"There is a great and painful contrast between [the] rapt extolling of the Bible as our true light and chief means of grace [that characterized evangelical Christians in the past] and the casual,...patronizing, superior attitude towards the Bible which is all too common today.
"Whereas the Reformers revered it, awestruck at the mystery of its divinity, hearing Christ and meeting God in their reading of it, we rather set ourselves above it, acting as if we already knew its contents inside out, and were indeed in a position to fault it as being neither wholly safe nor wholly sound as a guide to the ways of God.
"Both the spirit and the sentiment of the clergyman who once in a national synod spoke of the Old Testament as containing 'spiritual junk' are unhappily typical of our age. Naturally, coming to Scripture in this frame of mind, we fail to gain a proper understanding of what it is all about.
"One of the many divine qualities of the Bible is this, that it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and censorious."
-- J.I. Packer, "God Has Spoken" p.41 (IVP 1979)
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