For the Bible Tells Me So - Biblical Authority Denied

One line that caught my eye in particular:

“In short order, Stanley argues that claiming infallibility for the entire Bible is a losing project. Furthermore, he argues that Christianity ‘made its greatest strides during the 282 years before the Bible even existed.’”

I guess there is some irony here, considering the conclusions reached by the Tübingen school that John’s gospel couldn’t have been written until the mid to late 2nd century—a position shattered by the discovery of the John fragment papyrus P52, dated by both conservatives and liberals to 100-150 A.D. Clearly John’s gospel existed very early in church history, meaning the synoptics existed even earlier. Peter referred to Paul’s writings, meaning they were early and circulating among the 1st century churches.

I have no conjecture as to what Stanley read that led him to the conclusion that the Bible didn’t exist until about 315 A.D., but it certainly wasn’t the work of Dan Wallace, Bruce Metzger, or even Kurt Aland.

I think Andy Stanley is clumsily referring to the adoption of the full canon of NT books which occurred some time in the 4th century (though not at Nicea as is often claimed and there is no exact date of when the 27 books of the NT were officially accepted…), though 282 years is a rather exact number. I think he does NOT MEAN that individual books of the NT were not around then.

I watched the Stanley video - His father has a tendency to use psychology in a lot of his preaching (aside from the fact that Charles Stanley should not be pastoring a church at all), so now his son has taken this approach further by adopting and adapting current Biblical criticism in an attempt to help people. Combine this with the recent Ligonier survey on theology, and Evangelicalism, and perhaps Fundamentalism to some extent, has a big problem.

Luke 18:8 “When the Son of Man comes, will He find the faith on the earth?”