Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal

The unpleasant task of exposing shoddy scholarship can rarely have been taken in hand with so much gentleness and grace as it is in Professor Woodbridge's response to The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible. A nasty job nicely done. In The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible two young professors tried to show that the best theology before the Reformation and the best Reformed theology since affirms the infallibility of Scripture in matters of faith and conduct but allows it to be incorrect on matters of historical and scientific detail. Professor Woodbridge's learned review makes it impossible to doubt that this paradoxical opinion is wrong. With courtesy and restraint Professor Woodbridge administers a series of knock-out blows to the confidently voiced claim that factual inerrancy is no authentic element in the historic Christian view of Scripture. Professor Woodbridge brings scholarly integrity and a great weight of learning to the business of setting straight the record, confused by others, as to how Christians through the centuries have regarded the Bible. His monograph is a model of careful analysis and cool, corrective controversy. It advances understanding of the history of thought about Scripture in a way that the more pretentious essay that called it forth quite failed to do. --James I. Packer