The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures

Top Highlights

“If you are a Buddhist, of course, and someone ‘proves’ that Gautama the Buddha never lived, it would not devastate your Buddhism: Buddhism depends for its believability very little on historical claims. But that cannot be said of Christianity. Prove that Jesus never lived, never died, and never rose from the dead, or declare that historical details are unimportant provided our imaginations are fired up, and you have utterly destroyed Christianity.” (Pages 28–29)

“We need new commentaries not only because new questions continue to be asked, and new audiences addressed, but also because we need a steady supply of new commentators—people who work carefully through the biblical texts and try to explain them to others. In exactly the same way, we constantly need a new supply of Christian scholars who think about the nature of Scripture, not only because new questions are raised from time to time, but also because we need a steady supply of new theologians who work through the fundamentals of every doctrine.” (Page 3)

“In the last half-century, many periods in the history of the church have been churned over afresh to demonstrate either that (a) historical criticism goes back a lot farther than many people think, or, more commonly, that (b) orthodoxy, and especially an orthodox view of Scripture, are rather late developments, so they can, and perhaps should, be held rather lightly.” (Page 18)

“Moreover, it is worth noting that the inerrancy doctrine itself has relatively few implications about what we actually ought to believe in light of Scripture.” (Page 898)