Inerrant the Wind

Conservative Protestantism in America has always wrestled with doctrinal controversies over issues ranging from predestination to the mode of baptism, from charismatic gifts to biblical prophecy. But probably none has threatened the American evangelical movement as much as the recent "battle for the Bible." The dispute centers on the doctrine of "biblical inerrancy"—the belief that the Bible is correct in any statement it makes, whether on nature or history, on doctrine or morals. In this painstakingly researched and penetrating analysis of the controversy, biblical scholar Robert M. Price helps us understand the present evangelical ferment by focusing on a recent period of intense theological conflict in which fundamentalists accused their slightly more mainstream brethren, the evangelicals, of abandoning the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Price provides a historical survey of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth century and argues that this history began repeating itself in the 1970s. Many evangelicals in fact abandoned rigid inerrancy beliefs and began to assimilate to various alternative approaches such as neo-orthodoxy, demythologizing, and Catholicism. Price analyzes the works, big and small, of evangelical theologians and their fundamentalist critics and distills a set of five distinct noninerrancy approaches evolved by liberal evangelicals amid the debate. Inerrant the Wind is utterly unique, not only in its comprehensive grasp of the ocean of relevant literature, but also in its cogent taxonomy of evangelical positions for and against inerrancy. Scholars and students on all sides of the debate will want to consult this valuable contribution to an important ongoing debate in the evangelical community.