Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 138:549 (Jan 1981)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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BSac 138:549 (Jan 81) p. 73

Book Reviews

The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible. By Jack Rogers and Donald K. McKim. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. xxiv + 484 pp. $20.00.

The central thesis of this book is that the modern stress on the inerrancy of Scripture is not the historic position of the Christian church nor of the Reformers. Rather, it is a result of the influence of Aristotelian and Thomistic rationalism through the post-Reformation Turretin and the Scottish realism of Thomas Reid and was dogmatized by the old Princetonian theologians Hodge and Warfield (see pp. 185-86). Behind this thesis is the insistence that truth is found in function (use) and not form (words) (pp. 175, 179). In this thesis Rogers and McKim do not claim originality but they admittedly follow Berkouwer who was influenced by Barth and Bavinck (pp. 427, 432).

Of interest to the reader will be the following claims of Rogers and McKim. The Bible is not inerrant in everything it affirms (pp. 341-42). Inerrantists overlook the historic doctrine of accommodation which means that God may accommodate Himself to human error (pp. 249, 342). Biblical inspiration is “organic” (p. 391) and “conceptual” (pp. 303, 337) but not verbal and propositional (pp. 11, 20, 30, 166). Truth is not to be understood as that which corresponds to reality but is viewed pragmatically (pp. 433-35), functionally (pp. 398, 431, 435), and even existentially (p. 138). Error does not mean a mistake or incorrect assertion, but what deceives (a lie) or misleads (p. 431). Further, truth is not primarily found in the propositions of Scripture but rather behind the writings in the minds and intentions of the authors (p. 292). In substantial accord with Bultmann, Rogers distinguishes between the divine content (the kernel) of the message and the human form or words (the husk) (pp. 391, 429). In accord with this separation, it is not surprising

BSac 138:549 (Jan 81) p. 74

to discover that Rogers and McKim do not believe the Bible teaches either science or cosmology (pp. 26-27, 287, 251). They argue that the salvation teaching of the Bible is infallible (pp. 382, 393) and the Bible is not a revelation in and of itself but is merely a record or witness to revelation (p. 384).

Rogers’s and McKim’s overreaction to rationalism leads them to the paradoxical conclusion that logic is not normative for all theological assertions (pp. 16, 416). Likewise, the authors reject deductive (syllogistic) reasoning for inferring doctrinal truths (pp. 92, 198, 348, 435), despite the fact that they use it themselves throughout the book. In this same vein, they reject epistemological foundationalism, claiming that inerrantists base the inspiration of the Bible on its iner...

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