1 Op. cit.; see Chapters IV-VII, VIII, IX.
1 For an extended note on this article, see Appendix I, pp. 178 ff.
2 Italics ours. Who, we wonder, fixed this 'strict sense' ?
3 Fundamentalism and the Church of God (S.C.M., 1957), p. 22.
1 Op. cit.; see Chapters IV-VII, VIII, IX.
1 The Times, August 15, 1955.
1 Op. cit., p. 25.
2 Op. cit., p. 10.
1 Published by Crusade, 30 Bedford Place, W.C.1.
1 'Both sides hold the orthodox faith,' says Hebert (op cit., p. 12); and Philip Lee-Woolf, a former General Secretary of the Student Christian Movement, writes thus: 'I do not think that the centre of the controversy is doctrinal in the ordinary sense. As a whole, and at their best, conservative Evangelicals lay splendid stress upon the fundamentals of the Christian revelation . . . the great pivots are there—sin and grace, revelation and Jesus Christ. . . the doctrinal fundamentals are not in dispute' (Christian News-Letter, July 1957, p. 32).
1 See Chapters III and IV below.
1 Op. cit., p. 42.
1I. X.
1 See also 'The Word "Fundamentalist" ' by Douglas Johnson in The Christian Graduate, March 1955, pp. 22 ff.
1 We do not suggest that those who are opposing 'Fundamentalism' in the present debate all hold these particular views, or anything in detail like them. But we confess that we think it correct to describe their position as generically liberal for reasons which we shall give in their place in Chapter VII below.
1 Christianity and Liberalism, pp. 7 f.
2 Op. cit., p. 78.
1 The Fundamentals, I.4.
2 Op. cit., pp. 17 ff.
1 Church History of Britain, 1837 ed., II, p. 474.
1 The Force of Truth, n.d., pp. 22 f.
1J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir, pp. 336 f. For a fuller discussion of Fundamentalism by an evangelical theologian, leading to similar conclusions, see Carl F. H. Henry, Evangelical Responsibility in Contemporary Theology, especially Chapter II (Eerdmans, 1957).
1 See also Chapters V and VI.
2 The Fundamentalist Controversy, 1918–31, pp. 127 f.
1 Machen himself showed how this might be done in two masterly critical studies, The Origin of Paul's Religion (1921) and The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930).
1 What is Faith?, pp. 17 f.
2 J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir, p. 337.
1 The RV margin and RSV read 'and ye all know', perhaps rightly; but this does not affect our point.
1 Acts iv. 31, vi. 2, viii. 4, 14; Col. i. 25; 1 Thes. i. 8, ii. 13, etc.
2 Col. iii. 16; 1 Cor. i. 18, RV.
3 2 Cor. vi. 7; Col. i. 5; Eph. i. 13; 2 Tim. ii. 15; Jas. i. 18.
4 Gal. iii. 1, v. 7; 1 Pet. i. 22; cf. Rom. vi. 17, x. 16; 2 Thes. i. 8; 1 Pet. iv. 17.
1 Tit. i. 1, RV.
2 Gal. v. 2–4, RV.
3 Gal. i. 8, 9, RV.
4 1 Jn. iv. 1; cf. a Jn. 7.
1 1 Tim. vi. 20, 21, RV.
2 Mk. vii. 6–13; Col. ii. 18; see below, pp. 49 ff.
1Jn. xvii. 17–23.
1 Westminster Confession, I. x.
1 Cf. Acts ii. 16 ff., iii. 18 ff., x. 43, xiii. 33 ff., etc.
2 Mt. v. 17.
1 Gal. iii. 29, vi. 16; cf. Rom. iv. 11 ff., xi. 17 ff.
2 Ex. xxxi. 18; Dt. iv. 13, x. 5.
3 Cf. Hab. ii. a.
4 Cf. Je. xxxvi.
1 Rom. iii. 2.
2 Lv. xxvi; Dt. xxviii; cf. 2 Ki. xxii. 13
3 For fuller treatments of Christ's attitude to Scripture, see R. V. G. Tasker, Our Lord's Use of the Old Testament (Westminster Chapel, 1953) or Chapter II of The Old Testament in the New Testament, 2nd ed. (S.C.M., 1954), and J. W. Wenham, Our Lord's View of the Old Testament (Tyndale Press).
1 Jn. vii. 16, xii. 49 f.
2 Mk. xiii. 31.
3 Mt. vii. 24 ff.
4 Jn. xii. 48.
5 Mk. i. 22; Mt. vii. 29.
6 Mt. v. 18; cf. Lk. xvi. 17.
7 Mt. xix. 4 f.
8Jn. x. 35.
