V Faith
CHAPTER V
FAITH
The Holy Spirit is no Sceptic, and the things He has written in our hearts are not doubts or opinions, but assertions—surer and more certain than sense or life itself.
LUTHER TO ERASMUS
All thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children.
ISAIAH liv. 13
Now faith is . . . the conviction of things not seen.
HEBREWS xi. I, RSV
WE have now outlined the view of the nature of Scripture as a revelation, and of its intended function as an authority, which the Bible sets before us. The next step in our argument is to show that this view is to be received by faith. It is not necessary for our present purpose to enter into a full discussion of the nature of saving faith, as the act and attitude of self-committal whereby the convicted sinner, humbled to see his need and his natural inability even to trust, casts himself in the God-given confidence of self-despair on the mercy of Christ Jesus. This is not directly in dispute, and it seems that some anti-fundamentalists would be in broad agreement with us about it. We shall confine our discussion to the intellectual and cognitive aspect of faith, as, in general, an activity of apprehending divine revelation for what it is, and, more particularly, of receiving and revering the Bible as the Word of God.
Let us begin by asking: what is the nature of faith? 'Trust' is the general idea that the word conveys. The specific character of trust, however, is determined in each case by its object. Trust in one's wife, one's judgment or one's lucky star are three different things, though each is an instance of the same generic attitude of reliance. The confidence which we repose in men is something different from that which we place in things, and the faith which we rest in God is a form of reliance distinct from either. The difference is accounted for in each case by the nature of the object trusted. The difference between faith in God and all other attitudes of trust derives from the unique character of its object—the Creator who declares mercy to His sinful creatures. Scripture speaks of this faith as having, strictly speaking, a twofold object: the words of God, and the God who speaks them—God's truth, and God's Person. And the first is evidently basic to the second. One must know something about God before one can. know Him. Truth is fundamental to trust. It is true, as is often insisted, that biblical faith is more than fides (credence); its object is something more than a body of sound doctrine; there is no faith, in the biblical sense, without fiducia, personal trust in the living God through the living Christ. But it is equally true that faith is not less than credence. It is a false antithesis, and a very silly one, to oppose faith as trust to faith as credence; for the Christian trusts the Christ of the gospel because he believes that what the gospel says of Him is right. Did he not believe the gospel, he would have no grounds for such trust, and could not rationally exercise it. We have seen already with what emphasis the New Testament insists that there can be no faith without prior knowledge and belief of the truth of the gospel.1 It does not acknowledge as 'faith' any religious attitude of mind or heart based on other beliefs, such as is found in pagan religions. Belief of what is not God's truth will prompt the rejection of what is; and the Bible name for that (however religiously done) is unbelief.
What is the proper basis for credence? On what ground should articles of faith be believed? As we can see from what has been said, it is not rational demonstration. Truths about God, by their very nature, can be only partly grasped by man, and cannot therefore be demonstratively proved; for such proof is only possible in principle on the basis of an exhaustive understanding of its object. Articles of faith, then, are not dictates of reason. They are not in themselves unreasonable, but they are above reason; they terminate in mysteries which the human mind can express only as paradoxes—three Persons in one God, one Person in two natures, man both free and controlled, and so on. Reasoning may prepare the mind for faith in these truths, by showing their meaning and biblical basis, their congruity with the total biblical outlook and the known facts of life, and the weakness of objections made to them; but reasoning alone cannot produce faith, for faith goes further than reason could take it. Reasoning could at best suggest only probability; but the nature of faith is to be certain. Any measure of doubt or uncertainty is not a degree of faith, but an assault upon it. Faith, therefore, must rest on something more sure than an inference of probability.
