In his latest book Living the Questions of the Bible, Professor Luke A. Powery invites the reader to focus on questions drawn verbatim from the Bible—questions such as “What shall I cry?”, “Why are you afraid?”, and "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”

Written for a broad audience, the book presents questioning as a viable and faithful Christian practice. We may think the Bible is only about getting answers, but the book argues that Bible is also a question book, revealing how the life of faith is a quest with and for God. By exploring various passages in the Bible, this book attempts to invite readers into an interrogative spirituality, one in which we learn that even God questions. Faith seeks and keeps on seeking. It may reach an understanding, or it may not. Either way, our questions are a way to live the Christian life honestly, faithfully, and doxologically.

“The Bible is a question book,” Powery writes in the book’s opening chapter. “It has its own questions for us, to us, about us. We don’t have to make up questions; they are right there in God’s Word.” Living the Questions of the Bible offers reflections on twenty-one questions embedded in the Bible, which are grouped into three sections: Who Is God? Who Am I? What Should We Do? Each chapter is dedicated to a biblical question with exegesis of the surrounding verses, present-day illustrations, and questions to spur group discussion.  

“The purpose of this book of reflections is to follow the pattern and language of Scripture by reminding Christians that questions are also the mother tongue of faith,” he writes. “Thus, this is a question book not an answer book. It aims to affirm an interrogative spirituality as a faithful Christian practice.”

The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery is the dean of Duke University Chapel and associate professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School. His teaching and research interests are located at the intersection of preaching, worship, pneumatology, and culture, particularly expressions of the African diaspora. He is the author of Spirit Speech: Lament and Celebration in Preaching; Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death, and Hope; Rise Up, Shepherd! Advent Reflections on the Spirituals; and Were You There? Lenten Reflections on the Spirituals.