By saying what he's about to say, he risks "forfeiting" the "general approval of his fellow Christians." To stem off the forfeiture, he pleads his bona fides as a Christian scholar and gentleman. Then he proceeds to say what he wants to say.

Thayer begins with the "Reformed or Calvinistic" view of Scripture, which is his not so veiled way of referring to Warfield and the Princetonians, a constellation of biblical scholars and theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary from the 1850s until the 1920s including Charles Hodge, his son A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen. The Princetonian view "has laid a disproportionate emphasis on the full and final character of the Scriptural teaching relative to the whole range of speculation and conduct, life and destiny." This is Thayer's way of expressing the view of verbal, plenary inspiration. This view, given full expression by Charles Hodge in 1857, contends that all (plenary means "full" or "entire") of the words (verbal) of the Bible are from God. Thayer continues, observing that this view, held by "a certain class of rough and ready controversialists," "furnishes" them "with a bludgeon which they are prone to mistake for the sword of the Lord." Again, that "certain class" would indeed be Warfield and the Princetonians, caricatured as always trolling for a good fight. The Princetonian view, Thayer continues, was "comparatively harmless in bygone days." Now it has "become a yoke." Here's why:

But by reason of improved methods of philological study, of progress in science and discovery, of accumulating results in archaeological and historic [sic] research, the theory has come to occasion restlessness and perplexity, at times not a little distress, in thoughtful souls. It has become a yoke which they—unlike their fathers—are unable to bear.⁵

This quotation deserves unpacking. "Improved methods of philological study" is a reference to higher criticism, the upshot of which is to see the Bible as a significantly human book. "Progress in science" refers to what the above pages outlined. The scientific worldview of moderns is not the same as the mythological worldview of the ancients. Progress means that you don't go back.

Thayer does not outline the archaeological or historical research he alludes to, but he's likely referring to the gaps in the archaeological record concerning biblical events. All of this is enough to make a "thoughtful" person blush in embarrassment. To borrow from a car commercial a few years back, the Princetonian view of Scripture was your father's view. This new generation needs a new view, a view that's not that of their fathers. It is also important to note what Thayer does not advocate. He does not advocate turning away from Scripture altogether or even in the main. He just wants a milder view, one that allows for some fuzzy boundaries and wiggle room—one that's not so distressful to thoughtful souls. This is the new view of Scripture that Thayer commends.

Between the American Civil War and the beginnings of the twentieth century, attitudes toward the Bible had changed indeed. These new attitudes brought about a whole new set of categories: modernists, those who saw no need for keeping the ancient book of the Bible or for keeping the religion it spawned; liberals, those who wanted to keep the ancient book of the Bible and Christianity but needed to retool both to fall in line with modern sensibilities; and fundamentalists, those who thought the Bible was as true in all of its particulars for moderns as it was for ancients. Admittedly, fundamentalism is a complicated term, meaning different things to different people at different times. The term does serve well, though, to describe theological conservatives who held to a high view of Scripture during the decades roughly from the 1890s through the 1930s.