Introducing Biblicism
Let us begin with four illustrations from real life scenarios.
The first case involved a well-known teacher replying to the question: “What work of fiction has most affected your Christian worldview?” “None!” this post defiantly proclaimed: “No work of fiction should ever change our worldview. As a Christian, my worldview is shaped by Scripture alone.”
About that same time, a popular apologist was asked “What do you think about homosexuality?” to which he replied, “What I think about it doesn’t matter at all. Let’s look at what the Bible says.” In the most obvious sense, this response is fitting for a Bible-believing Christian. What God says is what matters, and it just so happens that the Bible has much to say that enables us to condemn homosexuality as sin. However, someone who posted this exchange commented, “It’s like they would have no problem with it if the Bible didn’t say anything about it.”
In a third instance, a pastor friend of mine was speaking with a gentleman who was involved in Christian media at a radio station in Boise. He detected a constant habit of disallowing labels and reasons from outside of the Scripture. At one point my friend said, “Well, we are using extra-biblical words right now. All of our sermons do the same. Should the pastor get up there and only recite the exact words of the text?” The individual responded without missing a beat, “Well, what would be so wrong with that?”
Our fourth and final account comes from my early years of ministry. A member of our church began to struggle in one of our book studies, and it did not help that he already had a difficulty with studying books that were not the Bible itself. This particular book quoted Scripture profusely, and yet in order to make this or that point, the author would occasionally use ellipses in order to weave together the particular point he was taking from the passage while remaining as concise as possible. At one point, our brother stood up and said, “See—right there! That’s what I’m talking about! Why does he not quote the whole verse?”
None of these accounts are meant to make light of the speakers. All of them represent a kind of intellectual bondage, and a barrier to deeper inquiry into the subject at hand.
As to the first scenario, I certainly do not maintain that one is duty-bound to have their Christian faith radically shaped by works of fiction. I simply note the impulsive resistance to a crucial part of our souls to which Scripture itself appeals, namely, the imagination. Likewise the teacher who restricts all reasoning that condemns homosexuality to “what the Bible says” will never get around to explaining how such is contrary to nature. As to the third scenario, the call to merely stick to the words of the text itself are not words to be found in the text itself. Finally, to that conversation in my own living room, what I came to realize is that, for this individual irritated by the constant ellipses, the meaning of the text was exclusively—or at least irreducibly—wrapped up in the precise and entire recitation of the ink patterns we have before us. In all four cases, what I have called an intellectual bondage intermingles oversimplification with superstition.
I suggest that each of these conversations share some common threads. Many have noticed the same, and so have even agreed upon a common name. That name is biblicism. However, the reader needs to know that not everyone agrees with the use of this word. “Biblicism” has been used by others as a pejorative term, a straw man for the Protestant doctrine of Scripture as a whole. What makes matters worse is that some in the Reformed community have fired back at this criticism by wearing the label as a badge of honor. We are not given any clarity on a popular level either. The description on the “Got Questions” website says,
Those leveling the charge of Biblicism often deny the doctrines of scriptural inerrancy or inspiration or at least seek to diminish the authority of Scripture. Sometimes Biblicists are accused of bibliolatry or “Bible worship.”
The terms “often” and “sometimes” in this description are carrying a lot of weight. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary gives this exceedingly unhelpful definition: “adherence to the letter of the Bible,” and the Collins dictionary is no better: “literal interpretation of the Bible.” Given such impressions, we cannot avoid the discrepancies over this word’s use.
War Over the Word “Biblicism"
How has the word “biblicism” been used in its whole history? An 1805 edition of the popular reference called The New Annual Register contained the first use of the English word “biblicism” on record. A statistical analysis for the use of the word “biblicism” may be found online. In a Google search, a simple chart shows the word biblicism appearing right at that 1805 usage, peaking in the 1820s, and, in spite of some ups and downs, never rising to that level again, until right around the year 2000 where it nearly doubles that original high.
It is claimed by our contemporaries who deliberately self-identify as biblicists that their use is proper to the original Reformed champions of sola Scriptura. We emphatically disagree and insist that the burden of proof is on them to establish such a lineage.
Their argument rests on two pieces of evidence that are really just two parts to the same claim. First, Roman Catholic antagonists to the Reformed doctrine would utilize the pejorative term “biblist” to lampoon the idea of sola Scriptura; and secondly, some Reformed authors welcomed the label, very often as a direct response.
