Classical Apologetics and The Nature of Scripture

In light of the recent dust-up concerning Andy Stanley’s sermon regarding the relationship of Christianity and the Bible, and the subsequent defense of Stanley’s sermon by men from the classical apologetics bastion, Southern Evangelical Seminary, men like Norm Geisler and Frank Turek, it seems to me that a crucial question has emerged: Can classical apologetics provide a lucid defense of the historic orthodox view of Scripture? In other words, can the current state of classical apologetics exist in harmony with, and be married to, the Christian Scriptures as they have been viewed by Christianity over the long history of the church? It seems to me that Frank Turek’s revised definition of Sola Scriptura provides an excellent starting point from which to begin our investigation.

Two things are required to answer this question: first, a sound understanding of the Bible’s claims about itself and how the church has understood those claims over the course of her history; second, a firm grasp of the core tenants of the classical method of apologetics. Can method x defend the type of claim y that Christian Scripture makes about itself?

Classical apologetics does not begin its defense of Christianity with the Bible. It begins its defense of Christianity with human reason, arguments, and evidence. It assumes that there is a set of neutral criteria agreed upon by both the unbeliever and the believer and that all that the Christian has to do is to present, in just the right way, the Christian claims in accord with this supposedly neutral criteria, and in so-doing, he will remove the unbeliever’s obstacles that supposedly are keeping him from coming to faith in Christ. What this means is that the unbeliever’s objection to Christian belief must be limited to his cognitive faculties. The classical method assumes that the primary obstacle to Christian belief is intellectual. If we can clear that objection, we can persuade the unbeliever to embrace Christianity and place their faith in Christ, or so it goes. Moreover, since Christian belief is based on the most rational arguments and clear evidence, a reasonable person will naturally decide to embrace Christianity if, and this is important, if the messenger presents Christianity in a way that accords with the neutral criteria of logic and evidence mentioned earlier. Since the unbeliever’s objection to Christ is intellectual in nature, the most effective way to clear the path to Christ from all these obstacles is to appeal to human reason, or so says the classical method. And the best way to appeal to human reason and to change minds, is to employ those tactics and strategies that have the highest probability for persuading the intellect, and hence, changing the unbeliever’s mind. You see, we can restore the intellectual respectability of Christianity and increase the Kingdom of God both at the same time! Or so goes the classical method.

Back to the question: can this method of apologetics put up a rational defense of the claims of Scripture about itself without compromising its own tenants or without sacrificing the historic orthodox view of Scripture on the altar of pagan philosophy and autonomous human reason?

Classical apologetics holds that every truth-claim ought to be accompanied with evidence, with proof for its claim. And that proof must satisfy the criteria of sound reason as agree upon by the Christian and the non-Christian alike. If we cannot support our claims by subjecting them to the criticisms and judgments of non-Christian criteria, then we have a gospel that is unconvincing because it lacks intellectual integrity and plausibility, or so the argument goes. The classical method allows for the and even depends on the condition of neutrality in human reason and the existence of brute fact for its success.

When I took Dr. Geisler’s “Introduction to Apologetic’s some 20 years ago, it was clear that reason had prominence of place. In fact, one of the points that Dr. Geisler made for why we should do apologetics in the first place was that “reason demands it.” “A fundamental principle of reason is that we should have sufficient grounds for what we believe.” Dr. Geisler went on to quote, not Paul, not Peter, but Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Indeed, human reason occupies a very high place in the school of classical apologetics. But the question for the classical apologist is can he deliver the kind of evidence required to warrant the Christian belief that the Bible is very Word of God, perfectly inspired in its original form? The real question for the classical apologist is can he deliver on his promise to defend the Christian worldview using his method without presupposing the truthfulness of the very worldview he wants to prove comports with the state of affairs as they have obtained.

The classical approach begins with the claim that God exists and it proceeds to offer us the evidence for this claim by way of the traditional arguments. But none of these arguments deliver the Christian God. They only deliver the possibility that some sort of very powerful, very intelligent being exists. They all fail to prove that the God of Scripture exists.

The classical approach then moves to the claim that if this very powerful, very intelligent being exists, then miracles are possible. And if miracles are possible then a miracle can be used by God to confirm a message from God. The problem with this argument is that Christianity, in modern times, is not accompanied by miracles. The best we can do is point to testimonies that are nearly 2,000 years old of people who claim to have witnessed a number of miracles. And that is not quite the same now is it.