Once more, then, we ask: on what account ought articles of faith to be received? On what basis may we rationally urge men to believe them? If we should say 'Believe them, because Scripture teaches them', that (though right in itself) would be an incomplete answer, because it would at once prompt the further question: 'On what grounds should we receive biblical doctrines as true?' If we should say 'Believe them, because Jesus and the apostles taught them', that (though also right) would still be an incomplete answer, because we should then be asked : 'What grounds are there for receiving their teaching as true?' In either case, our original question would merely be pushed one stage further back. Scripture answers it by resolving the ground of faith, formally, into the veracity of God and, materially, into the divine origin of the propositions put forward for belief. The proper basis for believing is, on the one hand, the acknowledgment that God speaks only truth and, on the other, the recognition of what is proposed as something which He Himself has said. Articles of faith are just truths for which God is perceived to have vouched. It is fundamental to the nature of faith to take God's word for things; acceptance on the authority of God is the biblical analysis of faith on its intellectual side. The first manifestation of faith is cognitive : it appears in the recognition of affirmations made by men—prophets, apostles, the man Christ Jesus, any biblical writer—as truths uttered by God. Faith apprehends their testimony to God as being God's own testimony to Himself, and receives and responds to it as such.1
The ground of faith, then, is the recognition of man's word as God's word. How does it come about? Through the work of the Holy Spirit, opening and enlightening the 'eyes' of the mind (which is where faith begins) so that man 'sees' and knows the divine source and spiritual meaning of the message that confronts him.2 This illumination is the direct ground of all faith's grasp of the things of God. Scripture presents it as the last stage in the complex process of revelation. Having disclosed Himself objectively in history, in His incarnate Son, and in His written, scriptural Word, God now enlightens men subjectively in experience, so that they apprehend His self-disclosure for what it is.3 Thus He causes them to know Him, and His end in revelation is achieved.
Not that the divine character of the Word which mediates His self-disclosure to men is not objectively clear. Scripture conceives of the divine character of revealed truth as something which evidences itself to the sound mind as clearly as do light and colour to the normal eye. But man's mental 'eyes' are blind through sin, and he can discern no part of God's truth till the Spirit opens them.4 Inner illumination, leading directly as it does to a deep, inescapable conviction, is thus fundamental to the Spirit's work as a teacher. It was of this that John spoke when, writing to reassure his readers that it was they and not the Gnostic seceders who knew God and had eternal life, he appealed to the 'anointing from the Holy One' which 'teacheth you concerning all things', and declared : 'The Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know him that is true.'5 Else-where, he says : 'the Spirit. . . beareth witness' to Christ, referring, apparently, to this same inner enlightenment.1 Historic Protestantism, interpreting the text in this sense, has regularly described this part of the Spirit's ministry as His witness to divine truth. It is a healing of spiritual faculties, a restoring to man of a permanent receptiveness towards divine things, a giving and sustaining of power to recognize and receive divine utterances for what they are. It is given in conjunction with the hearing or reading of such utterances, and the immediate fruit of it is an inescapable awareness of their divine origin and authority.
And when this starts to happen, faith is being born. Faith begins with the according of credence to revealed truths, not as popular, or probable, human opinions, but as words uttered by the Creator, and uttered, not only to mankind in general, but to the individual soul in particular. The personal application of the Christian message is realized as the Spirit convinces of sin of righteousness and of judgment. Credence then finds its fulfilment in trust as the sinner is enabled to cast himself on Christ the Mediator and to close with Him as Saviour. And the life of faith which he lives from then on is one of continuing credence and trust.
Now, all the divine utterances which faith apprehends are in fact scriptural affirmations; for there are no words of God spoken to us at all today except the words of Scripture (direct revelations having now ceased). Conversely, all scriptural affirmations are in fact divine utterances, and are through the Spirit apprehended as such by faith. But among the affirmations of Scripture is the biblical doctrine of Scripture which we have surveyed; and one effect of the Spirit's witnessing action is to make men bow to this doctrine. The case is just the same as with any other article of faith. The scriptural witness to this doctrine is full and clear; writer after writer affirms the divine origin and authority of the written Word, and Christ, as we saw, based Christianity upon it. Yet it is not credited by the Church apart from spiritual illumination. As the Westminster Confession puts it: 'We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverend esteem of the holy scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God; yet notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the words in our hearts.'1 This witness is not, as is sometimes supposed, an inner voice, or a mystical experience, or that sense of being gripped and searched by particular passages of which Coleridge spoke when he said : 'Whatever finds me, bears witness of itself that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit.' It is, in fact, the same witness that we have described already : that enlightening action which is the root of all faith, inasmuch as it alone enables sinners to discern and respond to revealed truth as such. The specific convictions to which it leads are those to which Scripture itself bears witness—in this case, that Scripture is from God, and that all it says is to be received as His Word. The effect of this witness is thus the self-authentication of Scripture to the Christian's conscience. We conclude that, where there is faith in Christ, and the Bible is known and read at all, there also, more or less explicit, is faith in Scripture as God's written Word.
