Two clarifications
1
The revelation of God
The primary question in every religion relates to the topic of authority: by what authority do we believe what we believe? And the primary answer which evangelical Christians (whether Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist or other) give to this question is that supreme authority resides neither in the church, nor in the individual, but in Christ and the biblical witness to him.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore this aspect of our evangelical identity. Why do evangelicals attribute authority to Scripture? And what are the consequences of this belief?
Perhaps the most helpful way to delve into the evangelical view of Scripture is to consider the cluster of three words which lie at the heart of it, namely ‘revelation’, ‘inspiration’ and ‘authority’.
The English word ‘revelation’, derived from the Latin revelatio, an unveiling, describes an objective action by which something previously hidden by a veil is unveiled and so disclosed to view. Evangelical Christians begin their thinking with a recognition of the obvious, logical reasonableness of revelation. Since God is our Creator, infinite in his being, while we are finite creatures of time and space, it stands to reason that we cannot discover him by our own researches or resources. He is altogether beyond us. And since in addition he is the all-holy God, while we are fallen, sinful and under his just judgment, there is a chasm between him and us which we from our side could never bridge. Being both finite and fallen, we cannot reach him. We could never know him (unless he should take the initiative to make himself known), and all the altars in the world, like the one Paul stumbled across outside Athens, would be inscribed to an unknown god (Acts 17:23). He would remain to us both incomprehensible and inaccessible. This double fact is the basic premise of divine revelation, and a major theme of Paul’s first letter to Corinth:
For it is written:
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached [sc. the kērygma, the gospel] to save those who believe.
(1 Cor. 1:19–21)
Again,
. . . we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9However, as it is written:
‘No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him’ –
10but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
(1 Cor. 2:7–10a)
Both these eloquent statements contrast the wisdom of God with the wisdom of the world. On the one hand, Paul declares the failure, indeed the inability, of human wisdom to find or to know God. On the other hand, he states the corresponding necessity of divine wisdom which is unattainable by the human eye, ear and imagination, but has been revealed by God, proclaimed by the apostles and is of saving efficacy to believers.
Four kinds of revelation are mentioned in Scripture. They describe the various ways in which God has revealed himself, and in some ways still does.
General or natural revelation
‘General revelation’ is so called because it is made to everybody, to the generality of humankind. It is also called ‘natural’ because it is made through nature, through the created order. One example from each Testament will perhaps suffice.
The fullest Old Testament reference to general revelation comes in the first six verses of Psalm 19. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’ Their proclamation is made both continuously and universally, for their message goes out ‘day after day . . . night after night’ and reaches ‘to the ends of the world’, especially as the sun makes its daily circuit across the sky. And although, literally speaking, ‘there is no speech or language’, yet metaphorically the heavens ‘pour forth speech’. Indeed, so does the earth, for ‘the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Isa. 6:3).
For the clearest statement on general revelation in the New Testament we turn to Paul and his Roman letter. He insists that ‘God has made plain’ to human beings what may be known about him because throughout history (‘since the creation of the world’) God’s invisible attributes of power and divinity have been clearly seen ‘from what has been made’ (Rom. 1:19–20). That is, the created world is a visible disclosure of the invisible God. Just as artists reveal themselves in their art, so the Creator reveals himself in his creation. In addition, we know something of the moral order through our conscience (Rom. 1:32 – 2:2).
Still today by creation and conscience God continues to bear witness to himself. The rationality, intricacy and beauty of the world on the one hand, and our sense of right and wrong, of duty and failure, on the other, speak to us of God. But the tragedy is that we have suppressed this truth in order to go our own self-centred way. In consequence we are guilty and without excuse (Rom. 1:20; 2:1). So general revelation cannot save us; it can only condemn us. We cannot read the way of salvation in the stars. We see God’s glory in the created order; for his grace we need another revelation.
Special or supernatural revelation
There are at least six differences between ‘general’ and ‘special’ revelation.
Of these differences, it is the second which concerns us now, namely that God’s general revelation was made through nature (heaven and earth proclaiming his glory), whereas his special revelation was made through miracle (inspiration and incarnation). This combination of inspiration and incarnation is vital. We evangelicals have often made the mistake of isolating and elevating the Bible. But the climax of God’s revelation was his incarnate Son, the Word made flesh: ‘but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son . . .’ (Heb. 1:2a).
The Son is further described as the agent of creation, the sustainer and heir of the universe, the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, who had provided purification for our sins and was now enthroned at God’s right hand (Heb. 1:1–3).
But how do we know all this about Jesus Christ? His incarnate life lasted only about thirty years, and we were not there to see it. How then could it benefit later generations and not be lost in the mists of antiquity? The answer lies in the apostles. They were chosen and equipped in order to record and explain what God had said and done through Christ. Only in that way could people in subsequent centuries have access to him. The only authentic Christ is the biblical Christ. What Scripture has done is to capture him, in order to present him to all people at all times in all places. The climax of God’s revelation should be described as the historic, incarnate Christ and the total biblical witness to him.
In God’s purpose of special revelation, event and testimony went together. This is important because it used to be fashionable among liberal (especially neo-orthodox) scholars to insist that God’s revelation was personal, not propositional. This is a false distinction, however. God’s self-revelation was indeed mostly personal – through acts of salvation and judgment. But how could such events be beneficial to those not involved in them unless there were witnesses to record and interpret the events? For example, many tribal migrations were taking place in the Middle East at the time of the exodus. How could anybody have known that Israel’s exodus from Egypt was special, unless God had raised up Moses and the prophets to say so? Again, many crucifixions took place during the years that Rome occupied Palestine. How then could anybody have known that the crucifixion of Jesus was special, let alone the turning-point of human history, if God had not appointed and prepared the apostles as witnesses? Thus God’s special revelation was usually a combination of deed and word, event and testimony.
