To contend for change as some evangelicals are doing on each of the topics we have explored is not necessarily to play «fast and loose»
with Biblical authority.
In all the arguments
for Biblical authority that I have heard lately, I do not recall hearing one reference to the Sermon on the Mount.
On the question of
biblical authority in Reformation theology much has been written but especial note should be taken on A. Skevington Wood, Captive to the Word: Martin Luther, Doctor of Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969); Kenneth Kantzer, «Calvin and the Holy Scripture,» in Inspiration and Interpretation, ed.
If ever there was a homogeneous version of this tradition in national life; if ever, after legal disestablishment, a faith was re-established in the popular ethos; if ever there was agreement
on biblical authority, on God, Jesus, heaven and hell and the true, the beautiful and the good, then it was in the high years of what one of my book titles terms the Protestant Righteous Empire.
Today's evangelicals rightly identify the loss of conviction
about Biblical authority as a major source of the decline of evangelical fervor in the United Methodist Church.
It is an affirmation and not, as many conservative evangelicals have reflexively assumed, a questioning of
biblical authority when the language of liberation and empowerment prove fruitful in understanding further dimensions of what salvation always meant according to the scriptural witness, even though we had not previously been pushed to see it that clearly.
BC I have already corrected your error with regard to Sodom and Gomorrah and your response, in direct violation to your claim to
accept biblical authority, was that regardless YOU believe what you want to about it anyway.
In the nineteenth century a growing secular rationalism, such new sciences as geology and Darwinism with their implications for traditional interpretations of the Scriptures with regard to human origins, the rise of biblical criticism, and so forth, all raised fundamental challenges to accustomed ways of conceiving of Christianity and
especially biblical authority.
Both of them insisted — albeit from very different places on the theological spectrum — that abandoning a high view of
biblical authority puts one on a slope that can only lead to a thoroughgoing liberalism.
A pragmatic alliance of silence has evolved within evangelicalism with the result that its basic commitment to
Biblical authority now stands threatened.
Although Biblical authority is asserted as a hallmark of the movement, it is daily called into question by the independent and contradictory theological opinions which are being given dogmatic status by evangelical writers.
Traditionalists, like Harold Lindsell, have been quick to challenge such an approach, for it
undercuts Biblical authority.14 But feminists as well, like Nancy Hardesty, are aware of the implications of this position and have sought alternate approaches:
It starts out with sovereignty goes,
then biblical authority goes, then I'm a universalist, now I'm marrying gay people.
To do that we need some label that distinguishes us from Protestants who
abandon biblical authority, neglect evangelism and fail to affirm historic Christian doctrines.
Best Point (nominated by Micah Odor): John Wilson at The Wall Street Journal with «No One Reads the Bible Literally» «What is at stake in these disputes is not a choice between
following biblical authority on the one hand or science on the other, as the matter is often misleadingly framed.
Most Christian theologies have defined Mormonism a «cult» in more the sense of the former - tenets of Mormon theology differ widely from Orthodox Christianity when it comes to key issues
like Biblical authority, the trinity, divinity and claims of Christ, total depravity, redemption and salvation... on and on.
Atlanta, GA About Blog The American Anglican Council is a network of individuals, parishes, dioceses and ministries who
affirm biblical authority and Christian orthodoxy within the Anglican Communion.