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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
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 10:40
AM
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
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