Do we act as if we really believe that "the Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the word of God written?

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 2000 by Grudem, Wayne

These thirty-seven articles, then, these 14%%, are the articles on systematic theology or ethics that appealed in a significant way to the Bible as an authority. These are the articles that attempted to tell the Church (or at least to tell the academically astute leaders of the Church who were reading these journals) what the whole Bible teaches us about some current question or problem.

Some examples were Cal Beisner's article on the amago Dei and the population debate,2 or an article by Jeffrey Boyd, a psychiatrist, on our self concept and Biblical theology.3 Other articles were on baptism, the canon of Scripture, dispensationalism, and so forth..

What was noteworthy about those thirty-seven articles, however, was that only eighteen of them were written by someone whose doctoral work was in NT or OT. More precisely, only eighteen of them were written by someone whose doctoral work was in NT (that's 7%1v of the articles). And of those eighteen, five were written by one person (Vern Poythress from Westminster Seminary). Apart from his articles, only thirteen others, or 5`%, were written by someone with doctoral training in NT. None of the articles was written by anyone with doctoral training in OT.

That means that of the small number of articles that were actually trying to answer a question or try solve a problem facing the Church-articles that were trying to tell us what the Church should believe-of that small number, half of them were written by people with other backgrounds: psychiatry, natural sciences, history, philosophy. I'm happy for the attempts of these scholars in other fields to tell us what the whole Bible says, and I want to encourage their work. I believe the Bible was written so that it could be understood by ordinary believers, and I believe that intelligent believers who are not technically trained in exegesis, but who will seek diligently to find the teaching of Scripture, can do quite a good job.

But my question is this: Where are the whole-Bible exegetes? Where are those trained at the doctoral level in NT or OT exegesis? Where are the Biblical exegetes who will use their exegetical skills to help the Church know what the whole Bible teaches about some problem? Has it become true that the more people know about interpreting the Bible, the less willing they are to tell the Church what the Bible says? Not just what one verse says, or one book, but the whole of the Bible, interpreted and applied rightly to the Church today.

Let me ask the question again. Has it become true that the more people know about how to interpret the Bible with academic precision, the less willing they are to tell the Church what the whole Bible says?

"About what?" you might say, It seems to me that there are many topics that need treatment and that cry out for solutions. For example, think of divorce and remarriage. It is a major problem facing every church today. Evangelicals are widely divided on the issue. There is no consensus. And out of 257 articles in these journals there was one article on divorce and remarriage, by William Heth.'4 Another issue is capital punishment-a major dispute in the western world today. There is no consensus in society as a whole, and evangelicals hear different purportedly "Christian" options. Mostly they end up confused and therefore silent on a major dispute in our society. Out of 257 articles, there was one article on capital punishment, by J. Daryl Charles.5