9 Mk. xii. 24.
10 Mt. xii. 3, 5, xix. 4, xxi. 16, 42.
1 Mt. ix. 13; cf. xii. 7, both quoting Ho. vi. 6.
2 The case for this view of the scope of Mt. v. 21 ff. is convincingly argued by N. B. Stonehouse, The Witness of Matthew and Mark to Christ (Philadelphia, 1944); cf. the general verdict of R. V. G. Tasker, The Old Testament in the New Testament, p. 32: 'Our Lord came into conflict with the Pharisees not because He was opposed to the written word of the Law, to which both He and they appealed, but because in His judgment the formalism and the casuistry of the legal system which the Pharisees had superimposed upon the Law rendered them insensitive to the living word of God; . . . What roused His antagonism were such things as the casuistry which justified the practice of Corban; the false deduction that the command to love one's neighbour implied that one should hate one's enemies; the limiting of the divine prohibition of murder and adultery to the specific acts of murder and adultery; the assumption that the only oaths which need be taken seriously were those made by the actual use of the divine name; and the extension of the exception clause in the law of divorce so as to permit divorce "for any cause" whatever.'
3 Mt. v. 17.
4 Mt. iv. 1 ff.; Lk. iv. 1 ff.; cf. Mt. xvi. 21–23.
5 Cf. Mk. ii. 24 ff., iii. 4 f.; Lk. xiii. 14 ff.; Jn. vii. 21 ff.
1 Lk. iv. 18 ff., quoting Is. lxi. I ff.
2 Mt. viii. 16 f., quoting the Greek version of Is. liii. 4.
3 Mt. xi. 5.
4 Mk. viii. 31; cf. ix. 31, x. 33 f.
5 Lk. xviii. 31.
6 Mt. xxvi. 24.
7 Lk. xxii. 37, RSV, quoting Is. liii. 12.
8 Mt. xxvi. 53, 56, RSV.
1 Lk. xxiv. 44, 46 f., RSV; cf. verses 25 ff.
2 Jn. v. 39 f., 46 f., RSV.
1 Mk. xiii. 31, 32.
2 Op. cit., p. 37.
1 Acts iv. 25; Rom. i. 2, ix. 17; Gal. iii. 8, etc.
1 Rom. xv. 4; 1 Cor. x. II, RSV; 1 Pet. i. 12, RSV.
2 Rom. iv. 23 f., RSV.
3 2 Tim. iii. 15.
4 Cf. 2 Cor. iii. 14 ff.
1 Cf. Acts xx. 35; 1 Cor. vii. 10 (quoting the words recorded in Mt. v. 32).
2 For a fuller study of the nature of apostolic authority, see N. Geldenhuys, Supreme Authority (Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1953), pp. 45 ff., and N. B. Stonehouse in The Infallible Word (Tyndale Press, 1946), pp. 110ff.
3 Gal. i. 1.
4 Gal. ii. 7 f.; 2 Cor. x. 8, xiii. 10.
5 2 Cor. v. 19, 20.
6 1 Thes. ii. 13.
7 1 Cor. ii. 13.
8 Jn. xvi. 12 ff.
9 Gal. i. 8.
10 2 Thes. iii. 6; cf. 1 Thes. iv. 2.
11 I Cor. xiv. 37, 38, RSV.
12 1 Cor. xi. 2; 2 Thes. ii. 15.
13 2 Thes. iii. 6, 14.
1 The formation of the New Testament canon is a difficult and complex subject which we cannot fully discuss here. There is a helpful treatment in N. B. Stonehouse's chapter on 'The Authority of the New Testament' in The Infallible Word (pp. 88 ff.).
2 Cf. 1 Thes. v. 27; Col. iv. 16; see also Rev. i. 3.
3 The evidence is reviewed by Geldenhuys, Supreme Authority, pp. 90 ff.
4 2 Pet. iii. 16. This Epistle is commonly held to be a pseudonymous document dating from the mid-second century: but see our remarks in Appendix II, pp. 182 ff.
1 See Chapter IV.
1 2 Tim. iii. 16, RSV.
1 Col. i. 25, 5, 23.
1 In the three pages which he allots to the discussion of authority (pp. 24 ff.), Dr. Hebert simply makes a general affirmation of the authority of Christ and of the gospel, and does not mention Christ's teaching on biblical authority at all.
