[554] over against all other nations, in theory as well as in practice. Now the biblical authority^a. The biblical authority is based on the identification of the biblical text with the presence of the Divine Spirit, in the Old and New Testament writings. In this way every word of this book is a place of infallible ultimate authority and cannot be criticized from any point of view. The history has here also judged this idea by the very fact of Protestantism being related to secularism^b, and taking the secular world

seriously because God is not identical with the sacred realm; God is related to the secular realm as much as to the sacred realm. If this is the case, then the realm of scientific research has its own religious dignity, by its own rules, by its own honesty, by its own service to the truth. Now if this is admitted, then the historical work done with the biblical books cannot be rejected by Protestantism, and if it is accepted, it is obvious that the doctrine which is usually called verbal inspiration cannot be accepted, neither from a historical nor from a religious point of view: it is a demonization ^cof the belief (which is a Christian belief) that the Bible CONTAINS the genuine documents about the event on which Christianity is based, namely the appearance of the Christ and the reception of Him by the Church. But if this is transformed into a place where every word and every sentence

has unconditional authority^d about everything in the world, history as well as physics, then we are in a demonization^e which is always identical with authority in principle. And the history of Protestantism has destroyed this demonization for most Protestants---not for all---