THEOLOGICAL LECTURE.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 27 May 1935, Page 4

THEOLOGICAL LECTURE.

DR. DICKIE AT ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH. In St. Andrew's Church, Levin, last night, Br. John Dickie delivered the first of series of 4 theological lectures, his subject .being "The Modern View of the Authority of the Bible." Ho showed how the modern view had come into ibeing, through the comparison of the Bible with other ancient I literature, and of one passage of it with others. As taught in evangelical colleges like those of the Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Methodist 'Churches throughout the whole of the British Empjrc and also by the representative scholars of the Church of England it fully conserves the absolute authority of the Bible in all matters of faith and life—maintaining as emphatically as the older view that the Bible is the only ultimate fountain of Christian Truth, and the foundation on which the Church is 'built, but admits that in matters of ordinary secular knowledge the Biblical writers shared the limitations of their time. He pointed out how this demarcation of spheres is in line with the fact acknowledged by all that in becoming a Christian, in virtue of being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, a person receives new insight into the character and purpose of God, and a new power to do God's holy will, ,but does not receive any new information on history or science or any such subject. He also showed how the newer view solves difficulties which have been felt by Christian believers from the very beginning, and how it is fully in lino with the way in which all Christians have always used the Bible in practice, whatever their theory of its authority. He mentioned also that he personally in twenty-five years' experience as a teacher of theology had always concentrated attention o'n what the Bible is as the Word of God which makes wise unto salvation and life eternal, and had never (brought forward the newer viewpoint, except when the Bible was used (illegitimately in a way that upset the balance of Christian Truth, or inferences were drawn front one-sided presentations of the older view which were an offence against Christian charity, or a menace to an intelligent faith (e.g., when it was maintained that no one who believed in evolution could be a Christian).