This is, as you may have noticed, Part B of Part 1. We continue with our study of inspiration, and we're going to open up with a statement from an article by the late Dr. Boyce on the doctrine of scripture and Reformed theology, which I think is very much the point and a good testimony to what it is we're talking about. So let's bow in prayer and then we'll begin. Holy Father, we do ask for your guidance and for the impression of your Holy Spirit to confirm these things in our hearts and minds that we might hold on and continue to confess the sufficiency of your Word to the end that we know the way of salvation, not of our own intellect or ideas or of human wisdom, but that which is revealed by You, the only one true and living God, by Your Spirit and in revelation of Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray now that You would give direction to our thoughts and deliberations this morning. To Your glory in Jesus' name, Amen. As I said, we'll start with this quote from Dr. Boyce. This is from an article on the doctrine of Scripture and Reformed Theology. The reform commitment to scripture stresses the Bible's inspiration, authority, and sufficiency. Since the Bible is the word of God, and so has the authority of God himself, reform people affirm that this authority is superior to that of all governments and all church hierarchies. This conviction has given reform believers the courage to stand against tyranny and has made reform theology a revolutionary force in society. The sufficiency of Scripture means that it does not need to be supplemented by new or ongoing special revelation. The Bible is the entirely sufficient guide for what we are to believe and how we are to live as Christians. So that's what we are committed to. That's what I'm committed to and committed to passing on to you. And we come now to another observation or application of this doctrine of inspiration. And that is the inspiration of scripture is essential as a revelation of God's way of salvation. Out of everything I'm going to say, I think throughout this whole series, that's the most important. The inspiration of scripture is essential as the revelation of God's way of salvation. I think, you know, the general revelation of God, of God's being and power through creation is sufficient for moral accountability. That's why the apostle concludes, quoting the psalmist, that there is none righteous, not one. There are none who are excusable. There are none who can get out from under the accountability that they have to God, their creator, so that the general revelation of God is sufficient for moral accountability. But the special revelation of Scripture is necessary for the knowledge of salvation by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. We read of that, for some examples, for instance, in Psalm 19, of the general and special revelation of God. In Romans chapters 1 and 2, the Apostle Paul concludes that all are under a guilt and accountability. What may be known of God is revealed by the creation to maintain that accountability, that there are none who are excusable. And as we saw last week in 1 Corinthians 2, while the scriptures are authentic, and bear out the testimony of Scripture, the natural man, the unconverted, those who are unregenerated, do not have the Spirit and therefore cannot know and understand the things of God until there is a life-giving power and presence of the Holy Spirit that brings a new heart and new understanding. So, general revelation sufficient for man's accountability, special revelation necessary for God's way of salvation, and that special revelation comes by the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine of verbal inspiration is complemented by its twin, providential preservation of the text from serious error. We believe that it was perfect as it came from God and that our copies thereof are reasonably accurate as a completely suitable basis for our faith and instruction. We're going to talk more about that when we get over to transmission and translation. What we're saying is that in the original autographs, as they originally came from God, as the prophets, apostles and inspired people of the scripture were moved by the agency of the Holy Spirit, that What they said, what they taught, what they wrote originally was perfect and complete. Jesus even saying not only that the concept of communication from God, but the explicit rhema, the very words that were written down and that were spoken came from the inspiration of the Spirit of God. And when we talk about transmission, we'll talk about why that is not a mechanistic type of view. It is often misrepresented that way. When we talk about this matter of the inspiration of the original autographs and then also of God's providential preservation, I think there's a very good example in the doctrine of the incarnation. And that is that Jesus, according to his human nature, was sinless. We know that's an article of our faith. We know that it was necessary that he be sinless so that he might be the sin substitute. But we also believe and know that He was a true human. He was the unique God-man, divine and human in one person without confusion. But according to His human nature, being sinless, Jesus nonetheless was still subject to the ravages of the fall. He was subject to all that sin occasioned in this world. And ultimately, He was subject to death. So, here's the question. Did this mean that Jesus must or even could be fallible or erroneous? And we'll talk more about this to come. But there are some who posit that, yes, he had to be that in order to be authentically human, Jesus had to be fallible and erroneous. And therefore, some of what we have in the Bible that Jesus spoke is not necessarily true. It was as he thought it was true, but it wasn't necessarily true. Now, I reject that out of hand. I reject that. And I say, no, Jesus was human, but he was sinless. He was subject to the effects of sin in the fall. But he was not corrupted. And that extends to his being infallible and without error in everything