Biblical Inerrancy and the Double-Revelation Theory -- By: John C. Whitcomb, Jr.

Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 04:1 (Winter 1963)
Article: Biblical Inerrancy and the Double-Revelation Theory
Author: John C. Whitcomb, Jr.


Biblical Inerrancy and the Double-Revelation Theory

John C. Whitcomb, Jr.

Professor of Old Testament
Grace Theological Seminary

[This paper is an expanded revision of a presidential address given at the Seventh General Meeting of the Midwestern Section of the Evangelical Theological Society, May 4, 1962, at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Illinois.]

Judging from the number of recent controversies in evangelical circles concerning the full implications of the doctrine that the Bible is divinely and verbally inspired and thus inerrant in the autographs, there seems to be little likelihood that Christians who hold to this crucially important teaching of Scripture are about to enter upon a period of triumphant and undisturbed peace and acceptance in the Protestant world.

For example, it has recently been asserted that the very possibility of a verbally inerrant revelation has been rendered untenable by studies in the field of linguistics.1 Others are claiming that the Bible contains historical errors which can be explained on the basis of inspired and therefore accurate quotations from non-inspired and erroneous sources.2 Along with this comes the suggestion that verbal inspiration extends only to those “basic” matters which God intended to convey to man, and not to mere “peripheral” matters.3 We are also being told that a true understanding of the nature of Biblical inspiration must be attained through an inductive study of the actual phenomena of Scripture rather than by a deduction from Biblical proof-texts on inspiration.4 Thus, many evangelical Christians have been led to believe that verbal inspiration is merely a human theory about the Bible, and therefore is neither essential to true Christianity nor legitimate as a standard and test of orthodoxy.5

The fact that such viewpoints have been publicized recently by scholars who claim to be evangelical should be profoundly disturbing to those who accept by faith the Bible’s clear testimony to its own verbal inerrancy (cf. Prov 30:5–6; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:19–21; John 10:34; Matt 5:18). Nevertheless, it is not our purpose in this paper to deal with any of the above-mentioned views, for we believe that they have already been adequately refuted by competent evangelical theologians.

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