Can We Still Believe the Bible? Quotes

“Those who still defend cessationism risk quenching the Spirit (contra 1 Thess. 5:19) and inappropriately closing themselves and others off from the full range of blessings God might have for them and from potentially the greatest amount of effective service for his kingdom. Without swinging the pendulum to the opposite extreme and embracing the various abuses of the charismata or trying to imitate the Spirit’s work in one’s own strength, cessationists really should cease trying to limit God in how he chooses to work in his world today. It is, in essence, a form of antisupernaturalism for all the postapostolic eras of Christianity.”
― Craig Blomberg, Can We Still Believe the Bible?: An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions

“The amount of testimony from those who have experienced the supernatural, whose lives have been changed for the better, and/or who have contributed good to society over the last two thousand years within a Christian context—such accumulating testimony dramatically outweighs what has been experienced and accomplished by any other ideology and dramatically outweighs the evils done in the name of Christ as well.”
― Craig L. Blomberg, Can We Still Believe the Bible?: An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions

“essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.”
― Craig Blomberg, Can We Still Believe the Bible?: An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions

“Some conservative evangelicals write or speak as if the only legitimate form of Christianity is inerrantism. Only a tiny minority throughout church history has held this conviction, and it often proves counterproductive.”
― Craig Blomberg, Can We Still Believe the Bible?: An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions

“Does one approach the Scriptures (or any other influential document or collection of documents in the history of world civilization) with a hermeneutics of consent or a hermeneutics of suspicion? Christians have not done well in trying to read literature from other religions empathetically, and atheists and adherents of other world religions today increasingly approach the Bible with preexisting hostility.”
― Craig Blomberg, Can We Still Believe the Bible?: An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions

“I wonder how often evangelical Christians in today’s world have completely inverted these priorities, kowtowing to the overly conservative, judgmental insiders and blasting away at the non-Christian world for not adhering to Christian morality. Yet how can we expect non-Christians to pursue Christian morality when they do not have God’s Spirit within them, the Spirit who alone makes such obedience possible?”
― Craig Blomberg, Can We Still Believe the Bible?: An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions