SUMMARY OF JACK COTTRELL’S “COLLECTED WRITINGS” SERIES:
VOLUME TWO: GOD’S WORD IS TRUTH, by Jack Cottrell

INTRODUCTION

Here I will attempt to summarize volume 2 of my “Collected Writings” series, titled God’s Word Is Truth. When I decided to tackle this “CW” project, my desire was to lump earlier-written, miscellaneous essays and lessons together under one general subject per volume. I have been able to do that, for the most part. This volume has eleven essays, most of which relate to the nature of the Bible.

PART ONE

This volume is divided into two sections, the first of which contains six distinct essays on the inerrancy of the Bible. The idea that the Bible is inspired by God, and therefore infallible, and therefore inerrant, was the belief of Christendom from its beginning. It was the dominant and almost only view until the 1800s, and was embraced by the early Restoration Movement. In the later 1800s, Liberalism developed and then continued to spread until now. In the Restoration Movement, Liberalism became represented by (most of) the Disciples of Christ branch.

In the early 1900s, an attempt arose within Liberalism to restore many of the crucial doctrines that Liberals had abandoned. It was called Neo-Orthodoxy, and it succeeded to some extent in recovering some of what had been lost. It did not, however, reinstate a high view of Scripture as such.

During the early 20th century, those Christians who never wavered about the Bible’s inerrancy began to be called Fundamentalists; beginning in the 1940s some preferred to be called Evangelicals. In the Restoration Movement, in this era most conservative non-Disciples continued to affirm Scripture’s inerrancy, though some were influenced by Neo-Orthodoxy.

All my childhood preachers and, later, all my Bible College professors at Cincinnati Bible Seminary (1955-1960) were strong believers in Biblical inerrancy. I accepted it completely, and just assumed that all Evangelicals and all Restoration Movement conservatives accepted it too.

In the 1960s, however, in my Westminster Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary days, I became aware that many Evangelicals were giving up inerrancy. Then in 1973, at a session of the North American Christian Convention, I came face to face with representatives from our strand of the Restoration Movement who were likewise rejecting the inerrancy of the Bible. Further details are given in these six essays in Part One.

For at least the next fifteen years, one of my main concerns expressed in the classroom and in writing, was to try to stem the loss of the doctrine of inerrancy in our movement. It became clear that the main conflict was between CBS and the Emmanuel School of Religion in Johnson City, TN. Five of the six essays here in Part One were written between 1976 and 1988.

Here I will not try to summarize the contents of all six of these essays. What I will do instead is to make a list of most of the questions that I attempt to answer, especially in the earliest five essays. (These questions are not listed here in any particular order.)
— How is inerrancy properly defined?
— How do its critics mis-define or misrepresent inerrancy?
— What is the general history of inerrancy within Christendom?
— Is inerrancy a new doctrine, as its critics often claim?
— Did Martin Luther deny inerrancy? Did Alexander Campbell deny it?
— Who is denying inerrancy today?
— Is inerrancy a Restoration Principle?
— Why is inerrancy such an important doctrine?
— What is at stake with this doctrine?
— What happens to theology when inerrancy is denied?
— Should belief in inerrancy be a test of fellowship – or a test of leadership?

When I first began writing about inerrancy, and exposing the many attempts that were being made to reject it, the general response to my writings was – “Surely not!” When this reality could no longer be denied, the tactics of critics and doubters changed from “Surely not!” to “So what?” I responded to this attitude in a Christian Standard article (11/7/82) called “Inerrancy—Does It Really Matter?” (see pp. 36-43 in this book). In that essay I show what else one gives up when he or she gives up the idea of Biblical inerrancy, namely:
— He gives up consistent surrender to Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus taught Biblical inerrancy (see Matt. 5:18; John 10:35; 17:17).
— He gives up the objective basis for Christian doctrine. When inerrancy is denied, one is saying there are errors in the Bible—somewhere. But where? Where matters of doctrine are concerned, the criterion for choosing between truth and error will be purely subjective.
— He gives up the keystone (as in a stone arch) of Biblical authority. Evangelical leader Harold Lindsell uses a similar analogy: “When inerrancy goes, it opens a small hole in the dike, and if that hole is not closed, the levee will collapse and the whole land will be overrun with the waters of unbelief.”

