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Schaeffer has lots of company Bill. What is to
misunderstand when we have Barth's own words on the subject and how could such a
great voice say something like this:
The Bible Not the Word of God Barth was right to speak about a distance
between the Word of God and the text of the Bible (SP, 99). The Bible does not
attempt to give the impression that it is flawless in historical or scientific
ways. God uses writers with weaknesses and still teaches the truth of revelation
through them (SP, 99). What God aims to do through inspiration is to stir up
faith in the gospel through the Word of Scripture, which
remains a human text beset by normal weaknesses [which includes errors]
(SP, 99-100).
which contradict God Himself who says His Words are life to those who find
them and health to all their flesh. Barth taught doublemindedness and the double
minded man receives nothing from the Lord.
On Sat, 3 Dec 2005 22:37:01 -0700 "Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
I cut my theological 'teeth' on Francis
Schaeffer, read everything he ever published. I love the man and think he had
a great deal of good to say to the twentieth century Church; however, he could not have been more off base in his apprehension and
critique of Karl Barth; he just flat misunderstood the guy.
What's sad is that it is Schaeffer's critique which stands as the definitive
statement on Barth to the conservative Church in America. It will take many
years, I'm sure, before Barth will be allowed to speak for himself to the
conservative community. In the meantime Evangelical Christians will be missing
out on one of the greatest voices the Church has ever known. Bill
JD writes: Stop with the lie, Judy. You have nothing to
back up your claim but when has that slowed you down in the
past. You want Barth to be a threat THEREFORE
he is. He spent
his lifetime presenting the Message of scripture -- a
lifetime. He is all about the biblical message and you are all
about making up stuff. Quite a difference.
No JD, it isn't only me, even though you would like
it to be. Barth is one of those liberal German theologians who began
the decline of belief in the authority of God's Word in this country.
Lord help us! Please remove these blinders.....
As Francis Schaeffer stated so eloquently, courage
for confrontation over matters of truth and righteousness in the
hearts of Christian leaders in North America was replaced by a kind of "knee-jerk" response committed to
accommodation and "peace at any price" which sadly still reigns
supreme within most evangelical circles today. This is
one major reason things have disintegrated so far and so fast. At the
same time, the relativistic view of truth and a dichotomy world view (that
segregates the spiritual world from the material world into two separate
air-tight compartments) that came from philosophers such as Hume, Kant, and
Hegel had all but completely captured the university intellectuals of the
entire world.
Neo-Orthodoxy infects the Evangelical Ranks -
This was the kind of academic atmosphere
that prevailed during the 20 years from 1947 to 1967 when many evangelical
seminaries and colleges sent their bright young scholars to European
universities to get their doctorates. A large percentage of these young
scholars were infected with liberal and neo-orthodox views of the Bible; and
then they returned to their evangelical schools to teach a neo-orthodox view of the Bible
(what they sincerely believed were the "latest, most scholarly" views) to
their students. These partially "corrupted" young professors did not openly
challenge their denomination's or institution's historic view of inspiration
of the Bible. It was more subtle than that and less obvious than the open
battle over the Bible of the 1920s and 1930s. Most of these young professors were infected with
neo-orthodoxy; the then fashionable "reformed" liberalism of Swiss
theologian Karl Barth. Neo-orthodoxy claims that the
human words of the Bible are not the very words of God, but rather are a
fallible human "witness" to the words of God and are therefore in a sense,
the "Word" of God to man. In some cases they claim that the words of the
Bible "become" the Word of God to man at a particular existential moment
when that man senses God speaking to him. Others have spoken of the Bible
"containing" the Word of God.
Neo-Orthodoxy Undermines the Reliability of
Scripture Since most
neo-orthodox theologians attempt to honor God's word in some sense, their
presentation to their students of their existential and relativistic
re-interpretation of the Bible does not appear to be, nor is it intended to
be, an attack upon the Bible. But, since most
neo-orthodox men accept most of the higher critical theories of theological
liberalism and since they usually
believe (with Kant and Barth) that human language is incapable of
communicating absolute, unchanging, and inerrant truth from God to man,
therefore they are essentially liberals in their view of scripture.
In addition, most neo-orthodox "evangelicals" believe they cannot count
on the Bible being absolutely true in matters of time and space, science and
history, or ethics and anthropology (that is, areas that are open to
scientific verification or falsification), but they do comfort themselves by
saying they believe the Bible may be capable of communicating undistorted
truth in "spiritual" matters such as eternity and heaven, faith and
salvation, or piety and theology (areas that are not open to objective
empirical verification). Thus they ask us to subjectively believe the Bible
in those areas of "faith and practice" that we cannot, by the nature of the
case, "prove" and then expect us to understand that the Bible is not totally
reliable in matters of history and science. In a
nutshell, a liberal and neo-orthodox view of Scripture considers the
original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible to be part true and part
false and that their theological experts must help us to determine what
parts of the Bible are true and what parts of it are false. That is the
essence of theological liberalism under whatever name it travels even if it
goes by the name of "evangelicalism." Thus, a professor infected with
a neo-orthodox view of Scripture will tend to not believe that Moses wrote
all five books of the Pentateuch; that Isaiah wrote the whole book of
Isaiah; that Daniel was written in Daniel's time; that the flood of Noah was
a universal flood covering the whole earth; that all of present mankind came
from Noah's family; etc., etc. They will also tend to teach students that
neither Jesus nor the Church Fathers believed the inerrancy of view of
Scripture that was taught by the Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Calvin, Wesley,
Spurgeon, Hodge, Warfield, Machen, and Schaeffer. They teach that the
inerrancy view is a late development in church history.