he lived and taught and did. That's right, it gets to the very heart. It involves all of our beliefs and identifications. What do we mean then by sinless? Can someone be fallible and erroneous and still be sinless? No, I mean, in plain speech and common understanding, according to definition of Scripture, that can't be. And we're going to get more to that because that brings up the bone of contention of inerrancy and infallibility. And these are very challenging issues, and they're often just skated over without getting to the impact that they have on the consistency of our theological beliefs and what is based upon the revelation of Scripture, that words mean what they say. Another question? Well, it is, although I don't want to place logic as a framework over the authority of Scripture. I would agree in terms of the law of non-contradiction that we have a reasonable understanding and that the Scriptures are set out for reasonable understanding. We must have a prior commitment and belief to the authority of Scripture and the revelation of God. And that really comes, that's much of what we're talking about. Is there a communication from a divine being to humans? That's kind of the nexus of the whole question. So, all right, let's go on then. to talk about this essential and important connection between the doctrine of inspiration and the teaching of salvation. Whenever the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of scripture is weakened or confused, the doctrine of salvation is also weakened or confused. And as I said before, this to me is most important thing out of everything that I'll say to you in this study. You know that Jesus had an ongoing conflict with the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the scribes. And that conflict centered around human traditions and extra scriptural sources superseding God's recorded revelation. Jesus was in conflict with him saying, you have turned the word of God upside down. You have made the commandments of no effect by your traditions. You have put human tradition and these scribal interpretations in the place of the clear statements of the word of God. And he gave a number of examples. in this conflict that he had with the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees. But what was it that disturbed Jesus most as we read about these concerns? I've got an example from Matthew 23, if you'll remember, where Jesus brought denunciation against the Pharisees, the scribes and the Pharisees in that passage. But does anyone remember what really was of greatest concern and what disturbed Jesus the most? Um, in the, in this conflict, anybody have a, it was their externalism and that externalism became a form of self-righteousness. And that self-righteousness was affecting what central, most important concern for Jesus. Salvation. He said, you don't enter in and you bar others from entering in the kingdom of God. You go and search out land and sea to make a proselyte and make him twofold more the child of hell. So what is it that was at the heart of Jesus' concern about their messing with Scripture? Was it affected the doctrine of salvation? Now, we know that God's foundation stands sure. God knows them that are His. And even Pharisees can't prohibit God's great work of grace and salvation. And we have a wonderful example of that in Saul of Tarsus. You remember him, don't you? He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. And he went about in zeal, persecuting the church of Jesus Christ. He was one of these searching land and sea to make proselytes and to try to snuff out, to try to break up and scatter these groups of Jesus followers, these Christians, until the great irresistible power and work of God brought him to his knees and on his face and Saul of Tarsus became Paul the Apostle. So we're not saying that they can, by human means, interfere or ultimately prohibit God's great work of salvation. But we are saying that wherever the doctrine of verbal inspiration of Scripture is weakened or confused, the doctrine of salvation is also weakened or confused. And we can trace that out from Scripture and through church history. That's why I'm so exercised about this. To make public testimony, to give instruction, to stand in defense of the integrity of the Holy Scriptures, because God's way of salvation is revealed therein. And we must hold to that with all our strength, mind and soul. Let's look then at confessional Christianity, building on the foundation. We looked at the Westminster Confession of Faith chapter one last week as an example throughout church history of a confessional statement. There are others and there are also confessional statements that are contrary to and undermine this doctrine of inspiration. Every confessional statement does not agree and particularly more modern confessional statements are revised statements within the history of the church. But there are differences between confessional, traditional and intellectual, anti intellectual views of scripture. What I mean by that is as confessional, I'm referring to that as a collective testimony. The Westminster Confession of Faith is a good example. It's a collective testimony about belief in terms of the Christian Orthodox Christian faith. And we have that chapter on Holy Scripture. That's something that I subscribe to as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America. I subscribe belief and agreement to that Westminster Confession and that chapter on the Holy Scriptures. So confessional Christianity is based on a collective testimony. Traditional application in the history of the Church has to do with a hierarchy of authority. do not accept as a confessional believer. I do not accept tradition as equal to or superseding the validity of Scripture. I do not believe that the validity of Scripture rest or is based upon the hierarchical testimony, even in church history. So that's one tradition or one view. And then there's another, the intellectual and anti-intellectual view of Scripture. And by this, I mean the primacy of the