Dr Paul Allen

"The Bible is the Word of God, which errs." From the advent of neo-orthodox theology in the early twentieth century, this assertion has become a mantra among those who want to have a high view of Scripture while avoiding the academic liability of asserting biblical infallibility and inerrancy. But this statement represents the classic case of having one's cake and eating it too. It is the quintessential oxymoron. Let us look again at this untenable theological formula. If we eliminate the first part, "The Bible is," we get "The Word of God, which errs." If we parse it further and scratch out "the Word of" and "which," we reach the bottom line: "God errs." The idea that God errs in any way, in any place, or in any endeavor is repugnant to the mind as well as the soul. Here, biblical criticism reaches the nadir of biblical vandalism. How could any sentient creature conceive of a formula that speaks of the Word of...

Image via Wikipedia Jesus answered, “It is written: Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God ” (Matthew 4:4). Early in the twentieth century, two European theologians mounted an assault on nineteenth-century liberalism. The nineteenth-century liberals had tried to find the “historical Jesus” by discounting the testimony of the Bible and filtering the biblical evidence through their own conceptions of what must have happened. They had used “literary science” to “prove” that the Bible is merely a collection of human opinions about God and not the Word of God at all. The two theologians who attacked this idea, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner , were called “neo-orthodox” because they seemed to be affirming the orthodox Christian faith against the more liberal mind set. They maintained that the Bible was the Word of God and that God inspired it—but what they meant by these statements was radically different from true Christianity. Barth and Br...