Fuller Theological Seminary illustrates the effect of a Christian institution or local church abandoning a solid doctrinal statement. The Domino Effect took place at Fuller Theological Seminary which was founded in 1947 by Charles Fuller. Harold Lindsell who served as vice-president at Fuller Theological Seminary documented Fuller’s departure from inerrancy in The Battle for the Bible. Lindsell dedicated chapter six to this battle at Fuller: The Strange Case of Fuller Theological Seminary. Gregg Allison notes that Harold Lindsell and other teachers at Fuller resigned over the inerrancy issue. Other conservative scholars who resigned were Charles Woodbridge, Wilbur Smith, and Gleason Archer (Gregg Allison, Historical Theology. Zondervan. Kindle Edition, 119).
Fuller's first doctrinal statement.
“The books which form the canon of the Old and New Testaments as originally given are plenarily inspired and free from all error in the whole and in the part. These books constitute the written Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.”
I think you will agree with me, this is a solid Biblical statement.
Every faculty member was to sign without mental reservation or voluntarily leave. In 1962, one wealthy board member, C. Davis Weyerhaeuser, openly denied inerrancy, and nothing was done. Later two faculty members denied inerrancy and nothing was done. Neo-Orthodoxy made its influence on Fuller through Daniel Fuller who went to Bazil, Switzerland, to study under Neo-Orthodox theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), who did not believe in inerrancy. Barth wrote about his view of errancy in his Church Dogmatics: “The Bible witnesses to a revelation from God …. The prophets and apostles are actually guilty of error in their spoken and written word” (Church Dogmatics pp. 507, 528, 529). When Daniel Fuller returned to Fuller he had relinquished inerrancy.
“The illustration that the Neo-Orthodox usually gives is that the Bible is like a minister preaching the Gospel. Although there may be many mistakes in his sermon, he is still witnessing to the truth, and this is sufficient to secure salvation for men” (Steward Custer, Does Inspiration Demand Inerrancy, 75).
Lindsell wrote to the influence of David A. Hubbard when he was elected president of Fuller. “Hubbard wanted to do away with the use of the word inerrancy. It ‘is too precise, too mathematical a term to describe appropriately the way in which God’s infallible revelation has come to us in a Book’” (The Battle for the Bible, 115).
Wayne Gruden in his defense of inerrancy argues that “the Bible can be inerrant and still speak in the ordinary language of everyday speech” (Systematic Theology, 91). He adds that “this is especially true in ‘scientific’ or ‘historical’ descriptions of facts or events ….. A similar consideration applies to numbers ….. Inerrancy has to do with truthfulness, not with the degree of precision with which events are reported” (91-92).
For example, when Joshua notes that the sun stood still in Joshua ten to give him more time to defeat his enemies, he was using the common “appearance of language” to describe the event. He was not scientifically imprecise.
Grudem states that in 1 Corinthians 10:11, Paul can refer even to minor historical details in the Old Testament (setting down to eat and drink, rising up to dance) and can say both that they ‘happened’ (thus implying historical reliability) and ‘were written down for our instruction’” (93).
In 1972, Fuller adopted a new doctrinal statement.
Lindsell reports that “It was ten years after the issue of inerrancy had erupted” that Fuller adopted a second doctrinal statement:
“Scripture is an essential part and trustworthy record of this divine disclosure. All the books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, are the written Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.”
One all-important statement is omitted from the first statement: “free from all error in the whole and in the part.” The new doctrinal statement reflected the denial of inerrancy by most of the administration and faculty.
Now the view is the infallibility of the Bible in areas of faith and practice. Grudem addresses this challenge to inerrancy. “One of the most frequent objections is raised by those who say that the purpose of Scripture is to teach us in areas that concern ‘faith’ and ‘practice’ only; that is, in areas that relate to our religious faith or to our ethical conduct .… Its advocates often prefer to say that the Bible is ‘infallible,’ but they hesitate to use the word inerrant .… The response to this objection can be stated as follows: the Bible repeatedly affirms that all of Scripture is profitable for us (2 Timothy 3:16) and that all of it is ‘God-breathed.’…..The Bible itself does not make any restrictions on the kinds of subjects to which it speaks truthfully” (93).
Five years later (1977) Fuller’s professor Paul King Jewett in his Man as Male and Female said Paul’s teaching about the subordination of woman to male leadership in Ephesians 5 is an error and in contradiction to Galatians 3:28. In other words, now at Fuller, according to Jewett’s view, the Scripture is infallible only in faith or salvation.
Look at the downward spiral which took place at Fuller.
1. Fuller believed in the infallibility and inerrancy of all Scripture in their first doctrinal statement.
2. Fuller then moved to believe the infallibility of the Scripture only in faith and practice (seen in the second doctrinal statement) not mentioning inerrancy.
3. Finally, Fuller moved to believe the infallibility of Scripture only in the area of salvation (Jewett’s view). Or the Scripture is only inerrant when it speaks of salvation.
In 1978, the International Council of Biblical Inerrancy met at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago consisting of 300 noted scholars, including Wayne Grudem, Homer Kent, Jr., John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, John Whitcomb, etc. to combat this heresy and produced The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy. Article XI reads, “We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses. We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.”
These conservative theologians not only saw the error that resulted from a doctrinal statement abandoned, they not only cursed the darkness, but they also lit a light and forged another solid doctrinal statement that now must be practiced and defended.