gods-unto-ourselves-march-april-2007

CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT ❘ INERRANCY ❘ BIBLE VS. QUR’AN

MODERN REFORMATION

Gods Unto Ourselves VOLUME

16, NUMBER 2, MARCH/APRIL 2007, $6.00

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Brenda Jung Department Editors William Edgar, Why We Believe MR Editors, Required Reading Brenda Jung, Diaries Eric Landry, Common Grace Diana Frazier, Reviews Starr Meade, Family Matters Staff | Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Ben Conarroe, Proofreader Contributing Scholars S. M. Baugh Gerald Bray Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson Bryan Chapell R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Adam S. Francisco Richard Gaffin W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner John D. Hannah Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm C. E. Hill Karen Jobes Hywel R. Jones Ken Jones Peter Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Keith Mathison Donald G. Matzat John Muether John Nunes Craig Parton John Piper J. A. O. Preus Paul Raabe Kim Riddlebarger Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul Rachel Stahle A. Craig Troxel Carl Trueman David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith William Willimon Todd Wilken Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2007 All rights reserved.

For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1725 Bear Valley Pkwy.

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Gods Unto Ourselves 10 Creature of the Word How are God’s words also God’s workings? The author explains how God not only communicates but communes with his people through his Word.

by Michael Horton Plus: Why Inerrancy Still Matters

18 Christ in the Old Testament 20 What the Bible is All About Is seeing Jesus as the focus of both the Old and New Testaments the correct hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture?

The author presents how both Jesus and the apostles viewed Jesus as the center of redemptive history.

by R. Scott Clark Plus: The Qur’an’s Challenge to the Bible

25 Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes How has sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) been misunderstood to mean “solo” Scriptura (by Scripture alone)? The author explores the relationship between Scripture and extra-biblical sources.

by Keith Mathison Plus: How Do We Know We Have the Right Books?

32 Thinking Clearly About the Clarity of Scripture In what ways can we expect the Bible to speak clearly to every generation? The author explains what the clarity of Scripture means and what it does not mean.

by Rick Lints

39 What the Bible Is: Personal and Propositional Revelation What is the nature of special revelation?

The author distinguishes between dual aspects of Scripture as God’s Word to humanity: the inspiration of the text and the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

by Peter Anders COVER BY PHILIPPE COLOMBI/PHOTODISC/GETTYIMAGES

ISSN-1076-7169

S UBSCRIPTION I NFORMATION US US Student Canada Europe Other

TABLE OF CONTENTS march/april

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Keeping Time page 2 | Letters page 3 | Why We Believe page 4 | Common Grace page 6 Diaries page 8 | Interview page 44 | Required Reading page 47 Reviews page 48 | Family Matters page 52

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KEEPING TIME i n

t hi s

is su e

Apostles Creed Jesus Christ Victorious

325 A.D. NICENE CREED Bust of Constantine

c. 500 A.D. ATHANASIAN CREED Triquetra

1561–1619 THREE FORMS OF UNITY T.U.L.I.P.

1563–1571 THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES Cross of St. George

1580 BOOK OF CONCORD

Gods Unto Ourselves “Hath God said?” With those three fateful words the serpent convinced Eve that the God of the Garden was not one who permits and provides, but prohibits. As Eve began to celebrate her autonomous self at the expense of her covenant fidelity, so began our common quest as her sons and daughters. Eve’s striving to become like God caused her to add to God’s word, judge God’s word, and finally place herself over God’s word. It isn’t hard to see that her attitude and actions have been replicated in each successive age, including this present one. The problem, however, isn’t with the secularists (with the seed of the Serpent); the sons of God—the faithful line of Seth—have struggled to maintain a proper adherence to God’s authoritative and creative word.

How should the Word of God function in our lives and in our churches?

What does it mean for us to be “people of the Word” in a day when truth is relative, personal needs are determinative, and authority is nonexistent? In this issue of Modern Reformation, we begin our year-long series of studying the “solas” of the Reformation by taking a closer look at the meaning, purpose, and application of the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura.

Michael Horton starts us off with a survey of God’s words through Scripture, revealing their authoritative as well as creative power. R. Scott Clark answers the question, “What is the Bible all about?” by helping us interpret Scripture with Christ at the center of our inquiries. Keith Mathison then helps us understand why the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura is not the same as the current evangelical practice of solo Scriptura. Rick Lints zeroes in on the common objection that the Bible is too difficult to understand and needs an authoritative interpreter (tradition, the church, or the autonomous self) by teaching us about the clarity of Scripture. Peter Anders finishes up this issue by dealing with the postmodern objection to Scripture’s propositional nature by writing about the propositional and personal nature of God’s Word. Also included in this issue are several helpful sidebars dealing with inerrancy, the Qur’an, the canon, and a chart to help you see Christ in the Old Testament.

Martin Luther’s Seal

1646 WESTMINSTER CONFESSION Westminster Abbey

1689 LONDON BAPTIST

CONFESSION Baptismal

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Eric Landry Executive Editor P.S. The White Horse Inn radio broadcast is discussing sola Scriptura during the months of March and April. Listen online or download the weekly programs at www.whitehorseinn.org.

NEXT ISSUES: May/June 2007: Christless Christianity (Solo Christo) July/August 2007: Grace: How Strange the Sound (Sola gratia)

LETTERS your

Quite apart from the fact that Calvinism is scriptural, the humbling effects of a solid embracing of it came through beautifully in the gracious answers of Robert Peterson in the September/October ’06 issue. To God alone be the glory!

Bonnie Budworth Chandler, AZ

In a relativistic age, when many astute scholars and observers of our troubling times have christened the postmodern and post-Christian era of Western civilization, American Evangelicals need a voice of intellectual coherency and substance amidst the barren wasteland of propositional bankruptcy that has become contemporary Evangelicalism.

As I survey the current intellectual trends of evangelical journalism in America today, I would suggest that Modern Reformation and the White Horse Inn has greatly met this glaring need of providing today’s evangelical with substantive cognitive data that has given many of us impetus to rediscover the magisterial Christ-centered doctrines of the Protestant Reformation, the greatest revolution the world has ever seen.

Since first providentially encountering Modern Reformation and the White Horse Inn in the early 1990’s, I have been thoroughly blessed and challenged by your articles and broadcasts, and I am eternally grateful for influencing me towards the Reformed faith which has taught me the infinitely priceless and precious truth — that men and women are justified by God from God’s wrath by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, based on the authority of

God’s Word alone for the glory of God alone.

Ed Enochs La Mirada, CA Well done to Brenda Jung’s article, “2007: A Time for Truth” (January/ February ’07)! Her take on “Solo Christo”— and use of Packer— was fantastic. In an age that answers “my faith,” instead of “God alone” to questions about creational and redemptive perseverance, Jung’s and Packer’s words seem absolutely vital. This “preoccupation with faith” and “confidence in…subjective experience” over against the historicity of Christianity is one the major stumbling blocks of our time. This is bound to happen when faith is seen as “our work” (contra Packer) and we are completely hell-bent on justifying ourselves. Such is the implied teaching, if not the blatant tone and tenor of our day.

While faith is undoubtedly important, it is just as much only subservient to the truth of God. As Jung says, “It is worth restating that faith does not save; Jesus saves.”

And it is only true faith that may— and must—utter such things. Faith is important only insofar as it serves truth. It is not an end unto itself. It has always seemed to me that there is good reason the “I believe” aspect of the Creed is muted. It is so that the text of God can dominate, while the faith aspect links us up to that truth.

Steve Zrimec Grandville, MI

thoughts

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Correction: In “The Way Forward” by Eric Landry (January/February ’07), it was not Mark Driscoll but Robert Lewis who called men “the lost gender.”

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido CA 92027 760.741.1045 fax Letters@modernreformation.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5

WHY WE BELIEVE de f en d i ng

th e

faith

Biblical Authority and True Progress

T

he French Revolution, beginning in 1789 and ending with Napoleon’s wars, was

in the Matter of Religion) (1818). His argument is the traumatic turning point which ushered in modern times for France and for that there are two kinds of doctrine: Catholicism much of Europe. Not surprisingly, the Revolution had a significant effect on the on the one hand, and Socinians, Deists, way religion was viewed. At the dawn of the new cenAtheists, and Protestants, on the other. Progress has tury, both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in been such, he affirms, that there is no longer a signifiFrance had been badly battered. Being directed against cant opposition between reason and faith … on condithe Church and the monarchy, the revolutionary forces tion that the church guide the process. The history of seriously curtailed the authority of Catholicism. the human race is one of progress toward modernity, but Protestants were in an uneasy alliance with the this progress needs to place religion at the forefront. The Revolution, which eventually pronounced their toleraReformation puts up a huge barrier to this progress, tion, yet, emerging from devastating persecutions, they because it is nothing but a “system of anarchistic philoswere a fragile minority. Both stood in need of respondophy, and a monstrous attack against the general power ing to the rise of modernity. The hour of modern apolothat regulates the society of human spirits.” getics had come!

Piqued, the young Vincent, theologically a “pre-liberSeveral different approaches were voiced. Some on al” (terminology used by historian Daniel Robert), shot both sides advocated a return to a pre-Revolutionary back with his Observations sur l’unité religieuse, en réponse era. Ultramontanist Catholics (over the Alps back to au livre de M. de la Mennais (Observations on Religious Rome) thought a premodern faith, grounded in the Unity). Though missing some of Lamennais’s nuances, authority of the magistracy, was still right. he announces that all of the abbot’s arguAnd some of the Protestant revivalists ments come down to the simple question of Could a true thought the same about the authority of authority. Lamennais wants a religion Calvin and the sixteenth-century founded on a “permanent and infallible authority be Reformation. However, most apologists in authority.” Yet every time such authority both communions thought an update was found in an era has been proffered, great damage has been needed. But what kind of update? Could a to human progress. Instead, Vincent of democracy, done true authority be found in an era of democargues, it is reason, free to examine all science, and racy, science, and criticism? things, which truly liberates. Of course, the Shortly after Europe settled down in the Bible is an important book. But one does criticism? wake of Napoleon’s defeat, a little publicized not have true access to it without le libre exabut most significant debate took place men, or free examination. between Abbé Félicité de Lamennais (1782–1854), a brilWhat is striking in this debate is not only the differliant, largely self-taught apologist for the Catholic faith, ences but also the similarities in their starting point. and Samuel Vincent (1787–1837), an erudite young Lamennais is certainly Catholic in his tone. He wants Protestant pastor in Nîmes. The early Lamennais had the church to come and gently rule over human some sympathies with Ultramontanism, but he soon progress. Yet that progress is something he accepts withbecame the staunch defender of modern social liberalism, out question. His is a Romantic religion, one that believes which he believed was compatible with an enlightened society’s progress duplicates the progress of the individCatholicism. He eventually went so far trying to reconual, one that believes there is danger in stifling such cile the church with the liberal ideal that his works were progress with rules and regulations. As for Vincent, condemned by the Pope in 1834. Undaunted, he went though he claims a Reformation heritage, he is as far on to become even more radical, condemning tyrants from Luther and Calvin on the doctrine of human reaand oppressors of all kinds, and daring to question papal son as he could be. He is more influenced by infallibility. He would leave the church in the end.

Schleiermacher and Kant on epistemology than the Lamennais wrote a popular tract called Essai sur l’inBible. So he too is a Romantic! He says, characteristidifférence en matière de religion (Essay Against Indifference cally, that religion is a trunk from which all the other sci-

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Revelation has final authority even for the interpretation of history and the proper use of reason. ences emerge as branches. Progress is a common bond between these two fierce opponents.

What had happened by the time of the French Revolution was that much of Catholicism and Protestantism had unwittingly accepted some of the deepest presuppositions of modernity. Both believed in the free use of reason, although Protestants were more individualistic about it than Catholics, who retained some notion of the authority of the church. Neither of these approaches, though, is truly biblical. Neither could become a successful apologetic for Christian faith, because neither could really confront the deep, underlying authority structure of modernity. And neither really could put history and human reason in their proper place.

What should a more suitable apologetic try to accomplish? To be fair, there were a few voices in the right direction even in the early nineteenth century.

Apologists like Louis Gaussen (1790–1863) and Merle d’Aubigné (1794–1872) spoke out against an inflated view of progress. And in Holland, the voices of Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, and then the important Abraham Kuyper began to look more deeply into the whole question of modernity’s claims. Not quite immune to Romanticism themselves, they nevertheless questioned whether progress was not rather the manifestation of sin than the pure advancement it claimed.

In his lecture, “Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life,” Kuyper argues that true unity will only be achieved in Christ. The world’s attempts are merely abnormal and sinful. They are counterfeits. Only the true unity proclaimed in revelation is from the Lord.

And that’s the point. Revelation has final authority even for the interpretation of history and the proper use of reason. This revelation, centered in Scripture, warns us against demonic counterfeits of God’s plan. To accede to the Bible, the church is important, of course, but only as a “motivation toward belief,” not the ground of that belief as implied in Augustine’s Reply to Faustus the Manichaean (I.32). And surely reason is crucial, but not the “free examination” of magisterial reason. Rather, reason must be ministerial in relation to the authority of Scripture, which is self-attesting. Of course, to be selfattesting, or self-authenticating, does not mean revelation is authoritarian. There is a world of difference between, say, the tyranny of Allah and the liberating authority of Christ. As Bavinck puts it so well, “Believing God at his word, i.e., on his authority, is in no way inconsistent with human dignity, anymore than it dishonors a child to rely with unlimited trust on the word of her or his father. So far from outgrowing this authority, Christian believers rather progressively learn to believe God at his word and to renounce all their own

wisdom.” Apologetics without true, liberating authority, the authority of revelation, is dead in the water.

Bill Edgar is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

For more information on apologists Louis Gaussen and Merle d’Aubigné, see Gaussen’s Théopneustie (London, 1842); Aubigné’s L’autorié des Ecritures (Geneva, 1850); Quelle théologie propre à guérir les maux du temps actuel (Geneva, 1852). Kuyper’s lecture on uniformity was delivered and published in 1869. It can be found in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, James D. Bratt, ed., (Eerdmans/Paternoster, 1998), pp. 19–44.

The quotation from Herman Bavinck is taken from Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1 (Baker, 2003), p. 464.

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COMMON GRACE G o d’s

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From Common Grace to Means of Grace

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rt and architecture are in the realm of common grace (albeit some art and

been placed at the entrance to the nave so architecture may say more about the fall than God’s grace—but this article is that Christians may be reminded that they too short to try to delineate the distinctions). Art and architecture in the service entered the church through their baptism into of the church also serve the means of grace, and serve Christ. Often, artist and architect have created a font either poorly or well. which involves both a tower, a waist high structure filled As a result of the iconoclasm of the Reformation, with water which flows into a pool, deep enough for Protestants have often failed to be sufficiently sensitive to immersion, and in some cases submersion. the way in which art and architecture speak. It is still my The presence of such a running water font at the contention, as set forth in Christ and Architecture, that art entrance to the nave is to all who enter a reminder of their and architecture are a matter of gospel. The message they baptism and the common graces of art, water, and sound, communicate either reinforces the proclamation of the all reinforcing the message of baptism: cleansing in Christ. gospel or detracts from it. And therein the common grace In many early churches the baptismal pools, either octagwhich enables the artist or architect to create that which is onal or cross-shaped, had three steps into and out of the worthy of its purpose comes into play. pool, symbolizing being baptized into Christ, into dying Those Christians for whom the term “means of grace” and rising with Christ. The three steps reminded all of describes the way in which God comes to his people to save Christ’s three days in the tomb and rising in the new life of and strengthen in their Christian lives, see these means of his resurrection. grace as the sacraments and the preaching of the Word.

The Table The Font In those segments of the Reformation that reacted The font for baptism offers a vivid illustration of how art strongly to the doctrine of transubstantiation and its manand architecture can either support or detract from the ifestation in the stone altar, the altars were demolished and gospel. In many Protestant churches the baptismal font is wooden tables were used for the serving of the Lord’s often a diminutive thing, at best made out of marble, but Supper. In Zwinglian territories this sometimes meant smaller than a bird bath, and usually positioned on the simply serving from a table-top placed over the font. In floor of the nave where it becomes completely invisible to Geneva it sometimes meant a temporary table formed of most of the seated congregation. The artistic effort to cretrestles and boards. In the Netherlands and Scotland, ate such a font is minimal, as is its visual power to commuwhile altars were demolished, the importance of the Lord’s nicate its importance as a means of grace. That coupled Supper was underlined by the practice of the congregation with the damp forefinger mode of baptism all but eviscersitting at table for the celebration of Communion. (Sitting ates the meaning of the sacrament. at table is still practiced in many churches in the While Baptists excel other Protestants in the symbolism Netherlands.) of their practice of submersion, in many churches the bapUnfortunately, in this country Protestants all too often tismal tank disappears when not in use, except in those followed the Puritan example of placing a small table on churches where its presence is signaled by art in paint, the floor in front of the pulpit, usually for the support of mosaic, or stained glass, depicting Christ’s baptism in the flowers and the offering plates. Like the little fonts, it too Jordan—which offers the opportunity for the common became invisible to all but congregants seated at the edge grace of the artist to support the means of grace. of the center aisle.

Christians can be grateful to Vatican II for offering In many contemporary churches, artist and architect guidelines for the use of the common grace of artist and alike have made the table of appropriate size to the church architect in supporting God’s means of grace in the sacraroom, visible to all. At best it has been carefully crafted ment. Architecturally, in many churches the font has now and made in keeping with the architecture of the church.

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Architecturally, in many churches the font has now been placed at the entrance to the nave so that Christians may be reminded that they entered the church through their baptism into Christ.

Sometimes its importance has been articulated by antependia with symbols appropriate for the season of the church year.

The Pulpit It would hardly seem necessary to emphasize the role of the pulpit as the architectural symbol of the proclamation of God’s Word. Throughout the history of the church one can find magnificent pulpits upon which the common grace of artist and architect has been lavished. Frequently symbols of the four evangelists, carved in wood or stone or cast in metal, have adorned pulpits. Sounding boards, serving both an acoustical but now largely visual purpose, have further enhanced the visual impact of the place of proclamation.

However, in our own era, in some cases, not only has the pulpit all but disappeared (sometimes into a little Plexiglas reading stand), but with it the pulpit Bible.

Instead there is a large platform for the minister. The absence of a pulpit while not in itself a denial of the presence of the gospel, nonetheless visually contributes to the emphasis upon the speaker, individualism, and the cult of personality. One must be careful not to deny that skits, praise teams, and the absence of Christian symbols can be used to bring people to Christ. However, one must question whether the use of the common grace of art and architecture in the service of the means of grace (the foundational nourishment of Christians in Word and Sacrament) are not in the long term desirable, if not essential, to the faith. Two millennia of Christian practice would indicate that common grace serves God’s saving grace in font, table, and pulpit.

The Architecture of the Church While serving as a sheltering enclosure for the means of grace, the architecture of the church also communicates.

Historically, the emphasis of what it communicates has oscillated between transcendence and immanence.

The early house churches communicated God’s immanence, as did such symbols as the Good Shepherd. The great Constantinian basilicas of the fourth and fifth centuries (e.g., St. John Lateran, St. Paul Outside the Walls) with their mosaics of the enthroned Christ and the Christus Pantocrator, emphasized God’s transcendence.

The Romanesque, depending on size, could go either way, while the Gothic clearly came down on the side of God’s transcendence. It is hardly a matter of style or accident that French missionaries, in seeking to architecturally pro-

claim God’s transcendence, built large twin-towered Gothic cathedrals in both Saigon and Hanoi. While in a totally different architectural vein, the contemporary Cathedral of St. Mary in Tokyo by Kenzo Tange also falls clearly on the transcen-

dent side of the equation.

The overwhelming majority of churches in the United States, both Protestant and Catholic built since World War II, have by their modest proportions spoken to God’s immanence. Mark A. Torgerson puts forth the case that this architecture of immanence also translates into Christians concerned with serving the world. However, artists (and this certainly includes stained glass artists) and architects with common grace can do much to bridge the transcendent/immanent divide through proportion, quality, and beauty. A superb example might be the little Chapelle du Rosaire by Henri Matisse in Venice.

Whether in the architecture, which speaks of God’s transcendence and immanence, or in the furnishings for Word and sacraments, the common grace exercised by artist and architect can serve the gospel of God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ.

Donald J. Bruggink is professor emeritus of historical theology at Western Theological Seminary (Holland, Michigan). He is also the co-author of Christ and Architecture and When Faith Takes Form.

In this article, Dr. Bruggink has referenced the work he co-wrote with Carl H. Droppers, Christ and Architecture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), pp. xii–707.

