Quote for the Day...

After defining an evangelical as one who is convinced of the final authority of the Bible as God's Word, Graeme Goldsworthy helpfully writes,

"To claim the name evangelical [i.e. that you believe in the final authority of the Bible] does not necessarily mean that we always understand its implications or are consistent in the way we carry them out in our lives or in our preaching. The understanding may be rather unformed and basically negative. This carries the ever present danger of pharisaism, 'I thank God that I am not like these Catholics, Liberals, and Charismatics; I read my Bible every day, I accept only the Bible as my authority.' The conviction may be a feel good thing that somehow relegates religious experience to some vague convictions about the Bible being the authority that authenticates this experience. The danger here is that as long as what we do makes us feel good, we are content to accept that it is biblical without necessarily examining the Scriptures to see if it really is. This good feeling may be some undefined inner warmth or simply the recognition that our ministerial strategies are working...It is easy to claim to be biblical, but it is much harder to translate that into the way we read the Bible and shape our thoughts, lives, and ministries...If we as evangelicals are Bible people, then we have to be diligent in working out our understanding of the message of the Bible and of its effects." (Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture...)