individual. Whenever we hear intellectual, that doesn't necessarily mean that being intellectual is being accurate. We have a tendency to think that way. I put intellectual and anti-intellectual together because someone can be academic and still be erroneous. I think there's a good example here in something that we've talked about recently, and that is the evolution and intelligent design controversy that's going on. And I think it helps to kind of demonstrate what we're talking about here. There are those practicing scientists who have gotten together and have borne collective testimony to basic articles and beliefs regarding intelligent design. They don't all hold necessarily to the same extent. an application, but there is a general framework and the general principles that they do agree on. And they've had seminars and published books and things of that nature. So there is a collective testimony to that working view of intelligent design. And they are really operating against a hierarchy of authority and tradition within the academic community. As a matter of fact, many of them have felt the brunt of the rejection of that academic community and its authority in their own professional careers. And they have really had to contend with that. But the traditionalist in the realm of science have now taken up that posture of an authoritarian hierarchy that says, you will teach this and nothing else. And then there are those who are involved in what I would say is the intellectual and anti-intellectual application of this, that it's just private or individual view that they hold. And simply for someone to be academic doesn't mean that they are intellectual. Or even to refer to someone as intellectual doesn't mean that they're accurate or true in their views. And we'll talk a little bit more about this as we go along, particularly when we get to translations. There are individual intellectual and anti-intellectual views of Scripture in translation. And I think that we need to be very careful about that as the Scriptures warn us against private opinion and private interpretation and things of that nature. So there are differences between the confessional, the traditional, and the intellectual and anti-intellectual views of scripture. And all of those play into the study of the question of the Bible and its authority, of its integrity, and what we mean by inspiration. While there is historical documentation from formal and personal records of church fathers confirming that the doctrine of verbal inspiration was consistently held throughout the ages, The creeds and confessions are the public testimony to Christian orthodoxy based on accepting the scriptures as the infallible and inerrant word of God. The authority of the institutional church claiming the primacy of tradition has often come into conflict with the belief in the verbal inspiration and providential preservation of the Scriptures. In other words, for instance, at the Reformation we have this demonstrated that the independent sufficiency in the self-attesting authority of Scripture came into conflict with the hierarchical authority of the church. And there was great conflict that resulted in that. I have an example here that comes out of church history. According to Roman Catholic opinion, the Latin Vulgate translated out of the Greek and Hebrew by Jerome in AD 400. is to be held authentic. In 1590, Pope Sextus V and his bull even declared that the Vulgate edition of the Sacred Page of the Old and New Testaments, which was received as authentic by the Council of Trent, is without doubt or controversy to be reckoned that very one which we now publish. He called it true, legitimate, and authentic, and prohibited any new editions to be published unless it was exactly like this one. It would seem that he regarded his Vulgate edition as inspired In short time, however, Sextus V died. His Vulgate had manifest imperfections. In two years, his successor, Clement VIII, brought out a new edition, which is the one that's now in general use. Roman Catholics today apparently do not hold that the Vulgate is inspired, although the words of Sextus V come very close to teaching that his edition of it was to be so considered. My reason for giving this example is that we do not subject the testimony and the claim of Scripture to be inspired, authentic and sufficient to even the authority of church or council or any decrees of men or any views of governments, we believe the Scriptures stand alone as the sufficient and self-attesting Word of God. And it is the Scriptures that test all opinions of men. In whatever capacity, they may be found, individually or collectively. And again, I would reference the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1, as a wonderful statement to this end. And I think it provides us with an important position that we should maintain in considering these matters. Now, the institutional church is not infallible. The institutional church is not infallible. The Holy Scriptures are and the church is to be the custodian of this God given treasure. I remember a book title that has really stuck with me by a wonderful Bible teacher and theologian, Dr. Rush Dooney, and the title of his book was Infallibility and Inescapable Concept. And to what do we look and adhere to being true and honest and accurate and without error? And of course, that is centered in the being of God, and then that applies to God's communication to us. Do we have an accurate communication from God to us? Do we have a trustworthy communication from God to us? Infallibility is inescapable. And so our desire is to know and to believe what God has revealed. However, cut loose from confessional orthodoxy and rejecting the absolutism of institutional church hierarchy, there are fragments of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism throughout the professing Christian church. And we're going to look at the first part of that today in liberal theology and modernism. Even though I think that that hold has been broken, and I really don't intend to spend a whole