Packer on Inerrancy

In his book "Truth & Power":

"In the ongoing North American debate between evangelical and liberal Protestants, in which a large number of the former took the name "fundamentalists," biblical inerrancy was from the first made the touchstone more directly and explicitly than was ever the case in the parallel debates in Britain. This I now think (I did not always think so) argues for clearer-sightedness in the New World, for without inerrancy the structure of biblical authority as evangelicals conceive it collapses."

Kevin Vanhoozer on Theology

Kevin Vanhoozer's paper on "Systematic Theology: The State of the Evangelical (Dis)union" delivered at Gordon-Conwell. It includes these 10 theses on theological interpretation:


1. The nature and function of the Bible are insufficiently grasped unless and until we see the Bible as an element in the economy of triune discourse.


2. An appreciation of the theological nature of the Bible entails a rejection of a methodological atheism that treats the texts as having a ?natural history? only.


3. The message of the Bible is ?finally? about the loving power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16), the definitive or final gospel Word of God that comes to brightest light in the word?s final form.


4. Because God acts in space-time (of Israel, Jesus Christ, and the church), theological interpretation requires thick descriptions that plumb the height and depth of history, not only its length.


5. Theological interpreters view the historical events recounted in Scripture as ingredients in a unified story ordered by an economy of triune providence.


6. The Old Testament testifies to the same drama of redemption as the New, hence the church rightly reads both Testaments together, two parts of a single authoritative script.


7. The Spirit who speaks with magisterial authority in the Scripture speaks with ministerial authority in church tradition.


8. In an era marked by the conflict of interpretations, there is good reason provisionally to acknowledge the superiority of catholic interpretation.


9. The end of biblical interpretation is not simply communication - the sharing of information - but communion, a sharing in the light, life, and love of God.


10. The church is that community where good habits of theological interpretation are best formed and where the fruit of these habits are best exhibited.


I really liked this quote from Vanhoozer towards the end of the paper:


"Seminary faculties need the courage to be evangelically Protestant for the sake of forming theological interpreters of Scripture able to preach and minister the word. The preacher is a ?man on a wire,? whose sermons must walk the tightrope between Scripture and the contemporary situation. I believe that we should preparing our best students for this gospel ministry. The pastor-theologian, I submit, should be evangelicalism?s default public intellectual, with preaching the preferred public mode of theological interpretation of Scripture."

Wendland on Orthodoxism

By this we mean the fact that many pastors and parishioners often mistook a mere intellectual knowledge of carefully systematized doctrine for faith. A personal conviction of sin was lacking, as also a faith which rested on the assurance of a forgiveness and had as a natural result a consecrated life of sanctification. A religious intellectualism began to control many Lutheran classrooms and pulpits, which consumed practically all of its energy... 'The humbler duties of preaching the Gospel and ministering to the spiritual needs of the people were often shunned in favor of the more glamorous field of theological debate.... the people had grown weary of the endless and useless theological disputes in which their pastors and prfoessors engaged.... leaders of Lutehranism found time, opportunity and funds for extensive theological debate and publication, but none for missions.

Wendland on Movements

Any movement, whether religious or polictical, with an 'ism' appended to its name, is usually the result of a reaction over against a state of affairs which has become intolerable, and therefore its inception is understandable. Because it is a reactionary moevement, however, it almost inevitably goes to extremes. Thus no matter how justified its causes may be, or how sincere the zeal of its proponents, we have come to regard any 'ism' with great suspicion.

Sam Allbury on Trinity

What happens when we forgetting the Trinity at Church? At least two things will follow.

1. Our view of church will become functional and not relational.
We will only meet to ?do? things, and will not really see the point of meeting for merely social reasons. Our gatherings will become a matter of utility and not family. In churches like this there will not be much life-sharing. The minister will see his congregation as ?clients? or 'patients'; his ministry as one of shunting people through the right programs or 'fixing the sick'. He will see himself as a professional ?Bible teacher?. His people will feel handled rather than loved. The church will be the place to grow for a while in understanding, or at least in Bible knowledge, but will not be the place to find authentic Christian community.

2. Our aim for church will be uniformity and not diversity. The Trinity shows us a God who is unity in diversity rather than unity in sameness. The Father, Son and Spirit are not interchangeable. They share an ontological unity, but function differently within the purposes of God. This lies behind Paul's teaching on the variety of gifts found in the church in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, Our unity-in-diversity reflects God's unity-in-diversity.

A Unitarian view of God will therefore lead to a monochrome view of the church. Maturity will be understood in terms of trying to make everyone a certain kind of Christian. Christians will look the same and sound the same. They'll be encouraged into the same kind of ministry. A particular gifting will be the hallmark of the spiritually advanced. In Corinth (reading between the lines) it was evidently the gift of tongues. Today, in many reformed churches, it is the gift of teaching. Those who are really committed to the gospel will become ?Bible-teachers? (there they are again). There will be cultural and vocational flatness.

Christianity it may well be, but a form of Christianity unwittingly more akin to Islamic, not evangelical, theology.