1 I Cor. xiii. 9.
1 For a thorough examination of the biblical material, see B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1951), especially his definitive study of 'The Biblical Idea of Inspiration' (Chapter III). This study and its companion, 'The Biblical Idea of Revelation', also appear as Chapters I and II in Biblical Foundations, a symposium of Warfield's writings (Tyndale Press, 1958, 15s.).
2 The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, pp. 245 ff.
1 Cf. Je. i. 5; Is. xlix. I, 5; Gal. i. 15.
2 Lk. i. 3.
3 Cf. Pr. x. i, xxiv. 23, xxv. 1.
1 See p. 10 above; and Appendix I, pp. 178 f.
2 Op. cit., p. 56.
1 Mt. v. 18; a Tim. iii. 16.
2 Eph. i. 11.
3 Ps. cxxxv. 6.
1 Acts i. 16, iv. 25.
1 Op. cit., pp. 76 f.
2 Op. cit., p. 78.
1 Warfield works this out in detail: 'as, in the case of Our Lord's person, the human nature remains truly human while yet it can never fall into sin or error because it can never act out of relation with the Divine nature into conjunction with which it has been brought; so in the case of the production of Scripture by the conjoint action of human and Divine factors, the human factors have acted as human factors, and have left their mark on the product as such, and yet cannot have fallen into that error which we say it is human to fall into, because they have not acted apart from the Divine factors, by themselves, but only under their unerring guidance'. The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, pp. 162 f.; Biblical Foundations, pp. 74 f.
1 Jn. v. 39; Lk. xxiv. 27, 44 ff.
2 Cf. 2 Cor. iii. 14–16.
3 See Ps. cxix, where God's 'word' (singular: dabhar or imra, 42 times) is a synonym for His 'law' (torah, instruction), 'testimonies', 'precepts', 'statutes', 'commandments', etc.
4 See p. 42 above.
1 Rom. iii. 2; see Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, Chapter VIII, for a thorough discussion of this phrase.
1 Warfield, op. cit., pp. 299 ff.
1 Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, ed. Hastings, s.v. 'Scripture' II. 586; reprinted in Warfield, op. cit., pp. 238 f.
1 It has been pointed out to me that the use of the phrase 'word of God' in this book may cause confusion if it is not explained. The rule is that when 'word' is spelt with a capital 'W', the reference is to Scripture, or the total biblical message. When it is spelt with a small 'w', the reference is to some particular divine utterance, such as the Christian gospel (which is what the phrase denotes in the New Testament, as we saw). Every such word of God is itself part of the Word of God, which is the normative account of all that God says to His Church.
1 'As Originally Given' (a comment on the reference in the I.V.F. doctrinal basis to 'the divine inspiration and infallibility of Holy Scripture, as originally given'), in The Theological Students' Fellowship Terminal Letter, Spring 1956, p. 3. The phrase in inverted commas is from the Westminster Confession, I. viii.
1 Bernard Ramm makes a striking observation on Christ's appeal to logic: 'With reference to logical forms our Lord used analogy, Luke xi. 13; reductio ad absurdum, Matt. xii. 26; excluded middle, Matt. xii. 30; a fortiori, Matt. xii. 1–8; implication, Matt. xii. 28; and law of non-contradiction, Luke vi. 39' (The Pattern of Authority, Eerdmans, 1957, p. 51). The list could be extended.
2 Cf. Mk. xii. 26, 27; Gal. iii. 10–12; Rom. ix. 15–18, etc.
3 Westminster Confession, I. vi.
1 See Cranmer, Remains (Parker Society), p. 19; Jewel, Works (P.S.), I. Bo; cf. Ridley, Works (P.S.), p. 16, 'the infallible word of God'. The Latin equivalent is older still: Wycliffe speaks of Scripture as 'infallibilis. . . regula veritatis' (De Veritate Sacrae Scriptural, XXIV; written 1377–80), and Gerson (ob. 1429) in his Tractatus de Examine Doctrinarum, II. 17, describes Scripture as 'tanquam regula sufficiens et infallibilis pro regimine totius ecclesiastici corporis'. I owe these references to the Rev. R. T. Beckwith.
2 I. v.
3 Tit. i. 2.
4 1 Pet. i. 23–25; Ps. cxix. 89.
5 Jn. x. 35; Lk. xvi. 17; cf. Mt. v. 18.
1 2 Tim. iii. 16.
1 Attempts to make Scripture teach science, either explicitly or by implication, have occasioned much fruitless labour, from post-Reformation days to the present time. For a review of some of these attempts, and a stimulating outline of the positive relation of Scripture to science, see R. Hooykaas, Philosophia Libera: Christian Faith and the Freedom of Science (Tyndale Press, 1957).