Information about Vatican II is taken from Walter M. Abbott’s The Documents of Vatican II (New York: Guild Press, 1966), pp. xix, 794; “The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,” pp. 137ff; and especially “Sacred Art & Sacred Furnishings,” pp. 174ff. For examples of provision for the practice of sitting at table for the celebration of Communion, see Christ & Architecture, op. cit., pp. 237, 240, 246, 256–263, 266, 278. Torgerson’s work is An Architecture for Worship and Ministry Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), p. 322. Houses of worship well served by the common grace of artist and architect can be regularly found in the periodical, Faith and Form, and in the series of books by Michael J. Crosby, Architecture for the Gods, and Houses of God, Religious Architecture for a New Millennium.

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DIARIES OF A POSTMODERN CHRISTIAN t he

c a n d i d

c h r istian

life

The Same Old Story

by Brenda Jung

In college, I carried my Bible and journal in my backpack so that I could have a Quiet Time on campus, in between classes. My favorite spot to meet with God was at the top of the Snakepath, the hill on which the main library overlooked the student center. There, I parked myself on a wide stone bench, warmed by the mid-morning sun. It was a quiet spot. It was also a safe spot; I didn’t run into anybody I knew. I would take a deep breath, unzip my backpack, and pull out my Bible. I opened it arbitrarily and read until some word or phrase caught my eye. Somebody had told me that whatever caught my eye was God’s personal word to me that day. Sometimes I landed in the epistles, sometimes in the prophets, sometimes in the psalms. It didn’t matter. The Bible was God’s open mouth speaking to me and I was content just to hear his voice and interact with him. I probably committed every hermeneutical fallacy possible — confusing the indicatives and imperatives, extracting verses from their context, reading the present into the past, deriving morals from every Bible story, treating the men and women in Scripture as character studies…

But I loved God’s Word. I took it personally — all of it, promises and commands.

Later, I learned that the Bible is not about me. It is about Jesus. I found out that my self-claimed “life verse,” Jeremiah 29:11-13, was not written to me but to Israel! “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’” My entire life in college hung on these verses, and they weren’t even written to me! I felt like Dumbo in mid-flight, when he accidentally let go of the magic feather he believed gave him the ability to fly, only to find out that he could fly all along – without the magic feather.

Learning that Christ is the interpretive locus of Scripture compelled me to reread the Bible using this framework. And I did. I enjoyed my new eyes that could recognize Jesus Christ as the one the Old Testament priests, judges, prophets, and kings were all pointing to. The characters, images, language, and dialogue all contributed to one grand, dramatic story. And the story’s ending did not disappoint.

I am grateful for a hermeneutic that is more faithful to the text. The individual books of the Bible make more sense now that I have a better sense of the whole library. But now, God’s Word often reads more like a static news report than an active conversation. God is just not as present or personal as he used to be — at least, it feels that way. I liked the idea of God’s Word being a personal message to me because it was the content of our conversations. Now I am left with an autobiography about God when what I really want is a living, tangible friendship with him, filled with phone calls, email, private jokes, handwritten letters…connection.

On bad days, I glance at my Bible with a brief inkling to read it, then conclude that I’ve read it before and I know how the story ends. What’s the point? I am looking for a personal word, a personal touch. Does God speak only general words to the collective human race? The preaching of God’s Word and the administration of the sacraments are not just for me; they are for the entire church. I don’t mind sharing God with others; what I mind is an impersonal God (which is why I hate mass email. It’s impersonal. People only do it because it’s convenient.). I know that I have a role in the story told in Scripture (I am the sinner in need of rescue by a savior), but I am just one of many sinners. There is nothing different about me. There is no special purpose for my life, only the same purpose assigned to every Christian: to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

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On bad days, I glance at my Bible with a brief inkling

That is so vague. What does to read it, then conclude that I’ve read it before and it mean for me to I know how the story ends. What’s the point? glorify God? What does it look like for me to enjoy God? What is the purpose of my life? If the Bible cannot answer these questions, then it seems insufficient for my needs. Is it really wrong to expect Scripture to address my felt needs when all I really am is a body of felt needs – physical, emotional, social, and spiritual? I need more than general guidance and direction; I need personal, custom instructions.

Oprah advises me to “follow your bliss” in order to discover my life purpose, or “chief end,” in the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. According to Oprah, I simply ask myself, “What is my bliss? What activities make me happy?” Whatever gives me joy is my life purpose, or what Christians know as “calling.” Now that’s tangible. Oprah empowers me from her television studio in Chicago, “Live your best life. Go for it!” Unfortunately, Oprah is not my authority on truth; Scripture is.

Evidently, I have lots of bad days.

On good days, however, I am like a kid who’s heard the same story a hundred times but begs to hear it one more time. At church, the story is told to me together with the entire congregation and I am reminded that God is ours. But when I take a piece of bread from the silver plate that is passed to me, and when I lift out one of the small plastic cups filled with sweet red wine, I know that the gospel is personal. The bread and wine go into my mouth: “This is my body, given for you…” God’s Word is not about me, but it is no doubt for me.

Learning to read the Bible “correctly” is a good start, but it is only a start. As I hear the same old story about Jesus again and again, it breathes faith into my disillusioned and disbelieving heart. The gospel induces my praise and ignites my worship of God, whom I now recognize more than ever as the same faithful God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Brenda Jung is managing editor of Modern Reformation.

Diaries of a Postmodern Christian asks “regular folk” to articulate the experience of living as a Christian in the postmodern age — that is, in general terms, a time when certainty is rejected and the meaning of life is largely centered around the subjective self. The works featured in this column may ask questions without necessarily offering a neat and tidy resolution. They do not need to be practical, but they do need to be personal. Writing style isn’t as important as thoughtfulness and honesty. If you are willing to let us “read a page of your diary,” email a manuscript of 1,000-1,200 words to letters@modernreformation.org, or send it by mail to Modern Reformation, 1725 Bear Valley Parkway, Escondido, CA 92027. If your work is going to appear in a future issue, you’ll hear from us prior to publication.

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G O D S U N T O O U R S E LV E S

“Creature of the Word”: A Liberating Captivity

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he modern age sees Martin Luther as a hero for standing up to the might of both pope and emperor with his famous trial at Worms: “Here I stand.” Yet such admirers often forget that the German reformer was not inaugurating a new era of the enlightened and autonomous individual. We recognize that simply by noticing the basis for his lonely stand. After allowing that he could be refuted by Scripture, Luther declared, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God…. Here I stand. God help me.” It was because he stood under the Word that Luther felt compelled to stand against the church of his day.

One of the critical insights of the Reformation was that the church is the creatura verbi: the creation of the Word.

Whereas Rome held that the church was the mother of the Word, bearing the twin offspring of Scripture and tradition, the reformers reasserted the priority of the Word over the church. Like the word that called into being a world that did not exist, the word of the gospel calls into being an elect, redeemed, justified, and renewed people drawn from every people and place in the world.

However, the reformers’ notion of the church as the creatura verbi was asserted not only against Rome but against Anabaptism, which (especially in its more radical versions) sharply distinguished the “outer word” of Scripture and preaching from the “inner word” of the Spirit’s supposedly direct and immediate speaking. This movement the reformers dubbed “enthusiasm,” from the Greek compound en (in) theos (God), because it gave the impression that its members were so filled with God (particularly, the Spirit) that they did not need an external authority, text, or even an official ministry of preaching and sacrament.

Today, we have a remarkably similar situation. On the one hand, we have had three centuries of “enthusiasm.”

Against the claims of either pope or Scripture, the Enlightenment lodged sovereign authority in the self.

Historians have often noted the parallels between the “inner light” of the medieval mystic, radical enthusiast, and Quaker and the “enlightenment” of the Age of Reason. Whereas God’s Word calls us out of ourselves to hear the divine summons, the search for enlightenment calls us deeper into ourselves, to see the vision of light and glory that we can determine and possess for ourselves.

Some people think they can read the Bible not only for themselves but by themselves, as if they could have a purely private relationship with God. But preaching is social; it creates a covenant community.

In reaction against autonomous individualism, many Protestants increasingly advocate today a recovery of something like Rome’s position. Not only do we hear God’s Word together as Christ’s body (as the reformers certainly emphasized); the Bible is the church’s book, we often hear it said. God’s Word does not only stand over the church creating and sustaining, but also critiquing and disciplining its speech and practice.

So much of contemporary reflection and practice is to some degree a replay of these options: on one side, the

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clamor for a sovereign church and on the other side, an appeal to the sovereign individual and the “felt needs” of the consumer.

Confronted with the usurpation of the “speaker of the house” position by the church and the individual, we need to reassert the sovereignty of God’s speaking through his Word. The alternative is not autonomy, but captivity to other lords who cannot liberate.

However, this means that we will also have to recover the Reformation view that the Word of God is not only a canon that regulates our beliefs and practices (a topic that I cannot treat here), but that it is actually alive, accomplishing everything God intends. While upholding the reliability and authority of Scripture, conservative Evangelicalism has tended to reduce God’s Word to a sourcebook for timeless doctrinal and ethical laws, missing the crucial point that the Bible itself underscores from Genesis to Revelation: namely, that God’s speaking is acting, and this acting is not only descriptive but creative. God’s Word is authoritative not only because of what it is (God’s utterance), but because of what it does (God’s utterance).

The Word of God written and preached is not simply legally authoritative and binding, but is the primary means of grace, through which the Spirit ordinarily creates communion with Christ and therefore the communion of saints: ekklesia. In other words, in this conception, the Word is not merely something that stands over us. It is also “the implanted word” (James 1:21) that “abides in you” (1 John 2:14), and is to “dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:16). “So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ” (Rom. 10:16).

Thus the Word is not only the church’s norm for faith and practice, but the primary means of grace, often referred to as the “sacramental Word.” Although there can be no saving, personal, covenantal encounter apart from information and assertions of fact, the Word in this sense is much more “living and active” than that. It not only tells us what God has done; it does what God tells.

Life is found only in God, located in Christ, mediated by his Word. Specifically, the gospel is that part of God’s Word that gives life. Not everything that God says is saving. Sometimes God’s speech brings judgment, disaster, fear, warning, and dread, Calvin reminds us.

God’s majesty is so terrifying that we would either be overwhelmed with despair or driven to idolatry and selfjustification in an attempt to avoid the God who actually exists. The only safe route, therefore, is to receive the Father through the incarnate Son. Christ is the saving content of Scripture, the substance of its canonical unity.

Calvin notes, “This is the true knowledge of Christ: if we take him as he is offered by the Father, namely, clothed with his gospel. For as he himself has been designated the goal of our faith, so we shall not run straight to him unless the gospel leads the way.”

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A merely intellectual view of the Word as something to which one must give assent alive, is communicatively deficient, reducing speech to the descriptive and propositional mode, which can easily reduce the Logos to logic rather than living and active speech. However, even in general revelation, “the heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). We and all other creatures exist because God’s told us to!

While God’s Word certainly includes assertions and propositions about the way things are, it is more basically the means by which things become what they are and that which does not yet exist comes into being. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6). God’s Word not only warns and promises, but brings about in history that which is threatened and assured: “The Lord sent a word against Jacob, and it fell on Israel” (Isa. 9:8). How often do we encounter in the prophets that familiar formula, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying ….” Far from being a dead letter, the Word of God “gets around.” Leading Israel from exodus to conquest, the Name is the purposeful, restless, unrelenting God on the move, refusing to have anyone build him a house since it is God who is the architect and builder (2 Sam. 7, with Heb. 11:10, 13–16).

The Word not only explains, describes, asserts, and proposes, but arrives. J. A. Motyer asks, “How did the prophet receive the message which he was commissioned to convey to his fellows? The answer in the vast majority of the cases is perfectly clear and yet tantalizingly vague: ‘The Lord came… ’” Indeed, “the word of the Lord came to me, saying … ” is also a common expression in the prophets. The Lord came in the energy of his Word, delivered through the prophets and now consummately in the One who is the Word of God not only in energy but in essence (Heb. 1:1–3). What is the difference between the prophets and apostles on one hand and the rest of us on the other? In both cases, it is an advent, God’s arrival to act in our midst, but in revelation for them and illumination for us. The Spirit comes to us both with the same Word, but in two different ways.

More than an event, to be sure, the sacramental Word nevertheless is surely not less. Nor is it ever lost to the ebb and flow of history: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8; cf.

Matt. 24:35). “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear’” (Isa. 45:22–23).

The prophet’s role can be reduced neither to that of mere witness nor to a mere recorder of divine utterances, but is

The Word of God is not only a canon that regulates our beliefs and practices … it is actually accomplishing everything God intends.

As Christ gives himself to us through creaturely elements of water, bread, and wine, so too he gives through the words of Scripture and the proclamation that is derived from it. As with baptism and the Supper, the Spirit creates a bond between the sign (proclamation of the gospel) and the reality signified (Christ and all his benefits). That is why the Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 65) answers the question, “Where does this true faith come from?” by saying, “The Holy Spirit creates it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.” Through such preaching, sinners are actually reconciled to God. Summarizing the classic Reformed consensus, Herman Bavinck observed that the Word of God preceded the canon. In other words, preaching came before the completed text.

The phrase “word of God” has various meanings in Scripture and can refer to the power of God whereby He creates and upholds, or His revelation to the prophets, or the content of revelation, or the Gospel proclaimed by the apostles. Nevertheless, it is always a word of God which means: never simply a sound, but a power, no mere information but also an accomplishment of His will (Isa. 55:11, Rom. 4:17, 2 Cor. 4:6; Heb. 1:3, 11:3), Jesus quiets the sea (Mk. 4:38), heals the sick (Mt. 8:16), casts out demons (9:6), and raised the dead (Luke 7:14, 8:54, John 5:25, 28; 11:43).

In the Scriptures, the Word is not simply a product, effect, or trace of original divine utterances, now belonging to the past along with all other historical documents.

First and foremost, the Word is the second person of the Holy Trinity: the eternal Son, by whom all things were created and in whom they hold together (John 1:1–16; Col. 1:17). Yet Scripture also refers to specific instances of the Father’s speaking in the Son by the power of the Spirit who brings about its intended effect. In this sense, God’s Word is God’s working. Like our own acts of speaking, God’s Word in this sense is not an extension of his essence, but the effect of his presence and lively activity. Borrowing on J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory, we may say that God does things with words. Although the divine essence does not emanate, God’s words do in fact “go forth” and are “sent” on their missions. The Word is that living and active energy that creates and recreates. It is never inert because it is the Word of the Father, spoken in the Son, made effectual by the Spirit.

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the ambassador who is authorized and commissioned to speak the living and active Word that brings about a new state of affairs in history: “I have put my words in your mouth…” (Isa. 51:16). Although Isaiah himself is “undone” in the presence of the holy King, recognizing that he as well as the people have “unclean lips,” the burning coal is pressed to his lips so that he will be able to speak God’s Word faithfully to God’s covenant people (Isa. 6:5–9).

There is a distinction, but there is no contrast drawn here between divine and human action: the human signs are sanctified as divine signs that communicate the reality signified. YAHWEH’S Word in human words is compared to the rain that descends and brings forth fruit: “[S]o shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11).

Although it brings him nothing by reproach, the Word is like a burning fire in Jeremiah’s bones compelling him to bring it to the covenant people day and night (Jer. 20:9).

“Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” (Jer. 23:29). God’s words are event-generating discourse: “Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: None of my words will be delayed any longer, but the word that I speak will be fulfilled, says the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 12:28). In fact, the scene of the prophet preaching to the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 vividly portrays this living and active Word that creates the reality of which it speaks.

God’s words “do good” to his people (Mic. 2:7), and Jesus was “mighty in deed and word before God and all the people” (Luke 24:19). Not only did Jesus bring and fulfill the Word as a prophet but he is also the Word incarnate (John 1:14), the unique archetype from whom the prophetic and canonical Word is constructed. While the earthly tabernacle and temple participated in the heavenly sanctuary sacramentally, the incarnation is the unique advent of the heavenly temple itself among us.

The same is true of the relationship between the energetic and hypostatic Word. Not only because the words of the prophets and apostles share in the light of the Word himself, but also precisely because they do, they are the very Word of God. Enthusiasts through the ages have appealed to John 6:63 in order to distinguish the Spirit from the “dead letter”: “It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.” And yet, Jesus immediately adds, “The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.” Christ is the Word who upholds all of creation for the good of his church (Col. 1:15–20) and gives us his Word to dwell in us richly (Col. 3:16). Paul acknowledges the Thessalonians as fellow-saints, chosen in Christ, “because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction…” (1 Thess. 1:5).

So the Word of God written and proclaimed is not an impersonal body of timeless doctrine or ethics, but is grounded ultimately in the Son as the climax of the

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Father’s revealing and redeeming speech in a gradually unfolding history (Heb. 1:1–3) and the Spirit as its perfecting power.

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. (Heb. 4:12–13) According to James 1:21, the Word is an implanted seed “that has the power to save your souls.” 1 Peter 1:23–25 adds, You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower fails, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” That word is the good news that was announced to you.

The Word of God is the source not only of creation, but of the events of judgment and redemption of history leading to the last day (2 Pet. 3:1–7). Hence, the rider on the white horse in the Apocalypse “is called The Word of God” (Rev. 19:13).

Throughout the prophets, scrolls are eaten and burn in bellies; they fly around like a giant parchment with razorsharp edges bringing judgment to the ends of the earth.

All of this imagery is meant to underscore the point that God’s Word as covenant canon not only speaks of but actually brings blessings and curses. Its sanctions are always effectively realized, and no mortal can add to or subtract from the canon without falling under divine judgment (Deut. 4:2; Deut. 12:32; Rev. 22:18–19).

Therefore, not only as word-events, but also as an enduring canon, God’s Word is living and active.

Consequently, the Word is not made alive, active, or effective by human decision or effort. Its proclamation is not merely an occasion for God to do something if we can somehow make God’s Word “present” and “relevant” to its audience, but is God’s presence-in-action and therefore establishes its own relevance. Although the hearer of the Word still requires the Spirit’s regeneration and illumination to understand and embrace it as the address of the Covenant Lord, the sphere of this activity is the recipient rather than that revelation itself. Therefore, regardless of whether anyone receives and acknowledges it as such, the Word remains the working of God. It binds and frees, hardens and softens, wounds and heals.

The place that God creates for communion with his people is generated by his Word. This was already true in creation itself, when the Spirit of God swept over the waters covering the earth and prepared dry land (Gen. M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 13

The power of the Word lies in the ministry of the Spirit, not in the ministers themselves.… The power always lies with the message, not the messenger; the

beings…For Luther everything depends upon the Bible; hearing, using, and preaching it as the living voice of the gospel (viva vox evangelii).”

commission, not the one who is sent; the Word, not the witness; the treasure, not the clay vessel.

1:2–10), and in the exodus, when the Spirit led Israel through the waters of judgment (Exod. 13–14). And now at Pentecost, the Spirit is poured out and the first public evidence is Peter’s proclamation of the gospel (Acts 2:14–36). Repeatedly in Acts, the growth of the church is attributed to the fact that “the Word of God spread” and “prevailed” (Acts 6:7; 13:49; 19:20) and “proclaiming the good news” is the central activity described this history of the early church.

By his Word and Spirit, the ascended Lord prepares a place of communion with his body. Word and Spirit are not opposites to be negotiated, but inseparable aspects of one effective speech. The Father is the source; the Son is the content (the external Word), and the Spirit brings about within us the “amen” (internal response) to his utterance. By the Word we are legally adopted and by the Spirit we receive the inner witness that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:12–17).

Luther’s doctrine of the Word was elaborated in the Lutheran confessions, as Oswald Bayer summarizes: “Another person, speaking in the name and on the commission of God, speaks this promise to me, but this is in fact the speaking and acting of God himself.” Article V of the Augsburg Confession reads, “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, when and where he wills, in those who hear the gospel.” Bayer asks, Is the Word to be rated that highly? Should we not inquire into its credibility and authority? Must not a material and tangible history stand behind it? Is it not just a witness to an event, from which it must be differentiated? Do we not have to agree with Goethe’s Faust that we should “not value the Word so highly”? Should we not correct the first verse of John’s Gospel, as Faust did, and say: “In the beginning was the—deed”?

Yet the Word is deed and the deed is Word. Bayer adds, “Our Western philosophical tradition has given the intellect prominence among our human faculties.

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Thus, Bayer concludes “…the preached Word that comes to us by word of mouth is Jesus Christ himself now present with us …” The gospel is the

kingdom. It does not simply proclaim it or point to it; it brings and causes all the hearers, including myself, to enter it. As Jesus Christ, as God himself, the gospel, when preached by word of mouth, does more than simply offer us the possibility that I can actualize and make it real by my own decision of faith. The Word itself is the power of God, God’s kingdom.

The choice of preaching as a medium is not incidental.

