strom says in the introduction, “The book works through the main events and features of the Bible story. My aim is to show how these events and insights contribute to the overall pattern, and to suggest some ways in which the coming of Jesus completes it.” He then writes, “ I have concentrated on providing some key ideas about how each historical period, event, institution or book adds something and fits in to the Bible’s overall history.”

I have appreciated other overview approaches to Scripture in the past: Jack Scott’s Old and New Testament surveys in our ABES series are an excellent summary overview of the Bible. S. D. DeGraff’s Promise and Deliverance has been a favorite for developing the central motif of covenant throughout the Bible. I believe Strom’s book is a combination of the two. His additions make it extremely valuable in understanding the Bible’s overall story and how the parts relate to the whole. His final point is that Jesus Christ is the key to understanding the unity in the diversity within the sixty-six books.

The Old Testament section is comprised of twenty-two chapters and the New Testament section contains ten chapters. It is an easy to read book that could be a good text for a Sunday school class, a Bible study group, or as a training tool for those who teach the Word. Other writers have maintained, as does Strom, that the first eleven chapters of Genesis provide an account of the events and themes of which shaped the entire course of its story. Strom, however, carefully leads the reader to see how those chapters reveal how the purpose of God in creation, the devastating effects of sin, and the first glimpses of God’s plan to restore harmony with his people, all fit together and culminate in Jesus Christ. He demonstrates how topics such as covenant, judgment, grace, kingdom, gospel, and eschatology all interface with each other. You will particularly benefit from his emphasis on our temptation to live by law rather than by grace and how we build our lives upon rules, confessions, and traditions rather than upon the finished work of Christ. Understanding what the Bible teaches is the key to resisting that legalistic tendency. Strom writes he is convinced that people today continue to make the same mistakes as did those in Bible days, namely confusing the “what God has done,” with “what we should do.”

One quote on this connection will give a flavor of the entire book; “The gospel shows us that God accepts us fully on the basis of Christ’s finished work. If we understand this, then we begin to experience a wonderfully realistic and other centered way of life: we worship Christ through our jobs, recreation, and relationships, our good times and bad, and we use our new freedom to serve others. Life is no longer about our egos, security, and comfort. Free in the knowledge of what Christ has done, we fear no longer to confess our weaknesses, nor do we grasp at glib answers to remove the paradox and sting of failure and suffering.”

Another quote will give you an idea of why I so strongly recommend this book; “One group of people trouble me deeply—those who struggle under the rules and expectations of their Christian friends and leaders. Among these are the divorced, the depressed, the socially inept, the unsuccessful, the sick, the average, the separated, the poorly educated, the lonely, the doubting, the intimidated, the hurt and the shy. They cannot appreciate their acceptance and worth in Christ because of the stumbling blocks placed before them by preachers of rules and experiences who spiritually rob them and leave them under the burden of false guilt.”

 As Strom develops the theme of the Kingdom of God as it unfolds in the New Testament, he has some helpful and insightful ideas about the community. He states that one reason people suffer from things like low self-worth and esteem is because they see their Christianity as an individual thing between themselves and God. They even use “quiet times” to foster that notion, and do not see themselves as members of the body of Christ.  Unless each of us sees that, we will never understand our significance and worth. He states, “When we cease focusing on feeling good about ourselves, and move towards recapturing the dignity of being a servant to others, then we actually discover a far deeper sense of personal worth and satisfaction.” The more we develop a sense of community in our Christian life, the more we will see how it relates to our everyday life. It is the lack of connection between faith and daily life that leads to alienation and the feeling of being second-class.

You will reap great benefits from this book. It is an easy read but not a simplistic book. It is a most helpful overview of the Bible and I believe a key to understanding the message of that book.

-Charles Dunahoo

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