“The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science,” Hodge wrote. “It is his store-house of facts.”* It cannot be overstated how much Hodge’s thesis, that the Bible was the completely inerrant, infallible word of God, was an astonishing break with Protestant church fathers and the traditional interpretation of the authority and limitations of scripture. Martin Luther, who had been a theology professor, used to acknowledge that the Bible contained contradictions and historical errors.