Not only is it calibrated to sola gratia (since hearing is receiving), but also to soli Deo gloria (since the medium is always secondary to the message). The fact that some of the most significant witnesses in the history of redemption are characterized as inferior speakers is surely of some consequence. Upon receiving his commission from God in the burning bush, Moses complains that he is a poor speaker (Exod. 4:10), and we have already encountered Isaiah’s sense of his own unworthiness as “a man of unclean lips…” (Isa. 6:5). Not only aware of his own moral unworthiness, Paul concedes his rhetorical weakness repeatedly in responding to the charges of the gilded-tongued “super-apostles” who are leading people astray. Yet all of this is “so that the power would not rest in us but in God” (1 Cor. 2:5).

The power of the Word lies in the ministry of the Spirit, not in the ministers themselves. God does in fact effectively mediate his Word through the mouth of Moses; he touches a burning coal to Isaiah’s lips, and brings about the faith of the Gentiles through his gospel as Paul proclaims it. Who dares to speak not only of God but for God? Only one who has been called, since revelation and redemption are God’s work. The power always lies with the message, not the messenger; the commission, not the one who is sent; the Word, not the witness; the treasure, not the clay vessel. According to the Second Helvetic Confession, The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven: and that now the Word itself

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which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.

With the radical sects in its sights, with their contrast between the Word that “merely beats the air” and the “inner Word” resident within the individual, the same confession declares, “Neither do we think that therefore the outward preaching is to be thought as fruitless because the instruction in true religion depends on the inward illumination of the Spirit, or because it is written, ‘And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor . . . , for they shall all know me’ (Jer. 31:34).”

That God can illumine inwardly apart from the external preaching is not denied, but this work of the Spirit within is always in Scripture connected to the outward preaching of mere mortals (the confession cites Mark 16:15; Acts 16:14, and Rom. 10:17). The Westminster Larger Catechism (Q. 155) adds, The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners, of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ, of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation (emphasis added).

As important as the reformers thought the reading, study, and prayerful contemplation of the Scriptures to be, the preaching of the Word was always regarded as the primary means of grace.

Many evangelical churches today exhibit a high theory of the script, while the actual performance here and now—that is, the Word conveyed through preaching, liturgy, song, and sacrament—is often barely discernable except as moralistic or therapeutic sound bytes. In this situation, one may discern two extremes. One is to treat the script as a formal document simply to be exegeted, giving the service the feeling of a lecture with a few songs.

It is no wonder that many raised in this environment swing to the opposite pole, concluding that the Bible and expository preaching cannot generate the relevance and drama that might make a difference in people’s lives. So instead of proclaiming the Word as a “living and active” work of God here and now, rescripting new characters in the drama of redemption, the script is used rather than followed. To be sure, the script is still regarded as legally binding and authoritative—even inerrant, but in actual practice it is not actually the “main event” in the performance of the local community theater. Excerpts are taken to illustrate various things that we already believe or find relevant and interesting, but they are finally footnotes

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for the dull soap operas of this passing age.

Somehow, we must reverse modernity’s presumption that our life is the drama that the biblical drama illumines, serves, fits, or for which it proves useful. On the contrary, the biblical drama is the plot that makes sense of our otherwise vacuous and dead-end characters. No formal theory concerning the text’s inherent value, however exalted, can save a church from becoming something else.

It is only in performing the script that the church stages the right play; it is only in performing the script that the covenantal canon generates, in the power of the Spirit, a covenant community in the present. When our public speech in the church loses touch with its place in God’s unfolding drama of redemption, it becomes easily reduced simply to instruction, exhortation, or moral uplift. It’s no wonder, then, that people go looking for means to bring Christ down from heaven or up from the dead—a living presence of God among us—when all the while he is “as near as the Word that we preach” (Rom. 10:8).

Just as creation is the result of a conversation between these persons, the church is the offspring rather than the origin of the gospel. It is no wonder then that Paul compares the work of the gospel to God’s Word in creation (Rom. 4:16–17). And, putting this passage together with Romans 10, we can see Paul’s logic: Salvation comes to us through the proclamation of Christ. “For this reason [the promise] depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants . . .”

(Rom. 4:16). We are saved by the preaching of Christ, so that it may be through faith, so that it may be by grace, so that finally, God alone may be glorified. ■

Michael Horton is professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

In this article, Dr. Horton has referred extensively to Calvin’s Petit tracté de la sancta Cene (1541), OS 1:504-505; and Institutes 3.2.7; 3.2.29; 1.13.7; 3.2.6. The quotation from Herman Bavinck is taken from chapter 10 (section 56) of Bavinck’s Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, 3rd unaltered ed., vol. 4 (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1918), this excerpt was translated by Nelson D. Kloosterman as “Law-Gospel Distinction and Preaching,” http://auxesis.net/ bavinck/law gospel distinction and preaching.php, p. 2.

Dr. Horton has also taken a quotation from J. A. Motyer’s, “Prophecy,” The New Bible Dictionary, ed. J. D. Douglas (Eerdmans, 1962), p. 1039. Various selections from Oswald Bayer are taken from Living by Grace: Justification and Sanctification, tr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 43, 45, 47, 49, 50.

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Why Inerrancy Still Matters

by Kim Riddlebarger In 1978, James Montgomery Boice sounded the because scholars can tell us where these errors are so following warning in Foundation of Biblical Authority, the that we can side-step them and find the theological introductory volume explaining the purpose behind the point, even if we have to sift through historical errors formation of the International Council on Biblical and mistakes made by the original authors to get there.

Inerrancy (ICBI). Boice wrote that “even among If the reformers railed against the papacy and the evangelicals, Christian doctrine and Christian living are magisterium for inserting the church’s infallible moving progressively away from the biblical standard authority between the text of Holy Scripture and the and from the classical teachings of the church.” ICBI did preacher/theologian, then surely the current approach yeoman-like work in formulating a statement of the ends up in the same place. Unless there is a scholar doctrine of inerrancy with the publication of the Chicago present to tell me whether or not certain things are true Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1979). The last twentyor false, how am I to know whether or not to trust what eight years have gone by and is written? The tyranny of the struggle to define biblical authority moves from the inerrancy and explain the church to the academy, but is ramifications of this for the it not the same tyranny?

[Inerrancy] matters because life of the church now seems Can you pick up your Bible like the last battle in the and trust it without a guide to Christians claim to accept the fundamentalist-modernist its supposed errors? Who do full authority of Scripture as controversy. Evangelicals no you believe? The church? longer debate whether or not The scholars? the final arbiter of matters of the Bible is inerrant. New The overlooked element in issues seem to have come to the declaration “we accept the faith and practice. the fore. doctrinal authority of But inerrancy still matters.

Scripture,” even if we reject It matters because Christians the concept of inerrancy (to claim to accept the full authority of Scripture as the final err is human, after all), is what the Bible teaches about arbiter of matters of faith and practice. How successful its own inerrancy. Is that not a doctrine taught in Holy Christians have been in following the teaching of Scripture? If it is, it should be affirmed. If it is not, it Scripture is one matter. Yet what Scripture teaches can be rejected. At the heart of this issue is the about its own authority and authenticity is certainly part “fundamentalist” view of Scripture held by Jesus of the biblical teaching about doctrine. In fact, this may himself. Inerrancy matters because this is the view held be the most important doctrine in Scripture: What does

by Jesus. This is the view he taught his apostles. Their Scripture say about its own authority and inerrancy? writings are the foundation for all subsequent church Scripture’s doctrine of Scripture is the foundation for doctrine. everything.

So then, what did Jesus believe about Scripture?

Critics of inerrancy respond by saying that This would include the Old Testament and the soon-toconservative evangelicals have blown the matter all out be-written New Testament. of proportion. Only naive fundamentalists believe that First, Jesus repeatedly refers to the Old Testament as everything in the Bible is true. You can still have an the Word of God (Matt. 15:6, Mark 7:13, John 10:35). authoritative Bible even if you reject inerrancy, they say.

These Old Testament Scriptures, he says, “cannot be It is all too common to hear people affirm the full broken” (John 10:35). They are “truth” (John 17:17). authority of Scripture and then turn right around and Furthermore, the Scriptures are without error in all point out all the factual errors the Bible supposedly matters about which they speak (cf. Matt. 22:29). contains. This is not a hindrance to Christians, they say, Second, Jesus affirms the Old Testament to be the 1 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

very words of God. In Matthew 4, when Jesus is mission? If so, he is intentionally deceiving his tempted by Satan, he responds to him by saying “Man audience. does not live on bread alone, but on every word that B. B. Warfield, perhaps, sums it up best in his famous comes from the mouth of God” (v. 4). In John’s Gospel, book, Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, when he says, Jesus is recorded as saying that “I gave them the words that you [the Father] gave me.” It is clear that for Jesus, [W]e do not adopt the doctrine of the plenary inspiration extends to the inspiration of Scripture on words themselves. The sentimental grounds, nor Old Testament, as well as even, as we have already had It is clear that for Jesus, that which Jesus himself occasion to remark on a priori speaks, are the “words of or general grounds of inspiration extends to the words God.” In Matthew whatever kind. We adopt it themselves. The Old Testament, 7:26–29, Jesus equates his specifically because it is taught words with those of God. us as truth by Christ and His as well as that which Jesus In this context, it is apostles, in the Scriptural important to note that “all record of their teaching, and himself speaks, are the authority in heaven and the evidence for its truth is, earth has been given to therefore, as we have already “words of God.” [Jesus]” (Matt. 28:18). In pointed out, precisely that fact, because Jesus speaks evidence, in weight and the words that the Father amount, which vindicates for has given to him, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but us the trustworthiness of Christ and His apostles as my words will never pass away” (Matt. 24:35). For teachers of doctrine.

Jesus, both the Old Testament, as well as his words, are the very words of God. Do we dare say that God errs So, we accept the Bible’s teaching on matters of faith when he speaks these words? and practice. Do we accept Jesus’ view of Scripture? If Third, Jesus affirms that the word of God cannot be we do, we must affirm the inerrancy of Scripture as did revoked (Matt. 5:18; Luke 16:17; Luke 24:44). The our Lord. That is why inerrancy still matters.

Bible has final authority in all matters of doctrine (Matt.

4:4,7,10; Matt. 21:42, Mark 11:17). In many texts Kim Riddlebarger is pastor of Christ Reformed Church Jesus uses the formula “it is written.” As J. W. Wenham (Anaheim, California) and co-host of the White Horse Inn points out, “There is a grand and solid objectivity about radio program. the perfect tense… ‘Here,’ Jesus was saying, is the permanent, unchangeable witness of the eternal God, The quotation from J. W. Wenham is taken from committed to writing for our instruction.” What is “Christ’s View of Scripture,” in Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. more, says Wenham, “divine authority is clearly implied Geisler (Zondervan, 1979), p. 15. B. B. Warfield’s in the expression [it is written] mentioned in connection quotation from Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (P&R with the temptations, but often used at other times Publishing) can be found on pp. 218–219.

(Matt. 11:10; 21:13; 26:24; Mark 9:12, 13; 11:17; 14:21, 27; Luke 7:27; 19:46). The inspiration and authority implied by these various phrases is applied not only to oracular, prophetic utterances but to all parts of Scripture without discrimination—to history, to laws, to psalms, to prophecies.”

For Jesus, then, the Old Testament is the authoritative Word of God. Fourth, of extreme importance when it comes to the inerrancy of Scripture are Jesus’ affirmations about various events of Old Testament history, frequently treated with ridicule. Jesus affirms the historicity: 1) of Jonah (Matt. 12:40); 2) of Adam and the Genesis account (Matt. 19:4); and 3) of Noah and the flood (Matt. 24:37–39). Is Jesus merely accommodating his words to the primitive view of Scripture held by those Jews living in Palestine at the time of his messianic M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 17

Christ in the Old Testament Overview The history of redemption is structured by God’s covenant promise and moves forward in the “seasons” of God’s saving work. The promise of God’s covenant is the goal of Old Testament history. It is grounded in his sure oath that the Son of God would save his people from their sins.

Pentateuch

Moses

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy The Pentateuch is the seed form of the Gospel revealed in types and shadows of Christ and what he would come to do as the true seed of the woman, the Second Adam, the promised seed of Abraham, and the true Israelite. The story of redemption contained in the first five books is a glimpse into the final redemption sinful man would receive in Christ. Images of Creation, Redemption, and Glory in the Pentateuch all reveal the coming person and work of Jesus Christ.

Historical Books Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, II Kings, I Chronicles, II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther The Historical Books serve as witness documents against Israel for her continued and repeated unfaithfulness to the Mosaic Covenant. These books—with their detailed recitation of the deeds of Israel’s kings—also bear witness to the coming Son of David who would fulfill the promise of an everlasting kingdom and bear in his own body the penalty for breaking God’s covenant.

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Joshua

Wisdom and Psalms Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Songs The wisdom books express the human quest for knowledge and understanding within the framework of God’s revelation. The fact that there is mystery in God’s ways compels us to trust in his goodness. Wisdom and Psalms are expressions of daily fellowship with God by those who know what it is to be redeemed by his loving mercy. They show that the history of redemption, the covenant, and the prophetic word from God are not merely religious ideas of statements about the past, but encounters with the living God. The great objective facts of God’s work for his people to save them are the foundation for spiritual experience and endeavor. They are deeply personal because in them we hear the voices of those who triumph and struggle, rejoice and lament as they find themselves both in the fallen world and in covenant relationship with God just as we do. Their anguished cries are answered in Jesus Christ. The mixture of joy and anguish are resolved in Christ.

David

Prophets

Jonah

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi The prophets warn that the unconditional blessings of the covenant cannot be enjoyed by those who continue to break the covenant. The prophets identify the specific ways in which Israel has broken the covenant, pronounce the judgment of God on this unfaithfulness to the covenant, and speak a message of comfort to the faithful. The post-exilic prophets interpret the nature of the restored community and point beyond it to the real fulfillment of the promises through the coming of the new covenant. Throughout the prophetic writings we see promises of a different kind of arrangement that was coming. This is fulfillment of the promises that God swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Deut. 4:25-31). Ultimately all of the prophets are pointing ahead to the ultimate Prophet—Jesus Christ himself.

In this chart, the text was provided by James Lee, Joel Fick, Reid Hankins, Brett McNeill, and James Lim of New Life Mission Church (La Jolla, CA), with portions from Graeme Goldsworthy’s According to Plan (InterVarsity Press, 2002). The overview was taken from Edmund P. Clowney’s Preaching Christ in All of Scripture (Crossway, 2003), pp.16, 19.

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G O D S U N T O O U R S E LV E S

What the Bible is All About From where do you know [that Jesus Christ is that mediator who is in one person both very God and a real righteous man]?

From the Holy Gospel, which God Himself revealed first in Paradise; afterwards proclaimed by the holy Patriarchs and Prophets, and foreshadowed by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law; and finally fulfilled by His well-beloved Son. — Heidelberg Catechism, Q/A 19

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he hit TV show Seinfeld has been called a show about nothing. One of the most pernicious falsehoods about the Bible is that it, too, is a book about nothing, that it is a random collection of ancient myths and moral aphorisms. Strangely, some Christians seem to regard Scripture this way. Others find unity in Scripture around God’s plan for national Israel and/or a time of millennial glory. Still others treat the Bible as if it is about the reader, as if there is no such thing as a “text” or authorial intent but only the reader’s experience of the text. Even more crassly, the Bible is read as if the reader (and his or her prosperity and happiness) is at the center of the story.

Reading the Bible the New Testament Way hese errant approaches to the Scriptures are borne from the misapprehension that the biblical writers themselves did not understand themselves to be contributing to a larger unified story and that they did not have a way of reading the Scriptures. There are writers who admit that such a unity and way of reading Scripture exists, but they contend Scripture is inspired and therefore it is beyond our ability to imitate the biblical hermeneutic. This view is mistaken. Scripture is inspired, but the biblical hermeneutic is not—at least not so that we cannot observe and imitate it. That is precisely what we shall begin to do in this essay.

The Scriptures are organized around God the Son who was “manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” (1 Tim. 3:16; ESV).

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Jesus’ Hermeneutic ur Lord himself claimed throughout his ministry to be not only God the Son incarnate but also to be at the center of God’s saving purposes and revelation.

Indeed, he attacked the hermeneutic of the Pharisees as wrongheaded. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life,” but the Scribes and Pharisees missed the unifying message of the history of redemption and revelation: the Scriptures “bear witness about” Jesus (John 5:39). The Pharisees claimed to believe Moses, but they did not, because Moses, “on whom you have set your hope” (John 5:45) accuses them. The Pharisees missed the point of the Pentateuch: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46).

One of the great and common misunderstandings of the Bible had to do directly with the Father before the incarnation, that the mediatoral work of the Son began with the incarnation, that prior to the incarnation we had unmediated access to the Father. Such a view is directly contradictory to the explicit teaching of Jesus. He said the Father’s “voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen.” He was even more explicit in John 6:46 that no one has “seen the Father except him who is from God ….” If anyone would see the Father he must look at Jesus, the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15). According to Jesus, his mediation does not mean less access to the Father, but more: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus was conscious of his office as the “revelation” of God (John 1:1). He knew that “No one has ever seen God. The only begotten God … has revealed him” (John 1:18).

Jesus repeatedly challenged the myopic hermeneutic of the Jewish leaders. Just as they claimed to follow Moses, they also claimed to be Abraham’s “children.” Jesus rejected the premise of their claim. He said that he is the fulfillment of Abraham’s deepest longing: “‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, he saw it and rejoiced.’”

Not only did Abraham and Moses trust in God the Son and in the salvation he would bring to his people, but so did the prophet Isaiah when he said, “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isa. 53:1). He was anticipating Jesus’ response to the blindness of the Jews (Isa. 6:9, 10) and predicting the reception Jesus received.

The Apostle John says “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him” (John 12:41).

Jesus provoked the Pharisees by querying them about the identity of the Messiah: “‘What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?’” Good scholars that they were, the Pharisees replied that the Messiah must be the “son of David” (Matt. 22:42). After evading so many of the Pharisees’ traps, Jesus had set one of his own. If the Messiah must be David’s son, how is it that, according to Psalm 110:1, David calls the Messiah “Lord?” whom God the Father has placed at the right hand in power (Matt.

22:42–46)? Totally baffled, they did not see that Jesus,

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whom they sought to murder, was both David’s son and David’s Lord.

On the cross our Lord, by applying Psalm 22 to himself, appropriated to himself all the Psalms. He made it clear that it was not David who was utterly abandoned by God; David did not substitute for those whom the Father had given to him (John 6:39; 10:39), David did not drink the cup the Father had given to him (John 18:11). Jesus is the man who delights in the law of Yahweh. He announced God’s name to the brothers (Ps. 21:23; Heb. 2:12). It is his royal signet ring (Ps. 2:12) that must be kissed in submission. He is the “shepherd” (Ps. 23) who went through the valley of the shadow of death, and he alone had “clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps. 24:4). We can see how the New Testament reads the Psalter by the way it uses Psalm 110. In more than twenty quotations and allusions, the New Testament makes clear that God the Son, who became incarnate, is the “Lord” to whom the Father said, “Sit at my right hand.” It is to and about him that Yahweh has sworn, “You are priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

After his resurrection and ascension Jesus gave the disciples a vital lesson in biblical interpretation. All the prophets, he said, testified that the Messiah must suffer before entering into glory. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25–27). Jesus did not simply apply particular Messianic passages to himself. He interpreted the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures as referring to himself. Thus, reading the Bible with Christ at the center is not reading anything into Scripture; it is refusing to read him out of it.

The Apostolic Hermeneutic he first official, public proclamation of the apostolic message centered on the “foolishness” of Christ and him crucified (Acts 2; 1 Cor. 1:25; 2:2). Like Jesus, Peter interpreted the patriarchs and the prophets with Jesus at the center of their message. He preached not an earthly millennium, but “This Jesus whom you crucified, God has made him both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36).

This twofold title, “Lord and Messiah,” is important because it gives us a clue as to how Peter understood the Hebrew Scriptures.

Frequently in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the covenant name of God, Yahweh (Exod.

6:3) is translated with the Greek word Kyrios. For example, in Psalm 110:1, the Hebrew text says, YAHWEH says to Adon, sit at my right hand ….” The two characters in the dialogue are distinguished by two different titles.

The Greek translation of Psalm 110:1, however, from which Peter quoted in Acts 2:34 reads: “the Lord says to my Lord….” Our English versions reflect the fact that the same noun is used for both persons. The distinction that was clear in the Hebrew text became ambiguous in the Greek text and the apostles capitalized on this ambiguity.

They did so because what distinguishes the Father and the

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Son is not a difference in divine essence, but a difference in their persons and it belongs to the person of the Son to become incarnate, but the incarnate Son is and remains consubstantial with the Father. Thus, to call Jesus Lord and Messiah is to say, “When you see the LORD speaking or acting in Scripture, think of Jesus.”

