From the conclusion to Carl Trueman’s paper, “Is the Princeton View of Scripture an Enlightenment Innovation?”
In looking at the doctrine of scripture from the early church to the seventeenth century, a number of points emerge.
First, the notion that the very words of scripture are inspired, truthful, and exactly what God wants them to be, is present from the Apostolic Fathers onwards.
Second, that scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and exactly how this inspiration takes place, are two separate points, and theologians exhibit a variety of opinions on the latter, ranging from early theories of dictation, through the crucial distinction between revelation and inspiration made by Thomas Aquinas, to the broad consensus statements of the post-Reformation Protestant confessions. Arguably, this consensus reflects the Bible’s own account of inspiration and inscripturation, which is not tied to one single model.
Third, the kind of critical textual questions to which the Princetonians were responding arise in the seventeenth century as a result of Protestant prioritizing of scripture over church tradition in terms of the former’s sufficiency and perspicuity, and the linguistic and textual studies which Protestantism’s scripture principle brought in its wake. It is at this point that significant discussion of autographs and scribal error develops, alongside an understanding of textual history (though, as we noted, these issues were adumbrated in the correspondence of Augustine to Jerome).
As a result, if the Princetonians are to be seen as innovators, it cannot be in terms of their
articulation of the concept of inerrant autographs or in their concern for verbal inspiration and the connection of this to notions of truth. On these points, they stand within an established tradition of Christian discourse which goes back beyond the Reformation to the early church.
In addition to this paper, readers interested in seeing if inerrancy was taught in church history prior to Princeton should check out John Woodbridge’s Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal.
