Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals

Description: In Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals readers are urged to pastorally consider their own spiritual responsibilities toward students by taking more seriously six representative critical discoveries that students tend to make during the course of their higher education. By doing this it is hoped that leaders and teachers might become more sensitive to the reality that younger evangelicals are not generally already convinced of the Bibles inerrancy and may even be secretly and frantically searching for existentially workable bibliological alternatives. It behooves evangelical leaders as responsible shepherds of Gods people to give their students the social and spiritual room they need to breathe by offering them acceptably orthodox alternatives for understanding the inspiration and authority of the Bible. Endorsements: Carlos Bovell has written a thoughtful book on the challenges both intellectual and spiritual faced by a new generation of evangelicals as they engage the question of inerrancy. While one possibility would be to simply abandon this doctrine another course of action is preferable: to subject this important idea to critical scrutiny with the intention of reconstructing it for the contemporary setting. I believe that this is an imperative task and that Bovells work deserves careful attention from those of us who continue to affirm this doctrine. We ignore these questions at our peril. --John R. Franke Professor of Theology Biblical Seminary Here are the recognitions of a young evangelical scholar whose spiritual formation was stifled not to say arrested because he had been led to believe that the only acceptably orthodox way was a belief in biblical inerrancy. The author argues that the dogma of inerrancy left him woefully unprepared for engagement with modernist and postmodern biblical scholarship and plunged him into a fundamental spiritual crisis. This book should be a welcome read for anyone who like the author can no longer make sense of the evangelical inerrancy credo. --James H. Olthuis Emeritus Professor of Philosophical Theology Institute for Christian Studies Toronto Bovell knows the evangelical world inside out and speaks on behalf of younger evangelicals who cannot or do not wish to reconcile themselves to the doctrine of inerrancy. He calls biblical teachers to account and campaigns for candour in facing up to the unsoundness of the doctrine. His argument is both scholarly and personally engaging and should be read by students and tutors alike especially those involved in ministerial training. --Rev. Dr. Harriet A. Harris University of Oxford author of Fundamentalism and Evangelicals Carlos Bovell has exposed one of the guilty secrets of the Evangelical Tradition that is its ironic ability to provoke theological and spiritual rebellion in its own ranks. Those who want to arrest this tragic development should begin by reading this book and facing squarely the challenge it presents. --William J. Abraham Albert Cook Outler Professor of Wesley Studies Perkins School of Theology Southern Methodist University About the Contributor(s): Carlos R. Bovell is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary and is studying history of philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies Toronto.