All this means that God the Son did not first appear in the history of redemption in the incarnation, but has been mediating the knowledge of God and saving his people for thousands of years before. This is how the Apostle Paul read the history of salvation and why he declared, “There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). We see this way of thinking in his admonition to the Corinthians regarding their conduct at the Lord’s Table, where he reminded them that they were not the first to be baptized (1 Cor. 10:1–2) and they were not the first to eat the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 10:3). Indeed, they ate the same food and drank the same drink we do: “For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed

them, and that Rock was Christ.” Paul did not see only occasional types of Christ in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Rather, he saw God the Son actively operating throughout Scripture. In other words, the unity of the covenant of grace is not merely typological but substantial. We Christians today are partakers of the same justifying and saving grace by which God the Son justified and redeemed his people before the incarnation. Paul said this much when he told the Corinthians, “For the Son of God Jesus the Messiah whom we preached among you … is not Yes and No, but in him the Yes has come. For however many are the promises of God, their Yes is in him. Wherefore also through him is our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Cor. 1:19–20).

The writer to the Hebrews also saw Christ as the center of redemptive history. Much is made of the heroes of faith and of the quality of their faith in Hebrews 11, but not enough is made of the object of their faith. Moses turned his back on privilege in favor of identification with God’s

The Qur’an’s Challenge to the Bible

by Adam S. Francisco Passages from the Qur’an said to be revealed in the earliest days of Islam suggest that Muhammad (570–632) viewed his religion as a reassertion of the monotheism of Christianity. As contacts between Christians and the nascent Muslim sect in Mecca increased, he even reportedly dissuaded his followers from debating with Christians. Instead the Muslims were instructed to approach them by saying, “We believe in what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we have surrendered” (29:46). Nearly 1,400 years later, in an age of religious syncretism, it seems that many Muslims and non-Muslims, particularly in the West, would agree. However, even a brief assessment of the Qur’an makes it evidently clear that Christianity and Islam share very little in common. Indeed, the Qur’an directly challenges the theology and authority of the Bible.

Before surveying relevant material from the Qur’an, a brief introduction to its place in the Muslim worldview is necessary. To begin with, Muslims consider the Qur’an to be the Word of God. A few passages from its rather obscure text suggest—and Islamic scholars almost unanimously agree—that it has existed for all eternity, but to lead human beings “out of the depths of darkness into light” (14:1). It entered the world, descended upon, and was delivered orally through Muhammad from 610 to 632 (13:39, 97:1–5). While there is evidence that many of his companions wrote down what he said during Muhammad’s lifetime, these revelations were not collected into one text until three decades or so after his death.

The central theological motif of the Qur’an is that God is one. Chapter 112:1–4, which is said to sum up a third of all Islamic doctrine, instructs Muslims to confess that God is also the eternal, incomparable sustainer of all humankind. While this may at first seem compatible with Christian teachings about the nature of God, this passage goes one step further and divorces Islam from Christian theism by asserting that God “begets not, nor is He begotten.” Elsewhere and more poignantly it addresses Christians specifically: “Say not ‘Trinity’ . . . for Allah is one God” (4:171), for the teaching that three persons comprise the one divine essence of God is viewed, at best, as a subtle form of polytheism in the Qur’an.

Nowhere is the Qur’an’s challenge to the theology of the Bible clearer than its treatment of the person and work of Christ. While it maintains—along with the Gospels—that Christ was born of a virgin (19:20–21), it flatly denies that Jesus was the son of God. In addition to the passage above defining the nature of God as one who “begets not,” the Qur’an boldly claims that it is not fitting for God to have a son (19:35, 92). In fact, it describes the doctrine of the incarnation of God in Christ as a “monstrous” assertion (19:89). Explaining the logic of this, the Qur’an rhetorically asks, “How can He have a son when He hath no consort?” (6:100–101) “Exalted is the Majesty of our Lord: He has taken neither a wife nor a son” (72:3). To be sure, as many note, Christ is revered in the Qur’an, but it is the Christ of the Qur’an—who is only a messenger of God (4:171, 5:75)—not the biblical Christ.

If this were not troubling enough from a Christian standpoint, the Qur’an even denies that Christ was crucified.

Instead, it claims, rather ambiguously, that someone who looked like him took his place while Christ ascended into heaven to await his return on the day of judgment (4:157–159). Despite the contradiction with both the biblical and extra-biblical 2 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

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people, because “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt… ” (Heb. 11:24–26). This means that there were Christians before the incarnation, believers who had, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism Q. 21, “a certain knowledge and a hearty trust” in Christ fifteen hundred years before the incarnation. Moses’ story is the story of a Christian pilgrim on the way to the heavenly city (Heb. 11:16), as we are, but who happened to live in the time of types and shadows (Rom. 5:14; Col. 2:17; Heb. 8:5). More than looking forward to the incarnation, Hebrews also places God the Son at the center of the action of the story of redemption.

Arguably, no place was more basic to Israel’s national identity than Sinai, and whom does Hebrews place thundering at the top of the mountain? Jesus, “the Mediator of a New Covenant” (Heb. 12:24). The one to whom we have come was there all along, with whom Jacob and Moses spoke “face to face” (Gen. 32:30; Exod.

33:11) and now, in the incarnation, with us. Read this

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way, we understand that with the incarnation we have not been cut off from God by the incarnation. Rather, we have more and greater access to God (Heb. 4:15–16; 9:15).

Writing to the suffering Christians of Asia Minor (central Turkey), the Apostle Peter assumed a Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The salvation that had been preached to them was the same prophesied by the prophets, into which those prophets had “searched and enquired carefully,” asking “what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Pet. 1:10–11; ESV). According to Peter, God the Son unifies the history of redemption and revelation despite the variety of circumstances and human authors of Scripture because God’s Word also has one divine, unifying author, the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit who moved all the writers to write as did they in Scripture (2 Pet. 1:21), and who intended all along that Scripture should reveal Christ throughout.

historical record that Christ was not crucified is of no consequence to a Muslim. The Qur’an denies that human beings are inherently sinful and, furthermore, that sins need to be expiated. While in the Qur’an Adam and Eve did fall prey to temptation, they were immediately absolved and forgiven (2:36–38, 7:23–24). Neither they nor their descendents fell under the curse of sin and the law. Rather, God simply forgives sins as he wills (11:90; 39:53–56), and humans earn their salvation by submitting themselves to God and doing good (4:125, 41:33).

Complementing this rather low view of sin, or at least of the consequences of sin, the Qur’an has a very high view of humankind. All human beings are born in a state of righteousness. They do not, as Romans 3 makes clear, in accordance with their sinful nature, turn away from God. Rather, the Qur’an teaches that all human beings are, according to their nature (fitra) predisposed to worship the God of Islam (30:30). Muhammad even taught that every human being brought into the world is by nature a Muslim. It is only through the misguided nurturing of their parents (and other influences) that they turn away from it.

This motif that Islam is the aboriginal religion of humanity and history is prominent in the Qur’an. All the prophets beginning with Adam through Moses and Jesus proclaimed essentially the same message that Muhammad, the sign and seal of the prophets (30:40), preached. “It is He Who sent down to thee (step by step), in truth, the Book, confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion [the Qur’an]” (3:3, 9:111). Muhammad did not start a new religion, the Qur’an claims.

Instead, he revived the religion of Moses and Jesus, whose messages had been corrupted (tahrif). Jews and Christians, the Qur’an charges—and later Muslim tradition develops—purposely altered the text and skewed the message of Moses and Jesus. Thus, God sent Muhammad to reiterate what truth was left in the Judeo-Christian tradition and to secure the full revelation of God once and for all in the Qur’an.

Clearly, the Qur’an contradicts the essence of biblical Christianity. It rejects the triune nature of God, disfigures the biblical doctrines of the person of Christ, and denies justification through faith on account of the work of Christ on the cross. While claiming to be the perpetual religion of nature and history, following in the footsteps of Christianity, it attempts to justify its claims by asserting that the Word of God, revealed in the New and Old Testament, is corrupted.

While still a relatively foreign religion, as the Muslim population continues to escalate and migrate westward, the Christian church must be prepared to respond to the challenge of Islam. This not only requires a solid grounding in biblical doctrine, but also a thorough acquaintance with the Qur’an.

Adam S. Francisco is assistant professor of history at Concordia College (Bronxville, New York). For further study on Christianity and Islam, see Dr. Francisco’s forthcoming book, Martin Luther and Islam: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007) Passages from the Qur’an are taken from the translations of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an, 11th ed.

(Amana Publications, 2004) and A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (Touchstone, 1996).

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Reading the Bible with Christ at the center is not reading anything into Scripture; it is refusing to read him out of it.

The Son in the Hebrew Scriptures hrist is the subject of Scripture. The question is not whether the Bible is Christ-centered but how?

Following the pattern established by Jesus and the apostles, we find that Christ is revealed by an extensive series of types (illustrations of the reality to come) in the history of redemption. Jesus and the Apostles, however, have clued us in to an even more profound way of reading Scripture whereby Jesus does not simply appear typologically, but as a pre-incarnate actor in the drama of creation, fall, and redemption. He was the agent of creation. John 1:3 says that “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made.” Remembering that Jesus is the only Mediator, we must consider that when Genesis 2:15–16 says that YAHWEH Elohim put Adam in the garden and instituted the covenant of works (Westminster Confession of Faith 7.2), we must identify that divine person as the pre-incarnate Son of God. It was he who made the woman, conducted the wedding ceremony, whom Adam heard coming in judgment in the garden (Gen. 3:10), and who pronounced the curse. It was also the Son who preached the gospel for the first time: “he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15) and who covered his people (Gen. 3:21). Read this way, this narrative takes on new depth. This is neither saga nor idle promise, for with this oath the Son solemnly committed himself to incarnation, suffering, and death in order to conquer the enemy. He did so again in the covenant-making ceremony of Genesis 15:17. It was he who went “between the pieces,” swearing a maledictory oath against his own life (Gen. 15:13). The mysterious figure with whom Jacob wrestled, and with whom he spoke “face to face,” (Gen. 33:20) was none other than the Mediator. That same person revealed himself to Moses as the “I Am” (Exod. 3:14; John 4:26; 6:20, 35, 41, 48, 51, 8:12, 58). Not only was his incarnation illustrated by the blood on the doorposts (Exod. 12:7) but it was he who sent the plagues and led his people through the Red Sea. When we read the Bible this way, we are not only following Jesus, Peter, and Paul, but we are also following a confessional Protestant pattern. At the Heidelberg Disputation (1518). Luther argued that seeking unmediated access (trying to get around the Son) is a “theology of glory” and sub-Christian. A genuine theologian only approaches the Father through the Son and his cross. Suggestively and brilliantly, Luther spoke of seeing God’s “backside.” He was alluding to Exodus 33:32 where God did not allow Moses to see his glory but only

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his “back, but my face shall not be seen.” If we would find God, it will not be in glory, but in the mediator who became wretched for us carrying a cross up Golgotha.

Conclusion cripture is not a random collection of ancient myths and aphorisms. It has a unifying message told in every genre, by every author, in every period of redemptive history. The unifying thread is not God’s plan to establish a glorious national people on the earth nor is the Bible about the reader. The Bible is about God the Son who became incarnate for us. The Son has been revealing himself to his people since the garden. It is not that God is indifferent to us. After all, we are those “upon whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor. 10:11), but we always remain readers of and not actors in crafted drama of redemption supervised by the same Spirit who hovered over the face of the deep (Gen. 1:2) and who hovers over the living temple of God (1 Pet. 4;14). The gospel is that the Mediator “become flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” ■

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R. Scott Clark is associate professor of historical and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

For more detail on Jesus’ applications of Psalm 22 to himself, see Edmund P. Clowney, Preaching Christ from All of Scripture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2003), p. 41. See also Geerhardus Vos, “Eschatology of the Psalter,” Princeton Theological Review 18 (1920): 1–43.

For examples of how the New Testament reads the Psalter, refer to Matthew 22:44; 26:64; Mark 12:36; 14:62; 16:19; Luke 20:42; 22:69; Acts 2:34; Romans 2:5; 8:34; 11:29; 1 Corinthians 15:25; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3, 13; 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:3; 8:1; 10:12; 11:15, 17:21.

For information on Luther’s participation in the Heidelberg Disputation, see Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 31: Career of the Reformer I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957), pp. 52–53.

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Solo Scriptura: The Difference a Vowel Makes

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he twentieth century could, with some accuracy, be called a century of theological anarchy. Liberals and sectarians have long rejected outright many of the fundamental tenets of Christian orthodoxy. But more recently professing evangelical scholars have advocated revisionary versions of numerous doctrines. A revisionary doctrine of God has been advocated by proponents of "openness theology."

A revisionary doctrine of eschatology has been advocated by proponents of fullpreterism. Revisionary doctrines of justification sola fide have been advocated by proponents of various "new perspectives" on Paul. Often the revisionists will claim to be restating a more classical view. Critics, however, have usually been quick to point out that the revisions are actually distortions.

Ironically, a similarly revisionist doctrine of sola Scriptura has arisen within Protestantism, but unlike the revisionist doctrine of sola fide, the revisionist doctrine of sola Scriptura has caused very little controversy among the heirs of the Reformation. One of the reasons there has been much less controversy over the revisionist doctrine of sola Scriptura is that this doctrine has been gradually

supplanting the Reformation doctrine for centuries. In fact, in many segments of the evangelical world, the revisionist doctrine is by far the predominant view now.

Many claim that this revisionist doctrine is the Reformation doctrine. However, like the revisionist doctrines of sola fide, the revisionist doctrine of sola Scriptura is actually a distortion of the Reformation doctrine.

The adoption of the revisionist doctrine of sola Scriptura has resulted in numerous biblical, theological, and practical problems within Protestant churches. These problems have become the center of attention in recent years as numerous Protestants have converted to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy claiming that their conversion was due in large part to their determination that the doctrine of sola Scriptura was indefensible. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists have been quick to take advantage of the situation, publishing numerous books and articles devoted to critiquing the doctrine of sola Scriptura. One issue, however, that neither the converts nor the apologists seem to understand is that the doctrine they are critiquing and rejecting is the revisionist doctrine

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of sola Scriptura, not the classical Reformation doctrine. In order to understand the difference, some historical context is necessary.

Historical Observations art of the difficulty in understanding the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura is due to the fact that the historical debate is often framed simplistically in terms of “Scripture versus tradition.”

Protestants are said to teach “Scripture alone,” while Roman Catholics are said to teach “Scripture plus tradition.” This, however, is not an accurate picture of the historical reality. The debate should actually be understood in terms of competing concepts of the relationship between Scripture and tradition, and there are more than two such concepts in the history of the church. In order to understand the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura we must understand the historical context more accurately.

The Reformation debate over sola Scriptura did not occur in a vacuum. It was the continuation of a long-standing medieval debate over the relationship between Scripture and tradition and over the meaning of “tradition” itself. In the first three to four centuries of the church, the church fathers had taught a fairly consistent view of authority. The sole source of divine revelation and the authoritative doctrinal norm was understood to be the Old Testament together with the Apostolic doctrine, which itself had been put into writing in the New Testament. The Scripture was to be interpreted in and by the church within the context of the regula fidei (“rule of faith”), yet neither the church nor the regula fidei were considered second supplementary sources of revelation. The church was the interpreter of the divine revelation in Scripture, and the regula fidei was the hermeneutical context, but only Scripture was the Word of God. Heiko Oberman (1930–2001) has termed this onesource concept of revelation “Tradition 1.”

The first hints of a two-source concept of tradition, a concept in which tradition is understood to be a second source of revelation that supplements biblical revelation, appeared in the fourth century in the writings of Basil and Augustine. Oberman terms this two-source concept of tradition “Tradition 2” (Professor Oberman had many gifts.

The ability to coin catchy labels was apparently not one of them). It is not absolutely certain that either Basil or Augustine actually taught the two-source view, but the fact that it is hinted at in their writings ensured that it would eventually find a foothold in the Middle Ages. This would take time, however, for throughout most of the Middle Ages, the dominant view was Tradition 1, the position of the early church. The beginnings of a strong movement toward Tradition 2 did not begin in earnest until the twelfth century. A turning point was reached in the fourteenth century in the writings of William of Ockham. He was one of the first, if not the first, medieval theologian to embrace explicitly the two-source view of revelation. From the fourteenth century onward, then, we witness the parallel development of two opposing views: Tradition 1 and

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Tradition 2. It is within the context of this ongoing medieval debate that the Reformation occurred.

When the medieval context is kept in view, the Reformation debate over sola Scriptura becomes much clearer. The reformers did not invent a new doctrine out of whole cloth. They were continuing a debate that had been going on for centuries. They were reasserting Tradition 1 within their particular historical context to combat the results of Tradition 2 within the Roman Catholic Church. The magisterial reformers argued that Scripture was the sole source of revelation, that it is to be interpreted in and by the church, and that it is to be interpreted within the context of the regula fidei. They insisted on returning to the ancient doctrine, and as Tradition 1 became more and more identified with their Protestant cause, Rome reacted by moving toward Tradition 2 and eventually adopting it officially at the Council of Trent. (Rome has since developed a view that Oberman has termed “Tradition 3,” in which the “Magisterium of the moment” is understood to be the one true source of revelation, but that issue is beyond the scope of this brief essay).

At the same time the magisterial reformers were advocating a return to Tradition 1 (sola Scriptura), several radical reformers were calling for the rejection of both Tradition 1 and Tradition 2 and the adoption of a completely new understanding of Scripture and tradition.

They argued that Scripture was not merely the only infallible authority but that it was the only authority altogether. The true but subordinate authority of the church and the regula fidei were rejected altogether.

According to this view (Tradition 0), there is no real sense in which tradition has any authority. Instead, the individual believer requires nothing more than the Holy Spirit and the Bible.

In America during the eighteenth century, this individualistic view of the radical Reformation was combined with the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the populism of the new democracy to create a radical version of Tradition 0 that has all but supplanted the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura (Tradition 1). This new doctrine, which may be termed “solo” Scriptura instead of sola Scriptura, attacks the rightful subordinate authority of the church and of the ecumenical creeds of the church.

Unfortunately, many of its adherents mistakenly believe and teach others that it is the doctrine of Luther and Calvin.

The Reformation Doctrine of Sola Scriptura o summarize the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura, or the Reformation doctrine of the relation between Scripture and tradition, we may say that Scripture is to be understood as the sole source of divine revelation; it is the only inspired, infallible, final, and authoritative norm of faith and practice. It is to be interpreted in and by the church; and it is to be interpreted within the hermeneutical context of the rule of faith. As Richard Muller observes, the Reformed doctrine of sola

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Scriptura did not ever mean, “all of theology ought to be constructed anew, without reference to the church’s tradition of interpretation, by the lonely exegete confronting the naked text.” That this is the Reformation doctrine of Scripture, tradition, and authority may be demonstrated by an examination of the reformers’ writings, only a sampling of which may be mentioned here.

Martin Luther is well known for his declaration at the Diet of Worms: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God.” Many point to this statement as evidence that Luther rejected Tradition 1, the teaching of the early church, but other factors must be considered before coming to such a conclusion, namely, the historical context of this statement and the fact that Luther said and wrote much more on the subject. As simply one example, in a 1532 letter to Duke Albert of Prussia about the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, Luther wrote the following: This article moreover, has been clearly believed and held from the beginning of the Christian Church to this hour—a testimony of the entire holy Christian Church, which, if we had nothing besides, should be sufficient for us. For it is dangerous and terrible to hear or believe anything against the united testimony, faith and doctrine, of the entire holy Christian Church, as this hath been held now 1,500 years, from the beginning, unanimously in all the world. Whoso now doubted thereon, it is even the same as though he believed in no Christian Church, and he condemneth thus not only the entire holy Christian Church as a damnable heresy, but also Christ himself and all the apostles and prophets.

The second-generation Lutheran scholar Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586), writes along similar lines in his Examination of the Council of Trent: This is also certain, that no one should rely on his own wisdom in the interpretation of the Scripture, not even in the clear passages…. We also gratefully and reverently use the labors of the fathers who by their commentaries have profitably clarified many passages of the Scripture. And we confess that we are greatly confirmed by the testimonies of the ancient church in the true and sound understanding of the Scripture. Nor do we approve of it if someone invents for himself a meaning which conflicts with all antiquity, and for which there are clearly no testimonies of the church.

Another of the magisterial reformers who addressed this issue was John Calvin. In the 1559 edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, for example, he writes:

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In this way, we willingly embrace and reverence as holy the early councils, such as those of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, Chalcedon, and the like, which were concerned with refuting errors—in so far as they relate to the teachings of faith. For they contain nothing but the pure and genuine exposition of Scripture, which the holy fathers applied with spiritual prudence to crush the enemies of religion who had then arisen.

And further: We indeed willingly concede, if any discussion arises over doctrine, that the best and surest remedy is for a synod of true bishops to be convened, where the doctrine at issue may be examined.

