Not of the Hitchens-Dawkins-Harris variety, but of the seventeenth century variety. The four figures most often attacked for formulating a thoroughgoing atheistic perspective were Spinoza (for his biblical work as well as his metaphysics), Hobbes, La Peyrere (author of Pre-Adamites ), and Lodewijk Meyer (author of Philosophia Scripturae Interpres ). At a conference held in Rostock, Germany, in 1702, traditional Aristotelian anti-Cartesians treated four principle claims against the new atheists: the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; the Scriptures do not... Read more

From Christianity and Liberalism : “The narration of facts is history; the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine.” “Although the ideals of the Cynic and Stoic preachers were high, these preachers never succeeded transforming society. The strange thing about Christianity was that it adopted an entirely different method. It transformed the lives of men not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of... Read more

In Christianity and Liberalism , Machen acknowledged that “There are many who believe that the Bible is right at the central point, in its account of the redeeming work of Christ, and yet believe that it contains many errors.” Machen disagreed, but Machen did not believe that such views excluded them from fellowship: “Such men are not really liberals, but Christians; because they have accepted as true the message upon which Christianity depends. A great gulf separates them from those... Read more

Thomas Reid’s “commonsense realism” gets beat up a lot, especially in contemporary evangelicalism. But in their history of the Bible in modern culture, Harrisville and Sundberg point (with some unnecessarily pejorative language) to some of the accomplishments of Reid’s philosophy in American church life and theology: “For three generations, commonsense realism helped to negotiate the thorny paradox of teaching divine election and human depravity while at the same time affirming American optimism in the great experiment of a new nation... Read more

An infallible Scripture needs an infallible interpreter. So Catholics have argued, at least since the Reformation. Luther, of course, disagreed: “They must admit that there are many among us, godly Christians, who have the truth faith, spirit, understanding, word and mind of Christ, and why then should one reject their word and understanding and follow the pope who has neither faith nor spirit? . . . Since we are all priests and all have one faith, one gospel and one... Read more

Melanchthon wrote, “The views of Erasmus might have caused greater tumults if Luther had not arisen to arrest them . . . all of this tragedy about the Lord’s Supper started from him.” Melanchthon had in mind Erasmus’s Neo-platonic disparagement of matter, which infected Zwingli and filtered into Anabaptist theology. Roland Bainton summarizes Luther’s response: “The foci for Luther were God, man and the world, not spirit and flesh. These were never separated. God himself is in flesh. The incarnation... Read more