Once the classical approach has established that the existence of some god is possible, or probable, and then from this conclude that miracles are possible, and from this, conclude that miracles can be used to confirm a message from God. From this point the claim is made that the NT is historically reliable. I suppose this means that the NT then is God’s message because God has given us miracles to confirm that it is true. The problem with this view is that it presupposes what it wants to prove: The Bible. You cannot use the miracles of the Bible to claim the Bible is confirmed to be God’s word without arguing in a circle. The very idea of the possibility of miracles presupposes the truthfulness of Christian belief. Now, as a presuppositionalist, I don’t mind the circle quite so much, but the classical method has a serious problem with it. You see, we do not see the miracles that Geisler talks about. We only read eyewitness accounts, or as the skeptic would say, claims. A mere claim that a miracle happened is not grounds to accept it. As Geisler has already said, we need evidence. What evidence do we have? From whence will it come? It cannot come from the very Scripture we are trying to conclude is the word of God. That is assuming what we are trying to prove or demonstrate. The evidence, in order to remain consistent with the classical approach must come from someplace else.

In order to show that the NT is historically reliable, Dr. Geisler points to the fact that we have a LOT of copies of the NT, and we have a lot of OLD copies of the NT. In fact, we have more of these old copies of the NT than any other document from antiquity. The NT records that Jesus claimed to be God in many ways. But does it follow that just because it is historically accurate to say that Jesus claimed to be God that it actually was God? The classical apologist will reply that Jesus worked a lot of miracles and claimed to be God. Did he really work those miracles? Just because the NT has proven to be reliable in those areas where it can be fact-checked against the evidence, that does not mean that it is reliable in every other area. After all, Andy Stanley is calling into question the historicity of creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood. The whole point is that Christianity can survive without a fully reliable Bible. Don’t let the 6 days of creation scare you away! That is the point. So, these miracles may not have happened just like Adam and Eve and the flood and the talking snake and the talking donkey may not have actually happened.

The next claim is that Jesus predicted and accomplished his own resurrection. Therefore, Jesus is God. Whatever Jesus, who is God, teaches, is true. Jesus taught that the Bible is the word of God. Therefore, the Bible is the Word of God. The problem with this approach is that none of these things come directly from Jesus. The miracles don’t come directly from Jesus nor do we witness these sorts of things in our day. And it is faith in our day that we are talking about. The claims that Dr. Geisler writes about are all claims made by someone else about Jesus. These men claim to have witnessed Jesus raise the dead, heal the sick, and so forth. The whole question is, did Jesus do these things? And more importantly, the question is, can classical apologetics demonstrate with sound arguments and good evidence that these things are in fact true? And can it do so without presupposing the very thing it is attempting to demonstrate? Namely, that the Bible is the Word of God and can be trusted in all that it claims.

What is the nature of the Bible? What do we mean by the phrase sola Scriptura? The 1689 LBCF as well as the WCF say: The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God. Can classical apologetics provide the kind of evidence and argumentation that warrants belief in the Bible while remaining internally consist with its own method? I don’t believe it can. And the reason I don’t believe it can is because belief in the Bible as God speaking, which is what we are talking about, is not the conclusion of logical arguments or historical evidence. Belief in the Bible as God speaking is the result and only the result of the miraculous and gracious gift of faith placed in the regenerated heart by God the Holy Spirit. The nature of the Bible is such that unaided human reason cannot and will not honor the Bible by properly recognizing it for what it is. Belief that the Bible is God speaking is not something that one can limit to the human intellect. Such a belief is whole-life changing and transforming.

The traditional arguments have failed to prove that the Christian God exists. They simply fall short of the mark. And if that is true, we cannot say if miracles are possible or not. In fact, if the conclusion of the traditional arguments is the warrant for belief in the possibility of miracles, then that warrant is low to be sure. And since we have such a low degree of warrant for both the Christian God and from there the belief in the possibility of miracles, the next issue we must face is the question concerning the claims of miracles in the NT. We may say that generally speaking a document is reliable and credible if we can validate its claims by means of other reliable and credible sources. But is this the case with the NT? If it is logically the case that the traditional arguments do not provide a high degree of warrant for belief in the Christian God and I don’t think they do, then it follows that miracles will necessarily come with a low degree of warrant. And if this is true, then surely any document that claims that God exists and that miracles happen may be very reliable in some respects, but quite unreliable in others. Why couldn’t one claim that the Bible is filled with many stories, some of them quite reliable where history is concerned and where corroborating evidence exists, and others of them are the very probably the product of superstitious minds, especially where supernatural claims are concerned.