To sum up the traditional Protestant view, the words of the nineteenth-century Reformed theologian Charles Hodge (1797–1878) are appropriate: Again, Protestants admit that as there has been an uninterrupted tradition of truth from the protevangelium to the close of the Apocalypse, so there has been a stream of traditionary teaching flowing through the Christian Church from the day of Pentecost to the present time. This tradition is so far a rule of faith that nothing contrary to it can be true. Christians do not stand isolated, each holding his own creed. They constitute one body, having one common creed. Rejecting that creed, or any of its parts, is the rejection of the fellowship of Christians, incompatible with the communion of saints, or membership in the body of Christ. In other words, Protestants admit that there is a common faith of the Church, which no man is at liberty to reject, and which no man can reject and be a Christian.

The Revisionist Doctrine of “Solo” Scriptura n contrast with the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura, the revisionist doctrine of “solo” Scriptura is marked by radical individualism and a rejection of the authority of the church and the ecumenical creeds. If we compare the statements made by advocates of “solo” Scriptura with the statements of Reformational Christians above, the difference is immediately evident. It is also important to observe the source of this doctrine in early America. As Nathan O. Hatch notes, the first Americans to push the right of private judgment over against the church and the creeds were unorthodox ministers.

The liberal minister Simeon Howard (1733–1804), for example, advised pastors to “lay aside all attachment to human systems, all partiality to names, councils and churches, and honestly inquire, ‘what saith the Scriptures?’” In his own effort to overturn orthodox Christianity, Charles Beecher (1815–1900) denounced “creed power” and argued for “the Bible, the whole Bible,

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arose, the apostles did not instruct each individual believer to go home and whose decide by himself and for himself who was right. They met in a council (Acts 15:6–29). Even the wellknown example of the Bereans does not support “solo” Scriptura (cf. Acts 17:10–11; cf. vv. 1–9). Paul did not instruct each individual Berean to go home and decide by himself and for himself whether what he was teaching was true. Instead, the Bereans read and studied the Scriptures of the Old Testament day by day with Paul present in order to see whether his teaching about the Messiah was true.

In terms of hermeneutics, the doctrine of “solo” Scriptura is hopeless. With “solo” Scriptura, the interpretation of Scripture becomes subjective and relative, and there is no possibility for the resolution of differences. It is a matter of fact that there are numerous different interpretations of various parts of Scripture. Adherents of “solo” Scriptura are told that these different interpretations can be resolved simply by an appeal to Scripture. But how is the problem of differing interpretations to be resolved by an appeal to another interpretation? All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone. According to “solo” Scriptura, that someone is each individual, so ultimately, there are as many final authorities as there are human interpreters.

This is subjectivism and relativism run amuck. The proponents of “solo” Scriptura rightly condemn the hermeneutical tyranny of Rome, but the solution to hermeneutical tyranny is not hermeneutical anarchy.

The doctrine of “solo” Scriptura also faces historical problems due to the fact that it cannot be reconciled with the reality that existed in the first decades and centuries of the church. If “solo” Scriptura were true, much of the church had no standard of truth for many years. In the first century, one could not walk down to his local Christian bookstore and buy a copy of the Bible.

Manuscripts had to be hand-copied and were not found in every believer’s home. The first books of the New Testament did not even begin to be written until at least ten years after the death of Christ, and some were not written until several decades after Christ. Gradually some churches obtained copies of some books, while other churches had copies of others. It took many years before the New Testament as we know it was gathered and available as a whole. Even then, it too was hand-copied, so it was not available in the home of every individual Christian. If the lone individual is to judge and evaluate everything by himself and for himself by measuring it against Scripture, as proponents of “solo” Scriptura would have it, how would this have possibly worked in the first

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: interpretation? and nothing but the Bible.” The universalist minister A. B. Grosh (d. 1884) declared in a similar way, “In religious faith we have but one Father and one Master, and the Bible, the Bible, is our only acknowledged creed book.”

The radical American version of “solo” Scriptura reached its fullest expression in the writings of the Restorationists as they applied the principles of Democratic populism to Enlightenment Christianity. In 1809, the Restorationist Elias Smith (1769–1846) proclaimed, “Venture to be as independent in things of religion, as those which respect the government in which you live.” Barton Stone (1772–1844) declared that the past should be “consigned to the rubbish heap upon which Christ was crucified.” Alexander Campbell (1788–1866) made his individualistic view of Scripture very clear, declaring, “I have endeavored to read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me, and I am as much on my guard against reading them to-day, through the medium of my own views yesterday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system whatever.” As the Reformed Princeton theologian Samuel Miller (1769–1850) rightly observed, “the most zealous opposers [of creeds] have generally been latitudinarians and heretics.”

Why “Solo” Scriptura Must Be Rejected he revisionist doctrine of “solo” Scriptura has become so entrenched in the modern church that many Protestant Christians today will sympathize more with the sentiments of the liberal and sectarian clergymen quoted above than they will with the teaching of the reformers. The doctrine of “solo” Scriptura, however, is as problematic and dangerous today as it was in previous centuries. It remains unbiblical, illogical, and unworkable.

Here I will address some of the more obvious problems.

The fundamental problem with “solo” Scriptura is that it results in autonomy. It results in final authority being placed somewhere other than the Word of God. It shares this problem with the Roman Catholic doctrine. The only difference is that the Roman Catholic doctrine places final authority in the church while “solo” Scriptura places final authority in each individual believer. Every doctrine and practice is measured against a final standard, and that final standard is the individual’s personal judgment of what is and is not biblical. The result is subjectivism and relativism. The reformers’ appeal to “Scripture alone,” however, was never intended to mean “me alone.”

The Bible itself simply does not teach “solo” Scriptura Christ established his church with a structure of authority and gives to his church those who are specially appointed to the ministry of the word (Acts 6:2–4). When disputes

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decades of the church before the New Testament was completed?

One of the most self-evident problems related to the doctrine of “solo” Scriptura is the question of the canon. If one is going to claim that Scripture is the only authority whatsoever, it is legitimate to ask how we then define what is and is not “Scripture.” Proponents of “solo” Scriptura claim that Scripture is authoritative but cannot say with any authority what Scripture is. The table of contents in the front of the Bible is not itself an inspired text written by a prophet or an apostle. It is, in a very real sense, a creed of the church declaring what the church believes to be the content of Scripture. One way to illustrate the problem “solo” Scriptura faces in connection with the canon is simply to ask the following: How would “solo” Scriptura deal with a modern day Marcion? How, for example, would a proponent of “solo” Scriptura argue with a person who claimed that the real New Testament includes only the books of Luke, Acts, Romans, and Revelation? He can’t appeal to the church, to history, or to tradition. A self-consistent adherent of “solo Scriptura” would have no way to respond to such a view because, as one such consistent adherent informed me in personal correspondence, it is the right and duty of each individual Christian to determine the canonicity of each biblical book by and for himself. This is the only consistent position for a proponent of “solo” Scriptura to take, but it is selfdefeating because it destroys any objective notion of Scripture. One cannot appeal to the biblical authority of Romans, for example, if each believer determines for himself whether Romans is in fact to be considered a canonical and authoritative biblical book.

The question of the canon is not the only theological problem caused by “solo” Scriptura. Another serious problem is the fact that the adoption of “solo” Scriptura destroys the possibility of having any objective definition of what Christianity is and is not. “Solo” Scriptura destroys the very concepts of orthodoxy and heresy. If the authority of the ecumenical creeds is rejected, and if each individual believer is to determine all questions of doctrine by and for himself, then the definitions of orthodoxy and heresy are completely relative and subjective. One man judges the doctrine of the Trinity to be biblical. Another deems it unbiblical. One judges open theism biblical.

Another deems it unbiblical. The same is true with respect to every other doctrine. Each man defines Christianity as it seems right in his own eyes.

Finally, it must be realized that “solo” Scriptura ignores reality. The Bible simply did not drop out of the sky into our laps. We would not even be able to read a Bible for ourselves were it not for the labors of many others including archaeologists, linguists, scribes, textual critics, historians, translators, and more. If “solo” Scriptura were true, it should be possible to give untranslated ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of biblical, apocryphal, and pseudo-epigraphal texts to some isolated tribe member somewhere on earth, and with no one’s

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assistance, that individual should be able to learn the Hebrew and Greek languages, read the various manuscripts, determine which of them are canonical, and then come to an orthodox understanding of the Christian faith. The reason this is not possible, however, is because “solo” Scriptura is not true. It is an unbiblical distortion of the truth.

The revisionist doctrine of “solo” Scriptura has been a source of great damage to the cause of Christ. The magisterial reformers were right to reject the early versions of it that appeared in the teaching of some radicals.

Contemporary heirs of the reformers must follow the magisterial reformers here. The fight must be fought on two fronts. We are not only to reject the Roman Catholic doctrine (whether the two-source doctrine of Tradition 2 or the sola ecclesia doctrine of Tradition 3), which places final autonomous authority in the church. We must also reject the revisionist doctrine of “solo” Scriptura, which places final autonomous authority in the hands of each and every individual. ■

Keith Mathison is associate editor of Tabletalk magazine and author of The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Canon Press, 2001).

For more information on Heiko Oberman’s concept of Tradition 1, see his work The Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), p. 280. For background information on Tradition 0, see Alister McGrath’s Reformation Thought, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell), p. 144.

For other background information on “solo” Scriptura see Nathan O. Hatch, “Sola Scriptura and Novus Ordo Seclorum,” in The Bible in America, ed. N. Hatch and M. Noll, pp.

59–78. The quotation from Richard Muller is taken from his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), p. 51.

Luther’s letter to Duke Albert of Prussia is cited in Philip Schaff’s The Principle of Protestantism (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1964 [1845]), pp. 116–117, note).

Chemnitz’s quote can be found in Examination of the Council of Trent, tr. Fred Kramer, Vol. 1, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971), pp. 208–209. The quotations from Calvin are taken from his Institutes, 4.9.8 and 4.9.13.

Mr. Mathison has taken his quotation of Charles Hodge from Hodge’s Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, pp. 113–114.

Comments from Nathan Hatch on the revisionist doctrine of “solo” Scriptura are taken from “Sola Scriptura and Novus Ordo Seclorum,” in The Bible in America, ed. N. Hatch and M. Noll, p. 62. The quotation from Samuel Miller is found in The Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions (Greenville, SC: A Press, 1991 [1839]), p. 15.

For a fuller discussion on this topic, Mr. Mathison refers readers to his book The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Canon Press, 2001).

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How Do We Know We

by Michael J. Kruger D. F. Strauss once declared that the question of how will take our cue from the reformers and their to authenticate the biblical canon was the “Achilles understanding of the self-attesting (autopistic) nature of heel” of Reformed/Protestant Christianity. After all, Scripture. The reformers argued that the Scriptures do when it comes to the New Testament, how do we know not become authoritative only after they have been for sure that we have the right 27 books? Why not 26 verified and approved by historical investigations, but books? Or 28? And if we cannot adequately answer this rather are authoritative in their own right, and thus question about the canonical boundaries of the New provide the only proper epistemological starting point Testament, then on what grounds could we ever appeal for all intellectual investigations (historical or to the content of the New Testament? Certainly, there otherwise). Turretin notes, “Thus Scripture, which is the can be no New Testament theology if there is no such first principle in the supernatural order, is known by thing as a “New Testament” in the first place. Thus, itself and has no need of arguments derived from questions about the canon can take on more without to prove and make itself known to us.” In other foundational significance than other types of questions. words, the canon internally bears the “marks” of a It is one thing for a person to question the meaning of a divine book and evidences itself to be from God. We given passage (and whether it says know which books are in the canon what we think it says), but it is through the canon itself. Thus, the entirely another to question We know which books are authority of the canon is not simply whether that passage belongs in the the conclusion of our investigation in the canon through Bible in the first place. The question but supplies the very foundation the canon itself. of the canon, therefore, is at the and guiding principles of our very center of how we establish investigation. Consequently, we biblical authority. Unless the church approach the historical evidence can offer a coherent response to such critical attacks, and our personal experience in light of, and in then Strauss may be all too right—the canon issue could submission to, the revealed word of God. become the single thread that unravels the entire garment of our faith.

2. Redemptive History. God not only speaks How, then, are the boundaries of the canon through his written Word, but he also speaks through established? If we are to have certainty concerning the redemptive history, through his mighty acts done on extent of the New Testament canon, then we must hear behalf of his people (Exod. 14:31; John 8:38, 20:30–31; from the only one who has the authority to tell us which Acts 2:22; Heb. 1:1–4). He has chosen to deliver his books belong there: God himself. He is the ultimate Word to his people not from golden tablets lowered from “canon.” But, how does God “speak” to us? We observe heaven but through the activities and events of real in the Scriptures that God “speaks” to his people history. Thus, if we are going to establish which canon through three different media: words (the Scripture is the true canon, then we must view the canon through itself), historical events (redemptive history), and people the eyes of redemptive history—we must look to see (personal experience). Each of these different media, God at work during the historical development of the when understood correctly and understood along with canon. It is here that we examine the historical “facts” the other two, bears the authority of God’s revelation. about the origins of the canon and see that we have Let us consider each of them in order. good reasons to think that we have the right 27 books.

There is not space here to enter into the historical 1. Scripture. In any discussion of the authority and details, but there is evidence that by the early second extent of the canon, the fundamental testimony that century the core of the New Testament canon—the four must not be ignored is the testimony of the canon itself, gospels and the thirteen epistles of Paul—was the very Word of God. Unfortunately, because the functioning as authoritative Scripture for the early extent of the canon is the very thing in question, many church. This provided a strong foundation for the refuse to consider the content of the canon in their church to engage in further discussions about the books discussion of its authenticity. However, it is here that we that some doubted (e.g., 2 Peter, Revelation, etc.), and to 3 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Have the Right Books? battle various heresies and the challenges of burgeoning apocryphal literature. In the end, we have solid historical reasons to think that the 27 books finally recognized by the church were authentic, originated from the age of the apostles, and bore divine authority.

Of course, it is important to keep in mind that whenever we interpret historical evidence/events it is not to be done neutrally but is to be done in light of God’s revealed Word. Thus, God can “speak” to us about the extent of the canon through the historical facts, but only in as much as those facts are interpreted through the lens of God’s special revelation.

3. Personal Experience. God not only speaks through his written Word, and through redemptive history, but he also speaks through his Holy Spirit to the hearts of individuals (and to the corporate church).

Thus, in order to know the true canon, we cannot simply know the historical facts (redemptive history) or the standard by which they are interpreted (Scripture), but we must also know ourselves and our response to these books because we are the ones doing the knowing.

Thus, we are not talking about “subjectivism” here, per se, but are noting that one of the primary ways we know the true canon of Scripture is the manner in which the Holy Spirit testifies to us (and to the corporate, historical church) that these books are from God. It is clear that throughout the ages, both individual Christians and the church at large, have recognized the voice of their master in these 27 books (John 10:27).

All three of these media—Scripture, redemptive history, and personal experience—work together in a manner that makes them the one unified voice of God testifying to the authentic canon of the New Testament.

We know we have the right books because the canon, as self-attesting Scripture, internally bears evidence that it is a divine book. We know we have the right books because historical investigations reveal much solid evidence that God was at work revealing and delivering these books to the New Testament church. And we know we have the right books because the Holy Spirit testifies in our hearts (and in the hearts of Christians throughout the ages) that these are his books and we recognize his voice. Thus, in the end, we know we have the right books because of the testimony of God himself.

Michael J. Kruger is associate professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte, North Carolina).

Dr. Kruger’s reference to D. F. Strauss is taken from Strauss’s Die christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im Kampfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft, vol. 1 (Tübingen: C.F. Osiander, 1840), p. 136. See discussion in G.C. Berkouwer, “The Testimony of the Spirit,” in The Authoritative Word, ed. Donald K. McKim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 155–181, particularly p. 156.

In his discussion of the canon, Dr. Kruger has used the following sources: J. H. Roberts and A. B. Du Toit, Guide to the New Testament: Preamble to New Testament Study; The Canon of the New Testament, vol. 1 (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel Transvaal, 1979), p. 92; John M. Frame, Perspectives on the Word of God: An Introduction to Christian Ethics (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1990), pp. 20–31; and R.C. Sproul, “The Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit,” in Inerrancy, ed. Norman Geisler (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), pp. 337–354.

The quotation from Francis Turretin is taken from Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), p. 89. See also WCF I.IV–V.

Definition Canon: The collection of authoritative and inspired books that God has given to his people.

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Thinking Clearly About the Clarity of Scripture A

re the Scriptures clear? Most of us would tend to answer: “sometimes yes, sometimes no.” There are passages that seem straightforward and other passages that appear really confusing. What else could we expect of a collection of books written over the course of 1,500 years, by so many diverse authors, in so many diverse styles?

Some passages are bound to make sense to us, and some are bound to be perplexing.

Consider the book of Proverbs. Almost all of us would admit that these little sayings of wisdom can be simple and powerful as well as complicated and mystifying at times. So for example Proverbs 26:4–5 reads, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.”

Are we supposed to answer the fool on his or her own terms or not? The two verses suggest the answer is not so clear.

What kind of clarity is it to say, “Sometimes yes, sometimes no”? This kind of conundrum may help us get clear about our notions of clarity. It may also help us distinguish some of our ordinary intuitions about clarity from the historically Protestant affirmation of the clarity of Scripture.

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I may say to our teenage daughter, “Please get the groceries when you stop at the store.” Simple and clear, correct? Simple, yes, but not very clear unless she also knows which groceries to buy. In this case “simple” is not the same as “clear.” “Clear” seems to be appropriate only when she readily understands my words, and this is possible only if other words are part of our communication. It may also be that no information is being processed in this communication. It might in fact be a command or a reminder. On this reading, our teenager daughter may respond, “Why can’t someone else get the groceries?” If one understands the general practice of communication between a parent and teenage child, one also knows this statement is not clear unless one also has a lot of background information, unless one can interpret the tone of the words and see the body language when the question was asked, and unless one can determine if in fact it was actually a question. Given all the background information required and about which communication theorists may offer rich and elaborate explanations, the question “Why can’t someone else go to the grocery story?” may well have been a paradigm of clarity, in other words, “Dad, I don’t want to go the grocery store!” It accomplished its intended goal. The words did their job.

I want to suggest by analogy, the clarity of the Bible has less to do with any straightforward understanding of those who read the Book, as it has to do with how the words of Scripture actually accomplish the task for which they were written. It is the power of the words to provoke the intended response, which enables us to call them “clear.”

This may seem counterintuitive to us. It also may seem out of accord with our ordinary use of the term “clear.” In what follows, let me suggest that understanding the Bible is indeed counterintuitive, and in many instances requires an out-of-the-ordinary kind of wisdom. And with Protestants more generally, I want to affirm that the Bible clearly accomplishes its goal, even when there are some who do not seem to understand it.

Clarity is a characteristic of the Scriptures themselves.

The words themselves as inspired by the Spirit of God, and as applied to our understanding by the same Spirit, illuminate the true nature of the gospel. The words are clear not because we have found a way to understand them, but because the Spirit inspires clarity and illuminates minds clearly. Our trust in the clarity of Scripture, in other words, is the trustworthiness of the Spirit.

Consider the words at the very beginning of the Bible, “In the beginning, God… “ These words echo at the beginning of Genesis with great theological force. It is simply not an accident that these words are the very first words of Scripture! These words powerfully remind us that God stands as the fountainhead of everything. He is that in which everything finds its ultimate reference point.

He is before all things, and he is that which orders and gives meaning to everything. He is the Sovereign of the created order and frames all of our creaturely tasks. He is the original against which all images are but reflections.

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God is the key to everything that follows. God is the only one who speaks in Genesis 1. God is the only who acts in Genesis 1. God is the only one named in Genesis 1.

He is the primary actor as well as the playwright of the drama that follows. He puts everything in its proper order, and everything appears as perfectly appropriate to its place in the drama that unfolds.

Of particular interest is the claim that God’s speaking appears as identical with God’s creating. In other words, when God says something in Genesis 1, God is creating that about which he is speaking. God says, “Let there be light,” and there is light. God says, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. Divine speaking accomplishes what it says. But why is that so? In the first instance we naturally want to say, “Well, because God is powerful, and he can do this sort of thing.” That would be true enough.

But it is also true that God’s power is interwoven with his purpose. He not only makes things, he designs them as signs and symbols of himself. He makes creatures that are moral because he is moral. He makes creatures that govern because he governs. He makes creatures in relationship, because he is in relationship. God’s nature is “communicated” to the created order, in the language of speaking creation into being.

Not all of God’s words through the Scriptures are “creative words,” but the early chapters of Genesis provide us with a model to think about the way we are to understand the clarity of God’s words. Generally speaking, as his creatures we are not in need of an abstract theory of interpretation before we can interpret God’s words.