We should not therefore perpetuate the myth that God’s revelation could be personal without being propositional too, deeds without words. We should not share in the modern disenchantment with words. Words matter. Even images need words to explain them. And God has chosen the model of human speech to illustrate his communication with us. We are familiar with such claims as these: ‘The word of the Lord came to me, saying . . .’ (e.g. Jer. 1:4). ‘Hear the word of the Lord’ (e.g. Isa. 1:10). ‘When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe’ (1 Thess. 2:13). Language is the most sophisticated means of communication we have. We cannot know each other’s minds until and unless we speak to one another. We sometimes talk about ‘mind-reading’, but it is impossible. If you were to remain silent, and assume a poker face, I would not have the foggiest notion what you were thinking about. If then we cannot read each other’s minds, how much less can we read God’s?
‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,’
declares the Lord.
9‘As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10‘As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread
for the eater,
11so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.’
(Isa. 55:8–11)
Notice how the prophet moves from thoughts to words, from the thoughts in the mind to the words in the mouth. He begins with a firm statement that God’s thoughts and ways are not the same as ours. Indeed, God’s thoughts and ways are as much higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth, which is infinity. It is absolutely impossible, therefore, for us to climb up into the infinite mind of God. There is no ladder by which to reach him, no bridge by which to cross the chasm between us. If he were to remain silent, we would never know (and could never even guess) what he is thinking.
But this is not the situation, for God has spoken, the prophet continues. He makes a second reference to the heavens and the earth. Having reminded us that heaven is infinitely higher than earth, he points out that both snow and rain bridge the gap. They both ‘come down from heaven’, and they do not return ‘without watering the earth’. Just so, he continues, as the rain makes the earth productive, so God’s Word goes out from his mouth. It does not return to him empty, but accomplishes his purpose. Thus the thoughts in God’s mind are inaccessible to us until and unless they are communicated by the words of his mouth, at which point they become effective in the fulfilment of his purpose.
Does this emphasis on words mean that evangelicals believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible? Many are quick to say that they do not. They draw a distinction between the words and the sense, and like to quote the great missionary Henry Martyn. Asked in Persia by a high-ranking Muslim whether he believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, as his questioner did of the Qur’an, Martyn replied, ‘The sense is from God, but the expression [is] from the different writers of it.’ It sounds like a useful distinction, until one examines it. The fact is that one cannot separate the meaning of a text from the words which constitute and communicate it. Words are the building-blocks of speech. It is impossible to frame a precise message without constructing precise sentences composed of precise words. Here is what Charles Kingsley wrote in the middle of the nineteenth century:
These glorious things – words – are man’s right alone . . . Without words we should know no more of each other’s hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog . . . for, if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand ourselves.
More important still, consider the claim which the apostle Paul made for himself and his fellow apostles: ‘This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit . . .’ (1 Cor. 2:13).
Progressive revelation
To believe in divine revelation does not mean we suppose that God revealed everything to his people at once. No, he taught them gradually as they were able to assimilate it, ‘a little here, a little there’ (Isa. 28:13), ‘in partial and various ways’ (Heb. 1:1, nab). This is particularly obvious in regard to the relation between the Old and the New Testaments. Thus, the elaborate sacrificial cultus of the Old Testament had taught Israel indispensable truths, such as that atonement was made by the shedding of blood (Lev. 17:11). But the animal sacrifices were discontinued in the New Testament because they had been fulfilled in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Wise parents do not teach their children lessons that they subsequently contradict; instead they amplify them. Otherwise they lose credibility.
Perhaps the doctrine of the Trinity is the best example. The Trinity is not explicitly taught in the Old Testament. To be sure, there are hints and adumbrations of it. When we read God’s Word ‘Let us make man’ we interpret the plural as trinitarian. It is the same when we overhear the threefold shalom of the Aaronic blessing (Num. 6:22ff.) or the ‘Holy, holy, holy’ of the heavenly choir (Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8). Christian ears pick up these allusions, but Jewish ears do not. For the great emphasis of the Old Testament is on the unity of God, in contrast to the crude polytheism of Israel’s neighbours. For example, ‘the Lord our God, the Lord is one’ (Deut. 6:4). It was only after God’s people had firmly grasped his unity that they were ready for the further revelation that he is one in three.
What we see throughout the Old Testament, Alec Motyer has written, is ‘a true cumulative progression’. ‘There is no abandonment of the early in favour of the late, the primitive in favour of the developed, but a gathering and maturing body of truth which, by the end of the Old Testament, is also truth tensed up for its brilliant dénouement.’
Personal revelation
It is conducive to clear thinking when we distinguish between two ministries of the Holy Spirit and refer to them as ‘revelation’ and ‘illumination’ respectively. ‘Revelation’ in this context describes an objective event, the Holy Spirit unveiling the glory of God in nature or in Scripture. ‘Illumination’, on the other hand, describes a subjective event, the Holy Spirit enlightening our eyes so that we now see what he has revealed.
Both processes are indispensable if we are ever to know God. Supposing we had met for an unveiling ceremony, for example the unveiling of somebody’s portrait. Supposing too that we had invited a blindfolded person to accompany us. Before we can all see the portrait, two processes are necessary. First, the picture must be unveiled, which illustrates the objective event called ‘revelation’. But still our blindfolded friend cannot see. A second process is necessary in his case. His bandages have to be removed, which illustrates the subjective event called ‘illumination’.
But because it involves the removal of a veil from our eyes or minds, this illumination is sometimes also called a ‘revelation’.
Jesus himself used this language. On one occasion he thanked his Father that he had hidden his truths from the intellectually arrogant and had ‘revealed them to little children’ (Matt. 11:25), that is, the humble. On another occasion, when Peter first identified Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus responded, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven’ (Matt. 16:17). What was true of Peter was equally true of Paul. His experience of conversion and commissioning on the Damascus road was so evidently due to the initiative of God’s grace that he could write, ‘God . . . was pleased to reveal his Son in me’ (Gal. 1:15–16). And having experienced this heavenly illumination himself, he naturally desired it for others. He prayed for the Ephesians that ‘the Spirit of wisdom and revelation’ would enlighten the eyes of their heart to know the fullness of God’s purpose for them (Eph. 1:17ff.).