Christians claim that the Bible is the supernatural Word of God. The Bible is a miraculous project. Can logical arguments and historical evidence defend the claim that the Bible is a supernatural book and remain internally consistent? Yes and no. Heb. 4:12 says that the Word of God is living and active. How can a book be alive and actually active? Well, given the presuppositions of autonomous human reason, it cannot. To say that the Bible is the word of God because Jesus claimed it is the word of God is not evidence that the Bible is the Word of God, at least not if we follow the logic of the classical approach. What it is, is something that a presuppositionalist like myself might say. But if we yield to the classical approach, it is only evidence that Jesus Christ believed that the Bible is the Word of God. And to say that Jesus was the Messiah because he rose from the dead and therefore, whatever he says is true, is a belief that is based on the Word of God. Why do I need to conclude that the Bible is the Word of God when all the evidence I am referencing, for the most part, is contained in the very book I am trying to demonstrate to be the Word of God? But this is, for the classical approach, begging the question. The presuppositionalist would gladly extend an “amen.”

Part of the problem is how the classical approach views what it means to know. The classical approach has embraced some principles from pagan Greek philosophy and some principles from the enlightenment. The demand for a very specific type of evidence has been uncritically accepted by this school and as a result, it has produced an apologetic approach that is on the brink of collapse. These philosophies first infected theology about God, about man, about salvation, and have now worked their way into apologetic method. Knowledge is not defined by ancient Greece nor is it defined by the god-hating, arrogant blasphemers from the enlightenment. It is defined by divine revelation. True human knowledge begins only where the fear of the Lord resides. That is where we must begin our definition, understanding, and case for the possibility, of human knowledge. Elizabeth Meek tells us that restricting knowledge to the sentence lying on a piece of paper makes no sense. This is not the kind of knowledge we are talking about when we talk about how we know God or how Christians know that the Bible is God speaking. I did not come to know my wife by way of logical arguments or syllogisms. I did not come to know her through empirical investigations. And we do not know God or God speaking in this way either. But you have an anointing and you all know, the apostle John tells us. (1 John 2:20) What? We know because we have an anointing from the Holy One. Jesus told the Father that he had manifested the Father’s name to his disciples and as a result, they have come to know everything. (John 17) The disciples only knew once Jesus disclosed the Father to them.

The classical approach ignores the fact that the human intellect is now operating under a divine curse and in desperate need of redemption. 1 Corinthians tells us without ambiguity that the message of the cross, which is exactly what the entire Scripture is about, is foolishness to those who are perishing. I would say that that qualifies as an obstacle. Why didn’t Paul tell us that we should do all we can to remove that obstacle? There is an incredible antithesis between unbelieving criteria for justified belief and believing criteria. The unbeliever’s epistemic authority is rebellious, unaided, fallen human reason. The believers epistemic authority for warranted belief is Scripture alone.

One final point on this was made by James White and I want to share this principle with you because it is indeed an excellent one. If you are going to make an argument for the credibility of the Bible, then that thing to which you appeal in your argument must come with a greater degree of credibility than the Bible if it is going to add anything to the credibility of the Bible. Appealing to the Babylonian Talmud to prove that Christ performed miracles is silly when you have the sort of evidence you have in Scripture. The Talmud has less integrity than Scripture and therefore, it does not add force to your argument. This point seems to be entirely lost on the classical approach.

In the end, it seems to me that classical apologetics cannot defend the doctrine of sola Scriptura precisely for the reason that it depends on the autonomous reason of fallen men to judge of its claims. This fact alone, by definition, means that classical apologetics is impotent when it comes to defending the Christian claim of Scripture alone! That fact alone should be enough for anyone who cares about the doctrine of sola Scriptura to abandon this apologetic method. Gordon Clark wrote, “All attempts to obtain knowledge apart from revelation have failed.” This is because the revelation of God in Scripture is the only means by which man may come to a true knowledge of God and of God’s creation. I need to further evidence than that which I have in Scripture alone!

Scripture In The Hands Of An Angry Sinner

καὶ ἠκυρώσατε τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ τὴν παράδοσιν ὑμῶν. And by this you revoke the Word of God through your tradition. (Matt. 15:6) It was during an exchange with the Pharisees and Scribes over the tradition of hand-washing that Jesus issued this stinging rebuke. The controversy began over the ceremonial tradition of washing hands.