Four preliminary questions come to mind as we consider this proposed evidence:
(1) What is the identity and influence of the authors who used the term?
(2) Is the use a reference to the doctrine of Scripture, the method of interpretation, or just passing rhetoric?
(3) What level of discontinuity—e.g., anachronistic sense—is there between present uses and the cited use?
(4) Is it not special pleading to disallow alternative uses for “biblicism” when the word in cited texts is often not even the same word, but rather “biblism”?
With such criteria proposed, we now proceed to the material evidence.
One example may be found in the Anglican archbishop, Thomas Tenison (1636 – 1715). It was said that for him “Biblism” is what the Reformed embraced as theirs—the very same pejorative aimed at them by the Papists. So he writes,
The faith of the Reformed has, by Some of their Adversaries of the Roman Persuasion, been called Biblism: And they themselves have had the Name of Biblists (a) given to them. And these they look upon as Names of Honour, though they were intended as marks of Infamy by the Inventors of them; for it is both a safe and worthy practice, to take, for their Rule, the Word of God, rather than the Word of Man.1
Such a piece of evidence has a clear function. Tenison reported that Romanists equated “The faith of the Reformed” as Biblism. It was a sweeping denunciation of the Protestant way of thinking. Moreover, Tenison is equally expansive in his use of the pronoun “they” to encompass Protestants in general.
Even taking this prima facie as representative of a general Protestant stance at that time, reason compels us to first inquire into the limits of this evidence in our particular discussion. Consider the following syllogism under this form:
1. All S is M.
2. All M is P.
∴ All S is P.
Or, in other words:
All Protestant theologizing is a final appeal to Scripture.
All final appeals to Scripture are exclusive appeals to Scripture (or biblicism).
All Protestant theologizing is an exclusive appeal to Scripture (or biblicism).
The Romanists in question attributed thing S to thing M by the word signified by P. Where then is the fallacy? Surely it is in the false equivalence of M to P—i.e., thing to thing—and not the correspondence of P to “biblicism”—i.e., word to thing. Now if someone wants to make some additional argument to show an unfitting correspondence of the term “biblicism” to the thing directly signified by P, they may do so. But they must do so on other grounds. Simply retracing the Romanist’s steps here and noting that, “That’s what Romanists said,” is actually flatly incorrect. They said not merely that “Biblicism is a term fittingly describing a hyper-inductive or atomistic appeal to Scripture.” They said more than that. Their exact argument was that the Protestant doctrine is that hyper-inductive or atomistic appeal to Scripture. We may agree with them about the former without giving an inch on the latter.
Yet those who want to claim the mantle of biblicism dig their heels into the history to show more of the same. An article posted on the Alpha Omega Ministries web site, written by Chris Whisonant, chronicles several nineteenth century uses of the term, all meant to show that the contrast was between a pejorative use of the term and what amounts to the original Reformed doctrine of sola Scriptura, or at least some method or practice which naturally flows from it. This summarization at the end of the article is useful to include.
1804 – “The New Annual Register” in passing referred to it as “Biblicism as a science”
1820 – “The British Review” referred to it as using “without hesitation or constraint all the hortatory, and alarming language which the Scriptures furnish” and saw Biblicism as a safeguard for the potential danger of Simeon’s overstatements
1821 – Daniel Wilson, in a funeral sermon for Rev. Thomas Scott stated that “Biblicism, if I may be allowed the term – is of the greatest importance, and will be most apparent. And I consider it as the harbinger of a better day for the universal church…that the Bible is the true point of union…”
1827 – Sophei Finngan, Catholic Priest, was indeed critical of Biblicism – because he saw it as being equivalent to Protestantism’s sola scriptura
1851 – Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigné referred to Paul’s (and others in the NT) quotation and “appeals to the Bible” under a constant refrain of “This is biblicism!” He would also note the Catholics’ derisive usage of the term.
1874 – Oosterzees labeled biblicism as “idolatry of the letter”. However, he saw that it was far better that the simple man read Scripture than the Roman Catholic Church’s prohibition against allowing the church to be read in the vulgar.