lot of time beyond this lesson, and then go on next time to postmodern and the anticipation of the postmodern by neo-orthodoxy, and then to the real bone of contention that we're dealing with, infallibility and inerrancy. So when we're dealing with the doctrine of inspiration, it all comes down really to this bone of contention, infallibility and inerrancy. So next week we're going to talk about neo-orthodoxy and then talk about the concepts of infallibility and inerrancy. But I'm going to ask that you bear with me this week because I want to lay some foundation work historically trying to connect the dots in terms of philosophical speculation and how that set the stage and influenced critical views of the Bible, liberal theological critical views. Now the term criticism I don't think is a bad term. And as we get into translations, we'll talk more about this aspect of critical methods. And so I want you to be careful. I don't think criticism or critical methods are necessarily bad. But when we talk about liberal theology and higher criticism, we're talking about, within the context of philosophical development, something that was very poisonous and ruinous, and we need to be aware of it. So in the aftermath of the Reformation and the Renaissance, the Enlightenment seeds of skepticism eventually bore rotten fruit in the German rationalist school of liberal theology. And while you may not be as familiar with some of the philosophical roots that are connected to this, I know that you are familiar with a lot of the claims and even today there is simply a an ongoing republishing of a lot of these views that have been discredited. But people are not aware of their discrediting, and so they just keep resurfacing. While the Copernican Revolution opened up a new world of scientific investigation, philosophical speculation brought about another revolution, positing human intellect and experience as the center of a new universe of meaning. It's really what we're dealing with here. Of course, we know that Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo had to contend with and deal with the hierarchy of the church. And we recognize the danger of institutional absolutism. That's why we do not subject the scriptures to any institution of humans. But with that revelation that came, a revolution that came in scientific investigation with the solar system, There was a counterpart, and that was the philosophical speculation that was unleashed and how, as an illustration, rather than the theistic or God-centered view of the world and of human purpose, there was a change and man, human ability, autonomous and sufficient to itself, was made the focal point and the center of human thought. and experience. The theistic worldview is not at odds with the Copernican solar system as expressed by Kepler himself. I'm thinking the thoughts of God after him. I've always delighted in that exclamation of Kepler because here he doesn't claim original thought. He's saying I'm an observer And I am beholding something new and wonderful that God had created from of old. I'm thinking the thoughts of God after him. So that Copernican revolution was not at odds with a theistic worldview. This theistic world, this theistic view of the world precludes the notion that the universe operates in a mechanistic fashion under its own power. The tension between a theistic universe governed by God and a mechanistic universe closed to divine interference from God was a burning issue at that very time. The Enlightenment philosopher Hobbes, as quoted as saying in the foreword to his Decorper, he declared that the mind should destroy first the given world and then, God-like, recreate it by the theoretical thought. For according to Hobbes, logic or logical thought should create like God or like an artist. And that is revolutionary because as we noticed that quote from Kepler above, human thought was analogical and discovered and had revealed to it the things of God and the wonders of God's creation. It was not original to itself. But what is Hobbes now saying? No, like the artist or like God, the individual creates their own meaning. The same notion was popularized by Alexander Pope. All nature is but art unknown to the all chance direction which thou canst not see all discord harmony not understood a partial evil universal good and spite of pride and erring reason spite. One truth is clear. Whatever is is right. Now, do not confuse that with the doctrine of providence. This is rather a perky and glib fatalism or determinism. And for Pope, God is an impersonable force of fate. Albeit, in this poem, a good-natured kind of impersonal force of fate. This would be very much in contrast to the Islamic view of God as an impersonal force of fate. Impersonal force of fate. So, nonetheless, what we're seeing here is that man is the center. Human experience and human thought is the only authentic and believable thing. So infallibility was thus transferred from God to the entire chain of being that which is is inevitably right, because it is part of that perfect whole man is thus not a sinner. He is right as he is, and because he represents a high point of the great chain of being the proper study of mankind is man. And that was really the position of the Enlightenment. that drove the Enlightenment philosophers, as you can see in the maxims of these Enlightenment philosophers. You've probably heard these before. I think, therefore I am, Descartes. God or nature, Spinoza. In other words, they're mutually exclusive. A blank tablet, that is the human mind at birth, John Locke. And to be is to be perceived, George Berkeley. So once again, you can see the proper and only Beneficial focus and study is the centrality of human experience and thought. The inevitable result of the Enlightenment's turn inward was not the light of truth, but the darkness of skepticism. The skeptics argued particularly against the knowledge of God, assuming that our senses cannot apprehend being directly. We can only know the appearance of things, not their real being. This was once