Back in the 1970s Harold Lindsell published ”Battle for the Bible.”

The article by Donald Dayton, published around that time, ”The Battle for the Bible: Renewing the Inerrancy Debate,” talks about the implications of his view. The concept of the Bible as ”absolute truth” and its extension to the realm of science also, is being carried on nowadays by people like Charles Colson and D.A. Carson. It results in divorcing the Bible from reality in a way that is very damaging (in my opinion).

“Lindsell flatly argues that the Bible ”does not contain error of any kind” — that it may be absolutely trusted in all its references to history, cosmology, science and so forth. …

“This position assumes (though exegesis is brought to bear on the question) that the Bible must be inerrant and infallible if it is in any real sense the ”Word of God.” This a priori leads rather directly to an immediacy and absoluteness of inspiration which, despite Lindsell’s protests to the contrary, result in a ”dictation” view of inspiration and ultimately to a ”docetic” view of Scripture in which the human element is present (supposedly!) but never determinative. These assumptions are generally developed in the direction of viewing the Scriptures largely in the categories of divinely given propositions, doctrines and information. As Carl Henry has put it, the Bible is ”a book of divinely disclosed doctrinal truth.””

Comment; Lindsell and his successors have contributed to the Bible becoming increasingly marginalized. By insisting that the Bible speaks to science, for example, people are left with the choice of sticking their heads in the sand about the actual evidence, or rejecting the Bible.