Ancient Word, Changing Worlds

The Doctrine of Scripture in a Modern Age

Stephen J. Nichols, Eric T. Brandt

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781433521133
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Belief in the Bible as God's authoritative revelation to humanity forms the bedrock of the Christian faith, laying the groundwork for nearly everything in the practice of theology. For the last 150 years or so, this doctrine has been put under the microscope of the modern age, with focused attention-and criticism-falling on three main subject areas: the authority of Scripture, the sufficiency of Scripture, and the interpretation of Scripture.

Ancient Word, Changing Worlds tells the story of these developments in the doctrine of Scripture in the modern age, combining in one volume both narrative chapters and chapters devoted to primary source materials. This new genre of historical theology will appeal to general readers, who will be drawn in by the book's prose style, and students, who will benefit from features like timelines, charts, explanations of key terms, and introductions and explanatory notes for the primary source documents.

1: Sacred Word in the Modern World: The Inspiration of Scripture

We believers in the full inspiration of the Bible do not merely admit that. We insist upon it.

J . GRESHAM MACHEN

I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction.

IAN MCKELLAN

No less than the famed “Lion of Princeton,” B. B. Warfield, nearly built a whole career on two words: inspiration and inerrancy. And from the late nineteenth on into the twentieth centuries, these were fighting words. Some have claimed that Warfield spent so much time with these words because he was a contentious man, that he was always up for a good fight. This portrayal has Warfield on the prowl for some argument that he could win, scouring for some controversy through which he could showcase his theological talents. No doubt, Warfield could handle himself, he could win arguments, and he had plenty of theological ability and mettle to display if he wanted to. But he took up this challenge not because he was a pugilist by nature and not because he belonged to some theological persuasion that relished controversy. Instead, if we take him at his word, he engaged the discussion over these words because they are so crucial to Christianity. Warfield indeed fought for these doctrines, but he fought for them because he knew how important they are to the “doctrine and duty,” the thought and practice, of the church.

These two words that occupied so much of Warfield’s time and energy, inspiration and inerrancy, are used by theologians to discuss the authority of Scripture, one of, if not the chief of, Scripture’s attributes. One way to get at the nature of Scripture is to explore its attributes, which tend to be summed up in a list of four: authority, necessity, clarity, and sufficiency. It might be helpful, though, to add a fifth attribute: beauty. Scripture is beautiful. Think of the simple poetry of Psalm 23 or the compelling force of Paul’s argument structures or the finely spun narratives in the Old Testament or in the Gospels. Scripture is remarkable as literature, as beautiful literature. Scripture is also sufficient, sufficient in relaying the message of redemption, sufficient in laying out all that we need for living the Christian life, and sufficient in proscribing the life and praxis of the church. The gospel message and the fundamental teachings of Scripture are also clear. Older works refer to this as the perspicuity of Scripture, perspicuous being a rather complicated word that simply means “clear.” You don’t need a decoder ring to get the message of Scripture; the message of Scripture is clear. Scripture is also necessary. Again, it is necessary in terms of the gospel message and in terms of what God would have us believe about the world he made, about his own self and nature, and even about our own selves and nature.

That brings us to the last attribute of Scripture: authority. You could likely make the case that this is the fundamental attribute from which the other four stem. Scripture as authority means that it speaks with solid credibility and legitimacy to all that it addresses. Scripture as authority means that it demands something of its readers, something that other books don’t demand. Scripture insists that its readers submit to it. The reason Scripture makes such a unique demand is that it makes a unique claim in reference to its authorship. Scripture claims to be the word of God, to be an inspired text. Scripture’s authority derives from its authorship, which leads you back to those two words that Warfield engaged and that dominate the discussion relating to Scripture in the modern world—inspiration and inerrancy. Chapters 3 and 4 take up the discussion of inerrancy; this chapter and the next concern inspiration.

