So I ended up at Wheaton, and it was a very of the Bible, is there an inspired message interesting experience, because where I in the 昀椀rst 昀椀ve books of the Bible that we came from, everybody sort of believed the can hang onto, even if we realize that it was same thing, and it was good and we were written by guys like (alphabet soup) J, E, D, P, all committed to it. I got to Wheaton, and the Priestley, the Deuteronomus, the Yahwus, everybody believed the same thing, but they the whole apparatus of the critical scholars argued about it all the time. The 昀椀rst course I as to how it got done? Is there nevertheless a had was a course in Apologetics. And I learned message in the middle of it which is inspired that there were all sorts of insidious forces and is from God which we can hang onto? out there in the world that were undermining The word that was used for “message” is the the gospel. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner and word charigma, which is a Greek word which Rev. Bowen and his wife, Bultman and all the other German “B’s” and means, “the message.” (That’s what we always Marlene, were married for 63 Paul Tillich. And the guy would set them up do in scholarship, think up Greek and German years and were partners in and knock ’em down. That’s a good teaching words for normal English ‘whatevers.’) The one ministry. Both enjoyed music, technique. The only problem was, I thought he thing I didn’t get into with respect to where I traveling and together, directed set ’em up better than he knocked ’em down. came from was the whole business of being the Gil and Marlene Bowen And I ran for the library.” born again. Christian Outreach Fund which was endowed by members of Kenilworth Union Church to And when I got to McCormick Seminary, where But the emphasis in evangelicalism is upon encourage a host of ministries half the guys it seemed were engineers out of experiential, emotional worship of one sort or the Bowen’s supported. Purdue who’d never even opened the Bible, I another. That’s a big deal. When I went was loaded for bear. I’d read most of the stu昀昀 to McCormick, the emphasis was upon I forgot who it was I was going to read. So Wheaton did me a intellectual integrity, typically. Having a faith “ great favor in that regard. They stimulated me that can be intellectually defended, that is that said, maybe it intellectually and then I went to McCormick coherent. That makes sense. It didn’t have to was Mark Twain, “I Seminary and entered a whole new world. And make sense at the Baptist church where I grew don’t have problems for want of a better term, let me simply say it up. It was in the book, it was preached, and with things I don’t was a world of liberal criticism and not words that was it. So it was a kind of authoritarian. If of God, but nevertheless concerned with what I can use the term with the Baptist experience, understand in the God might have to say through the manuscript. an authoritarian experientialism. Can I put Bible, I have problems And we called it Neo-orthodoxy. I was there those two together? Because the minister with things I do in what was known then as the heyday of preached the Bible. And the Bible was to be Neo-orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in the sense that accepted as inerrant and literal in every sense. understand.” it was an attempt to shore up the message of And the heart of your religious experience was the Bible at the same time while the criticism to accept Jesus Christ as your own personal of the text and its development was accepted. lord and savior. The McCormick Seminary (All this I’m doing in an oversimpli昀椀ed fashion.) experience, on the other hand, involved much So if Moses didn’t write the 昀椀rst 昀椀ve books more of the question of intellectual integrity. 24 MCCORMICK THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY