REFORMATION
INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
BOOK
SUMMARY: THY WORD IS TRUTH
Thomas
Booher
SYS 501 Systematic
Theology
January 5,
2017
Professor Edward J.
Young’s Thy Word is Truth is a
helpful book that defines and defends the doctrine of the inspiration of
Scripture. He demonstrates that this doctrine is indispensable; without it one
cannot rely upon the Bible as the inerrant word of God, and thus man must
become the ultimate arbiter concerning which parts of the Bible are truly God’s
word and which are not. In contrast, to establish the doctrine of inspiration
grants complete confidence in the whole Bible as God’s word, solidifying the
statements about man, sin, Christ, and salvation by evoking the eternal truth
of God Himself as man’s guide for all of life. The whole of the Christian faith
stands or falls on the doctrine of inspiration, and it is for this reason that
a careful summary of each chapter of Young’s book on inspiration follows,
beginning with the present crisis concerning the doctrine of inspiration in the
church.
Chapter 1: The Issue Before the Church
Young
states that the church is at a crossroads and must choose whether to stay true
to the historic faith and word of God, or abandon it for man-made religion. To
say that the Bible still has some value as a religious book but is not actually
inspired in a fixed, absolute fashion is simply non-sense, for it makes the shifting
opinion of man the determiner of truth and reality rather than the sovereign
God. This renders the foundation of Christianity no longer God, but man.
Many
in the church at the time of this book’s publishing (1957) were arguing against
the modernism that rejected the Bible in every sense, and instead advocated for
a truncated view of inspiration that discards infallibility but retains
spiritual “truths” that can serve as moral guideposts. Young counters that the
scientific study of the Bible in modern times has not demonstrated anything
that would challenge the classic doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture as
expressed in the 1st chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith
and which the Bible self-attests. The definition of inspiration must come from
the Bible itself, which says that inspiration is the “God-breathed” words of Scripture;
2 Timothy 3:16 uses the Greek word theopneustos
to indicate the God-breathed nature of all of Scripture (and that it is
profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness for
the man of God).
Scripture is not
given to man in a heavenly language, but through human language by the means of
men who were moved by the Holy Spirit as they spoke and eventually wrote (2 Pet.
1:21). It is apparent that the words of Scripture are the words of men, but the
self-attestation that these words originate from God Himself are indispensable
to the doctrine of inspiration, for Scripture is not just the words of God but
is intended to reveal God to man. It is revelation, and that it claims to be
such is corroborated by the majesty of its scope, style, harmony of all the
parts, weightiness of subject matter, etc., but all the beauty and majesty of
Scripture would fall short of binding the conscience if it did not testify to
carry the authority of God Himself.
The words of
Scripture are more properly regarded as being “expired” or “breathed-out” by
God than the term that inspiration indicates in modern usage, which calls to
mind a “breathing into” something. It is not as if God merely blessed the words
of the human authors as being in accordance with His own will (if this were the
case it would mean Scripture was not revelatory but something man was capable
of deducing on his own, but 1 Pet. 1:21 denies this, stating instead that the
men were “carried along” by the Holy Spirit) and thereby their words bore the
marks of the divine. Rather, it is God Himself who wrote the words of Scripture
through human agency.
The machinations
of man did not produce the Bible; God disclosed Himself in His own words, not
by reducing man to mere automatons, but through their own persons and
giftedness. Young summarizes on page 27, “According to the Bible, inspiration
is a superintendence of God the Holy Spirit over the writers of the Scriptures,
as a result of which these Scriptures possess Divine authority and
trustworthiness and, possessing such Divine authority and trustworthiness, are
free from error.” As Christ Himself said in John 10:35, “Scripture cannot be
broken.” This high regard for inspiration is held because the Bible itself
adheres to it. While God could have sent Christ to save sinners without an
infallible word, He has not chosen to do so, but in His great kindness has instead
given man His infallible word so that he may have firm confidence in Who it is
that he believes.
This chapter
explains that the issue facing the church is whether the Bible will be taken at
its word (as God’s own word), or not. If not, then no doctrine in Scripture can
be trusted as reliable. If so, then every doctrine of Scripture is reliable,
for it is all the word of God, who cannot lie and does not change. At this
point, one may object that if the Bible really claims to be the word of God and
bears the qualities of the divine, why do so many fail to recognize it as such?
The answer is simply that men are blinded by their sins. It is not that the
testimony and majesty of Scripture itself is insufficient. Man does not need
more light, but eyes that see. Hence it is ultimately the Holy Spirit that
testifies to the believer that the Bible is the word of God, and He does this,
not in a vacuum, but through the word of God itself, overcoming man’s blindness
and suppression of the truth of inspiration that is plain to see.
Chapter 2: The Extent of Inspiration
Young
argues that few Protestants know the teaching of the Bible in general because
the church has largely ceased to preach doctrine and provide catechetical
instruction. The result is that few even know what the biblical teaching on
inspiration is. So, when progressives come in and redefine the doctrine of
inspiration, this is met with acceptance because the counterfeit goes
undetected. The remedy is to lay out the biblical doctrine of inspiration in
order to distinguish it from the counterfeits.
