Presuppositional Defense of Scripture

It is not much of a secret these days that we have numerous people in American as well as other western cultures that want to be numbered with the saints and identified as Christian without having to hold either to the one and only ancient standard of belief and practice that has been handed down in the Church from it’s inception. I have encountered a very kind man over at Michael Kruger’s blog who fits this category very well. He was reared in a Southern Baptist Church in what he calls were the traditional teachings of conservative Christianity. Now, my new friend says that he no longer thinks the Bible is the inspired, authoritative Word of God that is both binding and our final authority for faith and practice. He also has denied that God would assign a 16 year-old unregenerate youth to eternal damnation because that punishment would just not be just. Additionally, he has denied that Adam is a literal historical figure, claiming that all ancient writers wrote in non-literal ways to convey history and that there stories should not be interpreted as actual history. Adam is one of many, many myths recorded in the OT as far as it goes and we should not read more into that account than we need to in order to learn the lessons that author of Genesis was seeking to convey. What were those lessons? It is really difficult to say based on such a hermeneutic. The purpose of this blog is to provide a very short defense of the Christian claim that the Bible, as the Word of God, is self-authenticating, self-sufficient, and self-interpreting, and as such, it is authoritative and binding on the covenant community.

The Psalmist tells us “In God, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust;” (Ps. 56:4) Here we see the Psalmist actually praising not God, but God’s word. So much for bibliolatry. Then again just a few verses later,        “In God, whose word I praise, In the Lord, whose word I praise.” (Ps. 56:10) Clearly the Psalmist had the highest possible view of Scripture if he is going to actually praise it. The Psalmist believed that God’s word purifies us from sin. “How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word.” (Ps. 119:9) If the Word of God purifies, then it follows that it must itself be of the purest essence. The Word of God is holy and being holy, it sanctifies. The Psalmist states this again in a different way, Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You. (Ps. 119:11) This ancient view that the Word of God, being holy, being true, being pure, being perfect, has a cleansing effect is restated in the NT. We will come to that in due time. Suffice it to say that ancient writings of the OT inform us that the Word of God is to be praised and that this Word is holy, perfect, and that it cleanses from sin and helps protect us from sin and error.

Solomon tells us in the second chapter of Proverbs that the Word of God imparts wisdom, knowledge, righteous judgment, understanding, discernment, and the fear of God. It delivers us from the evil way. Repeated we are instructed in the Proverbs to given attention to the Word of God and by it we shall live. The theme throughout the Proverbs is that the Word of God produces everything we need to order our lives in a wise, righteous, and holy manner from beginning to end. The wisest human to ever live thought that the very key to knowledge and understanding was situation in the Word of God.

Jesus affirmed that man lives by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. In Matt. 15:4-6, Jesus identified Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy as the Word of God. In fact, Jesus accused the Pharisees of refusing to recognize the force or power of the Word of God – invalidating it’s authority by replacing it’s clear teachings with their own traditional views which were an admixture of ancient Scripture and autonomous Jewish philosophy. This is significant because Jesus has now identified the Sacred Writings, the Scripture, with the Word of God.

Jesus Himself, according to John was not only God incarnate, He was the Word of God made flesh. Not only this, the words of Jesus were also the Word of God because Jesus is God. Jesus said that those who hear His word and do not do it are like the fool who builds his house on the sand so that when judgment comes, he is destroyed by his own refusal to acknowledge the power and authority inherent in the Word of God. (Matt. 7:24) Moreover, Jesus said that if anyone was ashamed of His Word in this life, He would be ashamed of them in the life to come. (Mk. 8:38) In fact, Jesus told us that heaven and earth will pass away but His Word will NEVER pass away. The Word of God is an abiding Word that will never fade away. Why is it then that professing Christians in modern western culture, and especially here in America, seem to want to do all they can to cast doubt on God’s Word and to ignore it, to replace it, to judge it, and to reduce it to the word of mere unsophisticated, ancient men whose ways are outdated and should be abandoned for more modern, enlightened customs and beliefs? The answer is simple: there is neither love nor fear of God in his or her heart. They are still in their sin. Unbelief is the dominant force in their thoughts.

