Many thanks to IVP for sending me a copy of this new book by Andrew McGowan, who happens to be the Principal of Highland Theological College where I am enrolled.

The Divine Authenticity of Scripture: Retrieving an Evangelical Heritage
A. T. B. McGowan
IVP, 2008
229 pages
Purchase from Amazon.COM or Amazon.CA

Here’s the TOC:
1 Introduction
2 Reconstructing the doctrine
3 The Enlightenment and liberal theology
4 Fundamentalism and inerrancy
5 Infallibility: an evangelical alternative
6 Scripture and confession
7 Preaching Scripture
8 Conclusion

Bibliography
Index of names

Here is the jacket blurb from I. Howard Marshall:

“Andrew McGowan has rendered a notable service to evangelical doctrine by calling us to reconsider our understanding of the nature of Scripture and directing our attention to the contribution offered by such revered figures as James Orr and Herman Bavinck. He steers a wise course between the dangers of an unthinking fundamentalism and a skeptical liberalism, and suggests that terms such as spiration and infallibility express concepts that are basic to a sound doctrine that will have practical relevance to the preaching of Scripture.” —I. Howard Marshall, Honorary Research Professor, University of Aberdeen

After poking through this book and reading some extended sections, I can recommend this book highly as a text that needed to be written. It says so many of the things that post-Conservative evangelicals are thinking about scripture, inerrancy, and infallibility. Reading parts of it resonated not only with my own thoughts, but I also heard echoes of my old prof Lee McDonald and his thoughts on Canon and scriptural authority. McGowan, for instance, suggests a new vocabulary, like “divine spiration”, which emphasizes the Spirit’s role in scripture and authority to the final form of the canon, and not restricting authority to the autographs.

All in all, a very good book that I recommend.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 2:36 am by Danny Zacharias and is filed under infallibility, inerrancy, IVP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.