God's Inerrant Word: An International Symposium on the Trustworthiness of Scripture

by John Warwick Montgomery

Book Overview

Conference on the Inspiration and Authority of Scripture. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871232928
• ISBN13: 9780871232922
• Release Date: June 1974
• Publisher: Canadian Institute for Law, Theology & Public Policy, Inc.
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Trusting Representation

The Word is well represented and respected in this book for all who are familiar with it's contents. There are hidden truths and nuggets to be found here. You should get it for generations to come.

Scholarly defense of inerrancy

Even though this book is over thirty years old, the issue of how we understand the authority of Holy Scripture in the life of the church is just as relevant today as it was then. The original event that precipitated this book was the needed response to Daniel Fuller's published views on "limited inerrancy," the view that the Bible is inerrant only in matters of faith and practice. This implies that there are minor historical and scientific errors in Holy Writ, but they need not concern us since these errors do not impact Christian life and doctrine. The authors of the included essays argue vigorously that any admission of errors in the Bible at any level will prove disastrous for the church and our confidence in Scripture. The collection of essays came out of a Ligonier conference and represent the strongest argument against Dan Fuller's (and Fuller Seminary's) stepping away from a strict inerrantist view in favor of Scripture as "the infallible rule of faith and practice." John Warrick Montgomery's "Biblical Inerrancy: What Is at Stake" tackles Dan Fuller's (and others like him) argument head on maintaining that any "limited inerrancy" eventually erodes the substance of Christian faith, just as it did in liberal Protestantism of the 19th and 20th centuries; e.g. the debate between Charles Augustus Briggs and B.B. Warfield that led to the eventual liberalization; i.e. apostasy, of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Unfortunately, Montgomery's essay is probably the weakest and most frustrating in the book. If we really believe that the infinite, unlimited God humbled Himself to reveal Himself through the finite, limited human authors of the Bible, then what does that really mean on a practical level? Evangelical scholars who question a strict view of inerrancy are generally doing so not to diminish biblical authority (what would be the point in doing that?). Instead they are seeking to explore the human character of God's Word. Montgomery rightly emphasizes the divine nature of Scripture, but he does so at the expense of Scripture's humanity. Yes, many have emphasized the humanity of the text over and against the divinity of the text, but what profit is there going overboard the other direction? The real gems in this book are the historical essays. J.I. Packer's "'Sola Scriptura' in History and Today" and "Calvin's View of Scripture", as well as Montgomery's "Lessons from Luther on the Inerrancy of Holy Writ" are valuable essays on the history of the inerrancy doctrine, though Packer's essays are more even-handed than Montgomery's. John H. Gerstner's "Warfield's Case for Biblical Inerrancy" cautiously admits to Warfield's tendency at least at one point to be open to the charge of docetism. Several essays take aim at the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth's doctrine of Scripture, including John Frame's "God and Biblical Language: Transcedence and Immanence" and "Scripture Speaks for Itself", as well as R. C. Sproul's "The Case f