The issue is crucial. It is via the Scriptures that the church historically has claimed to understand matters of faith and life, from God’s creation of all things from nothing to the significance of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ to the ultimate consummation of all things toward which history is moving. If the Bible is unreliable in what it teaches about these things, the church is left to speculate and has nothing of value to speak to the world. In the thirty-plus years
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