Neo-Orthodoxy Entrenches Itself in Evangelical
Institutions - Since the 1960s, many
evangelical seminaries and colleges, denominations and organizations have
been infected by the prevailing fog of
neo-orthodoxy. Many sincere evangelicals, including many pastors and
professors, are neo-orthodox liberals in regard to Scripture and don't even
know there is anything wrong with their view. In light of all this, we felt
we had to launch the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy in
1977. By 1976, a neo-orthodox and liberal view of Scripture and
therefore a relativistic view of doctrine and morals had permeated all
levels of evangelicalism in every denomination and organization. The
prevailing mood among educated people was openness to the liberalized view
of scripture and a general fear of being labeled a "narrow inerrantist" who
still believed the old, "unscholarly and medieval" view of Scripture. If a
Christian in many evangelical circles really believed in the inerrancy of
the Bible, they tended to remain "in the closet." Furthermore, we, who
felt God wanted us to stand up for the traditional, inerrancy view of
Scripture and call our churches and organizations to be consistent with the
statement on scripture in that organization's founding documents, were often
attacked as troublemakers and told to be quiet or to go away. Almost no one wanted to face up to an honest, open evaluation
of how far a church or organization had slid down the slippery slope towards
increasing liberalization. Christian leaders then, who believed in the
inerrancy of the Bible, found themselves becoming lonely warriors who were
misunderstood, feared, and sometimes gently persecuted. And almost no one
seemed to be willing to make it a national Christian issue and get it
settled if it meant losing friends or a position in their
organization.
The Battle for the Bible Explodes -
In 1976, Dr. Harold Lindsell came out
with his bombshell book, The Battle for the Bible, which exposed the
massive infiltration of liberalism and neo-orthodoxy into nearly every
denomination and seminary that considered itself evangelical. Lindsell's
book was very accurate in exposing the deterioration and it was scholarly in
its presentation. As far as we can tell, none of Lindsell's charges were
ever refuted in any substantive manner by the institutions in question. The
accused schools merely fumed and spoke harsh things against Dr. Lindsell. At
that time, few leaders beside Dr. Lindsell, Francis Schaeffer, and Bill
Gothard were attempting to make the inerrancy of the Bible an issue, though
many were still faithfully teaching inerrancy. The general response to
The Battle for the Bible among the evangelical leadership of America
was that it was "divisive" and that Lindsell was too "harsh" and "unloving"
in exposing the factual situation within evangelical institutions. Thus, the
church was not at all ready nor willing to go to battle over the watershed
issue of inerrancy. Many of the inerrantists were in the "closet" and the
anti-inerrantist, neo-orthodox theologians were having a field day making
fun of the old-fashioned view in the various evangelical periodicals and
journals. (I want to make it clear at this point that the Fundamentalists
and most Pentecostals stood firmly for inerrancy during this period). It was
in this context that the ICBI was born. The following is a short explanation
of how several of us gave birth to the ICBI.
A Call to Unite and Plan Strategies for the Battle -
In 1976, God was leading me to create a
night school and training center for laymen in the San Francisco Bay Area
called the Reformation Study Center. R.C. Sproul suggested to our little
staff that it would be wise to launch the study center with a conference. We
took Sproul's advice and organized a conference on the Authority of
Scripture at Mt. Hermon, California for February 1977. Our five speakers
were to be R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, Norman Geisler, John Gerstner, and Greg
Bahnsen, each dealing with two major topics on the authority of
Scripture.
In September 1976, prior to the Mt. Hermon conference, I wrote to Sproul
and to Harold Lindsell suggesting somebody should attempt to organize a
national theological conference to deal with this battle for the inerrancy
of the Bible and to expose the fallacies of the neo-orthodox false
assumptions believed by so many evangelicals at that time. What I visualized
was something of a theological "army" of scholars who would take this thing
into battle as a united team. I invited the five
speakers, plus Miss Weatheral Johnson (of Bible Study Fellowship),
Karen Hoyt and a few others to come early to the
conference so we could pray in our living room about what to do regarding
the inerrancy battle in the church. We had that prayer meeting then launched
the conference and our little study center that February evening in Mt.
Hermon with about 300 people in attendance. During the weekend conference, I
gathered the speakers, Miss Johnson, and a few others together to discuss
what strategy we might use to organize a frontal attack
on this problem of a Barthian/liberal view of Scripture having infiltrated
most of evangelicalism in North America
judyt
He that says "I know Him" and doesn't keep His
Commandments
is a liar (1 John 2:4)
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