Has God Said?

Scripture, the Word of God, and the Crisis of Theological Authority

John Douglas Morrison

HAS GOD SAID?

Scripture, the Word of God, and the Crisis of Theological Authority

The Evangelical Theological Society Monograph Series 5

Copyright © 2006 John Douglas Morrison. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.

ISBN: 1-59752-581-2

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7641-2

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Morrison, John Douglas

Has God said? : scripture, the word of God, and

the crisis of theological authority / John Douglas

Morrison.

Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2006

Evangelical Theological Society Monograph Series 5

xiv + 306 p. ; 23 cm.

ISBN: 1-59752-581-2

1. Bible—Inspiration. 2. Bible—Evidences, authority, etc.

3. Bible—Hermeneutics. 4. Barth, Karl (1886–1968). I. Title.

II. Series.

BS480 .M67 2006

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

• Title Page

• Acknowledgments

• Chapter 1: Has God Said?

• Chapter 2: Spinoza, Semler, and Gabler

• Chapter 3: Has God Said?

• Chapter 4: Biblical-Critical Methodology and the Text of Scripture as Written Word of God

• Chapter 5: Developments Regarding the Nature of Holy Scripture in Modern Roman Catholic Thought

• Chapter 6: Barth, Barthians, and Evangelicals

• Chapter 7: Scripture as the Written Word of God

• Chapter 8: Einstein, Torrance, and Calvin

• Appendix: The Authority of Holy Scripture and the Need for Hermeneutical Authority in the Theology of the Early Church Fathers:

• Bibliography

To

My wife

Ellen

My children

Heather and Shawn

My son and daughter-in-law

Philip and Meghan

My new granddaughter

Charity Faith

My new grandson

Shawn Calvin

and

All our grandchildren

and the generations

to come

Thanks to

Sarah Pisney, Meredith Piper,

Sean Turchin, David Pensgard, Sharon Cohick, Phillip Hines

and

Gary Habermas

For his encouragement

Acknowledgments

The writing of this book has been a long if steady process. The concerns which gave rise to it, the dualistic separation of “the Word of God” from the language/text of Holy Scripture goes back to my doctoral dissertation on T. F. Torrance (since published as Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God in the Thought of Thomas Forsyth Torrance), and the lingering question of the “Barthian” ambiguities about divine disclosure, Christ the incarnate Word, and the prophetic-apostolic Scriptures. This concern was cross-pollinated by the works of evangelicals who, for seemingly inadequate reasons, finally, and often deceptively rejected the classical Scripture principle, the identity thesis that Holy Scripture is, under Christ the Word, the written and authoritative Word of God (cf. chapter seven).

From that point, this issue of the nature of Scripture became a matter of personal focus and, hence, research, ...