Reformation Seminary - New Testament Theories That Crashed.

 

1. The Two-Source Theory. This has Mark as the most primitive and earliest of the Four Gospels. The "other source" was made up of sayings parallel to Matthew and Luke.

2. No one can really say all the things that the modern liberals claim to be true. Authority piles up on authority and theological faculties claim this or that perspective - all speculation. The foundation was their unbelief, or rationalism, or bias.

3. Left alone is the text itself. That is what we need to study thoroughly. A Yale PhD was given to someone who translated a German work by Rudolph Bultmann, doubtless to make many more people gush over Bultmann's personal statements. On the resurrection of Christ - "Any schoolboy knows that a dead body cannot raise himself from the dead." So that was not even research, just a fan eager to translate. I saw the book at the Yale Divinity library.

4. We have relatively little knowledge about the individual writers because the New Testament and the Old Testament are about Jesus Christ the Savior, not the Biblical Theory Fanclub.

5. To this day, even at a LCMS church (remember Seminex? I do) - a pastor can say "The Gospel of John was written 300 years after Christ." Some facts:

1. He was denying the truth of the Fourth Gospel
2. He removed the Apostle John from the Gospel. 
3. He was making John a Gnostic - that is - false Gospel.
4. He was against the divinity Christ.
5. He mocked faith in Jesus in the Fourth Gospel.
6. He was mocking the faith of the believers in that group. Someone did oppose him and he backtracked.

6. The Greek New Testament has also been a means to make people question the Gospel.