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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
One of the greatest needs of our day and generation is for an approach to the question of the inspiration and authority of the Bible which will be sufficiently clear and embracing in its statement of the truth to be a means, both of assurance to all who seek to find God's Word for their daily spiritual food in the Bible, and of reconciliation to those who have approached the problem from varying angles in their search for a satisfying solution, and who, instead of welcoming one another's insights, treat one another with hostility and contempt. Fifty years ago Fundamentalists and Liberals looked at one another across a vast chasm of bitterness and difference: that chasm has persisted to the present day, but in many ways it is not so wide or so deep as it was—and neo-Calvinism has interposed a third approach. Is it too much to hope that the time should now have come when each of these groups will be ready to confess the defectiveness of its own understanding, and the extremes to which it has at times gone in overemphasising one side of the truth; and that each will seek that fuller understanding which an appreciation of the contributions of the others can bring? The barriers between the theologians of these three schools are in some ways more difficult to overcome than those between Christian denominations.
page 35 note 1 Frontier, pp. 249–50, 253.
page 35 note 2 Fundamentalism and the Church of God, p. 27.
page 36 note 1 Life and Work, Aug. 1958, p. 197.
page 36 note 2 S.C.M. Press, 1957.
page 36 note 3 I.V.F., 1958.
page 36 note 4 Methuen, 1957.
page 36 note 5 At this stage I should explain my use of the term ‘Fundamentalist’. Packer dislikes it, and calls it an ‘objectionable term’ (op. cit., p. 29), and prefers the term ‘Evangelical’. The trouble is that many who would rejoice in the term ‘Evangelical’ are not Fundamentalists. I therefore use the term Fundamentalist to denote a well-known attitude to the Bible, but with no intention to be derogatory or derisive. The term ‘Evangelical’ is used with a wider connotation.
page 37 note 1 It certainly puts into words what I myself feel about it!
page 37 note 2 See Newbigin, The Household of God, passim. It seems clear that in Newbigin's classification Dr Packer would be labelled ‘Protestant’, and the pietist Lutheran pastor ‘Pentecostalist’.
page 37 note 3 Packer, op. cit., p. 142
page 37 note 4 ibid., pp. 22–23.
page 38 note 1 Some time ago I was giving a talk on the Islamic view of inspiration to a group of candidates in training for missionary work. I contrasted the Islamic view of revelation of Divine truth through a Book, with the Christian view of revelation through Christ the Word of God, a Person. Afterwards one of the group suggested that there was little to distinguish the Islamic from the I.V.F. view. I felt at the time that there was a vast difference; having read Dr Packer, I am not now so sure of the vastness! I think Dr Brunner was referring to this when he spoke at a meeting in Lahore in 1951 of the danger of becoming ‘Muslim Christians’.
page 39 note 1 Reid, op. cit., p. 267.
page 39 note 2 op. cit., pp. 277–8.
page 39 note 3 Reid's statement that ‘the Bible has the authority of God who chooses to speak in and through it’ would have been much clearer and more evidently biblical if the words ‘the Holy Spirit’ had been added after ‘God’.
page 39 note 4 Packer, op. cit., p. 72.
page 39 note 5 ibid., p. 73.
page 39 note 6 Frontier, p. 252.
page 40 note 1 History of the Reformation, 2nd edn., I, pp. 461–464Google Scholar. The whole section (pp. 453–67), written in the pre-Barthian period by a conservative, non-Fundamentalist Evangelical, is a particularly valuable and helpful one.
page 40 note 2 Packer, op. cit., p. 47.
page 41 note 1 ibid., pp. 91, 92, 93.
page 41 note 2 ibid., pp. 113–14.
page 41 note 3 Hebert has no objection to the term ‘verbal inspiration’: ‘If Scripture is inspired at all, it must be the words that are inspired.… God's revelation, then, is transmitted to us in the Holy Scriptures by means of language.’
page 41 note 4 See Bromiley, G. W. in New Bible Commentary, p. 22, col. 1.Google Scholar
page 41 note 5 Packer, op. cit., p. 47: ‘The Bible is a record and explanation of divine revelation which is both complete (sufficient) and comprehensive (perspicuous).’
page 41 note 6 ibid., p. 47.
page 41 note 7 ibid., p. 112.
page 41 note 8 ibid., p. 119.
page 42 note 1 Reid, op. cit., pp. 139, 182–3, 116. Reid is chiefly criticising Romanist and scholastic views here, but the application to Fundamentalist views is clear.
page 42 note 2 ibid., p. 102.
page 43 note 1 See The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, ch. VI, esp. pp. 115–20. ‘If inspiration is not regarded as plenary, there is no reason why we should not believe in verbal inspiration.’
page 43 note 2 C. F. Evans, quoted by Hebert, op. cit., p. 76.
page 44 note 1 Hebert, op. cit., p. 32. Hebert goes on to show how the Holy Spirit exercised an interpreting function in the cases of the Exodus and the coming of Christ.