Mishnah Yadayim (“hands”) describes the procedure: “[To render the hands clean] a quarter-log or more [of water] must be poured over the hands [to suffice] for one person or even for two.” A quarter-log of water is equal in bulk to an egg and a half,²³⁵ which was poured over the hands up to the wrists prior to the consumption of food. Such a small amount of water demonstrates that the concern for washing was ceremonial, not hygienic.”^[1]

The Pharisees had taken the law of God much further than even God intended. They mixed their own teachings with the law and even elevated their traditions to the place of Scripture. This is indeed a dangerous practice. The sole authority governing the lives of men is the authority of God Himself. The commandments, traditions, and programs of men are just that: programs of men. But when men begin to elevate their traditions, their personal convictions, and their programs and impose them on others, they enter a domain reserved only for our Creator. However, contrary to what many liberals think, it isn’t only the binding of new laws on men that is the problem. The crux of the problem is that the laws of God are being undermined and misapplied regardless of it is adding to them or taking away from them. The end result is that God’s word is being rejected, invalided, and disregarded. And that is the problem. In other words, the Word of God is binding. Any attempt to relieve the obligation one has to the Word of God is an attempt to relieve oneself from their duty to God. God and His word are inseparable.

The Pharisees’ unwillingness to humbly submit to God’s Word resulted in a handling of the Sacred Scriptures that Jesus said resulted in making null and void the Word of God. For some reason, liberals along with many in the emergent church think that because the Pharisees were religious conservatives that somehow this means only modern religious conservatives could possibly commit the sort of error their supposed counterparts committed in Jesus’ day. I intend to show that if anyone is a modern Pharisee, it is not the typical conservative reformed or evangelical Christian.

In modern American Christianity, more unbelievers, more unregenerate sinners, more unqualified men than ever before involved in the handling of Scripture. What is the reason for this modern explosion of anti-Christian attitudes toward the teachings of Scripture and even the nature of Scripture itself? It really is quite simple: social media, the internet, and self-publishing are the basic ingredients for what is simply an explosion of heretical views challenging what appears to be every basic teaching of Christianity that has ever been established. Everyone now thinks they are experts in interpreting Scripture. And the really big problem is that we now have more unregenerate people than ever blogging, writing, and commenting on Christian teachings. When you couple that with the abandonment of theological training in the Churches for the past twenty to thirty years, what you have is nothing short than a recipe for spiritual disaster. And that is precisely where we are.

The most basic requirement for handling Scripture is that the handler, the interpreter, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Apart from the presence of the Holy Spirit, handling Sacred Scripture is by far the most dangerous endeavor a person could could ever attempt. Calvin writes,

“If we desire to provide in the best way for our consciences – that they may not be perpetually beset by the instability of doubt of vacillation, and that they may not also boggle at the smallest quibbles – we ought to seek our conviction in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit.” [Institutes, I.vii. 4, 78]

Far too little attention is given to this truth in modern debates and controversies surrounding the teachings of Christian theology. Indeed the state of affairs is confusing given the very basic requirement of regeneration in the hermeneutical enterprise. It is as if many modern reformed and evangelical scholars have forgotten that one must have been converted to Christ through the preaching of the gospel in order to have a seat at the table of the Christian discussion and pursuit of truth. Essentially, we find ourselves in continual debate with people that aren’t even regenerated by the Holy Spirit about what the Church is and is not, believes and does not believe, confesses and does not confess. The homosexual issue is a perfect example. We would not argue with a whore or a prostitute or and adulterer about the status of their salvation so why do we go back and forth endlessly with the homosexual groups? These are unbelievers that are not interested in Christian truth. They are interested in immorality and self-justification. How should we handle their attacks? I will comeback to that later.

John Calvin was adamant that the Holy Spirit is necessary to understand Scripture. This is surely bound up in a false anthropology but also a very flawed bibliology. Many Christians display a very poor understanding of the nature of Scripture. Without a right understanding of the nature of Scripture, it is impossible to rightly interpret it. A sound theology of Scripture is an essential component of hermeneutics. In addition to that, a sound anthropology and hamartiology are essential components in a sound theology of Scripture. Is it any wonder then that we are giving a wink and a nod to people who claim to know the Bible when the fruit of their life indicates that they don’t even know Christ?

Bavinck is on target when he writes, “The Christian character of truth can be assessed solely because it is rooted with all its fibers in Holy Scripture. There is no knowledge of Christ apart from Scripture, no fellowship with him except by fellowship in the word of the apostles.” [Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. I, 472.] We are liberated from sin and death by Scripture. We are born again by Scripture. We are sanctified by Scripture. We know Christ only by Scripture. Everything we are and everything we know and understand owe to Scripture. Apart from Scripture we remain dead in our trespasses and sins, blind, ignorant, groping about in darkness, filled with wickedness, and violent despisers of all that is holy. Here we see and understand that Scripture is essential for all things Christian.

