Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

201
Fosdick as theologians with whom he identifies, thus his
answers are counted half as 'objective' and half
'subjective'.) If the mention of persons born between
1500 and 1850 were proportional, 'objective' lecturers
would have mentioned only eleven such persons, that is,
seventy percent of the sixteen occurrences, rather than
the actual ninety percent.
'Objective' lecturers' Bible-related responses to
several survey questions also demonstrate their
conservative (i.e., less open to change in preaching
content) tendencies. For example, the fact that
'objective' lecturers are more than twice as likely to
see Biblical material as the content of preaching (table
16) speaks to the stable nature of their teaching
content.
'Objective' responses to questions nine and twelve
also document this tendency. Over eighty percent of the
'objective' lecturers stated that faithful preaching must
• be true to the Bible, while only fifty-two percent of the
'subjective' lecturers made that statement (table 17).
In answer to a question asking the lecturers to state
their primary hermeneutical principle (table 18), twenty
percent of the 'objective' lecturers (compared to none of
the 'subjective') made the stronger statement: "The
Bible is God's Word" (table 18). This evidence points
toward a relatively simple, static view of Scripture,
and, following that, of preaching content.
'Subjective' lecturers give the Bible relatively