INERRANCY Part 2

INERRANCY Part 2

Devotions for Word Sermon Series. January 10, 2017 INERRANCY OF SCRIPTURE.

INERRANCY OF SCRIPTURE, PART ONE: HISTORICAL DATA

by Jack Cottrell (Notes) on Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at 3:59pm

In his Journals for July 24, 1776 (vol. 4:82), John Wesley comments on a tract that says the Biblical writers sometimes made mistakes: “Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth.”

Such quotations could be multiplied for the first 1,800 years of Christian history, until around 1860, when Darwin’s work sparked open attacks on Genesis. From then on a sharp division began between Liberalism and Conservatism. Liberalism developed into a denial of the supernatural in all things, including the nature of the Bible. Around 1920 Neo-orthodoxy arose as a reaction against Liberalism; it restored belief in the supernatural elements of Christianity, except for the nature of the Bible. Conservatism in the early 20th century took shape as Fundamentalism, and was modified as Evangelicalism around 1950.

Evangelicalism at first continued to believe in inerrancy, but this changed in the 1960s. In 1963 Dewey Beegle wrote The Inspiration of Scripture (later edition: Scripture, Tradition, and Infallibility). He declared he was an Evangelical but denied Biblical inerrancy. Since then the most serious attacks on inerrancy have come from within Evangelicalism.

This same pattern has occurred within the Restoration Movement. Its founders (early 19th century) accepted the standard inerrancy view, but Liberalism entered and took control of most of its colleges and seminaries. Our Bible colleges, including Cincinnati Christian University (1924), were begun as a response to this Liberal takeover, and were originally committed to Biblical inerrancy. The by-laws of Cincinnati Christian University (Cincinnati Bible Seminary at the time) state that every trustee and faculty member must “believe, without reservation, in the full and final inspiration of the Bible to the extent that for each of them it is the infallible Word of God and, therefore, the all‑sufficient rule of faith and life;* in the deity and supreme authority of Christ; in obedience to the Gospel; in edification of the church; and in the restoration of its unity on the New Testament basis.”