Sermons on the Second Readings
Since the 1600s, in a historical period called the "Enlightenment," scholars have been studying the scriptures in a new way. They have rejected the older theory that the scriptures were inspired, word for word by God, and therefore were infallible and without error. Instead they approached the scriptures as a human document, meaning that it could be studied with all the tools of literary and historical scholarship. Yet they did not deny that the scriptures, studied in this new way, could bring us into the presence of God.