As mentioned above, the first five essays on the subject were written between 1976 and 1988. By 1988 most had made up their minds about the subject, one way or the other; so I stopped writing much about it. In 2011, I did prepare one more essay called “Inerrancy: Does It Still Matter?” (in the book, pp. 44-62). My answer was YES, definitely! See this (p. 51):
“. . . If you reject Biblical inerrancy, HOW will you decide what in the Bible YOU will believe, and what you will reject? You can no longer say: This or that specific statement in Scripture is TRUE, just because it is in the Bible. . . . Instead, every individual statement in Scripture must now be evaluated and judged for its truth or falsehood by some other criterion, e.g., reason, experience, or a mystical sense of being guided by the Holy Spirit.”

When this happens, what we will actually find is this: if the Bible is not inerrant, we have no objective basis for accepting MOST of what the Bible teaches. . . .
See also this (p. 53):
“Archimedes said: “Give me a place to stand, and I can move the world.” But in this post-modern world of relativism, where the Bible is seen as flawed or at least impossible to understand, there IS no place to stand! As Francis Beckwith has said in the title of one of his books, with relativism, we have our “Feet Firmly Planted in Midair.” No wonder so many Christians are reluctant to take a stand on “the BIBLICAL view” of this or that doctrine, or this or that issue. The ultimate result of denying the inerrancy of the Bible is the idea that there is no “Biblical view.” The conclusion then becomes: DOCTRINE DOES NOT MATTER!”

PART TWO

In the second part of this book, God’s Word Is Truth, I include five more essays on different aspects of the nature of the Bible, as follows.

A. “Say ‘YES!’ to the Bible” (pp. 121-132). The first of these five is an address I gave to the 2014 graduating class at the Mid-Atlantic Christian University in Elizabeth City, NC (a Restoration Movement college I highly recommend). The address is titled, “Say ‘Yes!’ to the Bible.” I was encouraging the members of the class to remain faithful to Biblical authority throughout their ministries.

My outline was a simple three-step process. The first step is to answer the question, “Is the Bible divine or human? And the answer is: BOTH! Every part of the Bible is both divine (inspired by the Holy Spirit) and human (written—but not necessarily composed—by human writers).

The second step is to answer the question, “Shall we accept ALL of the Bible as our absolute authority, or just PART of it?” The answer is: ALL of it! This includes both the OT and the NT, and both the “red-letter” sections and the black-letter sections.

The third step is to answer the question, “Shall we regard the Bible as PERSPICUOUS or as AMBIGUOUS? That first big word simply means “clear, understandable.” I use it here because the Protestant Reformers emphasized the “perspicuity” of the Bible—i.e., its clarity. God intends for us to understand His inspired Word, and we CAN understand it! If the teachings of the Bible are ambiguous, then its pages might as well be blank! See John 8:32.

B. “The Newness of the New Testament: The Transition from Physical to Spiritual” (pp. 133-167). This is the second of the five essays in Part Two. ATTENTION: I consider this essay to be the most important one in this volume. I say this not because the content as such is more important than some of the other essays, but because what I am saying here is not very well understood within Christendom and within the Restoration Movement. You MUST understand the main point here, if you are going to avoid some serious false doctrines that are popular among Christians!

We all know that the Bible is composed of two distinct parts – the Old Testament and the New Testament. My point in this essay, though, is that we often miss one of the main points of HOW these two testaments differ from one another. The difference of which I speak is not just between these two written documents. The basic difference is in the ways in which God deals with His chosen people in the two historical periods covered by the two testaments. In summary (p. 134):
“. . . In Old Testament times, God’s intervention into the world, and His dealings with His people (especially with His own chosen people, the Jews) were usually of a PHYSICAL nature, on the PHYSICAL level. But in the New Testament era, from Pentecost on, God’s interventions and dealings are mostly on the level of the SPIRITUAL. . . . This is one of the most significant distinctions between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant eras: HOW God deals with His people.”