more retreat into Plato's cave with philosophers rolling a stone in front of the entrance. The skepticism was phenomenalism to a radical degree. Phenomena, as we have seen, refers to those things that are evident or manifest to our senses. According to phenomenalism, it is impossible to get behind or beyond the phenomena to reality. And I hope that you'll see as we're connecting the dots here that this is going to spill over into the view of scripture. And then the view of our humanity as revealed by scripture and the need of salvation and the doctrine of Christ. It's inseparable. It all hangs together. Hume's legacy was a skepticism with respect not merely to God and religion, but also to science. In Hume's strict empiricism, there is no place whatever for God and only a slim place for science in terms of probability concepts, not laws. There's no place either for the self of man as a spiritual substance. Instead of the self, there are only perceptions. And this is what Hume wrote. I never can catch myself at any time with a perception and never can observe anything but the perceptions. When my perceptions are removed for any time as my sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself and may truly be said not to exist. Maybe we should wish that he just slept like Rip Van Winkle. It would have been better for us if Hume had been a Rip Van Winkle. But he wasn't. Hume understands that the concept of miracles is crucial to the Judeo-Christian faith. Take away miracles and you take away Christianity. By the way, where are miracles recorded in the Bible? Earlier, Locke had said that biblical miracles certify the credit of the proposer. That is, miracles do not prove the existence of God. His existence must be established before work can be credited to him. But they demonstrate God's certification of an agent of revelation. Moses was given miraculous powers in order to prove that his message was from God. Likewise, Jesus' claims were demonstrated by his miracles, and especially his miraculous resurrection from the dead. Now, these enlightenment seeds of thought sprouted into rationalism, which is just another name for modernism, in the philosophical garden of Immanuel Kant. And this transition and coming to Kantian speculation is connected to what happened in the development of the liberal theology in the German rationalist school. While we would say today that the hold of modernism to a great extent has been broken up, we are continuing with postmodernism, and there are seeds of postmodern thought throughout these philosophical speculations. It's just one more step from modernism to postmodernism, but it's still on the same continuum with the same assumptions to a great extent, that human experience and thought are the only valid vehicles for truth, if there is truth. rationalism, and then, of course, moving from that to relativism. So philosophy had worked to this point to eliminate the a priori, the a priori in terms of theistic expectation or assumption, God-centered view of the world. So philosophy had worked to this point to eliminate the a priori. Now with Kant, it was ready to introduce a new a priori. Since both spiritual and material substances had been eliminated from the realm of valid knowledge and only the mind of autonomous man left, the a priori could now be relocated firmly in man's reasoning without any reference to God. Man could now have knowledge, but he did not need God for this new kind of Kantian knowledge. Not only God by way of general revelation, but especially God by way of special revelation in scripture. Kant's concern was a system. based on no data except reason itself, and which therefore seeks, without resting in any fact, to unfold knowledge from its original germs. Kant thus sought a new foundation for knowledge, one neither dependent on spiritual or material substances, nor of things in themselves. Kant was working toward cutting the umbilical cord which bound man to God and the universe. Now, the reformed Bible scholar E.J. Young, taught at Westminster Seminary, Old Testament scholar, as well as just a general Bible scholar, recognizes that the rotten fruit of liberal theology comes from the seeds and sprouts of Enlightenment and rationalist philosophies. And this is what he wrote in his book, By Word is Truth. Differing as modern views do in particular, they are essentially one in this respect. that they are founded upon modern ideas of God and man. We cannot really understand modern thought as it comes to expression in the field of theology unless we first realize that much that is offered for our consumption today is founded upon and has its roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The modern movement, despite disclaimers to the contrary, is really skeptical in nature and goes back to the element of skepticism found in Kant himself. That skepticism has to do with uncertainty. That's why the relativism that we contend with today and many of the assumptions that are expressed have become a commonplace. If you're talking to someone about believing the Bible, about understanding even commitment to the doctrine of inspiration, it's these assumptions and skepticisms that have come out of enlightenment rationalism and relativism, moral relativism, that cause people to raise their eyebrows like you actually believe in something? You believe in something other than validating experience? You believe in an authority outside of yourself? And of course at the same time we have to steer clear of determinism and fatalism, of institutional authoritarianism. So where does that leave us? Or of individualism. Where does that leave us? It brings us right back to confessional Orthodox Christianity. That there is something bigger than us as an individual. There is something more authoritative than the collective views of humans. Yes, sir. Well, in terms of civil law. Yeah, there are a number of things in terms of civil law. that are connected to biblical revelation and to the development of the concept of civil law. I mean, there's a long history to