1976
For longtime evangelical leaders like Harold Lindsell, it must have felt like deja vu. J. I. Packer had expressed his concern in Fundamentalism and the Word of God. Francis Schaeffer, at the { 189] Congress on World Evangelism in 1974, predicted that the "cm-cial area of discussion for evangelicalism in the next several years will be Scripture. At stake is whether evangelicalism will remain evangelical.״ He said that there was no use in evangelicalism getting bigger "if at the same time appreciable parts of evangelicalism are getting soft at the central core, namely the Scrip-tures.״ About the same time Packer, R. C. Sproul, and James Montgomery Boice were planning a conference for the defense of the inerrancy of Scripture.
So the time was right for Harold Lindsell's book.
Fie and others of the older generation of evangelicals remembered the struggle that had gone on in the early part of the century. Theologian B. B. Warfield had spelled out the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture back in 1881, and that view was quoted often by fundamentalist leaders in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. Liberals had not only denied historic Christian doctrines, they charged, but had rejected the notion of a reliable biblical record.
Out of that turmoil the fundamentalist movement had emerged, and then gradually the rough edges of fundamentalism were smoothed into evangelicalism—which sought to be less cantankerous, more reasonable, less separatist, and more with it.
In that spirit, a score of vital new movements and missions sprang up in the 1940s and 1950s. Doctrinally they upheld the same basic doctrines as the fundamentalists: the inspiration of Scripture, the virgin birth, the atoning death of Christ, his bodily resurrection, and the blessed hope of the second coming.
But now Lindsell and others—many of whom had been active in the rise of evangelicalism—were seeing a waffling on the inerrancy of Scripture. And Lindsell, Francis Schaeffer, andj. I. Packer were saying, ״Oh, no! Here we go again!"
A former professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and at this time editor of the prestigious Christianity Today magazine, Lind-sell examined all the foxholes and fired shots wherever he sensed any movement away from a tight inerrancy position.
After defining the problem, showing how Scripture talks of its own infallibility and outlining how the doctrine was considered throughout church history, Lindsell points out Lhe defections he had noticed in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the Southern Baptist Convention, and Fuller Theological Seminary, where he had previously taught. He mentions examples of slippage in evangelical parachurch organizations, as well as in some smaller evangelical denominations. He then takes a chapter to discuss how alleged discrepancies in Scripture can be handled. In con-elusion, he reemphasizes, ״Errancy leads to further concessions." Consequently, to evangelicals who believed as he did, ״I urge you
to contend earnestly for the faith____1 urge you to take whatever
action is needed to secure a redress of the situation."
Lindsell began his preface by saying, "I regard the subject of the book, biblical inerrancy, to be the most important theological topic of the age." Other key leaders agreed. John Walvoord of Dallas Theological Seminary called Lindsell's effort "one of the most strategic books to be published by evangelicals." Harold John Ockenga, one of the founders of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942, praised the book's importance, saying, ״Those who surrender the doctrine of inerrancy inevitably move away from orthodoxy."
Partly as a result of this book, conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention began their takeover of the denominational seminaries and headquarters. But many others felt that Lind-sell's book was too black-and-white, too quick to draw battle lines. Inerrancy needs to be further defined in a scientific age, some were suggesting. A number of evangelicals preferred a softer definition of inerrancy, such as: ״For the purposes for which the Bible was given, it is fully truthful and inerrant."
But there was no doubt—whether you loved it or hated il— Lindsell's book left its mark on the evangelical scene for the rest of the century.