Here then are four aspects of divine revelation – general and special, progressive and personal. Evangelical Christians emphasize that without revelation the knowledge of God is impossible. God himself is veiled, and so are our minds, until by his grace and power both veils are torn off. Evangelical Christians also emphasize that what God has revealed is true, and that our only reaction must be to listen, to believe and to obey.
How blessed we are that God did not abandon us to grope in thick darkness, to flounder in deep water, or even to make do with human philosophy! No, he has given us his Word as a lamp to our feet and a light for our path (Ps. 119:105), indeed ‘a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns’ (2 Pet. 1:19).
The evangelical emphasis on truth, revealed by God and therefore absolute, binding and universal, is not at all compatible with the mood of postmodernity. But then it was not compatible with the previous mood of modernity either. A Christian mind should respond to contemporary culture neither with a blanket rejection nor with an equally indiscriminate acquiescence, but with discernment.
Evangelical Christians could never come to terms with modernism, that is, with the Enlightenment – its replacement of revelation with reason, its proclamation of the omni-competence and autonomy of the human mind, and its glorification of objective science as the basis for its confidence in the inevitability of moral progress. It was high time this bubble burst, and we may be thankful that postmodernity has pricked it.
Professor Diogenes Allen of Princeton Theological Seminary has written optimistically that with the collapse of the Enlightenment vision there is now ‘a new possibility of God’ and therefore ‘a new openness for faith’. He shows how the four major pillars of Enlightenment confidence are all crumbling. The Enlightenment declared the following.
1. The universe is self-contained and God is superfluous, whereas now both philosophy and cosmology are exhibiting a new openness to God.
2. Morality is self-evident and revelation is unnecessary, whereas now we cannot reach a consensus for moral action or even discussion.
3. Progress is inevitable because of science, whereas now we are faced with our failure to solve social problems.
4. Knowledge is inherently good, whereas now we have to confess that knowledge is often misused for evil ends.
All this indicates that ‘the embargo on the possibility of God is lifted’ and that the gospel has a fresh relevance.
And yet, alongside this new openness to faith, postmodernism is the sworn enemy of claims to absolute truth. Dr Os Guinness describes the collision between postmodernism and modernism:
Where modernism was a manifesto of human self-confidence and self-congratulation, post-modernism is a confession of modesty, if not despair. There is no truth, only truths. There are no principles, only preferences. There is no grand reason, only reasons . . . If postmodernism is correct, we cannot even aspire after truth, objectivity, universality and reality.
But the evangelical faith cannot capitulate to this pluralism and relativism. We must continue to argue that truth is truth. Dr Peter Cotterell has put it well, as it confronts the Christian mission:
Truth is not a matter of pride or humility. It is a matter of fact. Islam says Jesus wasn’t crucified. We say he was. Only one of us can be right. Judaism says Jesus was not the Messiah. We say he was. Only one of us can be right. Hinduism says that God has often been incarnate. We say only once. And we can’t both be right.
If the word ‘revelation’ indicates that God has taken the initiative to make himself known, the word ‘inspiration’ indicates how he has done so, at least in special revelation, namely by speaking to and through the human authors. In this sense the Bible is a unique book; no other book resembles it. For it is God’s Word through human words. It thus has a double authorship (divine and human), which on that account demands a double approach – reverent because it is the Word of God, ‘critical’ (to be defined later) because it is the word of human beings.
The double authorship of Scripture
Evangelical Christians are anxious to avoid the opposite extremes of fundamentalism and liberalism. So-called ‘fundamentalists’ (at least of the old school), as we have seen, declare that the Bible is the Word of God. They tend to regard the human authors as having been entirely passive, their human faculties having been suspended by divine inspiration. They sometimes liken the Bible’s human authors to musical instruments or dictating machines, no longer living persons but lifeless toys in the hand of the Spirit. So-called ‘liberals’, by contrast, declare that the Bible is the word of human beings, originating in their minds and ennobled by only occasional flashes of divine inspiration.
But neither of these accounts of Scripture will do, because neither is the account which the Bible gives of itself. There is a third way, best designated the double authorship of Scripture. It is both the Word of God and the word of men, indeed the Word of God through the words of human beings. Examples abound. The Pentateuch is called in the same passage ‘the Law of Moses’ and ‘the Law of the Lord’ (Luke 2:22–23), and Jeremiah introduces his prophecy as ‘the words of Jeremiah’ into whose mouth Yahweh had put his words (Jer. 1:1–9). Similarly, we read in the New Testament both that ‘God spoke . . . through the prophets’ and that ‘men spoke from God’ (Heb. 1:1; 2 Pet. 1:21). In consequence, it could be said equally that ‘the mouth of the Lord has spoken’ and that he spoke ‘through the mouth of his holy prophets’ (e.g. Isa. 1:20; Acts 3:21, literally). So out of whose mouth did the prophetic oracles come? The divine mouth or human mouths? The only possible answer is both. God spoke out of his mouth, but through the mouths of the human authors. We must now consider these two truths separately.
First, the Bible is the Word of God. The familiar clause in the Apostles’ Creed about the Holy Spirit affirms that he ‘spoke through the prophets’. They regularly introduced their oracles with the claim that the Word of the Lord had come to them. And the apostles made the same claim, even though they did not use the prophetic formulae.