In the book I explain ten ways in which this physical-spiritual distinction shows up in the Biblical data. I will name them here, but cannot explain them in this short summary:
1. How the world’s population is divided (OT: by physical nations – Jews vs. Gentiles; NT: by the spiritual condition of people’s hearts – see 2 Cor. 6:14-15).
2. How God’s people are identified (OT: physical birth as descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whether believers or not; NT: spiritual birth, i.e., by being “born again” – John 1:12-13; 3:3-6).
3. The sign of membership in God’s people (OT: physical circumcision; NT: the SEAL of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit – 2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13).
4. The “birthplace” of God’s people (OT: physical Mt. Sinai – Exod. 19 – 20; Heb. 12:18-21; NT: the heavenly Mt. Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem – Gal. 4:26; Heb. 12:22-24).
5. The “homeland” of God’s people (OT: geographical Canaan/Israel as the home of the NATION of Israel; NT: a spiritual, heavenly kingdom to house the church as a spiritual FAMILY – Eph. 2:19; Phil. 3:19-20; Col. 3:1-3).
6. How the people of God are organized and governed (OT: physical kings ruling the physical nation; NT: a spiritual kingdom ruled by Jesus from heaven – Luke 17:21, NKJV; John 18:33-37; Eph. 1:19-23).
7. The enemies of the people of God (OT: the surrounding physical nations; NT: spiritual warfare with Satan and his demons – Eph. 6:10-18; 1 Peter 5:8).
8. The salvation of God’s people (OT: physical preservation of some of the physical nation; NT: spiritual, eternal blessings, especially the new gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit – see Acts 2).
9. How God’s people worship (OT: mainly through physical ceremonies – feasts, offerings, animal sacrifices; NT: in Spirit and in truth – John 4:23-24).
10. Our very purpose for existing as a separate people (OT: to PREPARE for the first [physical] coming of Jesus into this world – Rom. 9:3-5; NT: to EVANGELIZE and win the world into God’s eternal family – Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15-16).

What happens when we fail to see this physical-spiritual distinction between the OT (Old Covenant people) and the NT (New Covenant people)? We become susceptible to some serious doctrinal errors, as listed here:
1. Failure to understand how God deals with nations today, e.g., misapplying 2 Chron. 7:14 to countries such as the USA today.
2. False views regarding how God views physical Jews and national Israel today, especially as in the heresy of dispensationalism.
3. The false assumption that the Church has simply assumed today the role occupied by Israel in OT times, as in the false doctrinal system called covenant theology (as originated by Zwingli in the 1520s in order to invent a new [non-salvation] meaning for baptism).
4. Failure to understand the newness of the working of the Holy Spirit, as begun in Acts 2.

C. “Let’s Build – With Sound Doctrine” (pp. 169-188). This third essay in Part Two explains how important sound doctrine is for the existence and work of the church.

D. “ ‘Follow My Teaching’ – 2 Timothy 3:10” (pp. 189-203). This fourth essay in Part Two shows the importance of following the teaching of the Apostle Paul in the church today.

E. “The New Perspective on Paul: Wright Is Wrong” (pp. 205-217). This final essay is a critical examination of a main teaching held by N. T. Wright, a modern NT scholar who is adored by many unwary Bible students today. The “new perspective” says that everyone up until the mid-twentieth century had misinterpreted Paul’s writings, especially the Protestant Reformers. Wright accepts this idea and presents his own version of how we ought to understand Paul today, especially regarding what Paul says about Jesus.

In my judgment, Wright’s whole approach to Paul and Jesus is very close to heresy. In essence, he says that OT Israel failed to accomplish its God-assigned purpose, namely, to evangelize the world; therefore God sent Jesus to do what Israel was supposed to have done. He thus rejects the real purpose for Christ’s saving work, namely, the substitutionary atonement.

There is more, but that’s all I will say here.