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Since my article on Scripture last December, several others have joined the discussion. I was pleased that in the January issue, and then in more detail last month, Dr. Alister McGrath was kind enough to pursue the discussion.

He identified the 'crucial issue' as 'the extent to which evangelicalism has been affected by rationalism'. Certainly this matter must be faced and it is right that we all re-examine our own presuppositions. An approach that reduces Scripture to propositional form only is inadequate, as I previously argued, and probably reflects the influence of rationalism. Nevertheless, a careful reading of Warfield et al, shows that they did view Scripture in at least something of the more rounded way that Dr. Packer described (February).

Christianity has always recognised two basic 'impossibilities': the impossibility of unaided human salvation and the impossibility of unaided human knowledge. Paul says: 'no one will be declared righteous . . . by observing the law' and again, 'the world in its wisdom did not know God'.

As evangelicals we are familiar with the first, less with the second - which is serious not only for the inerrancy debate, but also for our whole experience, for the central issue of our time is not soteriology (salvation), important and necessary as that remains, but epistemology (knowledge). The West's current disorientation and distress flows naturally from its intellectual bankruptcy.