The classic statement of the Holy Spirit’s work in the inspiration of Scripture remains 2 Timothy 3:16: ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God’ (av), or literally is God-breathed (theopneustos). The word means neither that God breathed into the writers, enabling them to write his Word, nor that he breathed into the writings, transforming them from human words into divine words, but rather that what they wrote was breathed out of the mouth of God. This reference to the breath of God is congruous with references elsewhere to his mouth and his words. For in speech our breath communicates our words out of our mouths. It is not literal, of course. Since God is Spirit he has no body, and since he has no body he has neither mouth nor breath. Yet human speech is a readily intelligible model of divine inspiration, since it conveys the thoughts of our minds in words out of our mouth by our breath. It is in this sense that Scripture may accurately be described as ‘God-breathed’.
Secondly, the Bible is also the words of men. Some famous Christian leaders have supplemented the model of speech with other models, giving the impression that the process of inspiration was mechanical, and that the human authors played no significant role in it. For example, Tertullian said that the Scriptures were ‘dictated by the Holy Spirit’; Athenagoras of Athens wrote that ‘the Spirit used the writers as a flute-player might blow into his flute’; Augustine called them ‘pens of the Holy Spirit’, and Calvin his ‘amanuenses’. But Dr J. I. Packer has shown that these metaphors were used not to define the process of inspiration, for which they would have been inappropriate, but to indicate the result, namely that Scripture is the Word of God.
The phenomena of Scripture demonstrate quite clearly that the human authors were active and not passive in the process of inspiration. I am referring to the inclusion within the biblical text of history, literature and theology.
1. Historical narrative. A substantial amount of both Old Testament and New Testament, in fact approximately a half, consists of narrative – much of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges and Ruth, the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, Ezra, Esther and Nehemiah, and in the New Testament the Gospels and the Acts. We do not imagine that the Holy Spirit revealed this history supernaturally. No. The authors had access to historical documents from which they quoted and which on occasion they incorporated into their text, like the decree of Cyrus the Persian in Ezra 1. Also Luke tells us in the preface to his Gospel about the painstaking investigations in which he had engaged (Luke 1:1–4). So there was no passivity here. Doubtless the Holy Spirit superintended their work, but his inspiration did not make their research unnecessary.
2. Literary style. If inspiration had been a mechanical process (the Holy Spirit dictating the biblical text), we would expect to find a uniformity of style and vocabulary. Instead, we find the opposite, an extraordinary diversity of literary genre (narrative, legal code, poetry, prophetic oracle, psalms, proverbs and other wisdom literature, Gospels, letters and apocalypses), of literary styles (ranging from the refined and elegant to the popular and even vulgar), and of language (each author having his favourite words and phrases). These literary characteristics (genre, style and language) were not ironed out by inspiration.
3. Theological emphasis. In this library of sixty-six books that we call the Bible, there is a broad spectrum of theological emphasis, some of which (especially in the wisdom literature) was evidently the fruit of prolonged reflection. Indeed, it is specifically stated that ‘the Teacher . . . pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs’ and ‘searched to find just the right words’ (Eccl. 12:9–10). Thus, we believe it is not an accident that in the Old Testament Amos was the prophet of God’s justice, Hosea of his love, and Isaiah of his sovereignty, or that in the New Testament Paul was the apostle of grace and faith, James of works, John of love and Peter of hope. The Holy Spirit did not obliterate the individual personality of the human authors, any more than their literary style. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit prepared and fashioned the biblical authors (their temperament, genetic inheritance, cultural background, upbringing, education and experience) in such a way as to communicate through each a distinctive and appropriate message. For example, it was through the tragedy of Hosea’s broken marriage that God taught Israel about his steadfast covenant love, and through Luke’s global horizons as a Gentile and a traveller that God emphasized the universality of the gospel.
Thirdly, the Bible is the Word of both God and human beings. We must now bring the two authorships – divine and human – together, and insist on each without thereby contradicting the other.
On the one hand, the Bible is the Word of God. For God spoke through the human authors in such a way as to determine what he intended to say, yet not in such a way as to violate, let alone smother, the personality of the human authors he chose to pen his words.
On the other hand, the Bible is the word of men. For ‘men spoke from God’ in such a way as to use their faculties freely, yet not in such a way as to distort, let alone destroy, the message of the divine author.
God spoke his words through their words in such a way that their words were simultaneously his. As a result, what they say God says.
We have no liberty to declare such a combination impossible. To say so, as Jim Packer states with clarity, indicates
. . . a false doctrine of God, here particularly of his providence. For it assumes that God and man stand in such a relationship to each other that they cannot both be free agents in the same action. If man acts freely (i.e. voluntarily and spontaneously), God does not, and vice versa. The two freedoms are mutually exclusive. But the affinities of this idea are with Deism, not Christian Theism.
‘The cure for such fallacious reasoning’, Dr Packer continues later, ‘is to grasp the biblical idea of God’s concursive operation in, with and through the free working of man’s own mind.’
In order to clarify this further, various writers (ancient and modern, Roman Catholic and Protestant) have developed an analogy between the two authorships of Scripture and the two natures of Christ. To be sure, no analogy is perfect, and it is always perilous to argue from an analogy. In this case the imperfection is evident, for the Bible has no intrinsic deity as Christ has. Nevertheless, there is in both Christ and Scripture such a combination of the divine and the human that we must affirm each without denying the other. We must preserve each without sacrificing the other.
Thus, Jesus is both God and man. We must neither affirm his deity in such a way as to deny the reality of his humanity, nor affirm his humanity in such a way as to deny his deity. Somewhat similarly, the Bible is both divine and human in its authorship. Therefore we must neither affirm its divine origin in such a way as to deny the free activity of the human authors, nor affirm their cooperation in such a way as to deny that through them God spoke his Word.
To say that ‘Jesus is the Son of God’ is true, but a dangerous half-truth. It might even be the heresy of docetism (God pretending to be human) unless we add that Jesus is also the Son of Man.
To say that ‘the Bible is the Word of God’ is also true, but a dangerous half-truth. It might even be the heresy of fundamentalism (God dictating mechanically) unless we add that the Bible is the Word of God through the words of men.
The Bible is equally the Word of God and the word of men. This is the double authorship of the Bible.
