No tradition (or generation of believers) is without the need to hear our Lord’s warning concerning the self-righteous yeast of the Pharisees. The decrees of the Council of Trent about sin and justification are to Pharisaism as cigarettes are to cancer. Some issues at these two sessions evoked special criticism from Anglicans and Protestants and dismay among many Catholics as well.

This coming to terms with secular culture is deeply rooted in the sense of intellectual liberation that began in the Enlightenment. Protestant liberalism can be traced to European sources, but it arrived very early in America-far earlier than most of today's evangelicals are probably aware. Liberal theology held sway where Unitarianism dominated and in many parts beyond.

"It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research," said Gershon Galil, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, who deciphered the ancient text.

BCE stands for "before common era," and is equivalent to B.C., or before Christ.

A fully orthodox treatment of sin is absent from the theology of the 1979, as well as a full-bodied treatment of the atonement, because of the theological liberalism which Gresham Machen criticized in his works. It is part of an overall return, he argued, to a pagan view of human nature marked by the belief that we may become virtuous by our own efforts.