Whether or not one sees Dean Inge’s remark above, regarding the biblicism of the Protestant Reformers, as a fair appraisal of their adherence to the doctrine of sola scriptura, it does highlight a problem that faces us still, one that should particularly concern Christians as we pitch our pilgrims’ tents in the post-Christendom epoch.
That problem is biblical fundamentalism or literalism. It is a mistake to think that “biblicism” (the term I will be using here for biblical fundamentalism) is just a Protestant phenomenon. We find it cropping up here and there throughout Christian history. We can come across it today among Catholics and Orthodox (especially, though not exclusively, in the United States). But the Bible, as Dean Inge was trying to get across, is not supposed to be received by Jews or Christians in the same way that Muslims receive their Koran. The Koran, according to Muslim faith, is simply and literally “the word of God.” Thus, every individual word of it is holy — “sacramental,” if you will — directly communicated by Allah. A truly faithful Muslim is supposed to learn Arabic, in fact, because the text should really be read as it was given, in the very language in which it was given. That’s what Inge meant by the phrase “the spirit of the Koran.” And, regarding the fundamentalist strand in Christianity, he was correct to make the comparison and the contrast.
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