On the Inspiration of the Bible

In reality, Warfield and Hodge were emphasizing a position long honored by many Christians throughout the ages.  The Bible gives no indication that copyists of Scripture were inspired – only the biblical authors were.  As Augustine, Erasmus, Richard Baxter, the English apologist Whitaker, and the Roman Catholic critic Richard Simon pointed out, copies, in fact, do have errors.  Then again, William Ames observed that God providentially protected the biblical writings as they passed through time such that no gross distortions ruined them.  For many Protestants, versions were “authenticated” to the extent that they reflected “originals.”  The autographs could be approached through the use of what we today would call textual criticism.

From: Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal by John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), p. 134.

John D. Woodbridge is Research Professor of Church History and the History of Christian Thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.  He has been on the faculty there since 1970.

 

Self-Esteem Subordinated to True Christian Love

For many people, very frequently the best solution is not in building self-esteem per se, but in service, in doing something for others, in giving.  For, as Jesus has taught, it is in dying that we live, it is in giving that we receive, it is in denying ourselves that we find ourselves.  In Jesus’ exhortation to love our neighbors as ourselves, He is not commanding us to love ourselves; He is assuming that we do.

Where a person has been brought up in cruel circumstances that have always destroyed self-confidence and jeopardized self-acceptance and feelings of self-worth, I doubt that the standard self-esteem message is the best treatment anyway.  The best treatment for such individuals is to introduce them to the Savior, who does love them, to the joy of being forgiven so that they may learn how to forgive others, to the biblical worldview that says they are important, to the message of Paul that insists there are different gifts, to a warm Christian church where love will be meted out at the practical level, to avenues of Christian service where they learn to do things for others and discover that the teaching of Jesus is true.

From: Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life by D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1993), p. 113.