This sphere of discussion is both delicate and frustrating as these well-meaning folks are (in some respects) upholding Scripture and yet pushing it beyond the boundaries of how it's supposed to function in this present evil age. And, they are guilty (we would argue) of imposing an alien epistemological commitment in their reading and interaction with the text which ultimately undermines a faithful rendering and interpretation.
Their extra robust view of Scriptural Authority is in the end compromised. And in many cases this misguided approach drives theological tendencies such as Dispensationalism and the Second Work of Grace/Carnal Christian theology that manifests serious and even (at times) heretical errors.
While the numbers adhering to these teachings are still considerable, a case can be made that in some respects these doctrines (especially Dispensationalism) are on the wane. The New Calvinist movement within Evangelicalism while quite different from historic Reformed theology, is nevertheless challenging these assumptions in the realm of Biblical structure and hermeneutics and in terms of salvation and the Christian life.
That said, there is still this academic tendency at work within Evangelicalism - one that has infiltrated not only Evangelical seminaries but Confessional circles as well. It has spawned some controversies in recent years at places like Westminster Seminary, but I believe the real scope of this problem has not been fully understood, or rather there are many that have not yet realized the magnitude of this shift and what it portends in the coming generation.
Following the scholarship associated with Bronze and Iron Age Middle Eastern texts, the Evangelical Academy has moved away from the kind of strict literalism advocated the Fundamentalists. They have a point (at times) but are too easily guided by the unbelieving thought of the experts and scholars. And this is a critical point - the Bible is for Christians and it is understood by those indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the most glaring implication of the Academy approach is that it implies that if one is simply trained in the proper methods, one can understand and comprehend the Biblical message to a far greater degree than a seasoned (and yet untrained) student of Scripture. This is to reject what the Scriptures actually teach and cast the notion of perspicuity into doubt. I must say, the same charge can be levied at some of the more robust and devoted philosophical theologians in confessional circles.
The Academy seems to teach that there's nothing even remotely unique about the Hebrews or Old Testament Israel. Their entire religion is one of appropriation - all their key concepts about God, the narratives surrounding Him, the stories associated with the Creation and Flood are all cheap knock-off copies of older versions from the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Even the redemptive symbolism, language, and concepts brought out in the Psalms and prophets are but imitations, replicas, or expressions of artistry. The assumption is that there's no Divine hand at work in the history of the Jews and Israel, let alone an inspired text. This is simply theological modernism or liberalism - an employment of the epistemological criteria of the humanist Enlightenment. This is what liberal/Mainline clergy have been taught for generations, something that was explicitly rejected by both Fundamentalists and Confessionalists more than a century ago. Evangelicals also rejected it for a time, but have slowly but surely compromised on these questions.
So are they no longer believers? Well, they would say that while the scholarship is correct, God spoke through prophets, who through divine artistic inspiration took and re-cast these pagan stories and narratives, crafting them (by the Spirit) into works we reckon as authoritative. Redactors edited old texts and there's a great deal of pseudepigraphy as well. Functionally this is little different from a Roman Catholic view (which is basically Modernist) with the exception that there is no Evangelical Magisterium that can speak authoritatively.
So according to this view, the Academy is basically correct in its assault on Scriptural veracity and integrity - they even extend this to the archaeological record. Almost none of the Scriptures were written by the claimed authors at the claimed times. They're all counterfeit works that have been (the Evangelicals argue) nevertheless granted Divine approval at some point along the way.
Needless to say this constitutes a radical departure from and redefinition of Sola Scriptura. In fact under such a paradigm, the term can have no meaning. It's also worth noting that this view is subject to great fluidity. As the 'scholarship' evolves and changes, it follows that these affected Evangelical members will also shift and change. The only question is how long does it take for these views to make it from the classrooms and journals into the pulpits and the pews?
I would describe this contemporary Evangelical Academic view as essentially akin to the conservative strain of 19th Century Theological Liberalism. It reminds me of someone like Philip Schaff who was not really a conservative but seems so when compared to the kind of theological downgrade that emerged in the 20th century. Compared to someone like Tillich, the Niebuhrs, and certainly someone like JS Spong, Schaff seems a robust adherent to traditional Biblical authority. But he wasn't, as his testimony regarding the text of Scripture, his defense of Charles Briggs, and even his Hegelian argument regarding Protestantism (and its justification) reveal.
Today's Evangelical Academy is in many respects where Schaff was at the end of the 19th century and I contend that within a generation or two they will have crossed the line into rank theological modernism - if not sooner.
For many, the means of overcoming this dilemma is the Neo-Orthodox theology of Karl Barth (1886-1968). In Barthianism they find a theology that is Christocentric and embraces the realities of Divine interaction and one might say supernatural activity, even while bowing to the academy. Barth's paradigm allows these Evangelicals to straddle this fence or as some detractors would say - have their cake and eat it too. Whenever I would read Michael Heiser, I kept thinking of Barth.
