Journal: Michigan Theological Journal
Volume: MTJ 03:1 (Spring 1992)
Article: Theodore Parker And The Nineteenth Century Transcendentalist Assault On Biblical Authority
Author: John Fea

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MTJ 3:1 (Spring 1992) p. 65

Theodore Parker And The Nineteenth Century Transcendentalist Assault On Biblical Authority

John Fea

The doctrine of the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture as the historical and orthodox position of the early church (and not an innovation of the Princeton theologians) is enhanced by an examination of the writings of those who opposed that understanding of Scripture. This article examines Theodore Parker’s assault on what he perceived to be the orthodox view of Scripture and demonstrates that even in Parker’s day (an era which preceded that of the Princetonian theologians) inerrancy was regarded as the orthodox position of the church.

Evangelicals have within recent years been engaged in what many future historians will probably call one of the most heated “inhouse” theological conflicts of the latter part of the twentieth century. It is the battle over Biblical authority. Debate rages between those who affirm the Bible’s “inerrancy” in all it teaches; and those who have viewed the Bible as “Heilsgeschichte” (redemption history) and thus infallible only in matters pertaining to faith and practice not science and history1 Throughout the 1970s, and into the early 1980s, both

MTJ 3:1 (Spring 1992) p. 66

parties sought to examine the claims for their individual positions both philosophically, biblically and historically.

It is the historical analysis of the doctrine of Biblical authority that forms the basis for this essay. Probably the most pivotal work in this controversy was a 1979 monograph by Jack Rogers and Donald McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach. This work sent shock waves throughout much of conservative evangelicalism, as it argued that the position of Biblical inerrancy was an innovation not held by the mainstream of historic Protestant orthodoxy, but rather an innovative doctrine stemming from the influence of Protestant scholasticism on conservative theology.

Rogers and McKim traced the historical flow of doctrine from the time of Christ to the present, arguing that Biblical inerrancy was a product of seventeenth century Protestant scholasticism, manifested specifically in the works of Reformed theologian Francis Turretin. Turretin’s position on Scripture, as argued by Rogers and McKim, greatly influenced the Princeton theologians in America in their attempts to formulate a doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. It should be noted that much of Rogers and McKim’s understanding of the Princetonians stems from a work by one Ernest Sandeen.

Sandeen, in The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930,

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