EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY continued an effective means to that end [that is, snatching any man from the transitory world about him], but the Scriptures never speak of them as an end in themselves. As wit nesses for Christ our principal busi ness is to bring a message of life to dead men.” T>
historic doctrines of the Christian faith as it claims, it would under stand what infallible and inspired mean, namely, that the very words of Scripture are inspired by God, the words which God wished to have there. Again, how is it pos sible to say that evangelicals believe ‘that God spoke through writers who were fully kept from error by the influence of the Holy Spirit,’ and at the same time declare as one does: ‘I notice a weakening even in some conservative circles of confidence in the high doctrine of Scripture.’ It is impossible to believe that the Holy Spirit guarded the writers of Scripture from error and at the same time adopt a lower doctrine of Scripture. “From a positive point of view, however, I suggest the following. 1) The attempt to get away from the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration is an attempt to remove difficulties at the expense of creat ing far more serious ones. 2) The attempt to get away from plenary verbal inspiration is an attempt to reduce our faith to a rational, scientific formula or basis, but faith cannot be reduced to this formula as Christ and His apostles readily admitted. 3) To doubt the full verbal inspiration of the Bible and thereby its inerrancy is to remove the foundation stone of Protestant ism. 4) To deny verbal plenary inspiration is to question the integ rity of Christ and of the apostles who bear witness to the nature of the Old Testament Scriptures. 5) To deny inerrancy to all of the Scriptures is to place a large ques tion mark over the faith which has been delivered unto us, for who then can be sure that any of the Bible is the very Word of God? &) To sit in judgment on the Scrip tures is to reverse Christianity, for we are judged by the Scriptures and they form the standard for our faith and practice. 7) Finally, the statements of the Scriptures indi cate that the writers believed im plicitly that they were writing the very Word of God.” Witmer: “ The question immedi ately arises, in what sense is there
or must there be a reopening of the subject of biblical inspiration? If it is meant in the sense of the validity, character and extent of biblical inspiration, evangelical theology is in a dangerous condition. The Bible itself has declared ‘Every Scripture is God-breathed’ (2 Tim. 3:16), which settles the basic issue of the doctrine of inspiration. The church through its history, until the rise of modern liberalism, has held a consistent position on the reality of the fact that the totality of Scrip ture in its original written form originated with God and was the verbal expression of His message to man and, therefore, errorless. “Down through the years con siderable variation has existed on the problem of the me t h o d of accomplishing this result, but the central truth of the fact is the his torical Christian church doctrine as well as the scriptural assertion. Furthermore, all the various inade quat e t h e o r i e s o f inspiration, including the ones advanced by neo-orthodoxy, have already been weighed in the balances and found wanting. There can be no reinvesti gation of the basic doctrine of in spiration by way of eliminating the factual inerrancy of the autographs of Scripture or of denying that in its total verbal form the Bible is the message of God to man without shifting the ultimate principle of biblical authority from an objective to a subjective basis — from the Bible itself to man and, therefore, in the final analysis endangering the entire structure of doctrine built upon the foundation of an authoritative Word of God.” Aldrich: “ If there is a ‘weaken ing’ in the Protestant belief in the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scrip ture under the pressure of neo orthodox theology, then the trend is bad, not good. It is one thing to redefine terms so as to convey the right impression, as fundamental ists have done in rechristening themselves evangelicals, but it is quite another matter to yield to the so-called we i gh t of unbelieving scholarship so as to ‘rethink’ our positions.”
1 . v^eopening of the subject of biblical inspiration. Many de fenders of the Word will find this the most serious and objectionable feature of the entire article. Charles L. Feinberg points out that “ a re examination of a doctrine or any previously held position is allow able. on the basis of 1) new facts brought to light and 2) discovered errors in former conclusions. Nei ther feature is present here. The trend of evangelicalism is more in the way of a creeping and crippling paralysis which seems only bent on correcting certain excesses in fun damentalism, but winds up with throwing the entire basis for the position overboard when it suggests a re-examination of inspiration.” Mason: “ I find p a r t i c u l a r l y obnoxious the suggestion that the whole question of biblical inspira tion needs a re-examination. Cer tainly no competent believer in verbal inspiration suggests that the whole Bible was ‘dedicated’ or that errors have not crept into the text and translations. Believers in verbal inspiration are no less emphatic in these matters than those who are suggesting a re-examination.” Christian: “ It appears that there is a basic contradiction or confusion of terms. In the Christian Life article ‘evangelicalism’ is defined as the ‘movement which adheres to the historic doctrines of the Chris tian faith’ while at the same time the article declares that ‘evangel icals, like fundamentalists, believe that the Bible is the infallible, inspired Word of God’ and then they ‘are making bold to ask, “What does ‘infallible, inspired’ mean.” ’ “ If evangelicalism adhered to the
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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