In today's class, we're discussing the history of the Doctrine of Scripture in Modernity. We previously covered Scripture in the pre-modern world, and now we're focusing on the three N's: Inerrancy, Inspiration, and Interpretation of Scripture. We'll examine how these doctrines were deconstructed during the Enlightenment and reconstructed by Schleiermacher, although his version fell short of Christianity. Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species further challenged the Church's defense of inerrancy, but theologians like B. B. B. Warfield defended it at Princeton. Karl Barth recovered historic Christianity but did not believe in inerrancy, leading to a questioning of this doctrine among evangelicals. This culminated in the Battle for the Bible in the 1970s, with J. R. Packer making a notable defense.
In today's class, we're going to cover the history of the Doctrine of Scripture in Modernity. Last time, we looked at Scripture in the pre-modern world, the Patristics through the Reformation. In that class, we looked at the Canon, the Scripture, the Authority, and Clarity of Scripture. Today, we're going to cover the three N's, the Inerrancy, Inspiration, and Interpretation of Scripture. As for our timeline, we're going to start with the Enlightenment's deconstruction of these doctrines, and then we'll see how Schleiermacher reconstructed them, but into something that fell short of Christianity, really.
Twenty years after his death in 1859, Darwin published The Origin of Species. So we're going to look at the Church's defensive inerrancy in those contexts, from Princeton with theologians like B. B. B. Warfield and others. Back in Germany, a guy named Karl Barth recovered much of historic Christianity in his context. So in contrast to Schleiermacher, he held to historic Christianity, except he did not believe in inerrancy. So after he died, many evangelicals followed suit and questioned the doctrine of inerrancy.
This came to a head in the 1970s in what is often called the Battle for the Bible. One of the great defenses at this time was made by J. R. Packer. If we have a chance, we're going to zoom in on his life a little bit.