The classic statement on the Spirit's witness in relation to Scripture is that of Calvin.2 Having rejected the idea that faith in the authoritative truth of Scripture should rest on the witness of an authoritative Church, Calvin lays down the following principle :
'They who labour to raise up a firm faith in Scripture by arguing are acting absurdly. . . . For as God alone is competent to bear witness of himself in his own word, so that word will not find credence in the hearts of men till it is sealed upon them by the inner witness of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must make his way into our hearts to assure us that they faithfully delivered that which was divinely entrusted to them. . . . Some good men are disconcerted that, while irreligious persons raise objections with impunity against the word of God, no clear proof of it is ready to hand; as if it were not the case that the Spirit is called a seal and an earnest to confirm the faith of the godly just because, until he enlightens their minds, they waver amid a multitude of doubts.' And he proceeds:
'Let this, then, remain fixed : that those whom the Holy Spirit inwardly teaches firmly acquiesce in Scripture; and that Scripture is in truth authoritative in itself (autopiston), nor is it right for it to be made subject to demonstration and arguments; but that it owes the sense of certainty which we ought to have about it to the witness of the Spirit. For though it commands reverence of itself, by its own majestic character, it only makes a serious impact on us when it is sealed on our heart by the Spirit. Enlightened by his power, therefore, we do not believe that Scripture is from God on the basis of either our own judgment, or another's; but, with a certainty that transcends human judgment, we are unshakably convinced—as though we saw God himself present in it—that it has come to us, by the ministry of men, from God's very mouth. We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which our judgment may rest, but we subject our mind and judgment to it, as something beyond reach of our assessing.'
Such, says Calvin, is the conviction of all who have the Spirit: 'I say nothing more than every believer experiences in himself, though my words fall far short of an adequate account of the reality.' Just as the Spirit teaches all Christians to receive as authoritative articles of faith the doctrines which the Scriptures assert, so He teaches them to regard as an authoritative source of doctrine the Scriptures which assert them.
Nor is this view peculiar to Calvin. Professor Alan Richardson insists with justice that Calvin here is simply crystallizing something that has always been part of the Church's faith. 'His teaching that the Christian's recognition of the authority of the Bible is due to the working of the Holy Spirit in his heart gives classical expression to a doctrine which has been believed by Christians in every century. . . . It is a doctrine of the whole Church . . . one for which support could be found in the writings of practically every leading theologian of the Church in every age.'1 Without claiming to understand all that Scripture contains, nor to have been 'found' in Coleridge's sense by every single text, the Church has from the first professed to receive the Bible's testimony to its own divine origin, and believed that it was the Spirit who taught it to do so. The doctrine of the Spirit's witness to Scripture, thus understood, is and always was part of the catholic faith.
Now, it is this catholic doctrine that explains the certainty and confidence of Evangelicals as to the divine truth and trustworthiness of the Bible. Some, as we saw, think this robust confidence unwarrantable, and explain it as a sociological phenomenon—a piece of wishful thinking prompted by the craving for certainty which we all feel, adolescents especially, in our unsettled and rootless age. Evangelicals, it is said, cling to the idea of biblical infallibility as drowning men cling to a straw—not because it is worthy of their trust, but because they want something to cling to and there is nothing else within reach. We can now see how perverse a misunderstanding this is. The evangelical certainty of the trustworthiness and authority of Scripture is of exactly the same sort, and rests on exactly the same basis, as the Church's certainty of the Trinity, or the incarnation, or any other catholic doctrine. God has declared it; Scripture embodies it; the Spirit exhibits it to believers; and they humbly receive it, as they are bound to do. It is not optional for Christians to sit loose to what God has said, and treat questions which He has closed as if they were still open. The truth is that the evangelical doctrine of Scripture is an article of the catholic faith, and the evangelical confidence in its truth is part of the Church's Spirit-given assurance of faith. It is strange that those who think Evangelicals odd for being sure of the biblical doctrine of Scripture do not see that so-called 'biblical theologians' who are not sure of it are much more odd. It is stranger still that those who accuse Evangelicals of 'heresy' for their view of the Bible should fail to grasp that it is not Evangelicals, but they themselves who have parted company with the historic catholic faith. One recalls the fond mother who watched the parade and concluded that all were out of step except her Johnny.
