RE: [TruthTalk] Warning!!! Neo-Orthodoxy in our midst .... JD and Lance are infected

[ShieldsFamily]

Wow.  Really eye opening information from Francis Schaeffer.  Now that’s a real indictment, coming from such a giant as him. Thanks, Jude. iz   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Judy Taylor Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 11:41 AM To: truthtalk@mail.innglory.org 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. 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