Sophisticated word studies and a nuanced theory of semantics may aid us in bridging the gap between the worlds and words of Moses (the human author of Genesis) and our own, but there is no such gap between the Creator’s speaking and our ability to understand the divine words, precisely because God has made us to understand his speech. He is a God who creates by speaking, and he creates persons who are “word-using” beings. We speak because we reflect the God who made us. We understand because he has wired us for understanding.

These intuitions suppose that the capacity for human understanding is a divinely ordained and created project.

God makes us in such a fashion that we ordinarily understand his words, as we ordinarily understand each other’s words. In this sense words are like tools we use to accomplish the tasks God has set for them. And because God uses them, words actually work. God’s words in particular always accomplish the task for which they are spoken.

There is one slight problem to this line of thinking — sin. Though we are created and wired to understand God’s words, we do not always like the words we hear. The human heart is not always receptive to the words that echo in the human ears. How radically impacted human understanding is by human corruption is a topic for another day. Suffice it to say here, that we don’t always M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 33

hearts. It is an interaction between the history of of the community redemption and our own history. In this meeting the reader ought to realize that as she asks questions of the Scriptures, they are also asking questions of her and showing her an alternative “way-to-put-the-world-together.” This might force her to rethink many of her fundamental assumptions and ways of thinking. Or it might result in an attempt to reinterpret the Scriptures on her terms, and keep any impact of the Scriptures to a minimum. Sometimes reading the Scriptures proves too costly to the life of the reader, and she simply dismisses the Book. But by the power of the Spirit, on occasion, the reader “gets it” and realizes how life changing the Book’s message actually ought to be. In this instance the message of the Book is crystal clear.

We might put it this way. The “success” of the Book is not a function of the reader bringing the Book into their world and understanding it on their terms, but of finding themselves transported into the world of the Book, and finding their terms now transformed by the Book. It is the movement from ordinary natural wisdom to the clarity of God’s gospel. What had at an earlier time seemed confounded and confusing has become clear and powerful. It has become clear and powerful not because the Scriptures have changed, but because the reader has changed.

Thinking about this task from the perspective of the reader, the task is to find ways to let the Scriptures ask the questions as well as provide the answers. The clarity of Scripture resides in the Scriptures themselves, which means as readers, we should let the Scriptures interpret the Scriptures, by means of which we are also allowing the Scriptures to interpret us.

One helpful safeguard toward this end is the warning not to read the Book as if you’re the only who has ever read the Book before. Learn to read the book together with the width and breadth of the church, past and present. Sometimes we wrongly suppose that the Reformation slogan, sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) grants permission to read the Bible alone, meaning, all by ourselves. Sola Scriptura may have been a rallying cry for our Protestant forbearers, but it was never intended as a means to bypass the community of readers (the church), either past or present. The interpretation of the Bible was a responsibility not of individuals by themselves, but rather of the community of believers gathered. It was to be a corporate task, which meant that the Scriptures gained their force when they were read and acted upon by the confessing community of believers.

There are indications aplenty to suggest that individualism, so characteristic of our times, has wreaked havoc on biblical interpretation. In earlier times, the greater danger may have been an interpretive tyranny

The interpretation of the Bible was a responsibility not of individuals by themselves, but rather of believers gathered.

get it, and this is mostly because we don’t want to “get it.”

Human desire deeply affects human understanding.

Tainted human desires correspondingly taint human understanding.

Misunderstanding is now so “normal” to us that we often take it for granted. We suppose that disagreement with another person mostly is due to the fact that they’ve misunderstood us, for we reason if they understood us, they would agree with us. If my argument is as good as I suppose it is (why otherwise would I believe it?), then others who disagree must be infected with a bias not enabling them from seeing my argument clearly.

On the other hand, most of us assume at some deep level that “misunderstanding” is not the way things are supposed to be. Genuine communication takes place often enough that we operate with this as the goal of most conversations. We speak and write as the way toward genuine understanding and communication. We may yearn for greater understanding in our conversations and we may get frustrated when there isn’t more understanding, but we rarely suppose understanding is absolutely impossible. Why is this? The simple answer is that God has made us like himself—to use words, and to receive words as a primary form of communication and understanding. Simple enough, right? Yes and no.

The ability to communicate and understand is Godgiven. The ability to miscommunicate and misunderstand is a function of our fallen condition. God’s ability to communicate clearly in the midst of our misunderstanding neither diminishes the essential clarity of his words, nor the reality of our tainted reception of those words. Clarity is a matter of God’s words accomplishing their intended task by the power of the Spirit of God. We may not understand all his words clearly, but we do understand them enough to “get it.” This experience of “getting it” is rooted in our confidence in the Word of God inspired by the Spirit of God. There is no special magisterial authority of the church required to understand the gospel as it has been narrated in the Scripture. What is needed is the Spirit of God working to glorify the Son in and through the Scriptures and as those Scriptures are applied in our hearts and minds. It is our confidence in the Spirit that leads us to affirm the clarity of Scripture.

How might we then describe the interaction between the Scriptures and the hearers/readers of the Scriptures (us)? It is a kind of interaction in which the respective “ways-to-put-the-world-together” engages or intersects each other. It is a meeting between the gospel and our 3 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

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exercised by certain ecclesiastical authorities, but today the greatest danger is an interpretive anarchy among evangelicals. There are Bible translations for every diverse constituency. There are Bible study guides for every perceived need. There is a Bible conference to attend for every conceivable audience. There seems no need to get outside one’s own comfort zone to read the Bible any longer. The Bible appears as infinitely malleable, bendable to any reader’s perspective. By contrast the original intuition behind sola Scriptura was that Scripture was the final authority for the life of the believing community. As a people of the Book, Protestants need safeguards against reading the Bible captivated by our own experiences. If Scripture is the final authority, then in some important sense, Scripture must interpret the reader, rather than the reader determining what Scripture may or may not be saying. The Scriptures are to be the final court of appeal about what the Scriptures actually communicate.

This entails another fundamental principle of the reformers, the clarity of Scripture. If the Scriptures are the final court of appeals, they must be sufficiently clear in their judgments to serve that purpose. The clarity of the Scriptures belonged to their general trustworthiness to define and narrate the gospel of grace. This would suggest also that not all things in Scripture are clear in themselves but that the gospel as narrated and enacted from the beginning to the end is clear—for the learned and the unlearned—as the Westminster Confession affirmed. The faith defined in any part of the Scriptures is interpreted by the faith defined in the whole of the Scriptures.

To these principles evangelicals have given less than unswerving fidelity and the result is that the movement has never achieved a unified expression nor learned how to deal with its differences. In evangelical hands, Scripture is too often treated without the safeguards provided by the Reformation principles of sola Scriptura and its intended consequence: The Clarity of Scripture. Too often there has been a license to interpret the Scriptures without reference to breadth of the church’s witness and to interpret the Scriptures as if its clarity resided not in the objective work of the Spirit but in the subjective experience of the interpreter.

The purposes in raising these particular considerations should be obvious. The clarity of Scripture is never a principle in the abstract. The clarity of the Scripture has to do with the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the task of redemption through the words of Scripture. The clarity of the words has to do with the intended consequence of God’s use of the words in the first place, that is, to reconcile an alienated people back into covenant relationship with him. How we read the Scripture is bound up with the ends toward which we are to read the Scriptures. Clarity is not so much a category of our rationality as it is a category of redemption. How we read the Book is bound up with how we are to live in relationship with the divine author of the Book.

An example may help clarify our point about clarity.

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The Scriptures seem clear in their portrayal of Christ’s However, unless the meaning and actual death. significance of that event is central to how we read the passion narratives, a crucial clarity of those narratives is missed. Further, unless the connection between the foreshadowing symbols and events (e.g. Passover) which preceded the death of Christ, is understood, our faith will be greatly impoverished. It is not enough simply to understand that Christ died on a cross, for many people have died on crosses. And it is not enough simply to understand that Jesus died as both God and man on the cross, for then one might declare with Frederick Nietzsche that God has died. In order to understand the death of Christ one must understand the significance of that event in the Bible as a whole for the whole life of the church.

This entails that Jesus’ death be understood in the context of the covenants of the Old Testament and the consummation of history at the end of time. The clarity of the narrative of Christ’s death is connected with the way the whole of the story of God’s redeeming work in the Bible is told. The Scriptures become clear when they fulfill the task for which they are spoken—viz., to give purpose to the past, present, and future in the light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Of great consequence is the increasing clarity with which the witness of God is manifest on earth. The testimony to the sovereign Lordship of God over all creation increases over time. There is a historical unfolding in the awareness of this lordship. This is one of the central themes in the Bible.

There is an initial clarity in Adam and Eve’s comprehension of the purposes and presence of God. The creatures and the Creator understood each other. The creatures are created in such a way as to understand their creator. The fall destroyed this clarity, and Adam and Eve sought shelter from God in the midst of their shame. God was not any less visible to them. Rather they sought to shift the blame for their changed situation upon each other and finally also upon God. There was some hint that they also tried to hide from God. God spoke with force and clarity and they proverbially stuck fingers in their ears and complained they could not hear. With obvious theological import, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden.

The Garden was protected by the flaming sword, an indication that the presence of God had become a place of dread for the fallen couple.

God did not leave himself without a clear witness on the earth, however. He lifted up Noah as a remnant to be a faithful and clear witness to him. Mocked and scorned by his neighbors, Noah nonetheless testified of his God in the building of the ark. The clarity of the witness of the remnant increased with the promise given to Abraham that his descendents shall be as numerous as the stars in the heavens. It is a witness that increases in clarity contrary to reasonable expectations. Abraham and Sarah bear a child in their old age, and this son served as a living reminder of the presence and promise of God. The witness M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 35

The clarity of the words has to do with the intended consequence of God’s use of the words in the first place, that is, to reconcile an alienated people back into covenant relationship with him. of God became clearer as the Jews were brought out of the land of Egypt and populated the land of Canaan. Though taken into exile twice, the Jews nonetheless extended the clear witness of God into all nations. While in the land of Canaan, the Jews increased in number greatly, but they were also reminded that this numerical increase was not itself a sign of the presence of God. The countless stories in the Old Testament continually remind the reader that even in the nation of Israel there remained but a remnant that truly believed and testified clearly to the power and presence of God. And correspondingly, the numerical decrease (in the two exiles) was not a sign of the ambiguous presence of God. When the situation seemed hopeless, God’s presence seemed to be the clearest. The unfolding presence of God occurred in unexpected and ironic fashion to human eyes, but nonetheless in a steadily increasing and clear if also ironic fashion.

This unfolding of the redemptive actions of God reaches a clear climax in the coming of Jesus as a baby. With his arrival, there is a manifold increase in the witness of God. God has become man for human eyes to see and human ears to hear. And yet in a paradoxical way Jesus reminded his audiences that only those with eyes to see will see and only those with ears to hear will hear. God’s work is clear, but only for those with eyes to see.

The disciples waited expectantly for the final flowering of the Kingdom of God as Jesus entered triumphantly into Jerusalem at the time of the Passover feast. They expected Jesus to gain ascendancy and finally be crowned a king in the land of Israel. With the advantage of hindsight (and apostolically inspired epistles) it is clear that they misunderstood the nature of Christ’s kingship. And contrary to further expectations, the witness of God was made clear in defeat, the death on the cross. In his humiliation, Christ was exalted. He became a king, not simply a king of the Jewish people but the king of every nation and every people. From the defeat of the cross the witness increased in clarity. At Pentecost, the Spirit descended and the church extended beyond all known ethnic barriers. Both Jew and Gentile served as vessels clearly testifying to the Lordship of God over all the earth.

There are many more who now appear to “get it,” though as we have learned throughout the Scriptures, appearances can be deceiving. With the appropriate cautions in place, nonetheless, it ought to be said that God’s Word has not returned to him void. It has accomplished the tasks for which it was spoken, since those tasks were the purpose for which it was spoken. God’s Word is more 3 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

powerful than any twoedged sword. It is clearer than any human misapprehension. The clarity of Scripture lays precisely in the reality that his Word creates, his promises redeem, and his judgments are final. ■

Richard Lints is professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, Massachusetts).

Prof. Lints recommends the following works for further study on the clarity of Scripture: James Patrick Callahan, The Clarity of Scripture: History, Theology and Contemporary Literary Studies (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Paul Helm and Carl Trueman, eds., The Trustworthiness of God: Perspectives on the Nature of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); Michael Horton, Covenant and Eschatology (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001); Richard A. Muller, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993); Kevin Vanhoozer, “God’s Mighty Speech Acts” in Philip Satterthwaite and David F. Wright, eds., A Pathway into Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); and Francis Watson, Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1979) A SHORT STATEMENT 1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.

2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

ARTICLES OF AFFIRMATION AND DENIAL Article I We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God. We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human source.

Article II We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture.

We deny that Church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.

Article III We affirm that the written Word in its entirety is revelation given by God. We deny that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on the responses of men for its validity.

Article IV We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation.

We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation.

We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration.

Article V We affirm that God’s revelation in the Holy Scriptures was progressive.

We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.

Article VI We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.

We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.

Article VII We affirm that inspiration was the work in which God

by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us.

We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.

Article VIII We affirm that God in His Work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.

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We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.

Article IX We affirm that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.

We deny that the finitude or fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God’s Word.

Article X We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.

Article XI We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.

We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions.

Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.

Article XII We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.

We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

Article XIII We affirm the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.

We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

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Article XIV We affirm the unity and internal consistency of Scripture.

We deny that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the Bible.

Article XV We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.

We deny that Jesus’ teaching about Scripture may be dismissed by appeals to accommodation or to any natural limitation of His humanity.

Article XVI We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy has been integral to the Church’s faith throughout its history.

We deny that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by Scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism.

Article XVII We affirm that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God’s written Word.

We deny that this witness of the Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.

Article XVIII We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatical-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.

We deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to authorship.

Article XIX We affirm that a confession of the full authority, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture is vital to a sound understanding of the whole of the Christian faith. We further affirm that such confession should lead to increasing conformity to the image of Christ.

We deny that such confession is necessary for salvation. However, we further deny that inerrancy can be rejected without grave consequences both to the individual and to the Church.

This document may be found in its entirety online at www.reformed.org.

What the Bible Is: Personal and Propositional Revelation

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PETER ANDERS

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o you have any drugs, guns, pornography or Bibles?” Guards at the Romanian border asked this question as we attempted to pass through the Iron Curtain to minister to Christians living under the persecution of an atheistic communist dictatorship. Our training and the language barrier, together with some Swiss chocolate and a carton of American cigarettes, enabled us to proceed through the border crossing without lying and without incident. This time our cargo was not discovered. The Bibles would eventually make it to our contacts throughout the country—contacts who under great danger to themselves would in turn distribute them to grateful believers in their churches, villages, and towns. I remember the excitement of my Bible-smuggling days as if it were yesterday rather than twenty years ago. I remember clandestine deliveries, clever hiding places and ingenious smuggling systems, all

for the purpose of getting the Holy Scriptures into the hands of brothers and sisters who so desperately needed them.

The Spirit worked in miraculous ways to make our efforts successful, and I never tire of relating some of the remarkable stories I heard from others and experienced myself. Of all those experiences, however, one image has stayed most vividly in my memory: an elderly whitehaired man with thick dark-rimmed glasses who embraced me and wept on my shoulder when he saw the bags of Bibles we had just delivered and unpacked on a bed in the back room of our contact’s home. To this precious saint these Bibles were spread out before us like a priceless treasure. His joyful emotional reaction left me with a profound sense of how important and valuable this book is for the people of God. Events and experiences like these lead us to ask the M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 39

knowledge of things depends exclusively upon what we do to obtain it, such as knowledge of God is not founded on our freedom and investigation and experimentation.

With capacity to know God, but on God’s freedom and another person, however, we are encountering a reality capacity to make himself known to us. which is, strictly speaking, beyond the reach of our simple question, “What is the Bible?” What is this book efforts to know. Knowledge of the other person depends that people would risk their possessions, their freedom, primarily upon the other’s intentional actions that reveal and even their lives to read; this book that persecuted or unveil who they are. For we could not know the other, pastors would hide under the floorboards of their they would remain fundamentally transcendent to us, churches, that whole communities would secretly share by unless the other is willing and able to reveal him- or exchanging single chapters at a time; and that believers herself. This characteristic of revelation affirms that God would pay up to a month’s wages to own? What is this exists personally, that he is conscious of himself, and that book that mighty dictators fear, that is banned, confiscated, he both can and does make himself known to creatures. burned, and even turned into toilet paper, and that is All our knowledge of God is a knowledge of a judged to be as dangerous to society as drugs, guns, and transcendent divine person, and therefore depends all the pornography? Evangelical Christians have historically more on his own activity of self-revelation. answered the question, “What is the Bible?” with The second key characteristic further defines the something like, “The Bible is God’s Word to humanity.” knowledge we receive from this divine activity of What exactly is meant by this sort of answer is the focus of revelation as something that was previously unavailable to our attention here. In order to get a clearer idea of what humanity, whether it is truths, facts, or events. This the Bible is, we will examine its nature and function as follows from the idea of “uncover,” “reveal,” “disclose,” or God’s Word in the broadest sense by placing it in the “unveil” conveyed in Scripture by the Greek word context of the meaning of revelation in general, and then apokalupto, which means to unveil something that was in the narrower sense by examining the objective and previously hidden or to bring into view something that subjective dimensions of special revelation. This insight before was out of sight or unknown. The term connotes a can then be applied to a discussion of Holy Scripture as disclosure where the one doing the disclosing has assumed personal and propositional special revelation that will give an active role, and furthermore that it is only because of us a richer and more complete understanding and the discloser’s activity that this revelation actually occurs. appreciation of what the Bible is and the indispensable role Scripture draws attention to this character of revelation in it plays in our relationship with God. the following way: “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them” The Meaning of Revelation (Rom. 1:19); “Surely you have heard about the he central assumption undergirding the concept of administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, revelation, especially for an evangelical theological that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have orientation, is the unapproachableness or already written briefly” (Eph. 3:2–3); “For God, who said, transcendence of God: “God is in heaven and you are on ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our earth” (Eccles. 5:1–2). The prophet Isaiah establishes this hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of same point more bluntly, “‘For my thoughts are not your God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the When we speak of revelation then, the emphasis here LORD” (Isa. 55:8; cf. Matt. 11:7; John 1:18; 1 Cor. 1:20–25; is upon God actively disclosing something that was not 2:9–16; 1 Tim. 6:16). An important implication of this previously available and not available in any other way. assumption is that knowledge of God cannot arise merely Taken together these two characteristics of an evangelical from humanity’s own efforts to discover who God is. concept of revelation affirm that before human thought Revelation is not a human achievement. The distinction and speech have anything to respond to and anything to and difference between finite humanity and incomparable describe concerning God, the reality of God’s own Deity is such that unless God presents himself to us, we revelation has to be made present by the gracious creative cannot truly know him. For this reason an evangelical work of God himself: “What do you have that you did not concept of revelation should affirm at least two key receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7). Whether it is general revelation characteristics. (where God tells us he exists, we are his creatures, and he First, because it is linked to the notion of God as a is the provider, sustainer, and moral law-giver), or special person, the knowledge we receive from revelation should revelation (where God confirms the truth of all this, and be seen as parallel to our knowledge of other persons, tells us much more about himself, about humanity, and especially as distinguished from that of things. Our especially about his work in our history as Redeemer), the

The most basic point for evangelical theology is that

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most basic point for evangelical theology is that knowledge of God is not founded on our freedom and capacity to know God, but on God’s freedom and capacity to make himself known to us. In evangelical theology, therefore, God is the Principium Essendi (principle of being), meaning that the essential foundation of our knowledge of God in revelation is God himself.

The Two Dimensions of Special Revelation ith this basic understanding of the evangelical concept of revelation in view, we can now look more closely at the unique category of special revelation. Much more than merely the disclosure of additional information, it is the fact that special revelation also establishes personal communion with God that distinguishes it most significantly from general revelation.

Unlike general revelation, where God is evidenced through certain features of creation, in special revelation God communicates himself to us.

In the speech and acts of special revelation, God, through the ministry of the Word, both confronts us personally and tells us who he is and what he has done for us. Here revelation indeed makes available a knowledge of something (someone!) new and unexpected as it draws us into a knowledge of our transcendent God in the fuller biblical sense that includes an experienced personal relationship (Eph. 3:14–19; Phil. 3:8–11; 1 John 2:4).

There is an objective and subjective dimension further defining special revelation in a way that will help us see its relationship to Holy Scripture more clearly and fully.

Objectively (that is, where God is the object), in this special revelation we receive a knowledge of God made possible by the Incarnation. An objective knowledge of God is what Scripture demands when it describes Jesus Christ as Immanuel, the incarnate one: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14); “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:1–3). By this objectively revealed Word we come to know the redemptive truth that we are sinners and that God is gracious to the sinner. We know this because Jesus tells us so, and because we sense it by his presence (Luke 5:1–11, 24:25–32; John 3:16–17, 11:25–26; 2 Cor. 4:6).

