1946 The Infallible Word

The Infallible Word edited Stonehouse and Woolley (1946 edition)

Foreword

The proposal to republish "The infallible Word" comes to me as most welcome news and I regard it as a real privilege to be asked to write this brief foreword. When it first appeared this book rendered great service in helping and strengthening the faith of true evangelical people throughout the world. It was needed then, but now, alas, the need is even greater. The problem of authority has always been crucial in the life of the individual and the Church; and to Protestants that authority has always been found in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself mediated to us through "the infallible Word." The Bible and our attitude to it has always therefore been at the very heart and centre of the conflict between true evangelicals and Roman Catholicism on the one hand, and liberal and modernistic Protestantism on the other hand. The fight has gone on for two and a half centuries, reaching its climax perhaps in the 20's of the present century. The very existence of the Westminster Theological Seminary is a living reminder of this.

But, it is not yet over, and alas, it is assuming a new form which to those of us who belong to the Reformed and evangelical tradition is most grievous. For it has now become a civil war within that very camp. Where all were agreed until some fifteen years or so ago there is now an obvious and increasing divergence of opinion. Once more the Reformation cry of "Sola Scriptura" is being questioned and that in a most subtle manner. A new authority is being set alongside the Scripture as being co-equal with it, and in some respects superior to it - the authority of modern scientific knowledge. The Scriptures are still regarded as being authoritative in all matters of religious experience. But not only is their authority in such matters as the creation of the universe and man, and even historical facts which play a vital part in the history of salvation, and which were accepted by our Lord Himself, being questioned and queried; it is even being asserted that it is foolish of us to look to the Scriptures for authoritative guidance in such matters. It has recently been remarked that some well-known evangelical writers are arguing that there is a distinction between the Bible's teaching and what is found in that book which is incidental. They believe that the scientific assumptions are usually in the category of incidentals and do not belong to the infallible teaching. In like manner certain historical data are not a part of the infallible message of Scripture.

All this of course is not new; it is but the old Ritschlian dichotomy with regard to facts and judgments. What is new is that men who are the successors of those who fought the old battle so nobly and successfully, and who themselves once saw so clearly the subtle danger of this type of thinking, should be succumbing and even defecting to the ranks of liberalism and what one of the writers of this book has described as "The New Modernism". There is nothing to justify this. There are no new facts or discoveries which have in any way changed the position and which could therefore justify this change. It is part of the indifferentist attitude and spirit fostered and encouraged by ecumenical thinking of a wrong sort, which, in some, places fellowship before truth, and bonhomie and intellectual respectability before integrity and in others allows the "problem of communication" so to occupy their attention that they forget that that is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit, and that our task is to be faithful to "the truth once and for ever delivered to the saints."

I say all this to show that the arguments presented in this volume are not only as cogent as ever, but are as urgently relevant today as they were when it was first published. I can but thank God for its reappearance at this time of unprecedented confusion, and urge all who are anxious to stand steadfastly against the alarming drift even among evangelicals to read it and study it with diligence. It will inform their minds, warm their hearts, and strengthen their resolution.

D M Lloyd-Jones Westminster Chapel London, England