The Challenge of the Modern Age

Scripture’s unique claim on its readers and its unique authorship make it a bit of a challenging book in the modern age. That’s actually an understatement. Scripture’s uniqueness is at the heart and center of the challenge it faces in the modern world. In the nineteenth century, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel introduced a philosophy of history that became quite popular during and after his lifetime. The particular idea is that ideas evolve through a process that he calls the dialectic. One idea dominates the prevailing worldview and outlook, which Hegel called the thesis. A different idea begins to counter that prevailing idea, which Hegel calls the antithesis. Over time and usually involving painful adjustments the two ideas begin to merge, which he terms a synthesis. The new synthesis becomes the thesis, which, you guessed it, eventually faces a new antithesis, and the process continues on and on. Hegel saw this process as always spiraling up, as always making progress.

To illustrate Hegel’s theory, consider how Karl Marx applied it to economics. According to Marx, feudalism (the thesis) reigned in the medieval era, followed by capitalism (the antithesis) in the modern era, which then, after battling it out, merged into socialism (the synthesis). Another illustration concerns the one Hegel himself used. The ancient world, Hegel observed, was the mythological age, the age of gods (the thesis). The latter ancient era and the medieval period may be marked as the religious age, the age of the one God (the antithesis). Hegel declared the modern age as the age of science (the synthesis). In Hegel’s worldview, there’s always progress. It makes no sense whatsoever to look in the rearview mirror. It’s silly, infantile, to live in the past. Now comes the application to how the Bible gets perceived in the modern world. The Bible belongs to the past, not to the present. As an ancient book, it does not speak with credibility and legitimacy (authority) to life in the modern world.

The ancients needed myths or religious texts to explain the phenomena they faced. They needed a vehicle to understand storms and suffering, disease and death. Sacred texts, texts claiming to contain the words of God or of the gods, supplied the answers. Moderns, however, have science. Storms are related to gulf streams and weather patterns and water cycles. Diseases come from germs and viruses. Science explains the phenomena, pushing God (religion) or the gods (myth) aside. In Hegel’s worldview, one doesn’t look back. One just keeps pulsing ahead.

The Bible and the events it records occur in a particular place and time geographically and historically, which is to say the Bible is an ancient book. But the Bible also claims to transcend its age.

The Bible as an ancient book speaks to the ancient world, but it also speaks to the medieval world, to the modern age, and even to the postmodern age. The reason? Scripture claims to be more than the words of ancient authors dispensing ancient wisdom for ancient people. The Bible claims to be inspired. As such, the Bible lays claim to transcending its age and speaking authoritatively to the modern age, the age of science and of reason.

The History of a Word

“The word ‘inspire’ and its derivatives,” B. B. Warfield informs us, “seem to have come into Middle English from the French, and have been employed from the first (early in the fourteenth century) in a considerable number of significations, physical and metaphorical, secular and religious.” Warfield proceeds to explain one of those religious significations, perhaps the chief one:

The Biblical books are called inspired as the Divinely determined products of inspired men; the Biblical writers are called inspired as breathed into by the Holy Spirit, so that the product of their activities transcends human powers and becomes Divinely authoritative. Inspiration is, therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Spirit of God, by virtue of which their writings are given Divine trustworthiness.²

Then Warfield takes us to 2 Timothy 3:16. This definition of Warfield’s and this text that he turns to first become the virtual template for discussing inspiration, though most are not as intrigued by etymology as Warfield was and consequently tend to overlook the French derivation of the English word. Second Timothy 3:16 is a good place to start, for in it Paul uses the Greek word theopneustos, translated “inspired” in many English versions. The word, as Warfield’s definition informs us, points to the divine origin of the text. While the doctrine of inspiration is well served by starting with 2 Timothy 3:16, the formulation of the doctrine by no means stops there. Second Peter 1:21 also informs us, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Alongside these two texts, Scripture is replete with its claim to divine authorship. Paul consistently makes the case that the authority of his words does not derive from himself; it derives from his office as apostle, one who has been appointed to speak for God (Gal. 1:11–12).

The Old Testament prophets consistently and widely refer to their role as mouthpieces for God. “Thus says the LORD . . .” is repeated again and again throughout the prophetic books. What makes Christ’s own words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7 so striking is the way in which he contrasts himself with the prophets of old. Christ speaks on his own authority. “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you” becomes the refrain punctuating the sermon. The prophets in comparison would never make such a claim. It’s not “Hear the word of Isaiah . . . or of Jeremiah . . . or of Malachi.” Rather, it is the word of the Lord spoken through the prophet. Scripture consistently and widely claims to be the very words of God.