What then of those who would tell us that Scripture is an open debate? What about those whose hermeneutic is such that it basically rewrites all that Scripture teaches? And finally, what about those whose theology of Scripture is based more on pagan philosophy than of Scripture itself? Do we engage them? Yes, we do and we must engage them. But we must be careful how we engage them. We cannot give the impression to any one that we believe we are talking to a regenerate person unless we have good cause to think it is so. For those who reject the Christian ethic and live in the debauchery of gay sex we have no choice but to lovingly but firmly and sharply rebuke their attempts to force their immoral lifestyles on the Christian community. We may engage them in a loving exchange of the truth but not endlessly. After a few exchanges, once we see they have no interest in hearing the soundness of Scriptural teaching on the matter, we must shake the dust off our feet and resist casting our perils before the swine.

See this article: Gays seek to dominate religion

For example, the Church cannot continually engage Matthew Vine without also calling him out for what he is openly. He is not a Christian, he is not an evangelical, and he does not know Christ. His book is to be condemned and other Christians are to be warned to avoid him and his materials. What we cannot do is pretend that Matthew Vine is a misguided Christian in need to some counsel. He has had a multitude of counsel and nothing has changed. Jesus instructs us to place him out of the community in hopes that he will repent. We must understand that these are not people who are Christians needing guidance. We can no longer allow Scripture to be in the hands of angry sinners. People like this have to be called out for what they are.

“But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. 10 Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.” Tt 3:9–11

Paul tells us that when factious people arise in the Church challenging the teachings that have been handed down to us from Christ and His apostles, we are to warn them a few times and then we are to reject them.

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^[1] Clinton E. Arnold, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 95.

Karl Barth on Scripture

I will be on vacation for the next week and will be reposting some excellent articles by men like Van Til, Calvin, Bahnsen, and others. Enjoy!

An Article by Cornelius Van Til

In order to appreciate the work of the great German theologian, Karl Barth, we must realize that he is seeking to burn the house of modern theology to the ground. For this we are very thankful. The house of Modernism must be burned; it gives no shelter for eternity.

But Barth is also seeking to burn the house of orthodox theology to the ground. He has not merely started a fire that has gotten out of control. He holds definitely that our house keeps the wind from blowing on the fire he has started in our neighbor’s house. He holds that both houses must be burned or neither will be burned. We can see something of this in his attack on the orthodox doctrine of Scripture.

Barth’s view of Scripture may be summed up in the following words taken from his book, The Word of God and the Word of Man: “The Bible is a literary monument of an ancient racial religion and of a Hellenistic cultus religion of the Near East. A human document like any other, it can lay no a priori dogmatic claim to special attention or consideration. This judgment, being announced by every tongue and believed in every territory, we may take for granted today. We need not continue trying to break through an open door. And when now we turn our serious though somewhat dispassionate attention to the objective content of the Bible, we shall not do so in a way to provoke religious enthusiasm and scientific indignation to another battle against ‘stark orthodoxy’ and ‘dead belief in the letter.’ For it is too clear that intelligent and fruitful discussion of the Bible begins when the judgment as to its human, its historical and psychological character has been made and put behind us. Would that the teachers of our high and lower schools, and with them the progressive element among the clergy of our established churches, would forthwith resolve to have done witha battle that once had its time but has now had it.” 

Is The Bible The Word Of God?

Can one read this quotation and doubt whether Barth is seeking to burn down the orthodox doctrine of Scripture?

But someone will say: “I interviewed Barth myself and I know that he believes in the Bible as the Word of God. I asked him whether the Word of God is in the Bible as the Modernist says, or whether the Word of God is the Bible as the Orthodox say, and Barth said the Bible is the Word of God. What more can you ask?”

Our reply is that we need something more than the sound of words. If we are to think of Barth as a man who has reasonably thought through his position, his contention that he believes in the Bible as the Word of God must be viewed in the light of his wholehearted acceptance of the principles of modern negative criticism and reconstruction. Whatever Barth may mean by saying that the Bible is the Word of God it is plain that for him this means something quite different from what it means to the orthodox Christian.

Does Barth Hold The View Of Luther And Calvin?

A second objector may say: “You are right. The Fundamentalist cannot claim Barth as a friend. Barth is no servant of the letter. He believes no such foolish theories as those of verbal or plenary inspiration. Barth’s Fundamentalism is quite different from American Fundamentalism.”

“But, you see, Fundamentalism is a child of the scholastic era of Lutheran and Reformed theology. Luther and Calvin were no literalists, though they truly believed the Bible as the Word of God. And Barth’s views are ‘fundamentally in accord with early Reformation conceptions.’ ” 

In our reply to this contention we need not argue whether the “early Reformation conception” of Scripture involved the notion of plenaryinspiration. Even if we grant, for argument’s sake, that Luther and Calvin held merely to the substantial correctness instead of the plenary inspiration of the Bible, Barth’s views would still be utterly opposed to theirs. For Barth no book that is in any sense a product of history and the human mind can be substantially correct as the Word of God. Such a book may be substantially correct as a record of what man has thought but the Word of God, according to Barth, can never appear in anything like permanent form among men. Barth’s activistic conception of revelation makes anything like an orthodox view of Scripture impossible.