Jesus believed that the Scriptures were the key to understanding and avoiding error, the same as the Psalmist did. (Matt. 22:29) He accused the Jews of erring because they did not understand the Scripture. In other words, the Scripture is right in all it teaches and if you would understand Scripture, you would avoid error. The key to avoiding being wrong about these concepts is situated in understanding Scripture because Scripture is right about them. Jesus said that the Scriptures impart eternal life. This is exactly what Solomon echoed in Proverbs repeatedly and the Psalmist in reference to the power of the commandment to impart life. Jesus also says that the Scripture cannot be broken. (Jn. 10:35) The Scriptures are indestructible according to Jesus. If one looks at what Jesus calls the Word of God and what He calls the Scripture, they are synonymous. Why would a follower of Jesus claim that the Word of God, or the Scripture, is not binding on their life? Obviously if we look at Jesus’ use of Scripture and the Word of God throughout the gospels, it is clear that His view of the Scripture is that it is the Word of God and that it most certainly is authoritative and binding upon His followers.

We now come back to the view that the Scriptures have a sanctifying effect on the Christian. Jesus Himself said, Sanctify them in truth; your word is truth. (Jn. 17:17) Jesus also said to the disciples that they are clean because of the Word, which I have spoken to you. (Jn. 15:3) Here we have the truth of God interchangeably used with the Word of God. Additionally, the Scriptures are the Word of God. God’s word is God’s truth. Therefore, Scripture is God’s truth. The Scriptures, the Word of God, and Truth are all used synonymously. To deny Scripture is to deny God’s truth. To say that Scripture is not authoritative or binding is to say that God’s truth is not authoritative or binding. To claim that Scripture is not God’s Word is to deny that Scripture is God’s truth. To deny that Scripture is God’s Word is to contradict Jesus’ claim that Scripture is the Word of God.

Paul, writing to the Ephesian Christians tells us that Christ has sanctified the Church, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word. (Eph. 5:26) From the numerous references to the Scripture cleansing us, helping us to avoid sin, purifying us, keeping our way clean, sanctifying us, it seems we have more than enough evidence to conclude that the Bible is an instrument by which God sanctifies His chosen people.

Paul, in his letter to the younger Timothy writes, You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:14-17) Paul is not requesting that Timothy do this, he is commanding him to do these things. The sacred writings, Holy Scripture, the Word of God, the Truth, is able to give you wisdom that leads to salvation through faith. Scripture is the source of salvation because it is in Scripture that we have preserved to us, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then Paul argues that all Scripture is God-breathed, the product of God, and as such, it does a wonderful work in our lives. Paul did not qualify this statement because there was no need. Obviously Timothy understood what Paul was saying. The Scriptures are the standard by which we are taught, reproved, corrected, and trained in righteousness. Only training in Scripture and by Scripture can lead to a man that is a “man of God, adequate, equipped for every good work. The word adequate here means qualified. In other words, it is divine Scripture that guides and equips us to be godly men who are qualified to engage in “every” good work. If it is a “good work” as defined by God, only Scripture can equip us to be qualified to perform it. Paul had the highest view of Scripture. Did Paul think that other NT writings were Scripture? According to 1 Tim. 5:18, he did. In that text Paul quotes Luke 10:7 and Deut. 25:4 both as Scripture. Hence, Paul viewed Luke on par with Moses. Being Scripture, they are equally viewed as the Word of God. After all, Paul is quoting them in the context of authority.

Peter tells us that no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (2 Peter. 1:19) We should take care not to call the Word of God the word of men. It is an act of blasphemy to lower the divine Word in such a manner. Then again, in 2 Peter 3:15-16, Peter issues an ominous warning: “and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.” Two very important points can be easily observed in this text. First, Paul’s writings were already understood as on equal footing with the rest of the Scriptures, the Word of God, divine Truth. Second, people that twist the things that Paul writes do so to their own destruction. Such would not be possible unless what Paul wrote was authoritative and binding on the conscience.