1880 – Dr. William Garden Blaikie referred to Biblicism as a “chief characteristics of the Reformation” and a way to prevent Protestantism from dying!2
It is worth noting that in the 1821 statement, the speaker, Daniel Wilson, needed to beg the pardon of his audience to use the word. He parenthetically adds, “if I may be allowed the term.” Evidently he had been granted permission, both then and now, but he would hardly have needed to draw attention to it if the word’s meaning was universally taken for granted. The example of Sophei Finngan is particularly striking in how it was used as an argument against Matthew Barrett’s use of the term biblicism. Finngan was clearly using the term to fix on the whole Protestant doctrine.3 Barrett’s own recognition of this as the first use of the term in the modern era allegedly glossed over the fact that this was a Roman Catholic priest. Thus, the argument concluded, Barrett’s definition and Finngan’s definition are at least functionally the same.4 This is question-begging to say the least.
If the weaponization of the word gets us nowhere in our criticism, the wearing of the label like a badge of honor may or may not fare any better from the other side. It is quite true that other words like “Puritan” and even “Christian” originated as pejoratives. Those words not only stuck but gained universal currency. The word “biblist” did not. Of course the most obvious problem with pejoratives is that it poisons the air of conversation. J. I. Packer once made the same observation about labels like Puritan and Methodist, and concluded,
The verdict of history is that the use of vague prejudicial labels (and the more they are the one, the more they are the other) rules out the very possibility of charitable and constructive discussion. The interests of truth and love seem to demand that such labels be rigorously eschewed.5
Beyond that, our antagonisms can often insulate us and so inflate our sense of the importance we attribute to words as opposed to what turns out to be a far broader context. The fact that this word had been used on occasion by Romanists ought to be measured against other trends developing in modern Christendom that would dwarf that controversy by comparison.
Missing Pieces from the 19th Century Frontier
We in the Reformed tradition must admit to specializing in this polemical insulation. We easily forget how vast the population of other Evangelical groups are by comparison. “What controversy could possibly be of greater import than that between the Reformation and Rome!” we may think. Indeed. But not everyone shares that opinion either. The revivalists of the new American frontier had their own bone to pick with Protestants and Catholics alike. This is a much more fertile soil in church history in which the biblicism we have in mind began to germinate.
Historians of American religion have made note of this relevant phenomenon as a defining characteristic of the Second Great Awakening.6 It was a new way of reading the Bible made to fit the newer ways of approaching God. Behind this was an epistemology: an inductive approach to the biblical text, which some have argued even influenced old Princeton.7 Its roots were a few centuries old, running from the inductivism of Francis Bacon, to the empiricism of John Locke, to the common sense realism of Thomas Reid.8
In other words—irony of ironies—this anti-extra-biblical method was built on a multilayered system of philosophy, which, I think all parties would agree, is not found on the pages of Scripture. At its extreme we might call that more fully developed system “hyper-inductivism.” Simple induction occurs when the mind moves from particular data to drawing more general conclusions.
However, when the prospect of individual minds coming into direct contact with particular units of data becomes an exclusive starting point, this can become a more expansive inductivism. Applied to the Scriptures, deriving meaning immediately from the text was the fundamental virtue and to impose onto the text anything external and abstract was the great vice.
None of this is to say that there were not other sources of modern biblicism. Richard Muller, for example, takes notice of a “biblicistic Socinian critique of traditional dogmatic language,”9 and John Calvin and Francis Turretin had both parenthetically addressed the anti-trinitarians’ routine of demanding exact word-formulae in Scripture.10 Packer identifies the notion that biblical authority requires “a prohibition against reading and learning from the book of Church history” as “an anabaptist mistake.”11
However, something radical happened in the nineteenth century religious landscape that is rather difficult to miss. Whole new traditions—church traditions that, like it or not, dwarf the old Protestant traditions in terms of membership and influence—were built on the foundation of this “Bible-only” stance. The story of a distinctly modern biblicism may be gathered through the lens of those late twentieth century church historians. We need not agree with their entire theses to gather crucial background from their work. One thing is empirically incontrovertible. It requires no sophisticated statistical analysis. The vast majority of the newer Evangelical traditions that emerged from the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries in America inherited this revolution in hermeneutics.