That Barth wants to ruin the orthodox house of Scripture completely may be seen still further if we think of what Protestant theology has often spoken of as the perfections of Scripture. Protestantism speaks of the authority, the necessity, the perspicuity and the sufficiency of Scripture. Does Barth hold to any one or all of these in the Protestant sense of the term? We believe not.

The Authority Of Scripture

But is not Barth the great prophet of the Word of God today? Is it not he that is calling men back from the word of man to the Word of God? And is not he asking unqualified obedience to the Word of God?

We answer that he is in a sense, but not in the orthodox Protestant sense. Barth has told us with a thousand voices at every period of his development that Scripture authority is not and cannot be that of a once-for-all revelation of God. At times he even identifies the Word of God with conscience. He speaks of conscience as “the perfect interpreter of life.” His views lend themselves readily to Buchmanism and other subjectivist movements. Nor does Barth feel the least bit of obligation to accept as history that which Scripture presents as history.⁴ Barth’s activistic conception of revelation denies the Protestant doctrine of Scripture authority.

The Necessity Of Scripture

Next to the authority of Scripture the Protestant Reformers maintained the necessity of Scripture. “They considered Scripture to be necessary in virtue of the good pleasure of God to make the Word the seed of the Church.” This doctrine of the necessity of Scripture was opposed to the idea of the living voice of God as maintained by Rome and the Anabaptists.

Now on this point Barth’s position is much closer to that of Rome, the Anabaptists and the views of Schleiermacher, than to that of the Protestant Reformers. Barth makes it as plain as he can that Christian preaching must be preaching not of a Word that is ready to hand in Scripture. To think of the Bible as anything like a complete expression of God’s will for man is, according to Barth, to limit the sovereignty of God. Barth’s enthusiastic defense of the “Sovereignty” or “free grace” of God makes him a bitter enemy of the Protestant doctrine of the necessity of Scripture. If Barth is opposed to “the modern use of the Bible” he is far more bitterly opposed to the generic Protestant use of the Bible.

The Perspicuity Of Scripture

Protestant theology has in addition to the authority and the necessity of Scripture also maintained its perspicuity. The plain man can know what he needs to know by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If he compares Scripture with Scripture, and the less plain with the more plain he need not fear that he has missed the central meaning of it all. No living voice such as the Church of Rome is indispensable as an interpreter of Scripture.

On this point, too, Barth is opposed to the Protestant principle. Since for Barth no human language can possibly be the medium by which the Word of God may come to us directly, the Bible, written by human agents, presents a great heap of rubbish which must be removed before we find the Word of God. The actual words of Scriptures are but pointers indicating the direction in which the “Form” (Gestalt) of the Word of God may be found. “Only God understands Himself, also in His Word.”⁴ Moreover, we cannot even recognize our own act of faith by which we accept the Scriptures as the Word of God for what it is. The prophets and the apostles are so many people pointing their fingers upward, urging us to look upward, too, so that perhaps we may hear something of God’s Word in the distance. For Barth it is of the essence of pride to think that we possess any plain words in Scripture that come to us and are recognizable by us as the Word of God. Rome took the Bible away from the common man before the Reformation; Barth is trying to do this same thing after the Reformation.

The Sufficiency Of Scripture

Finally we observe that Protestantism has asserted the sufficiency of Scripture. “The Reformers merely intended to deny that there is alongside of Scripture an unwritten word of God.” 

With respect to this point, too, it cannot be denied that Barth has denied the Protestant doctrine. Speaking of the fact that the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God, Barth says: “The oracles of God, of which they are the possessors and guardians, are the comprehensible signs of the incomprehensible truth that, though the world is incapable of redemption, yet there is a redemption for the world. It is irrelevant whether they possess and are concerned to guard Moses or John the Baptist, Plato or Socialism, or that moral perception which dwells in all its simplicity in the midst of the rough and tumble of human life.” And if one should think that this does not really represent Barth he may turn to the Kirchliche Dogmatik, Barth’s most recent major work, and find essentially the same point of view. In this more recent work Barth is, to be sure, not so rash and outspoken in his rejection of the canon of Scripture. At points he even seems to plead for the necessity of a canon. Even so, the canon is after all nothing but the precipitate of the Christian consciousness. The Scripture must never be taken as a completed historical document. The canon is but the starting point of the revelation of God and the preaching is the continuation of that same revelation.⁹ The Reformers regarded the written word as the high-water-mark of the revelation of God; Barth regards the written Word as the unavoidable petrification of the living word.