Every system has for it’s final authority, a standard that is located within the system. For example, if someone claims that empiricism is the standard by which all truth claims are justified, then that claim itself cannot be subjected to an external source without proving itself false. This is exactly the same with Christianity. If we appeal to something else outside of Scripture to argue for it's final authority, then that thing, be it empiricism, or rationalism, or existentialism, or whatever, now replaces Scripture as the arbiter of truth. The problem, in the end, with every other non-Christian view is that they all reduce to irrationalism. They move from claims to mystery to irrationalism while Christianity moves from claims to mystery to the self-contained ontological triune God revealed in Scripture.

Opponents of Biblical Christianity seem to want to read a text that says the Bible is the self-attesting, final authority for faith and practice before they will accept it as such. Such a demand is irrational and displays a profound ignorance. Not a single author of the NT was alive to witness the collection of all the other author’s writings together at one time in one place. The approach we take then is an a posteriori approach examining each epistle one by one to see if it presents itself as an authoritative expression of the tradition and revelation that began with Jesus Christ. When we take that approach, we see in every single epistle, the marks of authority, commands, authoritative instructions, and the expectation on the part of the author that his audience will respect and obey his letter.

My friend has worn the word rational out to be frank with my readers. In order for something to be accepted as binding, he says that it must be considered rational to him. But why can’t each man make the same claim? And if they can, does it not follow that each man can do what is right in his own eyes, based on what he thinks is rational? If that is the situation, how can my friend condemn a God that judges the 16 year-old unregenerate men that die rejecting Christ? It is perfectly rational to me that God can do exactly that. And if my reason is really what determines what is binding and true and reasonable, then what basis does my opponent have for contending with me? The fact is if we reject the objective authority of Biblical revelation in Scripture as our final standard, the only alternative is a radical subjectivism where each man, based on what is rational to him, decides what beliefs are justifiable, and what behaviors should be praised and those that should be avoided. In fact, the summum bonum itself becomes a moving target based on the whims and impulses of billions of men.

There is so much more that could be said but space and time dictate that this will have to do for now. Suffice it to say that no man truly understand the true nature of Scripture, or the gospel, unless God opens His eyes to it's wondrous truth.  We do not arrive at a proper understanding of Scripture by historical evidence, empirical demonstrations, or rational argumentation. We can only rightly assess Scripture when our hearts and minds have been captured by the divine, regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Remember, Jesus said the reason they do not believe is because it has not been granted to them to believe. No one comes to a right understanding of Scripture unless it has been granted to them by the Father. (Jn. 6:65) Jesus said, But you do not believe because you are not my sheep. The casual relationship between being sheep and believing and not being sheep and not believing is impossible to miss.

A Presuppositional Approach to the Defense of Scripture Part 2 of ??

When we talk about defending the Christian claim that the Bible is the Word of God, what we are talking about is defending the idea that this specific "belief" about the Bible is actually justified. Now justification for truth claims can be an extremely thorny philosophical issue. My goal is to keep it as simple as possible. Generally speaking, when we talk about epistemic justification, we usually bring in concepts like a posteriori knowledge versus a priori knowledge, and analytic statements versus synthetic statements. If one is not careful, they can end up falling victim to the folly of attempting to use unregenerate, humanistic philosophy and criteria to justify the claim that the Bible is in fact the Word of God. The problem is that empiricism nor rationalism nor any other philosophical system can produce adequate epistemic justification for the claim that the Bible is the Word of God. To think that such a project is even possible exposes serious flaws in one's theological grid. Only genuine Christian theism presented faithfully and consistently as an entire system has the intellectual power to reach the standards necessary to demonstrate the truthfulness of the claim.

Quite frankly, an appeal to human reason and/or empirical data is inadequate to provide a sufficient defense to sustain the claim that belief in the Bible as the Word of God is actually true. To what then must we appeal if we are to demonstrate that belief in the Bible as the Word of God rises to the level of true knowledge? Is this belief self-justifying or can we offer justification for the belief that is itself self-justifying?

