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ICBI-I read all of the collected/bound papers. I
still have all of the lectures on cassette delivered over the years. Seriously
Judy, your knowledge concerning so much is so remarkably uninformed and
hollow.
I'm prepared to recant should you be able to do
something beyond misquote inappropriate Scripture(s) to make your 'inerrantist'
point.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: December 03, 2005 15:10
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Warning!!!
Neo-Orthodoxy in our midst .... JD and Lance are infected
The ICBI is defunct, as far as I
know. Your network copy skills have manifested themselves with
abundance in the following. Hats off to Judy and the party
line !!!!!!!!!
The fact of the matter is that no one offers any real evidence
. You know nothing of Barth's personal battle against some whose commentary he
considered to be extremely harmful -- folks with whom
you would oppose as well. You have placed your faith in the
radical comments of know-it-alls who
function with no heart for fairness and honesty (as they lumb Barth with Kant).
I can't argue with you about "inerrancy" since you consistently refuse to give a working definition for
"inspiration," a fault I find with most radical right
wingers. The articles included in your post mean nothing to me
because, for starters, they
are anonymous. Secondly, they are not written by
you . In the third place, they are anti-intellectual
in that they do not even pretend to voice an opinion of the
issues.
Not even a good try.
jd
-----Original Message----- From: Judy Taylor < jandgtaylor1@juno. com> To: [email protected]Sent: Sat, 3 Dec
2005 12:40:34 -0500 Subject: [TruthTalk] Warning!!! Neo-Orthodoxy in our
midst .... JD and Lance are
infected
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. M ost 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
hel p 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 willi ng 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 i nerrancy 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 fo r 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 me eting 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
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