I'm also reminded of my own frustrations with a publication such as the Biblical Archaeology Review. While not explicitly Evangelical by any means, there are many Evangelicals who write for it - to the extent that it (I believe) is kind of the fringes of the academy. Some look down on it as too explicitly Christian.
I once subscribed to the magazine and finally cancelled my membership in frustration with the sub-Biblical, Biblically subversive, and rank liberal attitudes of its authors. I would not recommend it for a moment.
A book that typifies this view is something like Eric H Cline's 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. The Bronze Age Collapse is (for me) a thrilling historical inquiry that is loaded with all kinds of hints of even more ancient history, primeval memory, and interesting elements that plays into the Biblical narrative at the time of the Judges.
Cline (who writes for Biblical Archaeology Review) discounts the written records and instead gets lost in the weeds of archaeological data and scholarship - which often ties itself in knots resting on this or that thesis, which then in turn drives (and limits) further inquiries and spawns new paradigms, which are often speculative and frankly ridiculous.
I could barely finish the book. It was awful, near to worthless, and when there was interaction with Scripture, the Bible and its authors were discounted and dismissed - with ambiguous back-handed caveats that would leave some hint of an idea that could be interpreted as to leave a little something for those Christians who wanted to see something in the Biblical text. It was classic theological liberalism and anti-Scripture.
The fact that such Evangelical models aren't fully embracing and implementing sociological frameworks of interpretation (such as feminist and other grids) does not mean these scholars are conservatives. But because these deeply anti-Christian camps are out there and entrenched in Mainline seminaries, these Evangelical Academics can appear conservative. They keep one foot in the academy by citing the fraudulent Deutero-Isaiah paradigm and the like even while insisting there's some Divine truth to be salvaged from what is really (if you accept their hypotheses) a disjointed and counterfeit pack of lies.
They reconcile it all by means of a sanctification of myth-history and inspired redaction - concepts the Scriptures nowhere teach.
It should also be noted at this point that the embrace of the academy's re-framing of Scripture as acceptable for Evangelicals has opened the door for many young people to just go a step further and embrace the unbelieving academy's modeling. Frankly the Evangelical attempt to salvage their less-than-inspired view of Scripture is wanting and it doesn't surprise me that many people end up abandoning it (and the faith) altogether.
In crisis, these same Evangelicals are also increasingly open to to embracing the sociological models of the academy. This has led to a series of severe crises, feminist rejections of Biblical norms, and the deconstruction trend which is just apostasy by another name. This discussion surrounding this latter point is further confused by the fact that so many Evangelicals are unable to incorporate a concept such as apostasy - their conversionist-based theology forces them to continually backtrack and re-interpret prior religious experience.
It's easy to claim to be a conservative when you just keep moving the goalposts. This kind of compromise is really the hallmark of post-war Evangelicalism. In order to keep the Christian faith as well as the Church relevant and influential within society, they've sold out and given up just about everything along the way. We see this also at work in the realm of politics.
It's not difficult to see why the Barthian approach is so popular - concepts such as sin and redemption are real, even while the Bible itself is not literally true. It contains God's Word (ad hoc), and thus can be preached, but in the end (as it stands) it's an error laden and untrustworthy production of men. The Bible is a human document through which the Divine operates in, with, under, and alongside (as it were). It's a means of revelation but far from pure and certainly not infallible.
Few Evangelical scholars will come right out and say that the Bible is not the word of God, but their dodgy evasions reveal that's where they're at. This theology is also suited to the cultural zeitgeist in that it's post-modern. The confidence of the Enlightenment that is still found in the more aggressive forms of Scientific Materialism is doubted by many and the fragmentation that ensued has generated a lot of tensions and ambiguities. This theology is able to navigate these waters and as such is very appealing to some.
It's little wonder that there has been so much focus on the human authorship side of Biblical studies. Unfortunately the conservative response has tended to be a more vigorous advocacy for coherentist systematics at the expense of contextual diversity. As it is with many doctrines, there is a dynamic tension that must be retained. Straying to one side or the other, let alone absolutizing single doctrines will lead to error and ultimately a subversion of the faith.
As such Academic Evangelicalism is not Evangelicalism at all if the term as it originally emerged is to retain any meaning. The movement as a whole never embraced Scriptural Authority in the realm of ecclesiology and the Christian life. The Academic branch is sweeping away any possible claim to the notion of Sola Scriptura among the Evangelical factions.
Academic Evangelicalism, Enlightenment thought and now Postmodernity have spawned another reaction - a call not just for Biblical literalism but what must be described as Hyper-Literalism.