The double approach to Scripture
The double authorship demands a double approch. Because of the kind of book the Bible is, we must approach it in two distinct yet complementary ways. Because it is the Word of God, we must read it as we would read no other book – on our knees, in a humble, reverent, prayerful and submissive frame of mind. But because the Bible is also the word of men, we must read it as we would read every other book, thoughtfully and in a ‘critical’ frame of mind. Because we evangelicals tend to neglect the latter, I will take it first.
The ‘critical’ approach to Scripture
The very mention of ‘biblical criticism’ is calculated to send shivers up the average evangelical spine. There are two reasons for this reaction, both of which need to be exorcized.
First, the word ‘criticism’ is often misunderstood. People assume that biblical critics criticize the Bible and pass uniformly negative, even destructive, judgments on it. But ‘criticism’ does not necessarily have this meaning. For example, a literary critic is not someone who criticizes literature and finds fault with everything he reads, but a scholar who reviews and assesses books. It is the same with an art or drama critic. Similarly, a biblical critic is not necessarily someone determined to discredit the biblical documents, but a scholar who examines and evaluates them from different points of view. In these spheres, ‘criticism’ means not destruction but investigation, not judgment but evaluation.
The second reason for our evangelical suspicion of biblical criticism is that the first critics about 250 years ago were extremely sceptical scholars, products of the so-called ‘Age of Reason’ or European Enlightenment. They were rationalistic and unbelieving in their approach to Scripture and consistently destructive in their conclusions. One of the earliest and worst offenders was the eighteenth-century deist Hermann Reimarus, Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of Hamburg. He was outspoken in his rejection of revelation, miracles, and the deity, atoning death and resurrection of Jesus. He also drew attention, almost with glee, to the discrepancies which he believed were to be found in the resurrection narratives. He and others like him gave biblical criticism a bad name.
But just as ‘criticism’ does not necessarily mean ‘judgment’, so its practitioners (‘biblical critics’) are not necessarily all unbelievers. Many are devout and reverent believers. Greatly to oversimplify a complex subject, we may say that there are four main types of biblical criticism. First, there is textual criticism, whose admirable goal is to establish the authentic text of Scripture. Secondly, there is historical criticism, which is concerned both to study the historical circumstances in which the biblical books were composed and to evaluate the historical element in the text itself. Thirdly, literary criticism examines both the sources which the author had at his disposal and the forms in which oral material was preserved and made available to them. The fourth, redaction criticism, is valuable because it recognizes that the biblical authors and editors (redactors) had a theological motivation behind their writing. By using these critical tools in our study, we are acknowledging the human aspects (literary, historical and theological) of the biblical text.
In all four kinds of biblical criticism the most important question concerns the presuppositions with which the critic approaches the text: are they Christian or sub-Christian? His conclusions will be determined largely by this. The three commonest sub-Christian presuppositions, which have led to disastrous conclusions, are as follows:
These presuppositions are not Christian. They reflect a thoroughgoing scepticism which is incompatible with biblical faith. Those who hold them will come into continuous collision with the Bible and with its very different understanding of history, cosmology and religion.
The ‘reverent’ approach to Scripture
Having considered the ‘critical’ approach to Scripture, we come now to the ‘reverent’ approach. They complement and do not exclude or contradict one another. For in the ‘critical’ approach we scrutinize Scripture, while in the ‘reverent’ approach we invite Scripture to scrutinize us.
Because we believe that Scripture is ‘God’s Word written’ (Anglican Article XX), it is unlike every other book. We therefore approach it as we approach no other book. We kneel – not because we worship the Bible, but because we worship the God of the Bible and desire to humble ourselves before him. We remember the words of Jesus that God actively hides himself from some (the arrogant), while revealing himself to babies (niv ‘little children’, Matt. 11:25), that is, those who are humble in their approach. So we sit at our Master’s feet, like Mary of Bethany, listening to his words (Luke 10:39). We pray like the boy Samuel, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening’ (1 Sam. 3:10). We cry to the Holy Spirit, who is the divine author of the book, to be its interpreter also, and to illumine our darkened minds. We ask God to break through our defences, until we are ready to hear not the soothing echoes of our own cultural prejudice but the thunderclap of his Word. I fear this risky humility before God is tragically absent in many biblical critics, and also in some evangelical preachers.
Just as, for a true and balanced understanding of Scripture, we must combine its divine and human elements and see it as God’s Word through the human authors, so also, for a true and balanced approach to Scripture, we must combine the critical and the reverent, and come to it with both diligent study and earnest prayer. I conclude this section with two examples, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New.
When Daniel was granted a vision beside the River Tigris, the heavenly being who appeared said to him: ‘Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them’ (Dan. 10:12).
Similarly, when Paul was anxious that Timothy would understand and obey the instructions he was giving him, he urged him to combine his own reflection with dependence on the Lord for illumination, that is, study and prayer. ‘Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this’ (2 Tim. 2:7).
If the word ‘revelation’ emphasizes God’s initiative in making himself known, and ‘inspiration’ denotes the process he employed, then ‘authority’ indicates the result. Because Scripture is the revelation of God by the inspiration of the Spirit, it has authority over us.
But our day detests authority. We are searching for freedom, and it is everywhere assumed (though falsely) that all authority will inhibit our quest, indeed that authority and freedom are incompatible. Ever since the 1960s, when the Free Speech movement erupted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the students took to the barricades on the streets of Paris, a strong anti-authority mood has prevailed. Every authority figure and every established institution is called into question. A ‘radical’ is precisely somebody who refuses to accept anything merely because it is laid down from on high or inherited from the past.
Moreover, this revolt against authority in the world has been accompanied by a loss of authority in the church. Consider the multiplicity of Protestant denominations, and our tendency to go on splintering; the competing factions in the ancient churches of the East and the West, as cracks appear in those mighty monoliths; the controversies in and about the World Council of Churches, whose doctrinal basis is good but minimal; and the unedifying spectacle on television of church leaders either not knowing what they believe or, if they do, then disagreeing with one another about it. It is a state of theological confusion, even chaos. And its basic cause is the lack of agreement on how to agree, that is, on the question of authority.