The nature of human knowledge, says the Christian worldview is, strictly speaking, entirely revelational in character. Since the state of affairs is what the Bible says it is, all knowledge must be revelational in nature. Everything that man knows about himself and about the universe, and indeed about God, he knows because God has made it known to him. The revelation of God to man is itself sufficiently clear. How man responds to that revelation however, is another matter altogether.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Rom. 1:20) The nature of man is such that unless God revealed something to him, he would know nothing at all about himself, about the universe around him, or about God.

“But revelation, after all, is the correlate of understanding and has as its proximate end just the production of knowledge, though not, of course, knowledge for its own sake, but for the sake of salvation.”[2]

Revelation is the sole key to any and all human knowledge. Calvin wrote,

“Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”[3]

 Since God is creator of all that is, it necessarily follows that all knowledge is deposited in Him. “In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” It follows that human knowledge is entirely dependent on God. Hence, the nature of epistemology, according to the Christian worldview, is revelational. The source for epistemology is God. The mode of epistemology is both natural and supernatural revelation. Human knowledge comes through God’s revelation in nature as well as God’s revelation in Scripture.

Knowledge means that 1) It is actually the case; 2) You believe it is actually the case; 3) You have justification for believing it is actually the case. [Halverson: A Concise Intro to Philosophy] When we apply this to the claim that we know that the Bible is the Word of God it looks like this: The Bible is the Word of God. We believe that the Bible is the Word of God. We have justification for believing that the Bible is the Word of God. If (1) is not the case, we would say that the claim to knowledge was mistaken. If (2) is not the case, we say that the person ought to know because they have good reason to believe the claim. If (3) is not the case, we would say that the person had a hunch or was lucky to believe a claim that actually turned out to be true, but real knowledge did not exist. True knowledge must meet all three conditions.

The temptation for the Christian in contemporary culture, in evangelism, and in apologetics is to feel some sense of duty or obligation to present the argument supporting belief in the Bible as the Word of God in such a way that it satisfies the demands or criteria of the world. For some reason we all feel it. If we are not careful, we fall into the trap of trying to make belief in the Bible as the Word of God rational in terms of how the unregenerate mind defines human reason. We search for historical evidence to satisfy the empirical demands and such evidence must come from external, supposedly neutral sources or it is ipso facto inadmissible. However, the Christian must give a reason for their belief about Scripture that is itself consistent with the Christian worldview. What we cannot do is violate the Christian ethic in our attempt to defend the Christian system of truth. But when we allow unbelievers to place the Bible in dock and judge it with fallible human reason, we are doing just that: we are violating the Christian ethic. We are judging that which we are commanded to believe. We are calling into question that to which we are supposed to wholeheartedly surrender. When we judge the Scripture in this way, it is our intellect, our science, our own wisdom that serves as the final authority in human predication. And this is the one thing we can never do if we are to be good stewards of the Christian gospel. 

Christians reject the idea that innate knowledge is impossible. Christian theism unreservedly claims to know with certainty that human knowledge is not the product of sense experience. Christian theism repudiates the notion that man can know the world as he ought to know the world apart from God. It is upon this presupposition that Christianity begins its defense of the belief that the Bible is the Word of God. The opponent will object with the retort that such an approach amounts to fideism. We will answer that objection in a future post.

^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ro 1:20.

[2]B.B. Warfield, Revelation & Inspiration (New York, NY: Baker Book House, 2003), 12.

[3]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, London: Westminster John Know Press, 2006), 1:35.

^[4] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Col 2:3.

A Presuppositional Approach to the Defense of Scripture - Part 1 of ??