Thus we see that Barth’s doctrine of Scripture cannot by any stretch of the imagination be made to appear similar to the generic Protestant view. Is this a small matter? Can we overlook this as a detail? Can Barth be essentially sound on other doctrines if he is essentially unsound on the doctrine of Scripture? This could be only if the doctrine of Scripture were a subordinate doctrine for Protestantism. As a matter of fact, the doctrine of Scripture is one of the most basic doctrines in Protestant and especially in Reformed theology.

The Cessationist View of Scripture

There is an explicit relationship between one’s understanding of revelation and one’s view of Scripture. For the Christian, the state of affairs that has obtained in the created order is what God has revealed it to be in divine Scripture. This perspective is what a philosopher would designate a metaphysical presupposition. Moreover, we know this statement is true because God has revealed it to be true by the instrument of divine Scripture. This second statement reflects what a philosopher would designate an epistemological presupposition. Many naïve philosophers and even theologians have attempted to establish and defend epistemological presuppositions absent metaphysical presuppositions. In addition, others have endeavored to establish and defend metaphysical presuppositions absent epistemological presuppositions. The problem with both goals is that they fail to acknowledge the unavoidable and necessary relationship between the state of affairs, and our theory of knowledge.

For the Christian, the nature of the case is precisely as God reveals it to be in the divine Scripture. Metaphysically speaking, God is the source of all that has come to be. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth and all that is in it. The Christian recognizes that the nature of this statement is divine revelation. God has revealed to man that He is the Creator of all that is. This type of revelation is called “special” revelation. When God created man, He also created him with the imprint of the knowledge of God in him as created in God’s image. Man is also graciously given God’s revelation of Himself in the created order. This, we call “general” revelation. The Christian that fails to understand or formulate a solid understanding or philosophy of revelation is subject to manifold and avoidable perils.

In point of fact, before the eighteenth century the existence of a supranatural world, and the necessity, possibility, and reality of a special revelation, had never been seriously called into question. But Deism, springing up in England, emancipated the world from God, reason from revelation, the will from grace.^[1] 

More than any other movement, the enlightenment paved the way for all sorts of theories to emerge concerning religion and revelation. One may ask what English deism has to do with the current discussion we are having on the gifts. The answer is nothing, other than the fact that the enlightenment destroyed the notion of revelation in the minds of some, and in the minds of others it granted a new sense of permissiveness so that they could formulate all sorts of opinions on the subject absent any discipline whatever. The Christian must take special care in formulating his or her view on the subject of revelation. A thoroughly biblical philosophy of revelation is indispensable to one’s understanding of the nature and significance of Scripture.

The philosophy of revelation, just like that of history, art, and the rest, must take its start from its object, from revelation. Even its idea cannot be construed apriori. There is but one alternative: either there is no revelation, and then all speculation is idle; or else there comes to us out of history such a revelation, shining by its own light; and then it tells us, not only what its content is, but also how it comes into existence.^[2] 

Of His own initiative, God condescended in the person of Christ, and He is immanent in creation. Even in the garden, Adam was not left to guess about the things surrounding him or the source of all that he was and witnessed. God came to Him. God comes to us, to each of us, by way of revelation.

The revelation of God in nature, appearing in the conscience of man and the created order around him, witnesses to the Creator and signifies to the creature that God is marvelous, benevolent, mighty, and sovereign over all. In his original state, man had an unbroken communion with God. He walked and talked with God as a matter of routine. He was unimpeded in his relationship with his maker. The revelation of God was unencumbered, lavish, and unequivocal. But man became discontent with the state of affairs that God had created. He took all that was good, holy, and pure and exchanged it for the corruptible and contemptible. Man intentionally rejected his Creator and came immediately under the curse of God. He was cast out of the garden and cut off not only from his Maker, but also from that special form of revelation he once enjoyed. Man still had God’s gracious revelation in nature, but the special revelation by which God would condescend with him was lost! Cut off from special revelation with God, man’s knowledge of God was doomed to take on a totally different nature. If man were going to know God as before, it would be up to God. Man had become totally unable and even unwilling to know God intimately.

