Three Books That Changed Me

(Aside from the Bible, of course, which would be too easy.)

Spiritually-speaking, I had a tough go of it in my years at Calvin College. I had a wonderful crew of friends, plenty of churches in the area, and many opportunities to serve--especially in dorm ministries. But I was not ready for the theological buzz saw that was the Religion Department.

I was a shallow, evangelical Christian. I loved the Lord, knew the basics of the Gospel, and knew how important prayer and time in His Word were for my spiritual sustenance and growth. When I left for Calvin, I was hoping they would mature my growth (as if they were the Church) in preparation for a career in elected politics.

The Religion Department quickly disabused me of that notion. In my first semester, my Religion professor did not teach me how to understand Scripture better (which would seem the point of a Bible course), but how and why it was flawed. He marked one of my classmates down for quoting John Calvin often in her paper, because she was not thinking "liberally enough."

Later on, I was told by Religion professors that modern doctrine of biblical "inerrancy" (which asserts that the Bible, in its original autographs, is without error in all that it speaks to) is "intellectually dishonest" and "biblically indefensible." I carry those terms with me now because they were so startling at the time. I was so shallow that I couldn't defend God's Word, but I knew God's power in His Word through personal experience, and couldn't believe what they were saying.

After graduating Calvin, when I finally became Reformed, I was irate at the teaching I received in that department. These teachings regarding the Bible could either be considered liberal or neo-orthodox, depending on the professor, but both schools of thought are decidedly outside of mainstream evangelicalism as was as outside of the historical stream of Reformed theology. Any cursory reading of John Calvin's view of Scripture shows him very much believing in the full authority and perfections of God's Word.

In addition, these Religion professors were not fair to their opponents nor gracious toward their students who struggled with what they were teaching. They presented the concept of inerrancy as historically novel, though the substance of the doctrine can be traced through the history of the Church back to the Scriptures themselves. They marginalized the doctrine and its adherents, categorizing them as the theological-equivalents of rednecks, though virtually every orthodox Protestant denomination holds to inerrancy, including all of the Reformed denominations, minus theirs. And they created straw man arguments that they could easily blow over.

I remember one friend coming to me with the assertion that if I believed in inerrancy, than I believe in "dictation," which basically asserts that the Holy Spirit disregarded the humanity of the human authors and spoon fed them each word. That claim was an incredible leap of logic, but I didn't know that at the time. So I retreated into my enclave of experience: "I don't think that's true, but I'd rather believe in dictation than believe that God has not fully inspired His Word."

All that background is provided to show the importance of the three books that changed me, and the professor who gave them to me. A rogue, undercover, Reformed Baptist professor began seeking out students who had not been totally waylaid by the Religion department in order to encourage them and rebuild their trust in the Scriptures. We rotated each week between going through a book and spending time in prayer. He also had us to his home for meals. I would mention his name, but outspoken orthodoxy is not necessarily rewarded at Calvin. The three books:

1) Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers-McKim Proposal by John Woodbridge. This book is fairly heady reading--not one to cozy up to a fire with--but it had the intellectual heft that a number of disoriented college students needed. The author was a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago and a former editor of Christianity Today. In the book, he goes toe to toe with the claims of the Fuller Theological Seminary professors who sought to make the reduced authority claim of Scripture more appealing to evangelicals. Much of the book is defensive in nature--it shows that the Reformers did indeed hold to the substance of inerrancy, and that the claims they made about the doctrine were largely straw men.

2) Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen. This later became my favorite book, and Machen, my greatest hero not named "Jesus." The main thrust of this book is that (theological) liberalism is not merely one branch of Christianity, but is an entirely separate religion. Its adherents claim to have "faith" in "Jesus" and to desire "salvation," but they have re-defined each of these terms (deceptively). Faith means "admiration," and by "Jesus," they mean a moral man--not the God-man, and salvation is a social utopia built of human goodness. The main value of this book to me and my friends at the time was that it showed the sharp contrast between orthodoxy and heresy, and also showed us the theological roots of the modern attack on Scripture.

3) The Great Evangelical Disaster by Francis Schaeffer. Machen's book became the rallying cry for orthodox Protestants in the 1930s; Schaeffer's book surveyed the wreckage of the liberal onslaught by the 1980s. While I would distance myself from some of his connections between the theological controversies and cultural decline, his stress on the importance of trusting God to speak Truth was of the utmost importance. While inerrancy is only one piece of an orthodox view of Scripture (along with its inspiration, necessity, authority, perspicuity (clarity), and sufficiency), every biblical doctrine is undergirded by the confidence that God speaks truth. Schaeffer also planted the seeds of compassion in hearts moving toward the "cage phase," and reminded us that a diminished theology leads to a diminished heart. It is tragic to look upon shipwrecked faith.

So I was put on a more solid footing to defend and expound the Word through which God breathed new life into me, and radically redirect my plans from elected politics to seminary and the ministry. With Calvin, I realized anew that if I find fault with God's Word, the fault is in me, not in His Word.

My heart is deceptive and vulnerable to temptation, but God, who birthed me through the Word of Truth, does not change (James 1). Therefore, I am not consumed (Mal. 3). All Scripture is God-breathed, and alone will make me wise unto salvation and equip me for every good work (2 Tim. 3:15-17). And it is the very power of God, so that I can rejoice in the chains of my own weakness. For the Word of God is not chained (2 Tim. 1). Amen and amen.