Table Of ContentINERRANT
theWIND
INERRANT
the WIND
The Evangelical Crisis of Biblical Authority
Robert M. Price
CONTENTS
PREFACE 7
INTRODUCTION: The Surprising Range of Options 9
1. TROUBLING THE HOUSE: 13 A New Fundamentalist-Modernist
Controversy?
2. PRODIGAL FUNDAMENTALISTS: 61 The Neo-evangelical Ferment
3. "INERRANCY, LTD" 85 The Inerrancy of (Some) Assertions
4. ENIGMA AND KERYGMA: 109 An Infallible Central Message
5. THROUGH A KALEIDOSCOPE DARKLY: 133 Authority as Authorization
in a Pluriform Canon
6. "IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO": 153 Do Evangelicals Demythologize?
7. THE ORTHODOXFORD OPTION: 183 The Canon outside the Canon
CONCLUSION: Onward to Post-Evangelicalism 197
APPENDIX 1: Clark H. Pinnock: 217 Conservative and Contemporary
APPENDIX 2: Paradigm Shifting and the Apologetics Debate 265
APPENDIX 3: The Centrality and Scope of Conversion 275
BIBLIOGRAPHY 297
GENERAL INDEX 313
SCRIPTURE INDEX 321
PREFACE
his book is dated. Except for slight modifications, it represents my 1981 doctoral
dissertation (at Drew University), "The Crisis of Biblical Authority: The Setting
and Range of the Current Evangelical Controversy." I have more than once
looked it over to see what updating might be required. I was surprised to find
that very little seemed to be in order. That is not because nothing new has
happened since. Rather, it is because evangelical scholars who have not
continued fighting the same old battles I describe here have moved on to other
interesting questions (such as "Open Theism") or have launched out on the
adventure of recreating evangelicalism on a whole new basis. More power to
them. Dave Tomlinson's The Post-Evangelical (Triangle/S.P.C.K., 1995) and
Gary Dorrien's The Remaking of Evangelical Theology (Westminster John Knox
Press, 1998) are particularly interesting. But I have decided not to extend my
analysis to include these developments, mainly because the book deals with a
self-contained topic and period, a time of ferment and innovation that has led to
some of these latter-day developments, some of which I predicted. But the book
is not merely a period piece, because the books and thinkers I discussed still
deserve and widely receive attention. People are still working their way through
the same issues, and I hope this old book of mine may serve to aid them in their
deliberations.
As I studied the work of the thinkers involved in the biblical authority
debate, I discovered the obvious: many of them were equally engaged in
adjacent discussions among evangelicals (old and new) on topics including the
verifiability of supernatural involvement, not in ancient miracle stories, but in
modern Christian conversions. Apologetics has similarly been inseparable from
questions of inerrancy and infallibility: Should these beliefs be put on the shelf
while arguing from the gospels as (merely) more or less reliable sources for the
historical Jesus? Is it possible to argue sincerely in such a fashion while
committed to belief in the inerrant accuracy of such texts on prior dogmatic
grounds? And then why not focus on the evangelical scholar who has pursued all
these questions the most rigorously and in unpredictable directions? I mean
Clark H. Pinnock, who figures so largely in the inerrancy debate. He has much
more to say, and I felt it would enrich my readers' grasp of the issues, as well as
of the evangelical theological agenda, if I were to append three other studies I
undertook during the same period I was putting together the main portion of the
book. I hope the main work and the appendices will shed light on each other; I
am pretty sure they will, no matter in which order one chances to read them! One
final note: those who kindly supplied blurbs for this book did not know about the
appendices. I do not think they would object to anything in them, but, for the
record, I shouldn't give the impression that they meant to endorse the
appendices, too.
Robert M. Price January 23, 2007
INTRODUCTION
THE SURPRISING RANGE OF OPTIONS
Conservative Protestantism in America has always wrestled with doctrinal
controversies over issues ranging from predestination to the mode of baptism,
from charismatic gifts to biblical prophecy. But probably none has threatened the
American evangelical movement as much as the recent "battle for the Bible" It
began, to all intents and purposes, with the 1976 publication of Southern Baptist
Harold Lindsell's gossipy The Battle for the Bible and continued for years in the
systematic purge of moderate seminary professors and administrators in the
Southern Baptist Convention. And though the controversy began in Southern
Baptist circles and has perhaps achieved its most violent eruption there in recent
years, the struggle over the Bible has affected evangelical Christians and
institutions of every stripe.
At stake in the recent crisis of biblical authority is the very epistemology that
formed the basis for all the previous evangelical debates: Can the Bible be held
as authoritative in such a way that the citation of any text (in context) will settle
a question? "For up to the present time any text from any part of the Bible was
accepted as a proof-text for the establishment of Christian teaching, and a
statement from the Bible was considered an end to the controversy."' Now some
evangelicals have doubted (loudly and publicly) that biblical authority operates
in precisely this way. This issue, besides being exceptionally thorny in a
conceptual way, is perceived as particularly volatile since it raises the ghost of
the "fundamentalistmodernist controversy" of an earlier generation. Those who
believe in biblical inerrancy fear that the non inerrantists are, potentially or
actually, following in the footsteps of the old modernists. Noninerrantists
repudiate this claim, yet they must take it seriously for fear that the evangelical
movement at large will believe it. If they do, the noninerrantists will find
themselves alienated from the evangelical mainstream, or even forced out
altogether.
The difference of opinion here is commonly represented as if one side
Description:Conservative Protestantism in America has always wrestled with doctrinal controversies over issues ranging from predestination to the mode of baptism, from charismatic gifts to biblical prophecy. But probably none has threatened the American evangelical movement as much as the recent "battle for the