There are a lot of squabbles written in favor of, as well as in opposition to, the claim that the Bible is the Word of God. Most of these arguments are written predominantly from a traditional or classical apologetics perspective. Typically, we come to this question with criteria for evaluating such claims already in hand. The objective is to answer very basic questions about this specific claim that Christians make concerning the Bible, or to put it another way, the nature of Scripture. The question we are asking is first and foremost, Is the Bible the Word of God? The number of those who deny this claim far outweighs the number that affirms it. Turning to the visible Church and Christian scholarship is of little help in answering this question. The fact most people deny the Christian claim cannot be part of the criteria for judging the truthfulness of the claim. We are not interested in committing the fallacy of appealing to the populace. The truth of a proposition is not determined by the number of people who affirm or deny it.

 A second question that merits attention centers on the type of evidence necessary for making belief in the Bible as the Word of God rational. What kind of evidence is necessary to conclude that belief in the Bible as the Word of God is in fact a rational belief? That is to say, what type of evidence supports the rational justification for the claim that the Bible is the word of God? Some would argue that the question is a religious question and therefore not subject to the laws of science or logic. It is purely a leap of faith. If this is true, then anything goes when it comes to all claims that happen to have a religious nature. However, Christian theism contends that its views are perfectly rational and consistent with sound scientific methods, properly so-called.

 Additionally, what evidence ought to persuade rational human beings to accept the Bible as the Word of God? It is one thing for a Christian to affirm that the Bible is the Word of God. But it is an entirely different matter to claim that there is rational justification for believing that the Bible is the Word of God. If this is true, then every rational person ought to accept the claim that the Bible is the Word of God and respond accordingly. And indeed, this is the message of repentance that is witnessed in and spread by the Christian religion. Men ought to humbly acknowledge God and willingly submit to His authoritative Word, also known as the Bible. Put quite simply, this is the essence of the Christian message.

 These questions, in my opinion, are very meaningful and should contribute handsomely to the discussion I am about to conduct. In fact, if one has read the article by Paul Helm "Faith, Evidence, and the Scriptures" in the book "Scripture and Truth," they probably recognize them. Dr. Helm does a magnificent job of framing up the questions for us and a brilliant job of answering them. It is not easy, however, to keep these questions in the forefront of one's mind as they read through the issues that are related to such a weighty topic. And this is especially difficult for a presuppositionalist to do. After all, presuppositionalism fancies itself to situate the foundation of every claim and counterclaim it encounters. It is this way by nature.

 The purpose of this paper is to provide a presuppositional approach for the defense of the Bible as the Word of God. My goal is to deliver an argument that is consistent with Scripture itself, and therefore, one that is consistently presuppositional in nature. Presuppositions by nature demand internal consistency. The difference between the presuppositional approach and the traditional approach is that the traditional approach makes numerous external appeals to autonomous human reason and the so-called brute facts of history in order to support its defense of Scripture as the Word of God. The presuppositional approach, as I shall hope to make clear, is distinguished by its unique place in the transcendental argument for God's existence.

A good analogy for the two approaches is the difference between a portrait and a puzzle. They could both be displaying the same scene. However, the puzzle can be taken apart and put back together piece by piece under the supervision of the person creating it. On the other hand, a portrait is a portrait. It is the finished product of the artist and cannot be deconstructed and reconstructed at the mercy of another. The only option open to the observer of a portrait is that of interpretation. So it is with the methods underlying the arguments in support of or in denial of the claim that the Bible is the Word of God. I hope to show how the claim itself is actually part of the complete portrait of the Christian worldview and that it is therefore invalid and unsound to attempt to argue in a jigsaw puzzle fashion, which is what I think the traditional approach actually does.

It seems to me that there is something very curious about Helm’s three questions concerning the nature of Scripture. No doubt it obtains that we must have some idea, about not only measuring claims, but also that we innately know it is right to measure claims. That is to say that we have some preunderstanding about how claims should be measured prior to the fact. We not only know that we should measure, but we also have some basic idea about how we should go about it. The problem enters when we begin to talk about ultimate reference points for measuring. We must ask the question, what must also be true in order for the idea of judging or measuring to be true. Would such a scenario make sense in a world of chance? If the Bible is the Word of God, as it claims to be and as Christianity affirms it to be, it follows that the argument that advances the affirmative must be bound up in and indelibly linked to the argument for the truth of Christian theism.