2 This statement should perhaps be illustrated. It is often said that the Bible pictures the universe as like a house, of which the earth is the ground floor (standing on pillars, 1 Sa. ii. 8; and having foundations, Jb. xxxviii. 4), heaven the first floor (divided from the earth by a solid firmament, which acts as a ceiling for the earth, Gn. i. 8, and a floor for heaven, Ex. xxiv. 10), and Sheol, or Hades, the cellar (the pit into which the dead go down, Ps. lv. 15). Water is stored in heaven above the firmament (Gn. i. 7; Ps. cxlviii. 4) and rain starts and stops according as holes are opened and shut in the celestial roof (the windows of heaven, Gn. vii. 11). Again, it is often said that the Bible thinks of man's consciousness as diffused throughout his whole physical structure, so that each part of him is an independent centre of thought and feeling: thus, his bones speak (Ps. xxxv. 10), his bowels yearn (Gn. xliii. 30), his ear judges (Jb. xii. 11), his kidneys instruct him by night (Ps. xvi. 7), etc. It may be doubted whether these forms of speech were any more 'scientific' in character and intent than modern references to the sun rising, or light-headedness, or walking on air, or one's heart sinking into one's boots, would be. It is much likelier that they were simply standard pieces of imagery, which the writers utilized, and sometimes heightened for poetic effect, without a thought of what they would imply for cosmology and physiology if taken literally. And language means no more than it is used to mean. In any case, what the writers are concerned to tell us in the passages where they use these forms of speech is not the inner structure of the world and men, but the relation of both to God.
1 Op. cit., p. 43.
1 Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1953.
2 Op. cit., pp. 96–98 and Chapter VII.
3 Op. cit., p. 40.
4 For the meaning of this term, see pp. 102 ff. below.
1 P. 139 and Chapter IV. His equation of the incompleteness of Old Testament revelation with error is an irrelevance. His repeated assumption of the legitimacy of rejecting, 'on critical grounds', such biblical affirmations as that Paul wrote the Pastoral Epistles begs the whole question of critical method; see Chapter VI below, and Appendix II, pp. 182 ff.
1 For an excellent introduction to the discipline of biblical interpretation, see A. M. Stibbs, Understanding God's Word (Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1950).
1 Tyndale, Works (Parker Society), I. 304 ff. The judicious Richard Hooker was making the same point when he wrote: 'I hold it for a most infallible rule in the exposition of Scripture, that when a literal construction will stand, the furthest from the literal is commonly the worst' (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, V. lix. 2).
2 For a good short review of some of the narrative and didactic forms of Scripture, see J. Stafford Wright, Interpreting the Bible (Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1955).
1 P. 102 above.
1 Mt. xix. 3–8, dealing with Dt. xxiv. 1.
2 I. ix.
1 Ps. cxix. 130, RSV.
2 Westminster Confession, I. vii.
1 Cf. 2 Pet. iii. 16.
1 Ep. lxxxii.
1 1 Cor. ii. 14.
2 1 Cor. i. 25; see the whole passage, i. 18 ff.
3 Mt. xv. 14, xxiii. 16, 17, 19, 26; Jn. ix. 39–41.
4 Mt. xi. 25, xvi. 17.
5 Jn. xiv. 26, xv. 26, xvi. 13, 14.
6 Jn. xiv. 26, xvi. 12, 13, xvii. 20.
7 1 Cor. ii. 4.
1 See pp. 42 f. above.
1 1 Thes. ii. 13; 2 Thes. ii. 11, 12; cf. Rom. ii. 8; 2 Tim. ii. 25; Tit. i. 1; 1 Pet. i. 22, etc.
2 Jn. iii. 3; 1 Cor. ii. 14, 15; 2 Cor. iv. 6; Eph. i. 18, etc.
3 Cf. Mt. xi. 25, xvi. 17; Gal. i. 16.
4 2 Cor. iv. 4; Eph. iv. 18.
5 1 Jn. ii. 20, 27, v. 20.
1 1 Jn. v. 7.
1 1 . v.
2 Institutes of the Christian Religion, I. vii.
1 Christian Apologetics (S.C.M., 1947), pp. 212 ff.
1 Jude 3, RV.
1 Op. cit., p. 124.
1 An important book for study in connection with this chapter is A. Lecerf, Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics (Lutterworth, 1949), especially Part II.
1 Cf. Rom. xiv. 22, 23.
2 Cf. Pss. xxv. 4 f., cxix. 12 (and nine times more), 71, 73; Mt. xi. 29; Jn. xiv. 26, etc.
1 See Appendix II, pp. 182 ff.
1 Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 313 f.
