John Warwick Montgomery begins his article on ‘Inspiration and Inerrancy: a New Departure’ (Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 8, No 2, Spring, 1965) by referring to James Orr’s The Progress of Dogma (4th edition, 1901).

Orr’s contention was that in each epoch of the Christian church has been characterised by focus on one particular doctrine that has proved crucial both for that day and subsequently.

‘In the Patristic era, the issue was the relation of the persons of the Godhead, and particularly the Christological problem of Jesus’ character; the Ecumenical Creeds represent the success of Orthodox, Trinitarian theology over against numerous christological heresies, any one of which could have permanently destroyed the Christian faith.

Medieval Christianity faced the issue of the meaning of Christ’s atonement, and Anselm’s “Latin doctrine,” in spite of its scholastic inadequacies, gave solid expression to biblical salvation-history as represented by the Epistle to the Hebrews.

In the Reformation Era, the overarching doctrinal problem facing the Church was the application of redemption in justification; Luther’s stand for sofa gratia, sola fide arrested an anthropocentric trend which could have turned the Christian faith into little more than pagan religiosity.’

(Paragraphing and emphasis added)

Orr judged that the key doctrinal challenge to be faced and resolved in his own day was around eschatology.

For Montgomery, however, the great doctrinal issue faced by the church of his own day was that of the authority of Holy Scripture.  This opinion was echoed by Harold Lindsell in his provocative work The Battle for the Bible (1976).

I am inclined to agree, in general terms, with Montgomery and Lindsell.  However, they couch the authority of the Bible very much in terms of the doctrine of inerrancy.  This I regard as an unfortunate and unhelpful miss-step, for reasons I have spelled out elsewhere.