In theory, all Christians confess that ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ (e.g. Phil. 2:9–11), for after his resurrection he claimed that ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ had been delegated to him (Matt. 28:18). The whole New Testament takes it for granted that the church is under the authority of the risen Lord Jesus. Charles Lamb, the nineteenth-century British essayist, is reputed to have said, ‘If Shakespeare were to enter this room, we would rise with respect to greet him; but if that person [meaning Jesus] were to come in, we would fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment.’
For myself I think we would do more than kiss his clothing; we would confess with Thomas, ‘My Lord and my God!’ If Jesus Christ were to appear visibly in such a way that no-one would question his identity, and if he were to speak audibly in such a way that no-one would mistake his meaning, it is charitable to suppose that the church would listen, believe and obey. But Jesus Christ will not appear like that and address his church, at least not until he comes on the last day, and then it will be too late.
So how does the Lord Jesus exercise his authority and govern his church today? Four main answers have been given to this question.
1. The Roman Catholic answer is that Christ rules his church through the magisterium, the teaching authority given to the Pope and his college of bishops both in the present and through past tradition. The Orthodox churches also stress tradition, specially through the first seven ecumenical councils.
2. The liberal answer is that Christ rules his church through the individual reason and conscience, illumined by the Holy Spirit, or through the consensus of educated opinion. They sometimes add experience to reason, wanting to unite the rational with the emotional, and the authority of experience is stressed by Pentecostal and charismatic Christians too.
3. A popular Anglican answer is that Christ rules his church through the ‘threefold cord’ of Scripture, tradition and reason. In other words, authority is dispersed, not centralized. It is typical of the so-called ‘sweet reasonableness’ of Anglicanism to avoid polarizations and opt for a via media. But in practice the threefold cord is unworkable. For what happens if and when the three authorities are in conflict with one another? Then Scripture must take precedence. Richard Hooker, to whose Ecclesiastical Polity (1593–7) Anglican leaders often appeal, did not in fact teach that Scripture, tradition and reason are equal authorities. Hooker wrote:
What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth.
4. The evangelical answer is that Christ rules his church through Scripture. Scripture is the sceptre by which King Jesus reigns. Tradition is important, for it includes the teaching of the early councils and the creeds. We evangelicals should develop a deeper respect for tradition, since it is the church’s interpretation of Scripture down the ages, as the Holy Spirit has enlightened it. Not of course that all tradition correctly interprets Scripture. But to ignore it altogether is to behave as if we thought the Holy Spirit began his teaching ministry, and even came into existence, only when we appeared on the scene! Nevertheless, Jesus himself subordinated tradition to Scripture, calling the former ‘the traditions of men’ and the latter ‘the word of God’ (Mark 7:1–13). We must do the same, assigning to tradition a secondary place, including the traditions of the evangelical elders.
Reason and experience are also important, for God has made us both rational and emotional creatures. But the proper place of reason is not to stand in judgment upon Scripture, but instead to sit in humility under it, seeking to elucidate and apply it; and the experience of the burning heart is a major way by which the Holy Spirit attests the truth of his Word (Luke 24:32).
There is one particular promise of Christ which these four groups – Roman Catholics, liberals, Anglicans and evangelicals – all claim for themselves! It is his promise that, when the Holy Spirit has come, the Spirit of truth, ‘he will guide you into all truth’ (John 16:12–13). Roman Catholics apply it to their bishops as the supposed successors of the apostles. Liberals insist that it is the individual whom the Spirit leads into the truth, or the contemporary church.
A brash statement to this effect was made by Frank Griswold, former Presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church has certainly gone beyond Scripture, he conceded. How is this justified? Because ‘Jesus talked about the Spirit guiding the church into all truth’. C. E. Bennison, Bishop of Pennsylvania, went even further. ‘Because we wrote the Bible’, he has said with bland self-confidence, ‘we can re-write it.’ But we did not write the Bible. In the New Testament letters, for example, the church was not writing in its own name. On the contrary, the apostles addressed the church in the name of Christ.
Let us return to Christ’s promise that the Spirit of truth will lead ‘you’ into all the truth. Who is this ‘you’? It is a crucial hermeneutical question. I venture to say that both Catholics and liberals are wrong, for the ‘you’ cannot possibly refer to them. It refers rather to the apostles. Consider the context. Jesus said, ‘I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth . . . he will tell you what is yet to come’ (John 16:12–13). The first two ‘you’s’ unquestionably refer to the apostles, who during the earthly ministry of Jesus were unable to assimilate all he had to teach them. So the third and fourth ‘you’ must refer to them too. We cannot change the identity of the ‘you’ in the middle of the sentence. What Jesus promised was that the Spirit of truth would accomplish after Pentecost what Jesus had not been able to accomplish during his public ministry. The promise was fulfilled in the writing of the New Testament.
The reason why the church has historically submitted to Scripture, and why evangelicals continue to do so, is that our Lord Jesus himself did. Thus the authority of Christ and the authority of Scripture belong together. The church has no liberty to repudiate what her Lord has affirmed.
Of course Jesus lived between the two Testaments. He looked back to the Old Testament, which was already complete, and he looked forward to the New Testament, which had not yet begun. So the way in which he affirmed them was necessarily different. He confirmed the authority of the Old Testament by endorsing it. He obeyed its moral commands, responding to temptation with a firm gegraptai gar (‘because it stands written’); he accepted its teaching about his messianic mission as the Son of Man and the servant of the Lord (‘The Son of Man must suffer . . .’); and in his public debates with both Pharisees and Sadducees he made Scripture the final court of appeal (‘This is why you are wrong, that you don’t know the Scriptures . . .’). His own attitude of humble submission to Scripture is incontrovertible; and it is inconceivable that his disciples should have a lower view of it than their Master.
