A New Bible Battle | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Home > 2011 > October

Christianity Today, October, 2011

Inside CT

A New Bible Battle

It's not about doctrine but our use of Scripture.

Mark Galli | posted 10/07/2011 10:41AM

Comments (8)

Related articles and links |

1 of 1

This magazine is indirectly famous for one of its editors—Harold Lindsell—starting a short-lived but notorious "Battle for the Bible" when the editor penned a book with that title in 1976.

At the time, I was a student at Fuller Theological Seminary, one key institution criticized by Lindsell (where he taught briefly) because it didn't hold to inerrancy. I still recall the momentous convocation in which our president, David Hubbard, defended the school's position: that the Bible is "the only infallible rule of faith and practice." Hubbard questioned Lindsell's "unbiblical" understanding of inerrancy, disputed his take on the contemporary theological scene, and vowed that Fuller would "sail into the winds of controversy" confident of the "seaworthiness of our ship and the correctness of our course." It was heady stuff.

At the time, Donald Dayton, a professor at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in suburban Chicago, reviewed the book and the broader controversy for The Christian Century. Toward the end of the review, he noted,

The crunch will most likely be felt at Christianity Today. Does the editor's book inevitably pull the magazine into his corner and make of it a party journal no longer representative of the whole? Or will the magazine find a way to bridge the ever-broadening evangelical world and by implication repudiate Lindsell's position—which depends at its very heart on its exclusiveness?

That question was answered in short order after Kenneth Kantzer became CT's editor in 1978. One of his first acts was to write a letter to Hubbard—which Hubbard posted outside his office door—extending an olive branch.

Though one editor's book suggested otherwise, as a magazine, we have always been committed to the word inerrant to describe the Bible's trustworthiness, and to fellowshipping with those who describe the Bible's authority using other language. The magazine as such never engaged in that battle for the Bible.

We are now interested in another battle, one that's not about the Bible's authority but rather its use. Evangelicals are tempted—even when we have the highest view of Scripture—to read it in sub-biblical ways. The sacred text is often used as a self-help manual, or for erecting a doctrinal fence, or for justifying our latest missional venture.

Instead, argues J. Todd Billings, associate professor of Reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, recent evangelical scholarship concludes that the Bible is not primarily about us or doctrine or even mission (see "How to Read the Bible"). It's about that yet so much more: the means by which we come to know God as revealed in Christ, and are transformed into his image.

So, in this new "battle," I'd like to see us (charitably!) wrestle over what that looks like as we preach and teach the Word of God in our churches.

Next month: Andy Crouch and Katelyn Beaty debut our This Is Our City project, and Sarah Pulliam Bailey interviews Christine Gardner on the abstinence movement.

Related Elsewhere:

See our cover story on "How to Read the Bible" and check back for more articles from the October issue.

Other Christianity Today articles on the Bible and its use in ministry include:

Battle for the Bible Translation | Our denomination is wide enough to include a variety of methods. (September 2, 2011)

A World Without the King James Version| Where we would be without the most popular English Bible ever. (May 6, 2011)

A Double-Edged Sword | Pastors split over Bible reading in schools as fix for violence. (November 4, 2010)

1 of 1

A New Bible Battle, October 2011, Vol. 55, No. 10, Page 11

Comments (8)

Subscribe to Christianity Today and get 3 free trial issues. No credit card required.

Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only.

If you decide you want to keep Christianity Today coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive nine more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The three trial issues are yours to keep, regardless.

Click here for international orders

2-for-1 Gifts!

Displaying 1–5 of 8 comments

See all comments

John

October 11, 2011 6:17pm

Actually, Mr. Galli's unwarranted swipes at Harold Lindsell show the battle Lindsell wrote about is still alive and well. Why else spend the first 4-5 paragraphs disparaging Lindsell's position and making clear that CT, while inerrantist, doesn't hold to what he taught? What should have been an interesting lead in to a series on Biblical interpretation is soured with unnecessary slams on a great Christian leader.

Ian Headley

October 09, 2011 9:56pm

Like the balance Mark; as Jesus noted while here in person, some religious folk imagined their whole experience of God was contained within the written word, whereas in fact the written word only claims to accurately describe an actual living relationship between the living God and people through the narrative of the biblical text. Like most of the biblical characters throughout the bible, unless we have a life giving and mind changing encounter with the Author and inspiration of the bible, we remain at best as one armed oarsmen, and at worst, dead to the Life the written word offers us to experience through Jesus Christ.

chad

October 09, 2011 2:15pm

"I do not consider myself an evengelical. I left that tradition of the faith even though I was led to Christ through it and am very greateful for it and the teaching of Scripture that it gave me." Whitman: I've always considered the teachings of Packer and Bray, just that, evangelical. I want to be a messenger of the good news to others like the church has always done. This may be to family, friends, community, nation, or the world. I don't know what your understanding of evangelical is, but I am sorry if you feel like you must turn from a term because others may not fully understand its meaning or may misuse it altogether.

Dr.D.L.Whitman

October 08, 2011 7:13am

I do not consider myself an evengelical. I left that tradition of the faith even though I was led to Christ through it and am very greateful for it and the teaching of Scripture that it gave me. It was at an evangelical, inter-denominational seminary where I was studying, that the chaos of biblical interpretation and lack of a consensus of hermenutic so upset me. What is the evangelical authority? Is this "movement" at an end? Packer was right when he said in the book,"Reclaiming the Great Tradition" that the evangelical must interpret scripture as the early church did and return to the great tradition. Oden,Bray,Packer are right. We stand at the end of history and only the Almighty knows just how many denominations there really are in the Protestant mess. God help us. Dr.D.L.

biblical_perspectives

October 07, 2011 8:54pm

From the dawn of biblical time (Adam's) to Jesus, the Word of God has faithfully recorded the relevant events by which people of faith are to know God, culminating in what Isaiah wrote, in an "earth [that] will be full of knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (11:9). How is this going to be accomplished? Through the divine authority and inerrancy of the Bible, of course! And in whatever manner, method or language that the Holy Spirit deems expedient. Yet the scoffers amongst us would reduce all these to secular polemics and non-sequitors, but feigning "non-expertise?"

You must be a Christianity Today subscriber or have created a FREE registration to post comments