It will be asked why, if the whole Church does in fact experience the witness of the Spirit to Scripture, any Christian should ever deviate from the Bible's view of itself. The same question arises in connection with unscriptural views of any doctrine. It does not seem hard to answer. Christians fall into mental error, partly through mistaking or overlooking what Scripture teaches, partly through having their minds prepossessed with unbiblical notions so that they cannot take scriptural statements seriously. All heresy begins so. In this case, our issue is with the liberal approach to Scripture, and we hope to show in the next chapters that this has been determined by an unbiblical view of the Christian use of reason. Meanwhile, we would point out that, when false principles possess the minds of Christian men, they go against their own deepest spiritual instincts. Unscriptural ideas in our theology are like germs in our system. They tend only to weaken and destroy life, and their effect is always damaging, more or less. But they provoke resistance. Heretical notions may occupy Christian men's heads, leading to error of thought and practice and spiritual impoverishment; but these notions cannot wholly control their hearts. As regenerate men, it is their nature to be better than the unscriptural parts of their creed would allow. Hence they are inconsistent; it is good that they are. In this case, Christians in the liberal camp have adopted a position which logically makes reason, and not Scripture, their final authority. But, just because they are Christians and have the witness of the Spirit, it is not in their nature to follow this anti-Christian principle to its logical conclusion—which would be to dismiss as incredible all that is incomprehensible, and so to deny the whole Christian faith. Regenerate men can never do that. Hence we find that they are in practice inconsistent. Though they evade the Bible's testimony to itself, they accept at its face value its testimony to other articles of faith. Radicals who query the truth and worth of much of Scripture are yet devout Bible-readers and vigorous preachers of the gospel, and that from texts whose credit they would deny in the lecture-room. Theological students sometimes wonder at the volte-face that takes place when their lecturers enter the pulpit! The impression thus given of an intellectual double life really marks a triumph of heart over head, of faith's instinct to believe over hesitation born of mental error.
Not that the Evangelical, glad though he is to see such a triumph, will cease to maintain that liberal principles in themselves are arbitrary, un-Christian and harmful. This he ought to do, just as any Christian ought to remonstrate with any fellow-Christian whom he found professing, say, a speculative Arianism, or Pelagianism. Jude's injunction, 'contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints',1 applies as directly in the one case as in the other. And the Evangelical will contend with the greatest confidence; for he knows that the faith delivered to the saints, being in the Bible, cannot finally be lost in the Church. The Spirit indwells the Church to witness to Scripture and to what is in Scripture; and while His ministry continues, though mistakes and heresies will no doubt appear in connection with all biblical doctrines, the Church will not finally lapse from any part of the biblical faith. God Himself will maintain His own truth : He will not suffer man to deny it for ever. This doctrine of the authority of God's Word written is part of the biblical faith, plainly taught in Scripture and sealed on the hearts of all God's people by the Holy Ghost; some day, when fashions of thought that at present keep many from confessing it have been outmoded, there will be an avowed return to it. Meanwhile, Evangelicals say of it what Gabriel Hebert, as an Anglo-Catholic, says of episcopacy : 'Believing it to be a gift of God and directly related to the Gospel of God, we see in it something which in a re-integrated Christendom must become the possession of all Christians; so that now we who have it hold it in trust for those who have it not.'1 And they remember the reflection with which Calvin ends the chapter of his Institutes from which we quoted : 'Whenever we are troubled at the small number of those who believe, let us counter that by calling to mind that none grasp the mysteries of God save those to whom it is given.'