The case for the authority of the New Testament is different. The argument now is that Jesus not only foresaw the writing of New Testament Scripture, parallel to the Old Testament, but intended it for the same reason (to record and interpret what God was doing). So Jesus made provision for it by appointing and equipping his twelve apostles. Their threefold uniqueness lay in their personal authorization by Jesus, their eyewitness experience of him (Paul being added as a witness to the resurrection) and their extraordinary inspiration by the Holy Spirit. In consequence, they spoke and wrote in the name of Christ with the self-conscious authority of his apostles. Paul even thanked God for the Galatians in these terms: ‘you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself’ (Gal. 4:14). I am thankful that the Anglican bishops, gathered for their Lambeth Conference in 1958, stated that the New Testament books ‘were recognised as giving the witness of the apostles to the life, teaching, death and resurrection of the Lord and the interpretation by the apostles of these events. To that apostolic authority the church must ever bow.’
So then our Lord Jesus Christ repeatedly endorsed the authority of the Old Testament by appealing to it and submitting to it. He also deliberately provided for the writing of the New Testament by appointing and equipping his apostles. In this way both the Old Testament and the New Testament, although in different ways, bear the stamp of his authority. Therefore, if we wish to submit to the authority of Christ, we must submit to the authority of Scripture, since the authority of Scripture carries with it the authority of Christ.
We have concentrated so far, for our understanding of Scripture, on the three words ‘revelation’, ‘inspiration’ and ‘authority’, although with the addition of ‘supremacy’ to indicate that the authority of Scripture is supreme over lesser authorities like tradition, reason and experience. Now, for the sake of completeness, we need to consider three more words, which also belong to the evangelical view of the Bible.
Perspicuity
The ‘perspicuity’ of Scripture was much insisted on by the Reformers. They meant that it has a ‘per-spicuous’, ‘see-through’ or transparent quality. They did not mean by this that everything in Scripture is plain. How could they, when the Ethiopian confessed his need of a teacher to explain things to him (Acts 8:31), and when Peter confessed that Paul’s letters contained ‘some things that are hard to understand’ (2 Pet. 3:16)? If one apostle could not always understand another apostle, it would hardly be modest for us to claim that we can! No, the Reformers’ insistence was that the essence of the biblical message, the way of salvation in Christ by grace through faith, is simple enough for even the uneducated to grasp. Hence their determination to put a vernacular Bible into the hands of the lay people. The perspicuity of Scripture was well defined in the Westminster Confession (1643–6):
All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or another, that not only the learned but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them (1.7).
Sufficiency
The ‘sufficiency’ of Scripture (sola Scriptura) was another Reformation concern. The Reformers did not mean by it that Scripture is sufficient for education, but that it is sufficient for salvation. They did not suppose that Christians should read nothing but the Bible. Following the invention of printing, they encouraged people to educate themselves, to read other books, and to develop a broad culture. But for salvation only one book was necessary. The sufficiency of Scripture is due to the sufficiency of Christ to whom it witnesses.
Anglican Article VI puts the matter succinctly:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.
The article was framed with the Church of Rome in mind, since she required (and still requires) her members to accept a number of traditions, which have no biblical warrant.
Today the challenge comes rather from some Pentecostal and charismatic church leaders who claim that God is again giving apostles and prophets to his church, and that their teaching supplements Scripture. All evangelicals will want to agree that there are today both apostolic ministries (e.g. pioneer missionaries, church planters and church leaders including bishops) and prophetic ministries (e.g. in addressing specific situations with wisdom from God). But evangelicals should also be able to agree that there are no apostles or prophets today who have an authority comparable to that of the biblical apostles and prophets, whose teaching is the foundation of the church (Eph. 2:20). If there were, their teaching would need to be added to Scripture and the principle of its sufficiency would have been breached.
Inerrancy
The ‘inerrancy’ of Scripture is a third word requiring elucidation. Since the publication in 1976 of Dr Harold Lindsell’s book Battle for the Bible, the battle among American evangelicals has really been over the word ‘inerrancy’, whose equivalent in British debate has been ‘infallibility’.
There are at least five reasons why the word ‘inerrancy’ makes me uncomfortable. First, God’s self-revelation in Scripture is so rich – both in content and in form – that it cannot be reduced to a string of propositions which invite the label ‘truth’ or ‘error’. ‘True or false?’ would be an inappropriate question to address to a great deal of Scripture.
Secondly, the word ‘inerrancy’ is a double negative, and I always prefer a single positive to a double negative. It is better to affirm that the Bible is true and therefore trustworthy. J. I. Packer clarifies in his lectures that what inerrantists are essentially concerned about is ‘total trustworthiness as a consequence of entire truthfulness’. And with that all evangelicals would (or should) agree.
Thirdly, the word ‘inerrancy’ sends out the wrong signals and develops the wrong attitudes. Instead of encouraging us to search the Scriptures so that we may grow in grace and in the knowledge of God, it seems to turn us into detectives hunting for incriminating clues and to make us excessively defensive in relation to apparent discrepancies.
Fourthly, it is unwise and unfair to use ‘inerrancy’ as a shibboleth by which to identify who is evangelical and who is not. The hallmark of authentic evangelicalism is not subscription but submission. That is, it is not whether we subscribe to an impeccable formula about the Bible, but whether we live in practical submission to what the Bible teaches, including an advance resolve to submit to whatever it may later be shown to teach.
Fifthly, it is impossible to prove that the Bible contains no errors. When faced with an apparent discrepancy, the most Christian response is neither to make a premature negative judgment, nor to resort to a contrived harmonization, but rather to suspend judgment, waiting patiently for further illumination to be given us. Many former problems have been solved in this way.