There have also been academic uses of the term “biblicism” that have blurred the lines between doctrine and interpretive approach. For example, David Bebbington used the word to describe one of four defining marks of evangelicalism in his Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. How did he describe this? Most concisely, it is “a particular regard for the Bible,”12 yet he elaborates that, in “their belief that all spiritual truth is to be found in its pages,” many evangelicals claimed “to be the more scriptural party in appealing to the bare text.”13 Central to this biblicism was a thorough-going literalism, which was only exacerbated by futurist eschatological schemes that suffered no defeaters (yet) from the most literal rendering of prophetic texts.14 His account then expands to the development of the Evangelical doctrine of Scripture: its verbal plenary inspiration and its inerrancy.
Mark Noll leans back on Bebbington’s attributes of Evangelicalism to referred to biblicism as “a reliance on the Bible as ultimate religious authority.”15 In the populist frontier religion, Nathan Hatch colorfully noted, “the Bible very easily became … ‘a book dropped from the skies for all sorts of men to use their own way.’”16 Such a description can itself be used in one way or another. The “skies” may point to the heavenly origin of the word of God so contained, or else it being “dropped” may only imply the slipshod manner in which the interpreter plucks it from its infinite context. All of this raises the question of whether too broad of a meaning given to a word should be allowed to have an exclusive claim to that word.
More comprehensively and negatively, in his 2011 book, The Bible Made Impossible, Christian Smith had conflated the hermeneutical sense of biblicism with a particular doctrine of Scripture. He says, “By ‘biblicism’ I mean a theory about the Bible that emphasizes together its exclusive authority, infallibility, perspicuity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning, and universal applicability.”17 Whether Smith intends it or not, the reader will receive an impression that links attributes of Scripture held by Reformed orthodoxy with the expectation of a “self-evident” or “universally applicable” meaning (e.g., one-to-one correspondence of principle to circumstance). The orthodox doctrine is conflated with the simplistic handling.
Moreover, it seems that Smith takes “pervasive interpretive pluralism,” as opposed to the conviction that each biblical passage has a singular meaning, as the real Achilles’ heel of biblicism.18 Greater sophistication equals greater ambiguity, or, at least greater appreciation for the many ways genuine Christians find meaning.19 Greater fixity of meaning equals oversimplification. This seems to suggest that an inerrant text and objective meaning together demand universal agreement about that meaning. In addition to the original conflation of classical Protestant doctrine and later Evangelical practice, a highly dubious epistemology is smuggled in to a critique of method.
These uses by Bebbington, Noll, Hatch, and Smith will not do justice to the contemporary discussion. We must turn from the historians and sociologists of religion to the theologians themselves.
Contemporary Uses Among the Reformed
Michael Allen and Scott Swain use the word in contrast to tradition. They write,
We have seen that the reformers, through intense study of the Bible itself as their final authority, came to believe that the Bible cannot be read by itself, for it warrants or mandates the functioning of other ecclesial authorities. To be more biblical, then, one cannot be biblicistic. To be more biblical, one must also be engaged in the process of traditioning.20
Similarly, J. V. Fesko speaks of an “individualistic biblicism in which people cease to read and interpret Scripture in concert with the church throughout the ages.”21 Carl Trueman linked recent trinitarian innovations to “a very narrow anti-metaphysical biblicism divorced from any engagement with the catholic tradition.”22 Craig Carter is a bit more general in saying, “By ‘Biblicism’ I mean the view that in stating a doctrine (such as a statement in a creed or confession for example) we must use only words that come directly from Scripture.”23 In Carter’s description there is a hint that the tension between biblicism and tradition makes tradition only one species of a crucial genus. That makes sense in Carter’s overall work, as his focus on doing theology and exegesis with “the Great Tradition” does point back to the past, yes, but it does so with an eye toward the particular philosophy that was practiced before the modern era.
One recent more specific definition may be found in Brad Littlejohn’s introduction to Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Here we gather that biblicism is “the attempt to seek for clear, comprehensive, and detailed Scriptural guidance for any area of life.” Granted that this was in the context of the early Puritan party which was persuaded that the definitive ecclesiology and main elements of worship were made plain in the New Testament.
At its extreme, said Littlejohn, such an approach may run “something like this: 1) Christians need guidance in this area. 2) Scripture is a guide for the Christian life. 3) Therefore, Scripture must provide a clear answer to our questions. 4) Therefore, those who disagree are not living in submission to Christ.”24 Whether Littlejohn’s summary accurately represents the rationale of Thomas Cartwright and those with whom Hooker sparred, I leave for a more expert judgment than can be offered here. What matters is whether we can recognize such a pattern in many people around us. I think we can.