Furthermore, the special revelation Jesus brings consists of redemptive acts that culminate in his own atoning work. Because this revelation deals with these redemptive truths and acts, because it involves salvation, it is not bad news of only judgment and punishment, but rather it is the gospel that brings grace and reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18–19).

Although we must speak of humanity as the subject of this knowledge of God, the apprehension of the objective

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knowledge of special revelation should not be understood as a possibility naturally given to humans. Rather, humanity may become the subject or the knower of God through special revelation only because God enables us to become this subject. In the subjective dimension of this special revelation humanity is given a newly created capacity to apprehend the objectively revealed Word, a newly created capacity to be the knower of God that is called faith. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8–10). Through this quickening activity of the revealed Word, our sinful and distorted concepts of God are broken (Isa. 55:10–11; Heb. 4:12; Rom. 10:17). We are no longer blinded and enslaved by our sin and by the lies for which we have exchanged God’s truth (Rom. 1:25). We are made free to cry “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). In these two dimensions of this divine activity of special self-revelation, God’s downward condescension makes possible our upward apprehension—objectively we come to know the Truth and subjectively this Truth makes us free (John 8:32; cf.

John 5:24–26, 14:6; 2 Cor. 3:17).

But how does God communicate these objective and subjective dimensions of his special revelation in Jesus Christ to us today, now that our Lord is no longer present here on earth in the flesh? Jesus promised his disciples that he would not leave them orphaned when he went to be with the Father. He assured us all that the special revelation God has made possible in him would continue on earth through the ministry of the Holy Spirit: When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you (John 16:13–15).

The Holy Spirit, who abides with us and in us (John 14:17) continues God’s activity of special revelation in both its objective and subjective dimensions. Objectively the Holy Spirit produced what is called in evangelical theology the principium cognoscendi externum (external principle of knowing). This external cognitive foundation of special revelation is the written Word of God or Holy Scripture as it rests on the Spirit’s work of inspiration.

Subjectively (that is, where humanity is the subject) the Holy Spirit produces what is called in evangelical theology the principium cognoscendi internum (internal principle of knowing). This is the newly created capacity of faith that knows the external Word as it rests upon the internal testimony or illumination of the Spirit. Thus the two M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 41

objective dimension of special revelation, then, the Bible serves to reveal God is both inspired verbal propositions that Christians himself to us—not too unlike a burning bush before Moses study with their minds and a personally encountered, in the wilderness, or a bright light before Paul on the road redeeming, living Word that Christians receive with to Damascus; or as Martin Luther put it, like swaddling their hearts. cloths lying in a manger.

The emphasis here is that the knowledge of God dimensions of special revelation are secured in the Spirit’s communicated in, with, and through Holy Scripture as work of inspiration and illumination that make possible a objective special revelation must concern both the acting continuing divine self-communication to us that is and speaking of God—it must be related to both God’s acts properly called the Word of God. In this special revelation that make himself known and God’s speaking that tells us the risen Christ, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, how to understand or make sense of those actions. John continues to both encounter us personally and tell us who Calvin makes this point beautifully, “This, then, is the true he is and what he has done for us. Through inspiration we knowledge of Christ, if we receive him as he is offered by receive verbal propositions (the text of the Bible) that gives the Father: namely, clothed with his gospel” (Institutes, us the new and unexpected knowledge of Jesus Christ and III.ii.6). Thus, the external cognitive foundation of special his gospel, and through illumination we are drawn revelation is the written Word of God, or Holy Scripture as through faith into a knowledge of God in Christ as an it rests on the Spirit’s work of inspiration. But because experienced personal relationship. We will now look God’s purpose for this written text is to bring about more specifically at how this two-dimensional work of the salvation for his people, Holy Scripture should be Spirit is related to Holy Scripture as personal and understood in the fullest sense of an objective special propositional special revelation. revelation that also places us in a personal encounter with God himself. In this encounter, we are forced to make a Holy Scripture as Two-Dimensional Special Revelation decision to obey God or reject God, which makes this s the Word of God, we understand Holy Scripture special revelation indeed something personally to be the normative and unique deposit of God’s experienced as a startling new reality, a reality that special revelation because it is God himself who summons us and changes us (1 Cor. 2:4–5). speaks and reveals himself in, with, and through these The subjective dimension of special revelation also writings as they confront us as God’s own words and as comes in, with, and through Holy Scripture. Just as the having God’s own authority. More precisely, we can objective dimension of Scripture as special revelation is understand Scripture as the Word of God in the objective secured by the Spirit’s work of inspiration, the subjective dimension of special revelation insofar as it both reveals dimension is secured by the Spirit’s work of illumination.

Jesus Christ and tells us who he is and what he has done The purpose of inspiration is to preserve the biblical writers for us. The Holy Spirit accomplishes the latter by from error, so that God is able to use the text of Scripture depositing and preserving special revelation in the form of to communicate both himself and his truth to us. The Scripture that has a clear, rationally comprehensible purpose of illumination is to enable us to truly perceive, propositional content. Its primary purpose is to bear comprehend, and apprehend the One of whom this witness to Jesus Christ and the message of the gospel in biblical text testifies. While there are certainly aspects to both the Old and New Testaments (Deut. 18:15, Acts 3:22; the biblical text that are simply available to reason—such Luke 24:25–27; John 20:30–31; Acts 17:2–3). as historical and scientific data, and even the clear facts of The Spirit’s work of inspiration establishes an identity the gospel—there is also another realm or sphere that is between special revelation and the teachings of Scripture accessible only to those who have faith. Again, as John that secures its authority and infallibility, and allows us to Calvin aptly puts it, “Faith rests upon the knowledge of affirm that “when Scripture speaks, God speaks.” But Christ. And Christ cannot be known apart from the because the Spirit’s purpose in producing Holy Scripture is sanctification of his Spirit” (Institutes, 3.2.8). not only to communicate verbal information about Christ To know and accept Scripture in the fuller relational and his gospel, we should also acknowledge that it reveals sense as God’s own self-communication in Jesus Christ, Christ himself. By the testimony of the church’s own we must perceive and understand it through a creative act experience, both initiating and sustaining her very of God that allows us to receive it that way. The Holy Spirit existence, this biblical text is and continues to be an must open our minds and hearts to it: “For who knows a effective vehicle for personal encounter with him to which person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is it infallibly testifies: the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Also in the in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God

God’s special revelation in, with, and through the Bible

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except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:11–14; cf. 2 Cor. 3:12–18, 4:3–7).

Objectively, revelation is the inspired text, which must be subjectively apprehended through the Holy Spirit’s work of illumining our minds and hearts unto faith. The same Spirit who spoke through the mouths of the prophets speaks in, with, and through the verbal propositions of the Bible to our minds and hearts, giving us an inner certainty that this is the Word of God speaking to us. Therefore the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit is critical for discerning the revelatory and redemptive meaning and content of Scripture, as well as for truly acknowledging its divine authority. And in this way, both the objective and subjective dimensions of the special revelation God has made possible in Jesus Christ continues on earth through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Toward a More Complete Understanding of What the Bible Is n this article, we focused on what is meant by evangelicals when they refer to the Bible as God’s Word to humanity. We sought to get a clearer idea of what the Bible is by examining its nature and function as God’s Word in the broader sense of the meaning of revelation, and in the narrower sense of the objective and subjective dimensions of special revelation. The insight gained from this discussion should lead us to affirm Holy Scripture as the Word of God in its more complete meaning as both personal and propositional special revelation. Not only will this balanced, twofold view give us a richer and fuller understanding and appreciation of what the Bible is and the indispensable role it plays in our relationship with God, it will also help to keep us from drifting into the theological and practical problems that arise from stressing one dimension over the other.

By holding consistently to Scripture as both personal and propositional special revelation, we will avoid the attempt to read the Bible without prayerfully seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Praying for the Spirit’s illumination reminds us that Holy Scripture is not merely another historical document or document of religious literature. Apart from the gracious, sanctifying ministry of the Holy Spirit we come to the Bible only to find out what Paul and John claimed about Jesus Christ, but not to actually perceive that reality of salvation for ourselves.

The Bible is God’s Word to humanity in the most complete sense only when we know what Paul said about Jesus, and also that what Paul said is true, since we perceive that very same reality—the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, God’s own redeeming and reconciling

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presence. Furthermore, by holding consistently to Scripture as both personal and propositional special revelation will also avoid the risk of treating Scripture as merely an instance of special revelation that is given by God not through verbal communications, but only through historical events (such as the crucifixion or a personal encounter). If God does not explain these events to us, then how can we understand their meaning, how can we understand God’s purposes? For instance, as Jesus Christ’s death was only one of many Roman crucifixions, how could anyone guess the significance of that event unless God had told us? Thus, God’s self-revelation must include cognitive content or we would be left to furnish it for ourselves, and from where would we get this content if not from the authoritative and infallible inspired text of the Bible? Therefore evangelicals answer the question, “What is the Bible?” with something like, “The Bible is God’s Word to humanity.” And what we mean is that the Bible is God’s special revelation in the most complete and consistent sense of personal and propositional revelation.

With this we affirm that God’s special revelation as the inspired text of Holy Scripture is not redemptively apprehended, and therefore not appropriately comprehended, apart from the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit; and with this we affirm that God’s special revelation by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit does not come apart from the inspired text of Holy Scripture.

God’s special revelation in, with, and through the Bible is both inspired verbal propositions that Christians study with their minds and a personally-encountered, redeeming, living Word that Christians receive with their hearts. The Bible is where the church learns who God is and what God has done for her, and where the church meets God in the risen Lord Jesus Christ by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is impossible to overstate the importance and value of the Bible for the church, and easy to see why the forces that are arrayed against God’s church are equally set against the Bible. For it is the nature and function of the Bible, most clearly, completely, and consistently understood as the priceless treasure of special revelation, that caused the reformers to cry, “sola Scriptura!”—and that elderly Romanian Christian to weep with joy on my shoulder. ■

Peter D. Anders is adjunct professor of theology at Azusa Pacific University (Azusa, California) and at Biola University (La Mirada, California).

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An Interview with Sam Solomon

Understanding the Theology of Islam In October 2006, editor-in-chief Michael Horton had the opportunity to interview Sam Solomon, a former Muslim who spent fifteen years studying Shari’ah law (Islamic jurisprudence) to become an Islamic jurist. Upon his conversion to Christianity, Sam was given fortyeight hours to leave the country. He fled to Europe, where he is a Christian apologist and leading expert on Islam. This interview originally aired on The White Horse Inn radio broadcast, which can be heard every week at www.whitehorseinn.org.

First of all, Sam, what is Islam? We hear in the news that Islam is a religion of peace. There are isolated extremists, but Islam as a religion is a religion of peace.

Well, Islam by definition as far as the Qur’an is concerned — Sura 49 verse 14 says, “They said to Muhammad: We are now believers; we have become believers,” and Allah commanded Muhammad to say, “Say to them that faith has not entered your hearts; you have surrendered, you have submitted.” So Islam by that definition means “surrender” and “submission.” … The definition that people give to us in the media is incompatible with the Qur’anic definition. Islam does not mean peace.

What is Islam about, then?

Islam sees the world in two parts. It sees the people as Muslims or as non-Muslims. And the non-Muslims are a target for Islam in all times because Muhammad came and said, “I have been sent to fight, to kill, people; to slay them until they recite the Islamic creed. And when they have recited the Islamic creed, then they are saved – their property and their lives are guaranteed to them. If not, then they will face the might of the sword.” So conversion, for Islam, is not something not presented to people as a decision that they must make but is a law of their being.

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They simply must convert, even at the point of the sword if necessary.

That is how Islam started, and that is how it continues. Take for instance, Mike, Islam started out in Saudi Arabia in the seventh century. How did it arrive to Egypt, Libya, North Africa, Persia, Syria…all the surrounding regions and beyond? Did they send very religious, mild, loving people who went out and say, “Please, accept Islam…these are the doctrines, this is what it is?” No. There were hordes of assassins called mujahadeins. These mujahadeins were no less than all for invasion and the Qur’an gives them the injunction to conquer the un-Islamic world there and to turn it into an Islamic world.

That is what Islam is about. It sees the world as an apostate world and it wants to bring the rule of Allah and submit — and people must submit. It isn’t a personal faith; personal faith would follow as long as they submit to the hegemony of Islam and its political and theological supremacy.

So is Islam a religion?

Islam by definition is not a religion — in the Western sense of the word.

Islam is neither a faith. Islam is a whole encompassing system. Islam is a socio-political, socio-religious, socio-economical, educational, judicial, legislative, materialistic system

cloaked in religious terminology. So, in the Western sense, it isn’t a religion; it is a whole system. You cannot separate one part of life from another. And Islam, as far as Islam is concerned — Sura 3 verse 19 says, “The religion before Allah is Islam.

Allah knows no other religion.” And Sura 3 verse 85 says, “Whoever desires,” — just desires, “any other religion, any other ideology, will not be received of him here and in the life after. He will be doomed.”

One of the things that we hear very often these days is that Judaism, Islam, and Christianity represent the religion of the Book, the Abrahamic faith. We are all children of Abraham. And we even hear, sometimes, Imams (Islamic leaders) tell us that this is how they see things as well. They see Christians and Jews as brothers and sisters in one common Abrahamic faith. Is this consistent with Qur’anic teaching?

No, Mike. I wish that would be true.

It isn’t. According to Sura 3 verse 67, it says, “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian. But he bowed his will to Allah and to Islam.” Abraham was a Muslim, according to Islam. In fact, Islam believes that every single human being is a Muslim. Every single prophet from Adam to Jesus to Muhammad to all the people in the world, they are Muslims. They have chosen to walk away from Islam.

Allah does not create anybody but Muslims. As far as the Jews and Christians are concerned, Islam is very clear about its position: it calls them. Now this is twenty percent of

the world looking at eighty percent of the world, whether they are Jews, Christians, Buddhists, or anybody else. Islam says that they are all profane, and that word occurs in Sura 9 verse 28: “The pagans, the unbelievers, are profane.”

Sam, many of us have met Muslims in all sorts of environments where it seems that they are moderate. They don’t wear the full hijab; it doesn’t seem that they are quite as strict. Is there some leniency for Muslims who live in Western countries?

In terms of leniency, Islam has certain divisions. What you can do in a Muslim country and what you are required to do, it may be overlooked when you are abroad because you are in a non-Muslim land. These discrepancies are provided by the Shari’ah. You can do certain things in the West which you may not be allowed to do in the Islamic country.

One particular doctrine comes to mind: the doctrine of deception.

Muslims are allowed, by the injunction of the Qur’an, to deceive their host, to lie to foreign governments and non-Muslims… that is all done with a good intention for the good name of Islam and to advance the cause of Islam.

Let’s turn now to the comparison and contrast with Christianity.

Admittedly, this is difficult for the reasons that you’ve made us aware of, namely that Islam is a culture — a political, militaristic, social, economic movement, whereas Christianity — at least in its Reformation form, is not Christendom, but is faith in Christ.

So we talk about the doctrines of Christianity and Islam talks about jihad and taking over the economic structures and so forth. If we do talk about the doctrines, though, what does Islam mean by “God”?

Because we’re often told, again, the Abrahamic faiths all worship the same God, whether you call him Allah, Yahweh, God… we’re talking about the same person. Do

either Muslims or biblical Christians teach that we worship the same God and just call him different names?

The problem with Islam and Christianity is this issue of terminology. We use the same terminology.

Muhammad borrowed all his terminology from the Scriptures… Our problem is that although the terminology is the same, the definitions and the concepts are radically and dramatically different. You cannot take it at face value. The Allah of Islam is a very, very different person.

The God of the Bible, for instance, is a covenant-making God. We believe in covenant theology. He’s a covenant-keeping, covenant-sustaining God. In Islam, Allah does not make a covenant. Though the Qur’an is saturated with the word “covenant,” that does not mean Allah makes a covenant because he is not answerable to anybody. The Allah of Islam is not a triune God, and if you were to compare and contrast certain behavior patterns of this Allah, you would immediately see that Allah of Islam has commanded his followers to kill, and the Allah of Islam has enemies, and that is all recorded in the Qur’an. His enemies are the Jews and the Christians. This Allah has denied the divine sonship of Christ, his substitutionary, vicarious death on the cross of Calvary, his resurrection… None of it is entertained in Islam. So that whole concept is so different, and I think we would have to take it in morsel bites to understand what Islam means by “Allah” – who he is, and who he is not.

How do Muslims respond to the historic claims of Christianity? First of all, are they likely to encounter a good historical argument for Jesus’ claims, particularly his resurrection, and if they are, what is their typical response?

As far as historical Christianity is concerned, Islam just completely — in terms of its constitutional ingredients and components of Islam, the Qur’an and the Sunna — knows nothing about historical Christianity.

It twists it around to make it fit its purposes, forces it to say what it does not say. From the historical point of view, the Qur’an cannot answer nor can stand the severe scholastic criticism it was brought under and subjected to. If the Qur’an were subjected to it, it would be torn to pieces. In fact, it is forbidden all over the Islamic world to subject the Qur’an to any form of criticism. It has to be received, as the Muslims would say, “in a worshipful attitude.” This is the word of Allah, and it is not subject to discussion. “Why?” is an un-Islamic question. If a child were to say, “Was Muhammad really a prophet?” he would be seriously reprimanded.

And so history does not bother a Muslim because the Qur’an is full of inconsistencies. It is inconsistent with itself with the doctrine of abrogation, it is inconsistent with biblical history, it is inconsistent with natural history…it just does not add up. It does not see the span of time, it does not know the people, it is just a hodgepodge of a lot of things. And therefore, poor Muslims who do not understand it, who haven’t read it, or if they have read it, they think that it is the facts, the truths.

Is there any sense at all in Islam of a need for a savior? Anything analogous to a sacrifice, an atoning sacrifice, for sin?

No. The atonement in Islam is basically through the Shi’a, the Islamic creed. A lot of people believe and think that Islam is a religion of works.

But works can never substitute for reciting of the creed. Because, otherwise, all those people who have done good works will be in paradise. Islam says no one will be in paradise except those who have recited the creed.

That is the prerequisite. Works follow that, and it will then create hierarchy.

Islam is not a religion of equality. It is a divisive and discriminatory religion because it sees a believer from an apostate, it distinguishes between a Muslim and a Muslim, it distinguishes between a man and a woman, it says a man is a higher, better, more privileged than a woman.

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Islam believes that every single human being is a Muslim. Every single prophet from Adam to Jesus to Muhammad to all the people in the world are Muslim. They have chosen to walk away from Islam.

So if I were a Muslim, when I sin, my repentance makes up for my sin.

Your repentance could be the start, but sin — in Islam, there are no Ten Commandments. Nowhere in the Qur’an. The Muslims say it is scattered — it is here, it may be there, but for instance, “Do not kill,” there is a legitimacy for killing: jihad. How do you reconcile the doctrine of jihad? How do you reconcile “Do not steal” with the doctrines of booty and spoils of war? “They ask you about the booty of war, say it belongs to Allah and his apostle.” There is a whole Sura devoted to that, Sura 8.

And of course then the divisions were made and all the directives for booty were given. So, sin varies. It could be at one stage a sin, at another stage it would be allowed.

There is no gospel in Islam, no good news.

No. The good news about it is that Allah said in Sura 21 verse 107, “We did not send you,” that means Muhammad, “except as the mercies to all the creatures. He is the embodiment of the mercies of Allah to all the creatures.”

Sam, in Islam, how does a person make it to heaven and avoid hell?

Well, first of all, Mike, heaven and hell are Christian concepts in Christian/Judeo-Christian understandings. That’s just biblical vocabulary. It does not carry. Islamic understanding…To them, heaven is a very foreign concept. It is a paradise, not “heaven,” where they will have pleasure. In paradise, according to the Qur’an, there are rivers of alcohol, rivers of wine, rivers of milk — 4 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

— making up for not having it on earth?

Yes, because on earth you need to be sober. You need to pray five times a day. But according to Sura 47 verse 15, there will be rivers of alcohol, rivers of pure water, rivers of milk, rivers of honey, and they will be flowing. Every kind of meat a man can desire, freshly cooked, everything – fruit of every kind, and of course they will have virgins – absolutely beautiful virgins, and they will always remain virgins; they will always remain pure; and they are there to appease the faithful ones. And these are called Houri, and they are specially created for the faithful ones. Added to that, the Qur’an says perpetually fresh, young boys — not exceeding the age of about fourteen at maximum — are there for the enjoyment of the faithful ones. Allah apparently understands an alternative lifestyle. So that is as far as how to “make it,” of course this is all Qur’anic.

Even if you repent – because it isn’t covenant theology, because Allah doesn’t make any covenant, he’s not going to change you. In fact, it is a Qur’anic verse, Sura 11 verse 13, “Allah does not change, will not change the condition of a people until they change it themselves with their own souls.” It is a self-effort. It has nothing to do with Allah; Allah doesn’t change a man. He will not touch anybody. Allah hates unbelievers; he’s not the God of the Christian faith who will seek the lost.