In His ST, Louis Berkhof informs provides an excellent assessment of the consequences of the first sin: 

“The immediate concomitant of the first sin, and therefore hardly a result of it in the strict sense of the word, was the total depravity of human nature. The contagion of his sin at once spread through the entire man, leaving no part of his nature untouched, but vitiating every power and faculty of body and soul. Immediately connected with the preceding was the loss of communion with God through the Holy Spirit.”[3] 

The effects of the first sin are far more devastating that most Churches care to know today. The truth is that modern Christianity spends very little time on the subject and consequences of original sin. This fact contributes, in no small way, to the kind of errors we are dealing with in the Strange Fire aftermath. I hope to help you connect the dots over the next few posts.

I have said that man has been deprived of the truly intimate knowledge of God he enjoyed in his original state. However, I have also said that man still retains his immediate knowledge of God, which we call general revelation. The knowledge of God that man possesses is sufficient to hold man culpable for his actions. Man knows God is His maker and he knows he owes God all that he is. In short, man knows he owes a debt that he should strive to pay. However, due to the curse of God and the subsequent intrusion of sin into the entire being of man, he seeks in every way to extricate himself from his miserable and pitiful circumstance. The knowledge of God that man has branded on his conscience, he seeks to remove, to hide, so that he can escape his state as the subject of God. This is to say that man willingly takes the revelation of God he has been graciously afforded and he corrupts it, suppressing it so that he can have his autonomy. In this state, man is doomed to divine wrath and justice. There is nothing he can do to escape the divine curse. There is nothing he can do to know God as he once in his original state. Unless God acts, man is doomed never to enjoy the intimate knowledge of God in special revelation again. Moreover, man is equally doomed to pervert and corrupt the revelation of God he does have by way of nature and conscience. Indeed, the circumstances of man are ominous.

But then we see Jesus, “But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.” (Heb. 2:9) And again John testifies, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” (John 1:18) The revelation of God that man so desperately requires comes to us in the pages of Scripture with Christ as their centerpiece. Without the revelation of God in Scripture, we are left to our own devices. The cessationist view of Scripture informs a philosophy of revelation, which in turns affects the position’s view of Scripture. The relationship is spherical in nature.

The Bible is exceptionally unique. No other document can even come close to the uniqueness of the Bible. They all pale in comparison. Jesus said in John 10:35 that the Scriptures cannot be broken. Again in Matt. 22:29, Jesus said that understanding Scripture guards one from error. Failure to understand Scripture is to error from the truth. Jesus said in John 17:17 that God’s word is truth. In John 1:1, 14 we are told that this word, God’s word, has become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Hence, what Jesus is, God’s word is and what God’s word is, Jesus is. We now return to John 1:18 which says, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” What we have in the incarnation of Christ, we have in the word of God: an explanation of who God really is. Without this explanation, the curse of total depravity continues to result in man’s inability and unwillingness to truly see God for Who He is. But through the gracious act of the condescension of God in the flesh, coupled with the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit on the human heart, man is able to receive this special revelation from God once more. The divine Scripture then contains very special works of God in the lives of human beings across the eons specifically designed to reveal God to us. The phenomena contained in Scripture did not take place randomly or arbitrarily and just happen to be recorded by a biblical writer. These phenomena took place in history for the overarching redemptive purpose and plan of God as part of His special revelation to His people. The deeds of Samson were not simply a collection of the history of specific events in this man’s life that just happened to be recorded in Scripture while other “Samson-types” were off doing the same things but were not recorded in Scripture. God providentially managed Samson, David, Moses, Elijah, and others in order to reveal things about Himself and for our benefit. Failure to approach Scripture with this presupposition firmly in place will surely lead to a most fallacious understanding of God’s workings then and now.

Because of original sin, man required special revelation in order to know and relate to God truly and rightly. Man is unable and unwilling to receive the revelation of God in nature without in one way or another perverting it. The story of redemption that we see from Genesis to Revelation is the majestic story of the grace of God. The Bible is a literary work that is by nature, written by God Himself through the hands of men preserved and protected for that end. As we approach the divine Scriptures, we must recognize that God was not just passing along historical accounts of how he worked with others so that we can expect Him to work with us in the same way. The document we call the Divine Text is given to us, with all its content, for a far greater purpose. Moses did not witness the burning bush simply for Moses. David did not commit adultery simply for David. These stories are part of the grandest story of them all! They are there for you and for me. The grace of God is far more remarkable than any of us could ever think or imagine. My next post will address the more specific aspects of the cessationist view of Scripture

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^[1] Herman Bavinck, The Philosophy of Revelation : The Stone Lectures for 1908-1909, Princeton Theological Seminary (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 7.

^[2] Herman Bavinck, The Philosophy of Revelation : The Stone Lectures for 1908-1909, Princeton Theological Seminary (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 26.

[3] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans, 1932), 225-26.

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.