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I l \„ l :n
d esc r ibed . W he re they d om in a te , n e i th e r the T r iu n e Ciod n o r the gospel <>l
Christ
no r
God ’s moral will arc likely
to be
clearly known,
and
elements
<>l
the biblical message will inevitably be suppressed. Faithfulness, lruit
f u l ne s s
and,
I
think, authority depend on the church adhering to [the
first |
method—which means, among other things, that we all must stop retreat in*»
from the bugaboo of an untheological inerrancy and once more embrace
t
he
whole Bible as the written word of God, to be interpreted on the assumption
that it neither misinforms nor misleads. Only so, in my view, can our Lesti
mony carry the full authority of God, and gain full authority with men.
Such, then, as I see them, are the intellectual
sine qua non
conditions of
any reconstitution of the authority of Christianity in our time. (With the
moral conditions of any such reconstitution I do not attempt to deal here.)
I am saying that we shall have to put our own house in order theologically
before we can expect modern men to want to come and live in it—and since
our house, as I called it, is really the house of God himself, this is surely a
major matter. Whether God will pour out his Spirit to revive his church and
make the world listen to its message in our day we do not know; what we can
know, however, is what would have to happen within the church in order for
that message to be authoritatively spoken, and a credible reconstitution of
divine authority be set before the world. . . . [T]o this, I judge, . . . we all
need most urgently to give our minds.
From J. I. Packer, “The Reconstitution of Authority,”
Crux
18 (December 1982):
2-12. Used by permission.