1 Op. cit., p. 140.
1 Gn. i. 28.
2 Gf. 1 Jn. ii. 15 f.; Rom. xii. 2; 2 Tim. iv. 10; Jas. iv. 4.
3 Phil. i. 21.
4 Mt. xxii. 37.
1 Cf. Acts xvii. 2, xviii. 4, 19, xxiv. 25.
1 Gal. i. 8, 9.
1 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5, RV; see the whole passage, i. 17–ii. 16.
2 Fundamentalism and Evangelism, p. 25.
1 Gn. iii. 5, RSV.
1 Op. cit., p . 11.
2 Op. cit., pp. 22 f.
1 See What is Christianity? (2nd ed., 1901).
2 Pp. 25 ff. above.
3 The Interpretation of the Bible, ed. C. W. Dugmore (S.P.C.K., 1944), pp. 102 f.
4 Pp. 25, 27 above.
5 Op. cit., p. 101.
1 Hebert, op. cit., pp. 22 f.; quoted above, p. 142.
2 So P. Lee-Woolf, art. cit., p. 36.
1 So Hebert, op cit., pp. 24, 78.
2 Op. cit., p. 23.
1 Review in Inter-Varsity, Autumn 1957, p. 17.
1 Op. cit., p. 74.
1 A. Richardson in A Theological Word-book of the Bible (S.C.M., 1950), s.v. 'Adam'; quoted by Hebert, op. cit., p. 39. (Hebert himself does not agree with this.)
2 See P. E. Hughes, Scripture and Myth (Tyndale Press, 1956), pp. 7, 11, etc. Bultmann goes on to advocate dropping the mythological mode of stating this 'meaning'.
1 Lk. vi. 46.
2 Ps. xix. 12, 13, RV.
1 Eph. i. 11.
1 Cor. xv. 17.
1 Op. cit., p. 83, our italics.
2 Kidner (loc. cit.) calls attention to this implication of the sentence from Hebert last quoted in the text. 'It is instructive to observe where the conditional clause comes. . . . This is no accident of phraseology, for he has already owned that if the resurrection story had been given only in a single, well-turned narrative, or had attempted descriptions of our Lord's appearance, etc., we might well have had to judge it an artificial construction. Yet it could have been reported in such terms, with perfect veracity. The true story would not have rung true, and the historian would have withheld belief as conscientiously as Doubting Thomas.' And what should the Church do when (as happens) some reputable historians deny that the resurrection stories as they stand ring true? Why should we be guided by the verdict that Hebert would doubtless pass on them, rather than by that which they would doubtless pass on Hebert ? Such considerations make plain the bottomless subjectivism of this method.
1 See 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5, RV.
2 1 Thes. ii. 13.
3 It should perhaps be emphasized that we do not mean by this that Scripture history is written according to the canons of modern scientific history. Biblical historians are not concerned to answer all the questions which modern historians ask, nor to tell their story with the detailed completeness to which the modern researcher aspires. It is no more possible to write a full history of Israel from the Old Testament documents than to write a complete biography of Christ from the four Gospels, or a full record of the expansion of Christianity during its first thirty years from Acts. The biblical writers had their own aims and interests guiding their selection of the evidence, and their own conventions for using it; and if we fail to take account of these things in interpreting what they wrote, we violate the canon of literal interpretation: cf. pp. 102 ff. above. Our point in the text is simply that, when Scripture professes to narrate fact, faith receives the narrative as factual on God's authority, and does not conclude it to be legendary, or mythical, or mistaken, or mere human authority.
1 Cf. Rom. i. 20–25.
1 Op. cit., pp. 117 ff.
1 O. R. Johnston, in The Theological Students' Fellowship Terminal Letter, Autumn 1957, pp. 12 f.
1 What is Faith?, pp. 41 ff.
1 P. 10 above.
1 1917 ed., II. 16 (J. M. Gray).
2 Op. cit., p. 60, quoting T. C. Hammond, Inspiration and Authority, p. 23.
3 P. 56.
4 The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, p. 173 n.
1 J. W. Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, 1905 reprint, p. 86.
2 2 Tim. iii. 16, the text of Burgon's sermon.
3 Op. cit., pp. 112–114.
1 Op. cit., p. 91.
2 New Bible Commentary, p. 539.
3 For a fuller defence of this view of Ecclesiastes by an evangelical scholar, see E. J. Young, Introduction to the Old Testament, pp. 339 f.
1 Op. cit., p. 1063.