Casey,
You've opened a can of worms with this one.
When Warfield talked the Church into accepting the opinions of an independent academy of textual critics that were under the authority of nobody, and that these men had
authority to declare what the word of God was unto the Church, we ceased being Presbyterians and returned to Anglicanism.
Scripture became subjective to a form/matter dialetic, holding the autographic text in dialetical tension against the apographic text, and Scripture became a secondary standard under a new Magisterium who would decree unto us it's ever changing autographic form. The Papacy was reborn and this independent body of textual critics now dictates, under the authority of nobody, what is and what is not the Word of God. One year certain texts of sacred writ is out and is no Word of God and a few years later it is back in and is the Word of God, all at the word of this unelected unordained authoritarian Papacy. The ecclesiastical leadership quickly rushed to recognize the authority of this unelected unordained authoritarian Papacy and began carry it's decree's on what was or what was not the Word of God unto their Churches.
This was done by departing from historic Reformed orthodoxy where infallibility was located in extant apographs unto a new and novel doctrine whereby infallibility demanded inerrancy, and hence ultimate authority could not be in errant extant apographs, but was located in a hypothetical (1) inerrant autograph. This hypothetical inerrant autographic text is not in the Church's possession and this created a radical discontinuity between the canon of Scripture and the text of Scripture, whereby the canonicity of Scripture became fluid attached to every changing text of Scripture in an infinite regress to the no longer existing autographic text.
In historic Reformed orthodoxy the canon of Scripture involves the final form of Biblical documents received and preserved by the Church - not the initial form, and never has been based upon this inversion and dialectical proposition. On the contrary, since the days of Thomas Aquinas it was Rome that was dialectical and held Papal infallibility in dialectical tension against Scripture.
The impact was immediate and this errant proposition derived from lower criticism directly caused higher criticism to ascend like a rocket through Princeton resulting in the forced reoganization of that school in terms of unbelieving academics. This, then, resulted in the rapid decline of orthodoxy in the PCUSA and was the major event signaling a downtrending and declining faith in the Reformed Church.
This leaven quickly leavened the whole lump and all of American Christianity followed suit dedicating themselves to repeated attacks upon the established Bible and promoting the doctrine that ultimate authority rested in a hypothetical non-extant text. From there it spilled over legally into the Courts whereby the Roman Catholics attacked the King James Bible in Kansas City Public schools. This, then, served as precedent for the US Supreme Court to develop the "separation of Church and State" doctrine and began forcibly reorganizing all of American society in terms of a radically hostile and anti-Christian humanism in direct contradiction to our Declaration of Independence, whereby Scripture was recognized as the ultimate legal authority.
American Churches were now Anglican in terms of the doctrine of Authority the next step was to make them legally Anglican and subject them to a legal hierarchy. This was done by the resurrection of the Divine Right of Kings existing in English Common Law, which our legal order rests upon, in IRS Code 501 C 3. See this
thread to understand this in more detail. This, then, legally imputs the old nature/grace dialetic (2) to the Church through the civil law whereby a radical discontinuity is mandated between what is spiritual and what is material and limits the jurisdiction of the Gospel substituting the Great Society for the Great Commission; as it is the duty of all federally funded non-profit corporations to promote the public policy of the United States. (See Bob Jones University v United States, 1984)
I could go on. It's really very simple - men do not create Authority, it is merely recognized, and since men cannot recognize the non-existant hypothetical autographic text of Scripture then Scripture has no real Authority. And since no critical text has any public standing at law, even if it is recognized by ecclesiastical leadership there is no way to overcome the legal discontinuity between law and gospel, State and Church, derived from withdrawing recognition of the established Bible. Authority has now been transfered to men lording over Christ's Church in various institutions.
Where it will end is anybody's guess - but I suspect as the sodomites and other groups continue their advancements and "hate crime" legislation makes continued gains under an ever growing liberal political regime that orthodox Christianity will be progressively criminalized.
Ultimately, the harvest reaped from despising the old archaic English Bible will result in old archaic persecution replacing it.
Footnotes:
(1) I use the term hypothetical because no one can see them, read them, or know what they say. We are only assured for certain what is not in the original autograph not what is in it, as the ever changing critical text plainly shows.
(2) The old Roman idea derived from the transfer of Authority from Scripture to men in the form/matter dialetic in which it was now placed.