Throughout church history, this belief in inspiration, the divine origin of Scripture, has been a central hallmark of Christian orthodoxy. In the early church the biblical authors were called theologians because they literally spoke (the Greek word logos in its verb form means “to speak”) for God (the Greek word for God is Theos). Moses was a theologian in the truest sense of that word. The biblical prophets, David, the Gospel writers, Paul, Peter, and the other writers of the New Testament epistles were all theologians. The early church fathers also recognized that because the biblical authors spoke for God, their words carried the weight of authority with them. These early church fathers often wrote their own epistles to the churches under their care, and in these letters they would pass along their advice on all sorts of matters. When, however, they wanted to make a particular point to these churches, they stepped out of the way and quoted the Bible. They didn’t defend it; they didn’t offer arguments for the authenticity of the text. They just quoted it, revealing the level of authority ascribed to the biblical books in the early church.

The Reformers approached Scripture in the same way. The Reformation, from one angle, can be seen as a debate around Scripture’s authority. Either Scripture stands over and above us as individual persons and as the corporate people of God, or we, either as individuals or as the collective body of the church, stand over it. The Reformation plank of sola scriptura addresses this directly, proclaiming emphatically and explicitly that Scripture stands over us as individuals and over us as the collective body of Christ. The church’s teaching and practice must be derived from its pages or the church risks running afoul. The Reformation was in one sense a debate over authority.

Curiously enough, the Renaissance carried on the same debate over authority with the later medieval Roman Catholic Church. The figures in the Renaissance, like the Reformers, turned away from lodging authority in the ecclesiastical structure. Unlike the Reformation, however, the Renaissance promoted looking within at the human mind or looking without to nature. Eventually, born of those seeds, rationalism and science would flower as the bases for knowledge, as the authority. The Reformers, however, looked past themselves and past nature to the one who created both. They not only looked to the Creator, they also listened to the Creator. They listened to his revelation as the authority.

This can be seen in John Calvin’s magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin scholar Edward Dowey has made a good case that Calvin’s thought can be understood against this Renaissance quest for knowledge in light of the meltdown of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. Consequently, Calvin begins his theology with a discussion of God as Creator who has revealed himself. Revelation is the starting point. It’s not just a convenient starting point. According to Calvin, it’s the only viable one.³ Since Calvin, theologians on the side of orthodoxy have realized just how right he was and is.

This high view of Scripture, stemming from the idea of inspiration and divine origin of the text, was not without challenge. The early church fathers contended with those who promoted false books of the Bible, books termed pseudepigrapha. These include books like the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas, books that are falsely (pseudo) written (grapha) in that they are written by later groups who claim to be written by apostles like Thomas. These books are not only faulty because of their authorship but also because of their content. The Reformers, as mentioned above, had to contend with those who tried to hem in the word of God, circumscribing it with tradition. This gets to the heart of Luther’s efforts at reform. He saw the word bound to the church and not the other way around.

The Reformers also battled the loss of the word. Widespread illiteracy, not to mention the powers of superstition, had captivated much of the laity. Copies of the Bible were extremely scarce, and then only in Latin, the language of a privileged few. William Tyndale expressed the Reformation opposition best in his herculean efforts to bring the Bible into print in the language of the people.

Changing Attitudes

Neglect, abuse, distortion—these were the culprits over the centuries that weakened the level of authority that people both inside and outside the church ascribed to the Bible. The modern age, however, introduced a new culprit, one that might just be a bit more pernicious: the judgment of the Bible’s irrelevance. The Bible in the modern world is sort of like a long-term employee who is about to get sacked. The employee is called into the manager’s office to be told what wonderful contributions he’s made to the company in the past. He’s told what great qualities he has, what a fine person he is. Then he’s told that his department is being restructured, that he is redundant. All of which is interpreted as saying, you are no longer needed or wanted. The Bible was good at one time but is outmoded and can’t keep up with the times. Or so goes the judgment of the modern age.

Mark Noll once wrote, “On the face of it, it would be hard to imagine a nation more thoroughly biblical than the United States between the American Revolution and the Civil War.”⁴ His opening phrase, “On the face of it,” is instructive. The reigning attitude toward the Bible in American culture was not that it was the Truth, but that it was the Story that provided the bac...