described in greater detail below. I contend that the biblicism that characterizes the thinking and practice of much of American evangelicalism is not so much “wrong” as it is impossible, even taken on its own terms. It simply does not work as proposed and cannot function in a coherent way. In order for evangelical biblicism to appear to work, therefore, those who believe in it have to engage in various forms of textual selectivity, denial, and contortion—which actually end up violating biblicist