When some 650 American evangelical leaders gathered in 1989 for a consultation on ‘Evangelical Affirmations’, co-sponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, they issued a fine, comprehensive statement. Here is part of their affirmation about the Bible:
We affirm the complete truthfulness and the full and final authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures as the Word of God written. The appropriate response to it is humble assent and obedience.
Then, as part of their conclusion they wrote:
Evangelicals hold the Bible to be God’s Word and therefore completely true and trustworthy (and this is what we mean by the words infallible and inerrant).
When evangelicals affirm that Scripture is God’s Word, they have two vital clarifications in mind. First, they are referring to Scripture as originally given. For example, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) affirms the inspiration of Scripture in its doctrinal basis ‘as originally given’. We do not claim authority for any particular text or translation, but only for the original text as it was written down by its author. Our critics begin at this point to smile and snigger, because of course all the biblical autographs have been lost. What is the point, they ask, of assigning authority to a text which does not exist? But we evangelicals are ready to face our critics’ mockery, for this first qualification is very important to us. We know that the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts which have come down to us, even the great codices of the fourth century ad, contain some copyists’ errors. But we do not claim divine inspiration for their mistakes! On the contrary, evangelicals are committed (as we have already noted) to the science of textual criticism, which compares manuscripts, versions (translations) and citations (quotations by the church fathers) with a view to establishing the original text. This remains one of the church’s vital responsibilities.
Secondly, we are referring to Scripture as correctly interpreted. Just as we do not claim divine authority for copyists’ mistakes, so we do not claim divine authority for interpreters’ mistakes. Moreover, in seeking to discover the true interpretation of a text, the most important principle concerns the intention of its author: ‘a text means what its author meant’.
Therefore, to ‘banish the original author as the determiner of meaning’ is to ‘reject the only compelling normative principle that could lend validity to an interpretation’. Postmodernists, however, ‘deconstruct’ texts, that is, detach them from their authors and expect their readers to determine their meaning as they wish.
Evangelicals must not surrender to this novel and disastrous deconstructionism. We prefer the Lausanne Covenant, which describes Scripture as ‘without error in all that it affirms’. This qualifying clause is essential. Just as the words ‘as originally given’ commit us to the discipline of textual criticism, so the words ‘in all that it affirms’ and ‘as correctly interpreted’ commit us to the discipline of hermeneutics. Two examples may be helpful.
First, we must not imagine that all Old Testament characters are presented to us as good examples to be imitated, for some set a bad example which is rather to be avoided (see 1 Cor. 10:1–11). In some passages we are told explicitly whether a story is recorded as a ‘warning’ for us (1 Cor. 10:11) or as an ‘encouragement’ (Rom. 15:4). At other times no moral judgment is passed, and we are left to make up our own minds in the light of the rest of Scripture. In a third kind of narrative we are given both positive and negative signals simultaneously, not least during that dark age presided over by the judges. True, Samson and Jephthah are celebrated among the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11:32, since they were loyal to Yahweh even when surrounded by Baal worship. But some of their conduct was deplorable. Samson behaved like a mixed-up, overgrown adolescent without self-control, and Jephthah should definitely not have sacrificed his daughter to his vow, since human sacrifice was one of the main evils for which God had said that the land would ‘vomit out’ its inhabitants. Although the writer does not clearly condemn the prevailing morals, he hints at his disapproval by his repeated refrain that ‘in those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit’ (Judg. 17:6; 21:25; cf. 18:1 and 19:1).
A second question concerns the Gospels. We must not impose on them our standards of computer accuracy, and expect them to conform to it. Take chronology as an example. Matthew and Mark both place Jesus’ visit to Nazareth (together with his synagogue sermon and his rejection by his own people) in the middle of his public ministry. But Luke places it at the very beginning, immediately after his baptism and temptations (Luke 4:14ff.). There is no need, however, to accuse Luke of error. He evidently sees the Nazareth incident as forecasting Jesus’ ministry and rejection. So he puts it at the beginning as a kind of signpost, deliberately presenting his chronology to make a theological point. We must allow every biblical author to lay down his own theological emphases and literary principles, and to abide by them.
Here then are the two important clarifications. While affirming the entire truthfulness and trustworthiness of Scripture, we are referring to Scripture (a) as originally given and (b) as correctly interpreted. It will mean more work for us as we labour to interpret and apply Scripture accurately, and it will remove from us some of the easy certainties which our critics suggest we are longing for. But it will enable us to guard our integrity. For although we sometimes disagree on our interpretations, the biblical text itself remains normative, and we have the permanent duty and right to keep returning to it, to keep scrutinizing all interpretations in the light of it, and to keep revising them accordingly.
I hope that this rather long chapter has demonstrated that we evangelical people are first and foremost Bible people, affirming the great truths of revelation, inspiration and authority. We have a higher view of Scripture than anybody else in the church. Our use of it should therefore correspond to our view of it.
Like everybody else, Bible people are busy people, and there is never enough time to do everything we ought or want to do. Nevertheless, we must struggle to make time every day for some personal Bible reading, since our spiritual life, health and growth are nurtured by it. And although family prayers at the breakfast table may nowadays be impossible for most, with the adults dashing to work and the children to school, yet a Christian family should be able to manage a little time together round the Bible every week, perhaps on Saturday or Sunday. As for the church, if we are pastors, I hope we will recommit ourselves to the wholesome discipline of biblical preaching, and if we are lay people encourage our pastors to do so. The conscientious exposition of the Word of God from the pulpit remains an essential characteristic of evangelical churches.
The words of Jesus, quoting Deuteronomy, still come to us across the centuries, that human beings do not live by bread only, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (e.g. Mark 4:4).
Kenneth S. Kantzer and Carl F. H. Henry (eds.), Evangelical Affirmations (Zondervan, 1990)
Alec Motyer, Look to the Rock (IVP, 1996)
J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Hodder and Stoughton, 1973); ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God (IVF, 1958); God has Spoken (Hodder and Stoughton, 1979)
John Stott, Understanding the Bible (Scripture Union, 1972)