In his Gifford Lectures on natural theology, the renowned biblical scholar James Barr spoke of the “biblicism” of his fellows in the field, “in the sense of their occupational unwillingness to see anything decided by factors without the Bible and beyond the range of their competence or expertise. Contrary to the general opinion of recent times, the obvious weakness of the average biblical scholar lay not in his or her bias toward historical approaches, but in his or her lack of philosophical insight or ability.”25 Such a statement may strike newcomers to this subject as elitist, but Barr spoke of a deficiency in his own field, and in an area of thought he believed his discipline was dependent upon.
An obstacle just as great as the pejorative distraction is the popular adaptation of the word to reference biblical faithfulness. For example, the text on Biblical Doctrine put out by the Master’s Seminary of John MacArthur used the word to describe “a very strong and even unquestioning commitment to the authority of the Bible.”26 This is a view of biblical authority that is certainly related to other attributes of Scripture. Anyone who affirms the divine inspiration of Scripture, its inerrancy, sufficiency, and clarity, would also affirm such an “unquestioning commitment to the authority of the Bible.” This does not tell us much about how our interpretation of Scripture interacts with other relevant spheres of knowledge.
In a 2025 Entrusted Conference, promoting a self-identified biblicist perspective, the following definition was offered:
“The commitment to the authority, perspicuity, and sufficiency of Scripture which is rooted in the presupposition that the Bible ought to be understood according to its own terms.”
The first half of this definition is blameless. All Reformed churches must believe the same. We also may want to affirm the remainder of the definition. An implication of sola Scriptura is that Scripture alone is the infallible interpreter of Scripture. If that is what is meant by “according to its own terms,” we offer a second hardy Amen! But what all is meant by the “terms” of Scripture being self-interpreting? Does this mean that the biblical terms are utterly self-referential in the sense that all extra-biblical terms, concepts, truths, and logical grounds are excluded from sharing in the objective substance of that meaning? Note that I am not asking whether these “aid” in interpretation, as self-described biblicists are quick to point out that they do not deny interaction between these and the text. I am specifically asking whether these can form reasons to believe truths communicated in the text, and whether they can form reasons to deduce more complex truths implied by the text, or from which to apply moral reasoning and action from the text.
To his credit, even “In Defense of Something Like Biblicism,” John Frame recognizes the actual senses in which the word has been used in our own generation. He wrote,
The term “biblicism” is usually derogatory. It is commonly applied to (1) someone who has no appreciation for the importance of extrabiblical truth in theology, who denies the value of general or natural revelation, (2) those suspected of believing that Scripture is a “textbook” of science, or philosophy, politics, ethics, economics, aesthetics, church government, etc., (3) those who have no respect for confessions, creeds, and past theologians, who insist on ignoring these and going back to the Bible to build up their doctrinal formulations from scratch, (4) those who employ a “proof texting” method, rather than trying to see Scripture texts in their historical, cultural, logical, and literary contexts.
It is always unhelpful to conflate the personal “to some-one” with the object to which the label “biblic-ism” (presumably a some-thing) criticizes, but, that aside, the rest of Frame’s summary is useful. Perhaps most important are his next words: “I wish to disavow biblicism in these senses.”27 Whether what Frame retains still orbits around the core of biblicism remains to be seen, yet his willingness to state the question with attributes recognizable to critics who use the term is a step in the right direction.
The still recent Reformed Systematic Theology co-authored by Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley briefly spoke of “anti-intellectual biblicism” as one of the chief objections to the study of systematic theology.28 They even quoted Cornelius Van Til on the value of this discipline, since, though academic theology has gone wrong, so too have the merely ‘Bible-trained’ “frequently preached error.”29 Although the authors do not define the term, the context at least frames biblicism as an attempt to isolate the Scriptures from integration with other learning.
That brings us to what may be the most helpful set of criteria articulated in recent years. This comes from the early pages of Matthew Barrett’s work, The Reformation as Renewal (2023). I mentioned in passing already the criticism leveled at Barrett’s use of the term. It seems to me that much of the attention given to this was because his list of six defining features of biblicism was a classical case of “naming the elephant in the room,” when most who defend biblicism are usually comfortable defending their view against only the ahistorical charge. Barrett’s list of six features are as follows:
(1) Ahistorical mindset.