Sam, can a form of Christianity that has so watered down the message, the main themes of

Christianity — sin, guilt, atonement…can that kind of Christianity really answer the onslaught of Islam?

Islam comes very strongly, and therefore if this is the modern view of Christianity, rejecting the centrality of the biblical truths, the sin of man, original sin, guilt, and atonement, so if people say, “I just repented…Jesus loves me,” these are facts. Yes, you repented. True indeed, Jesus loves you. But if that is the limit, then when troubles come we will fly out of the window even before we have melted away.

Why? Because we are not grounded and rooted in the Word of God. If God has accepted me, not because I am a nice man, not simply because I have repented, but he has accepted my repentance based on his covenant. If we do not understand covenant theology, if we are not rooted there, that God accepted me not because I have done something good or because I have given to the poor but because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, it is in his blood, it is because he stood for me, and he took the wrath of God. If we think that God is all love and there is nothing in him which hates sin, that means anything will go. If we ignore the part of wrath, then we are going to lose out.

Why? Because we fail to see God’s wrath toward sin when Jesus took it. It cost him. It cost him. Islam comes and undermines all these things and says, “Just repent. Just say the Shi’a, the creed, and you’re accepted, you’re saved because you are a Muslim.” Today, Europe is almost down under. Islam rules supreme. Mosques are springing up everywhere in the United States.

People are ripe. It isn’t just the Muslim population here; it is the Americans, and every state in the United States has a mosque, an Islamic center. It is making a huge advance because there isn’t any difference anymore between what Islam holds and what watereddown Christianity has to offer.

REQUIRED READING FOR 21ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS modern

reformation

m u st- rea d s

Readings on Sola Scriptura What would Modern Reformation choose for you to read for further understanding of sola Scriptura? This new column, “Required Reading,” will feature books that we believe are worth your time. We hope you’ll consider adding these titles to the treasury of your mind.

According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible

Is the New Testament Reliable?

by Paul Barnett (InterVarsity Press, 2005) Barnett, too, draws on excellent scholarship and offers a good “intermediatelevel” treatment of the historical reliability of the New Testament.

by Graeme Goldsworthy (InterVarsity Press, 2002) This book is about the most accessible one-volume summary of the whole Bible. It’s neck-and-neck with Edmund P. Clowney's excellent book, The Unfolding Mystery.

The Shape of Sola Scriptura

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

by Keith Mathison (Canon Press, 2001) For many Protestants (and critics), sola Scriptura means that we read the Bible by ourselves, without any creeds, confessions, or other means of communal interpretation. Mathison does a terrific job of pointing out what sola Scriptura means and doesn't mean, as well as defending it.

by Craig Blomberg (InterVarsity Press, 1987) Drawing on the best scholarship, Blomberg, a New Testament scholar, offers a good "intermediatelevel" treatment of the important issue of the historical reliability of the Gospel books.

See also these out-of-print titles that can be found at libraries and used bookstores:

Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon

Scripture and Truth

by John D. Woodbridge and D.A. Carson (Zondervan, 1986)

by John D. Woodbridge and D.A. Carson (Zondervan, 1983)

M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 47

REVIEWS wh at ’s

b e i n g

r ead

Books That Still Matter: 15 Years in Print In each issue, we’re looking at a book published during Modern Reformation’s 15-year history with a look to why this book was and still is significant.

D

on A. Carson first published his award-winning book The Gagging of

With its demand for all truth claims to be regarded as equally God in 1996, the year that I was ordained to preach the gospel. I valid, philosophical pluralism continues to be a central chaldevoured the book shortly after it came out, and it has served as an lenge for the church, and the related issues that Carson intellectual reference addresses over the course of nearly 600 pages continue to point for life and mindemand a thorough Christian response. If anything, The istry ever since.

Gagging of God is a more important book today than it was The title of the book a decade ago. There seems to be hardly any theological or has a double meaning. cultural issue of major current importance that Carson fails It refers both to the to engage: the different forms that pluralism takes, the true challenge of pluralism meaning of tolerance, the problem with evolutionary natand to the inadequacy uralism, the uniqueness of Christ in the context of world of the church’s religions, the limits of contextualization, the need to draw response. To begin and defend theological boundaries, the materialism and with, God is being narcissism of the Western church, the global face of congagged by the posttemporary Christianity, and so on. modern deconstrucOne of the book’s major emphases may perhaps come tion of the truthfulness as a surprise to some readers, but not to anyone who of truth. If absolute knows Don Carson: its strong evangelistic fervor. In offertruth is inherently ing a thoroughgoing critique of postmodern Christianity, impossible to know or Carson is not simply trying to win an intellectual argument to communicate, then (although he does use his considerable logical and rhetorhow can God reveal an ical gifts to do that as well as he can), but also to defend The Gagging of God: authoritative Word to the true gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ and teach peoChristianity Confronting anyone? Whatever he ple how to live for Christ in pluralistic times.

Pluralism has supposedly said In that regard, one of the most useful chapters is one

by D. A. Carson cannot be binding. that appropriately comes late in the book: “On Banishing Eerdmans,1996 Yet, according to the Lake of Fire.” As its title suggests, this chapter relates 640 pages (paperback), $26.99 Carson, in its own way to the final judgment. In it Carson mounts a vigorous and contemporary Christianity is complicit in the gagging of convincing defense of hell as a place of conscious eternal God. By accommodating to postmodern perspectives in torment. While this defense is rooted in the historic teachhermeneutics and apologetics, the church (including the ing of the church, it also employs Carson’s exegetical evangelical church) is silencing God from speaking with expertise in clarifying particular texts of Scripture. Indeed, full and living power. this is one of the strengths of the book as a whole: while The Gagging of God is a philosophical, biblical, and theCarson readily engages in philosophical and theological ological tour de force. Although some critics have comissues throughout, his center of gravity is always solidly plained that it should have been more tightly edited, the rooted in the witness of the Bible and its story line of book’s length is one of its virtues, as Carson surveys and redemption in Christ. critiques the leading ideas of postmodern pluralism— It may well be wondered how many evangelical both inside and outside the church—across the full specauthors writing on postmodernism would dare to discuss trum of society. the final judgment. However, Carson sees this argument as

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crucial to his total case. What is really at stake in current debates over the indeterminacy of truth or the necessity of faith in Christ alone for salvation? Nothing less than the rescue of hell-bound sinners from eternal wrath through the death and resurrection of the Son of God. If that is what is at stake, then we have little time for theological game-playing. But if we care about living for Christ in these post-Christian times—and about leading people to Christ for all eternity—we should make some time to read and reread D. A. Carson’s The Gagging of God.

Philip Graham Ryken is senior minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and the Bible teacher on the radio broadcast, Every Last Word.

A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State

by Darryl G. Hart Ivan R. Dee, 2006 288 pages (hardback), $26.95 Evangelical involvement in politics has perhaps never been more intense. The Bush administration speaks of integrating faith and politics and has an office of faith-based initiatives. The national media cover the scandals of evangelical leaders because those evangelicals have political clout.

Indeed, most Christians on the right and left seem to agree that there is such a thing as distinctly Christian politics.

Into this super-heated environment comes a book by Darryl Hart challenging the assumptions that fuel the social programs of both conservative and liberal Christians.

Hart’s argument with both groups is that “Christianity in its classic formulations, especially the Protestant traditions of Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican, has very little to say about politics or the ordering of society” (10).

“Christian-inspired policy arguments” or candidates are inappropriate “on Christian grounds” because “using Christianity for political ends fundamentally misconstrues the Christian religion” (253).

Through nine chapters, Hart interacts with a substantial body of literature attempting to account for the relations between Christ and Caesar. He argues that, when pressed into the service of Caesar, Christianity is always denatured and cheapened, because, the “trick of successfully employ-

SHORT NOTICES Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach

by Vern S. Poythress Crossway/Good News Publishers, 2006 384 pages (paperback), $20.00 Science and Christian faith have clashed for so long that most people today probably assume the divorce is final. Like a skilled marriage counselor not willing to concede defeat, Vern Poythress in Redeeming Science calls not for a truce but for a return to the wedded bliss that should never have been interrupted. Of course, with doctoral-level degrees in both mathematics and theology, Poythress is uniquely qualified to fill that mediatorial role.

With Romans 1:21–23 in mind he sets the thesis for his book: by the very way scientists do science they show that they “know” the God of the Bible, though (because of sin) they do not honor him. He pleads with Christians to develop a witness to unbelieving scientists that is as sensitive to the spiritual issues involved as it is to intellectual arguments.

Poythress has outlined his apologetic concerning science and faith many times over in essays, articles, and class lectures previous to the publication of Redeeming Science.

This new book, however, expands those à la carte selections into a sumptuous feast. Chapter after chapter applies his approach to not only hot-button issues in the science versus faith wars (origins, epistemology) but also to individual disciplines within the field of science, such as physics and mathematics. Always his concern seems to be with maintaining the primacy of the revelation given us in the Bible, but at the same time he gives scientists their due.

Because the Bible itself encourages humans to explore and investigate the wonders of creation, the best work that scientists do should be viewed by believers as of great value rather than as a threat. Redeeming science contains many treasures and delights not only for those of a scientific bent, but for anyone who has ever traveled the path from the marvels of creation to the magnificence of the Creator.

Poythress’s insights into the beauty revealed in mathematics, for example, were a real revelation to this reviewer who normally associates numbers with suffering (read “Algebra I” and “checkbook balancing”)! Even more valuable, perhaps, is the model of irenic apologetics that redeeming science sets forth.

—Mark Traphagen

(continued on page 51) M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 49

ing any faith for public ends is to have access to the socially useful parts of religion while leaving behind its dogmatic and sectarian baggage” (13). For Hart, there is no such thing as “Christian” politics. For readers familiar with Hart’s earlier work, this view should come as no surprise as it is part of his broader advocacy of the renewal and reapplication of the Reformation theory of the two kingdoms, that is, the notion that Christ is sovereign over all things but he administers his sovereignty in two distinct kingdoms: civil and ecclesiastical. Thus, nonecclesiastical vocations are common to believers and unbelievers and much of this common work must be conducted according to creational categories (nature) and existing cultural norms rather than redemptive categories (grace). In other words, there is no distinctly Christian way to drive a bus or set monetary policy. Bus drivers, historians, and politicians do common work according to nature. Hart, with a few other writers (such as David VanDrunen and Michael Horton), seeks to employ the two kingdoms theory in the late modern world as a bulwark against evangelical and liberal theocratic tendencies. According to Hart, both the evangelical right and the mainline left are theocratic.

Walter Rauschenbusch’s “social gospel” has become the playbook for ostensibly conservative evangelicals (105–123). Both the Christian left and right routinely misappropriate and misapply passages from the Old Testament—passages intended to speak to the Israelite theocracy and to the church—as if they were intended to serve as a blueprint for post-canonical social policy.

How are Christians to negotiate their civic lives? Hart’s answer is that we must embrace an “awkward neutrality” (229–230), that we must be prepared to live “hyphenated lives.” With “legal secularists,” Hart argues that for Christian secularists, “the work of government lacks any overtly religious or spiritual purpose” (15). Its work is common to believer and unbeliever. In an age when the “integration” of faith and life is the standing order, it is bracing, even shocking to see one arguing that Christians should “bracket” their faith (175–177, 253, 257) from their civic lives.

He takes issue with the notion on which much Christian political involvement has been premised, , American exceptionalism, the notion that the United States is a “shining city on a hill” (19–45). Only the visible church could be that city in this world. Thus, he criticizes the colonial Puritans, mainline Christians, and evangelicals for consistently applying theocratic categories to the civil rather than to the ecclesiastical kingdom.

Following George Marsden’s account of the influence of the “Whig cultural ideal” (54), Hart observes that Christians have regularly confused democratic republicanism with Christianity and vice versa, conflating Christian liberty with political liberty (66). He argues that the legal secularism of Isaac Kranmick and R. Laurence Moore is closer to the intent of the Westminster Divines than is modern Christian republicanism (69–71). He chronicles the consequences of this ideology for American 5 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Christianity by surveying the rise of the “common” (public) school. In order for such an institution to foster a generic civic religion, the common schools that arose in the 19th century had to promulgate a sub-Christian faith (89).

Drawing upon Nathan Hatch’s analysis of the democratization of American Christianity, Hart also contends that much of what is done in the name of advancing the “kingdom of God” is really the product of Jacksonian, egalitarianism (124–152), and attempts to preserve the Protestant hegemony, on the flawed assumption that the Protestant churches are the seminary of democracy (145, 150–152).

One of the most interesting chapters is his survey of the changes in religious identity in America from Al Smith’s defeat to today. John Kennedy had to assure evangelicals that he would not allow his Romanism to influence his policies and today evangelicals seem to insist that Roman politicians obey the Pope in their civil lives. In this chapter, Hart engages in his most detailed biblically based argument (170–174) for the two-kingdoms reading of Scripture.

Rejecting the dominant two-party reading of American religious history, that is, that there are two kinds of Christians (“conservative” and “liberal”), Hart argues that the conservatives of the National Association of Evangelicals are not really different from liberals of the National Council of Churches (chapter 7). Rather, genuine religious faith is bound not to produce a religious unity, as the Christian-republicans (right and left) imagine, but division. True religious conviction is inherently confessional and sectarian (206).

Like everything that Hart writes, this work is provocative in the best sense. As a Reformed confessionalist, I find his argument theologically compelling. The Israelite theocracy was unique and fulfilled by Christ. Christ and his apostles established an institution with only spiritual authority and commanded Christians to live peaceably and patiently in a hostile culture. Implicitly or explicitly, however, under the influence of pre- or post-millenarian eschatology (anticipating some earthly golden age) Christians have spent much of modernity trying to resuscitate Christendom by employing implicitly or explicitly theocratic arguments. Even if one disagrees with Hart’s theology, anyone willing to reconsider the prevailing theology of cultural engagement will find a vigorous discussion partner here.

My agreement notwithstanding, Hart’s rhetoric and historical analysis raise questions for further discussion.

According to Hart, the adjective “public” refers to civic activities and the adjective “private” refers to sectarian ecclesiastical religious activities. [Certainly he is entitled to his definitions, and used to mean “not civic,” Christian practice must be described as private. Yet some will wonder whether “private” is the best adjective to describe Christian theology and practice.] It’s true that certain acts of piety are to be private (176) in the sense of “hidden from view” (Matt. 6:4), but the empty tomb was available

for everyone to see, as was Christ’s resurrected body and as is Christian worship.

Historians may balk at a few characterizations of seventeenth-century British politics and the political intentions of the Westminster Assembly (e.g., 64, 70). For example, though Hart concedes that the two kingdoms doctrine emerged under Christendom (i.e., a state-church, the civil enforcement of the first table of the Decalogue), his account of Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 20 makes no mention of the original version of Article 23, which calls for the magistrate to keep “unity and peace” in the church and to keep pure “the Truth of God” and to suppress “all blasphemies and heresies” (23.3).

Similarly, his claim that the Reformation marginalized the institutional church (244) is partly true, but a little misleading. He refers in passing to the consequence of desacralization of the world by the Reformation. Where the medieval church had grace “perfecting” nature, the Reformation restored nature and grace to their rightful places. For Protestants, grace renews nature. Did that make the church less or more important in the lives of believers?

One might also be puzzled by the relative absence of Calvin’s theory of the two kingdoms in a book by a confessional Presbyterian.

He spends several pages on Augustine’s two cities and on Luther’s theory of the two kingdoms but little on Calvin’s theory of the two kingdoms, giving perhaps unintentionally the impression that his view is more Augustinian and Lutheran than Calvinist.

Finally, Hart’s argument makes one eager for further elaboration of a positive basis on which Christians can make civil decisions. After all, through the ballot initiative and referendum process now commonplace, the average citizen is engaged in making policy on a level that preEnlightenment Christians could hardly imagine.

Discussion of the historic Protestant doctrine of natural law will be most welcome. This is a valuable book deserving of careful attention from readers across the religious and theological continuum.

R. Scott Clark is associate professor of historical and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

Short Notices (continued from page 49)

How People Change

by Tim Lane and Paul David Tripp Punch Press, 2006 255 pages (paperback), $17.99 Corresponding to the Christian Counseling Educational Foundation seminar curriculum of the same name, How People Change brings the practical teaching of Tim Lane and Paul Tripp to a wider audience.

The authors start with God and stay firmly rooted in the gospel message of redemption.

Throughout the book they draw heavily on illustrations of the thorn bush and the fruit tree developed and used by David Powlison in his “Dynamics of Biblical Change” course. In addition, they use illustrations from counseling situations and provide opportunities for personal reflection.

More than an explanation about the Christian faith, this books deals with what it means to live with an understanding of God’s deep, abiding, and life-giving grace.

—Diana Frazier

1 & 2 Kings

by Peter Leithart Brazos Press, 2006 304 pages (hardback), $29.99 Peter Leithart’s volume on 1 and 2 King’s in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series captures and expounds for contemporary readers the political machinations and backroom intrigue of the books of Kings. Leithart’s God-centered and gospel-centered exposition weaves together the theological strands of Kings that anticipate, and prepare for, the Messiah that Yahweh will send.

Of particular interest is the emphasis upon Kings as essentially prophetic literature. Kings records the failure of all Israel’s hopes: wisdom, king, temple, Torah. Every support is pulled away, drawing all attention to Yahweh who will raise anew the devastated people. If there is a weakness to Leithart’s volume, it may be an over-eager connection of biblical and theological themes from across the canon and between the testaments. Everything connects to everything. However, for every link that may leave readers scratching their heads in uncertainty, Leithart offers two, three, or four insights of how all the Law, Prophets, and Psalms point to the crucified and resurrected Christ proclaimed to all nations.

—Matthew Harmon M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 51

FAMILY MATTERS r e sou rces

fo r

homes

The Classical Model: Could We Use It in Church Education?

(Part 2 of 3)

The Grammar Stage

R

ecognize what children do naturally and then direct it to help them learn—this

children to apply those phonics immediately by, is the simple concept behind the classical education model that many Christian for example, reading Shakespeare. We know schools are adopting. At certain stages of development, children think and there is time for that later, and, right now, we want learn in certain ways—by default, as it were. When eduthem to master the rudiments of reading that will prepare cators understand their students’ “default settings” and them to appreciate Hamlet in the future. Likewise, in make use of them, learning is more likely to occur. church education, we should feel free to fill children with About the time children go off to kindergarten and until facts, knowing that we are preparing them for future reathey become pre-adolescents, children have an uncanny soning and application. Certainly, as we teach Bible stoability to remember. They memorize songs, jingles, and ries, we will draw out applications and as we drill catefacts without even intending to do so. A wise educator, chism, we will explain what we drill, but we should not recognizing this natural ability, calls upon children to hesitate to major on getting a wealth of information into memorize mountains of information they will find highly young minds. useful later. She drills her students with phonics flash Classical educators realize that learning is a lifelong purcards, with math facts, with rules for grammar. She realsuit. The objective, therefore, is to build into children tools izes that every subject has a set of basic facts that must be for learning that will last them a lifetime. Imagine entermastered before the subject can be explored in any depth. ing adolescence, with all its demands for life decisions, In the three-part classical education model (the Trivium), already possessing a thorough knowledge of God’s Word this first part of mastering facts and rules goes by the name and of sound doctrine as a basis for making those deciof Grammar. A classical educator works, during the early sions. Imagine going on into adulthood and taking a place years of education, to ensure that children memorize the of ministry in the church and in the world, having already necessary grammar of all the subjects they will eventually mastered a wealth of knowledge in the Scriptures and in need to know.

Christian doctrine. Of course, every Christian parent or What would this mean if it were applied to church eduteacher would want this for children! No one would argue cation? Before children reach middle school age, teachers against this goal. Yet most of us seem to hope this will just would work to build a core foundation of knowledge of happen through hit-or-miss lessons and stories. A classical the Bible and of sound doctrine. Bible facts, Bible people, approach to church education would follow a diligent, sysBible places and events would be mastered through the tematic plan for filling young children’s minds with telling and retelling of Bible stories. Memory programs Christian truth and Bible facts while they still find it easy would include catechism, the books of the Bible, and Bible to learn and memorize. In this way, we would equip them passages. Things memorized now—and faithfully drilled— with tools that would prove invaluable to them in their will be remembered for life. (Wouldn’t you love to know subsequent stages of learning. just where Habakkuk comes in your Bible without relying on the contents page?)

Starr Meade is author of Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: But we shouldn’t only teach information, someone may Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism (P&R, object. This is Christian knowledge. It has to be applied.

2000).

Indeed, this is true, and we should seek to apply what we teach. Nonetheless, at this stage in a child’s learning, we should have no hesitation about emphasizing information.

When we teach phonics, we feel no pressure to require

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