D. A. Carson on Klaus Berger

NT scholar, Klaus Berger, emeritus at the Uni of Heidelberg wrote a book called Die Bibelfälscher in his ‘senior years after a whole lifetime of critical study.' Don Carson summarises the book as follows:

Berger’s volume - no mere tract but a sustained expostulation… opens by arguing that two centuries of biblical research has decimated our churches. The universities provide the pastors for most German churches, and these pastors are systematically taught a ‘hermeneutic of mistrust’… The result is that scholars who identify as Catholics or Protestants feel entirely free to disavow any allegiance to historic Christian teaching even though the Bible teaches it… Berger concludes by insisting that historical criticism in Germany has promoted atheism, splintered churches, and converted no one to Christ. In the near term Berger finds little hope; the trajectories of acceptable scholarship are discouraging. He quotes the [now former] Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George, who wrote: “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” 

D.A. Carson The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), p5-6.

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