(2) Irresponsible proof texting.
(3) Anti-metaphysics.
(4) Univocal predication (especially in language about God).
(5) Restrictive revelation (anti-natural theology).
(6) Overemphasis on the human author.30
The point is not that anyone who exhibits one or a few of these must necessarily be guilty of all of the others as well. However, this should not dissuade us from seeking out a common thread if there is one.
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1. Thomas Tenison, Popery Not Founded On Scripture, Or, the Texts Which Papists Cite Out of the Bible: An Examination of Their Texts Concerning the Obscurity of the Holy Scripture (London: 1688).
2. Chris Whisonant, “Further Thoughts on the Origin of the Term Biblicism,” June 17, 2024. https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/church-history/further-thoughts-on-the-origins-of-the-term-biblicism/
3. Sophei Finngan, The Mania of Seduction Unmasked; or, A Scriptural View of the Rise, Progress and Decline of Biblicism: With Much Interesting Collateral Matter (Cork: T. Geary, 1827).
4. Whisonant, “On The Origin of the Term ‘Biblicism,’” November 25, 2023. https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/reformed-baptist-issues/on-the-origin-of-the-term-biblicism/
5. J. I. Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God (Leicester, UK: InterVarsity Fellowship, 1958), 31.
6. Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972); George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Mark A. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1986); The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
7. The thesis that the Princeton theology may be characterized by this same inductivism—and in the historical “orthodoxy” of Ahlstrom et al, by a more general Enlightenment rationalism—has been challenged: cf. Andrew Hoffecker, Piety and the Princeton Theologians: Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, and Benjamin Warfield (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1981); Paul Kjoss Helseth, Right Reason and the Princeton Mind: An Unorthodox Proposal (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2010).
8. Note that this progression only reflects pieces taken from each thinker, not that each subsequent thinker was building entirely upon the other. For instance, common sense realism brought the mind in immediate contact with the objects of experience, cutting through the medium of Locke’s theory of ideas.
9. Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 4: The Triunity of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 99.
10. Calvin, Institutes, I.13.3-5; Turretin, Institutes, I.3.23.6, 16-29.
11. Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God, 48.
12. David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1989), 3.
13. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 12, 13.
14. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 88-89.
15. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 8.
16. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 182.
17. Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011), viii.
18. Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, x; cf. 16-26.
19. Without getting into a specific critique of Smith, it does seem as though his understanding of inerrancy partly conflates the “unerring” dimension of Scripture’s intrinsic truthfulness with a very different kind of “unfailing”—namely, of the word of God authoritatively and sufficiently teaching the people of God. He quotes Charles Hodge toward the end that inerrancy would cultivate this expectation: “If the Scriptures be a plain book, and the Spirit performs the functions of a teacher to all the children of God, it follows inevitably that they must agree in all essential matters in their interpretation of the Bible.” The Bible Made Impossible, xi. At least two facts do not occur to Smith. First, God may have many purposes in bringing all his own children to final-singular truth through diverse paths and at different rates, and some passages of Scripture even hint at a few such purposes (e.g., Romans 14:1-15:7). Second, Hodge’s statement still holds true in the general sense ordinarily meant by such statements. If I may put a finer point on an old maxim to which Smith himself alludes (24): In essentials there is unity; in non-essentials there is liberty; and in alleged counter-examples, there is really just heresy. Refuting Smith on this point requires a separate book.
20. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 84-85.
21. J. V. Fesko, The Need for Creeds Today: Confessional Faith in a Faithless Age (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 94 n.51.
22. Carl Trueman, “Turning Inward,” First Things (December, 2020).
23. Craig A. Carter, “Aquinas, Van Til and Biblicism,” Credo Magazine, July 27, 2022.
24. Bradford Littlejohn, Introduction to Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in Modern English (Davenant Institute, 2019), xix.
25. James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 119.
26. John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 925.
27. John Frame, “In Defense of Something Like Biblicism,” republished as Appendix O in The Doctrine of the Word of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2010), 571.
28. Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1: Revelation and God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 133-34.
29. Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 2nd Edition (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2007), 22.
30. Matthew Barrett, The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023), 21.