that. There's still traces of it, but the theory of law has also been cut loose and has been infected by Enlightenment rationalism and, you know, reflects that. I didn't hear what you said. Well, yeah, I mean, there's certainly issues related to the disintegration of law and of cultural norms. In some respects, I hope that maybe we're ripe for a rediscovery. But I don't know what the providence of God will bring. But humanistic law is certainly bankrupting. But I don't know that there are only dire consequences and results from that. But that's another discussion. So, let's go on concerning the validity of Scripture as we talk about the inspiration and authority of the Bible. Concerning the validity of Scripture, the views popularized by the German Rationalist School of Liberal Theology are known as higher criticism. You've probably heard that term before, higher criticism. And as I said earlier, this is not to tar all terms or all theories of criticism. We do employ various critical methods and theories as it relates to the study and the use of Scripture. even in terms of the translation and application to various manuscript sources and that kind of thing. But higher criticism is a term that is applied and used to identify the rational school of liberal theology that came out of Germany. This movement is a worm-eaten result of skeptical speculations and hollow conclusions that the Bible is a hodgepodge of after-the-fact editors. This is one of the things I was talking about that you often hear people refer to. Oh, well, you know, you can't credit the authority and authorship of the Bible. There is no way of knowing that. For instance, the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible accredited to Moses, And the German higher criticism documentary and source documentary approach, you may be also familiar with, came up with this identification, J-E-D-P, where they claim there was multiple authorship. And there is no foundation or basis for that. For example, they took that there were two different words used for God and that the claim was that those words were not contemporaneous. Archaeological studies has demonstrated that that was a false assumption. And other such assumptions were brought. In Kantian fashion, these assumptions were the source and starting place for these critics. And they began to spill this out in terms of the unreliability of the Bible and their assumptions that this could not be true, this would not be expected. in terms of human experience or in terms of cultural dynamics. And they were skeptical in their speculations in discrediting what had long been accepted and recognized as the authority of Scripture and the authorship of Scripture. They proposed multiple authorship for the book of Isaiah, again discredited. And a second century date proposed for the book of Daniel saying that the specificity that Daniel had regarding the visions and the prophecies could only have been written after the fact. And what is the assumption? God couldn't have revealed that. God doesn't communicate with man. There is no God. So this book had to have been written after these things happened. And once again, you'll hear people commonly trot out those kinds of exceptions to your belief in the Bible. And I just want you to know that all those things have been discredited. Here's a concluding quote from an article by Dr. Packer. This is from his article on higher criticisms found in the New Geneva Study Bible. There is clear evidence in the world of scholarship that the higher critical theories that have been described are unnecessary and indeed unnatural. They were produced against a background of prejudice against divine sovereignty, divine speech, and the miraculous, and of craving for naturalistic explanations of the seemingly supernatural. Nowadays, these theological currents are less strong. Though the Wellhausen, and he was one of the German academics who popularized this view, though the Wellhausen hypothesis is still often taught to beginners as if it were certainty, Professionals of all schools of thought are currently querying it from all angles. The authenticity of all Paul's letters, all the history of Genesis and the Gospels, and indeed all the Bible facts that have been questioned at any time in the past are currently defended by scholars with at least as much cogency as appeared in the skepticism of the skeptics. And so, as I said to you, I think to a great extent modernism has bankrupted. Rationalism has bankrupted, and we're seeing the next step in terms of relativism, and that is the postmodern mindset. And that was anticipated, as a matter of fact. There was reaction against the liberal theology of the German rationalist and higher criticism called Neo-Orthodoxy. And Neo-Orthodoxy anticipated the postmodern in many respects by positing that the Bible contains the Word of God. which must be subjectively encountered and validated by human experience. And we reject that view. And we're going to talk again about the agency of the Holy Spirit and recognize the significance and importance of the individual regenerating presence of the Holy Spirit. But the Bible is not validated by human experience. And it is not just subjectively encountered. The Bible stands as the objective revelation of God's truth. And we'll come back and revisit some of those views in encountering and dealing with Neo-Orthodoxy. Because Neo-Orthodoxy, I think, is probably the biggest danger that we have in Reformed theology contending with it. I think, once again, Neo-Orthodoxy is resurfacing throughout our academic institutions and in terms of seminaries. And if it's not If it's not identified in a formal way, I think the assumptions of New Orthodoxy are often the general position that are held regarding the Scriptures. And as I said, this really comes to its fore in the bone of contention regarding the verbal inspiration of Scripture, and that's the question of inerrancy and infallibility. So, next time we're going to talk about neo-orthodoxy and we're going to talk about inerrancy and infallibility.