page 44 note 2 See W. C. MacDonald, Modern Evangelism. I have not the exact reference. He describes vividly an interview he had with Karl Barth. See also Bromiley, G. W. in New Bible Commentary, p. 22.Google Scholar
page 44 note 3 Barth, quoted in Reid, op. cit., p. 200.
page 45 note 1 Brunner, quoted in ibid., p. 233.
page 45 note 2 ibid., pp. 278–9.
page 45 note 3 ibid., p. 26.
page 45 note 4 See J. Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology, especially VII, secs. 22 and 23.
page 46 note 1 All biblical quotations in this article are from the R.S.V., unless otherwise indicated.
page 47 note 1 op. cit., p. 48. Reid is here speaking of Calvin's views.
page 47 note 2 It might be said that Fundamentalists overstress inspiration, neo-Calvinists communication, and Liberals illumination (which they tend to equate with ‘inspired commonsense!’).
page 47 note 3 Lev. 4.I, etc.
page 48 note 1 Hymn 197, R.C.H.
page 48 note 2 Hymn 196, R.C.H.
page 48 note 3 The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament, p. 232.
page 48 note 4 Grace Abounding, Conclusion, para. 4.
page 49 note 1 I Thess. 1.5.
page 49 note 2 Acts 10.38.
page 49 note 3 John 3.34.
page 49 note 4 Matt. 4.4, etc.
page 49 note 5 Mark 2.25, etc.
page 49 note 6 Packer, op. cit., pp. 54–62 takes the opposite (and I believe mistaken) view, and builds the whole argument of his book on it. The argument is ruthlessly logical—but only if we accept his premiss!
page 49 note 7 Acts 1.2.
page 50 note 1 See Packer, op. cit., pp. 137–42 and passim.
page 50 note 2 John Robinson, quoted in Packer, op. cit., p. 89.
page 51 note 1 This attitude has recently been modified, but in matters of faith and life is unchanged. One is reminded of the action of the Caliph Uthman, who declared one version of the Quran correct and ordered all the rest to be burnt. The attitude of some extreme American Fundamentalists to the R.S.V. suggests a tendency to regard the A.V. as an infallible translation.
page 51 note 2 R.S.V. translates: ‘Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope.’
page 51 note 3 Ps. 28.5, A.V.
page 51 note 4 2 Tim. 2.9, A.V.
page 52 note 1 e.g. of Isa. 7.14, where the Greek παρθ⋯νος must be translated ‘virgin’, and is so used by Matthew as a prophecy of the Virgin Birth.
page 52 note 2 I have found this view common among Pakistani Christians who prided themselves on their orthodoxy. O. T. Allis, The Unity of Isaiah (a recent I.V.F. publication), has much to say about authorship, but little to say on the unity of the book's message, and is a typical example of emphasis put on the wrong place.
page 52 note 3 Jeremiah, p. 316.
page 53 note 1 I believe that much solid work is called for today along these lines. An indication of how the method might be used may be found in an article by the present writer in The Life of Faith entitled ‘The Shepherd of Bethlehem’ (15th Dec. 1955) in which it is briefly applied to the study of Micah.
page 53 note 2 Snaith, N., The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, p. 89, n. 1.Google Scholar
page 53 note 3 ibid., p. 13.
page 53 note 4 See Packer, op. cit., pp. 182–6 for an attempt to explain as reasonable what Dr Hebert feels to be a real inconsistency of the New Bible Commentary on this issue.
page 54 note 1 op. cit., p. 113. See pp. 112–13 passim.
page 55 note 1 As in Smith, G. A., The Book of Isaiah, vol. I, pp. 331–342.Google Scholar
page 55 note 2 On this see further Reid, op. cit., pp. 251–2.
page 55 note 3 supra, p. 36
page 55 note 4 Hebert, , The Authority of the Old Testament, quoted in Reid, op. cit., p. 158.Google Scholar
page 56 note 1 Fundamentalism and the Church of God, p. 43. Hebert's whole discussion is very helpful. It is a pity that Packer (op. cit., p. 65, n. 2) treats it so suspiciously.
page 56 note 2 Hebert, op. cit., pp. 86–87, etc., makes valid criticisms of the New Bible Commentary on this score.
page 57 note 1 I have used this approach in discussions with Ahmadiyya Muslims, who make the verses in Mark a basis for attacking the sinlessness of Christ, and found it helpful.
page 58 note 1 A.V.
page 58 note 2 See Contra Celsum, VII, 18–26. I quote from Chadwick's translation.
page 58 note 3 Life and Work, June 1958, p. 138.
page 58 note 4 e.g. the late Dr J. Rendle Short in The Bible and Modem Research, last chapter.
page 58 note 5 Reid, op. cit., p. 184.
page 59 note 1 Life and Work, Aug. 1958, p. 197.
page 59 note 2 The Death of Christ (1902), pp. 315–17.