2007 Chafer Theological Seminary Bible Conference

A Word to the Wise:

There is a danger in reading the theologies of our favorite authors in that we tend to accept their opinions as gospel without feeling a need to do a biblical double check on the jots and tittles of their work. It is the intent of this paper to demonstrate this by examining a few statements of the spiritual father of the seminary, Lewis Sperry Chafer himself, and at the same time achieving the noble goal of showing the superiority of the methods taught at his namesake seminary toward a refined biblicity of thought and action. The refined methods help prevent the transmission of error from one generation of theologians to the next, giving a better foundation for new men who take up the mission of grounding believers in biblical orthodoxy. The author does not intend to demonstrate a general laxity or tendency toward error on the part of L.S. Chafer. Far from it! But if an examination of a great man’s error leads to an affirmation of belief in sound method, then a great purpose is served. ...

Believers often think of the sufficiency of Scripture primarily in terms of its relation to psychology and church growth, and mainly negatively even in those areas. Mostly, “the sufficiency of Scripture” is a fence that keeps secular intrusions out of the church. However, the sufficiency of Scripture is a much deeper and richer concept in those two areas, and has much broader application beyond them. This paper will seek to survey some of the areas where believers are working hard to apply the sufficiency of Scripture, but it will also suggest a series of areas where we are not yet working hard, and we should be. ...