Introduction - A Critical Corrective

The Reason for this Review – a Critical Corrective

Andrew McGowan has set the cat amongst the pigeons. Most online conservative reviews have slammed his latest book, The Divine Spiration of Scripture, subtitled Challenging Evangelical Perspectives. Many evangelicals and fundamentalists have condemned the book on the basis of these reviews without even reading it. One Christian blogger wrote on April 17, 2008:

“McGowan’s proposals stir up memories of my Barthian and Bultmannian college professors who taught that the Bible is full of myths (albeit they have a great moral lesson, so they would say!), the predominance of Jesus’ words were not authentic, Paul didn’t write his letters, etc…

He continues to lump McGowan in with the theological ‘baddies’ of history in an even broader sense, declaring authoritatively that:

In reality, Dr. McGowan’s “challenge” is not unlike the challenges Evangelicals have faced in the past in regards to the issue of the authenticity and trustworthiness of the Bible (I heard them all at both a Methodist and Southern Baptist College!). The issue of inerrancy has far reaching implications for the Christian faith. For example, if the words of Scripture are not authentic and trustworthy, then the Gospel itself is called into question. How can one be absolutely assured of the conclusiveness of the Good News?”

How indeed? The problem is, that is not what Andrew McGowan is saying at all. In fact Andrew specifically says that he believes the words of Scripture are entirely authentic and trustworthy. The blogger quoted above is basing his knowledge of the book on one or two rather simplistic reviews. His own short comments, effectively a review of a review, in the grand tradition of internet Chinese whispers, will be passed on and amplified in ignorance by those who haven’t even read the reviews, let alone the book itself. And pretty soon Andrew McGowan ends up being burned at metaphorical stakes all around the world.

What follows is an attempt at a critical corrective to balance some of these very negative, and in some cases definitely misleading reviews. I have given Professor McGowan the benefit of the doubt he asks for when he insists that his views are not liberal but solidly within the evangelical reformed theological tradition. For that reason, instead of taking the word of the negative reviewers, I carefully read through the book, not once but twice, weighing his arguments and the criticisms levelled against him.

Now because of the agenda I set out above, this may read more as a defence of Andrew’s book than a review. You could even say it is a review of the reviews as much as it a review of the book! And it is true that you will not find much here where I rehearse in detail the content of each chapter. Other reviews have done that already. I will comment on what I think are the strengths and weaknesses of the author’s arguments. But this will be largely in the context of working out whether the criticisms already vocally levelled at those arguments are valid.

All of this is not to say that I would endorse all of Andrew’s views. I do have some concerns. Many whose life and theology I admire have come out strongly against the implications of this work, and I take that on board. Nor are all his critics as strident and careless as some. John Frame, for example, has a well written and well informed review. However, having weighed things most carefully, I don’t see anything in Andrew’s work that is heretical when read in the context of his foundational arguments and his explicit repudiations of liberal, neo-orthodox, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox theology. Though I did not know Andrew when he wrote this book, I had heard him preach at the General Assembly of Australia of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, and found him to be not only completely orthodox but an able bible expositor. I have since had opportunity to correspond with and meet personally with him, and hear him speak several further times. This has confirmed my belief that he has been badly misrepresented by the negative reviewers.

In Part 1, which will follow shortly, I will begin with the negatives, looking at the weaknesses of the book and setting out some of the things I thought could have been done better. In Part 2 I will address some of the major criticisms of the work, and argue that most of these have arisen from misunderstanding and in some cases misrepresentation of what Dr McGowan is actually putting forward. Part 3 will be a summary and review of some of the issues raised by the book.