While holding a high view of Biblical authority, [Augustus] Strong’s starting point was that the truth was not doctrinal or propositional, but rather “the truth is a personal Being, and that Christ himself is the Truth.” Strong attributed the intellectual difficulties in the church to a view of truth that was too abstract and literal. People mistakenly supposed the perfection attributed to the deity could be attributed equally to statements about Christ made by the church, the ministry, the Bible, or a creed. “A large part of the unbelief of the present day,” he said, “has been caused by the unwarranted identification of these symbols and manifestations with Christ himself. Neither the church nor ministry, Bible or creed, is perfect. To discover imperfections in them is to prove that they are not in themselves divine.”
George M. Marsden,
Fundamentalism and American Culture (p. 107)