Young
returns to the Bible’s teaching on inspiration, emphasizing that the “word” of
God is simply the vehicle God uses to disclose His holy will to man. Since the
Bible is the word of God, then it is all true, for God cannot lie. Young
distinguishes inspiration and revelation, stating that revelation communicates
knowledge and information, whereas inspiration guarantees infallibility in what
is being taught. The prophets, then, were recipients of revelation and were
also inspired, for God put the words He wanted said in their hearts and on
their lips. They were “inspired organs to whom Divine revelation had come”
(42). The examples of Moses and Jeremiah indicate that the prophets did not
develop the ideas God planted in them of their own willing, but God gave them
the very words they were to say (see Ex. 4:15; 7:1-2; Jer. 1:9, 17). The
Apostles likewise were not left to their own devices to deliver the truth of
God to others, for Christ promised that the Holy Spirit would “…teach you all
things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto
you” (Jn. 14:26). Paul in 2 Thess. 2:13 praises the Thessalonians for receiving
the apostle’s word not as their own but as the word of God Himself.
It
is clear that the prophets, Christ, and the apostles were inspired by God and
spoke the very words, and only those words, which He intended to be spoken and
written. The question remains: Is the Bible an inspired, infallible
representation of what the prophets and apostles said? According to its own
claim, the answer is yes (keeping in mind that this would be referring mostly
to the Old Testament since the New Testament had not yet been given). Romans
9:17 and Galatians 3:8 are just two places where Paul indicates that the Old
Testament Scripture was speaking the very words of God. He refers to the
Scripture speaking, and when the Old Testament reference is looked up, it is
actually God Himself speaking, in the first passage to Pharaoh, in the second
to Abraham.
Christ in Matthew
22:43 refers to David speaking in Psalm 110 as speaking by the Spirit, and when
tempted by Satan in the wilderness He refutes Him with what “is written” in
Scripture passages from the Old Testament. He knew He would be betrayed by
Judas because what was written in the Old Testament had to be fulfilled, for it
was the very words and plan of God. In fact, the Gospels frequently speak of
current events in Christ’s earthly ministry as fulfilling Old Testament
prophecies, often in quite specific and minute detail. Peter in 2 Peter 3:15-18 regards Paul’s letters
as Scripture and says that people twist the letters to their own destruction,
for it teaches the people about God and salvation through Christ. There can be
no doubt that the prophets, apostles, and other authors of Scripture all
believed that Scripture was altogether God’s word and thus completely free from
error and unable to err.
Truth
and inspiration go together. Books can be true and not inspired, but the Bible,
claiming to be God’s word, must be inspired and therefore true. One can report
on the historical reality of Christ’s crucifixion, but the revelation of
Scripture is necessary to have the right interpretation of the significance of
the crucifixion, and only God can reveal and tell man what that significance
is. The Bible, then, to have any real redemptive value at all, must be inspired
because it must, without doubt, declare to man the meaning of the cross and the
only way to be saved from the wrath to come on account of sin.
Young
turns to the question of inspiration for the copied manuscripts of the Bible.
Since the originals, the autographs, are lost, is the inspired word of God lost
today? No, but not because the copyists were prevented from copying errors by
the Holy Spirit; rather, the extant copies possess a faithful representation of
the autographs due to the providence of God. The scribes and others who have
copied the Scriptures over the years did so with utmost care, more care than
any other writings, for they knew that these writings were the very words of
God. There is no difficulty in understanding how man can possess the truth of
other writings from copies despite the absence of the original. How much more
then should it be accepted that copies of the sacred Scriptures are faithful to
the original Author’s words. The errors found in the copies are resolvable and
almost always inconsequential, and are often related to numbers and dates or
slight misspellings of words.
Nevertheless,
there are difficulties in the copied manuscripts that have not been resolved,
such as 1 Kings 15:14 stating that the high places had not been removed, but
the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 14:5 saying that they had been. On these
very rare exceptions, should the very claims of Scripture be overthrown? They
should not, for many such difficulties have either been resolved in time or
possible explanations have been produced. Archaeological discoveries have
proven assertions of Scripture to be true when others thought they were
impossible, such as Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Prior to archaeological
discovery, it was thought that writing was not invented until after Moses’
lifetime, but it is now known that writing predates Moses’ life by many years.
While other textual difficulties remain in the copies of Scripture, the unity
of the copies far outweigh them, and it can be expected that finite man will
not be able to fully grasp all the complexities of the revelation of God or to
be able to resolve the textual difficulties immediately. So while the
autographs are lost, the word of God is not.
Chapter 3: The Human Writers of the Scriptures
Young
makes clear that he is not advocating for a mechanical dictation theory of
inspiration, which is what liberals often claim for those who articulate the
biblical position on this doctrine. It is not as if God completely suppressed
the human personality when the authors wrote. Peter could not have penned Paul’s
letters because they are recorded in the rhetorical style of Paul, the very
style that God gave to Paul when He made him. God intended in eternity past to
deliver part of His holy word through the God-given personality of Paul.
The
human authors, such as David and Isaiah, were holy men, and yet they were
sinful men. They loved the Lord from the heart but like all other men were
still wrestling against the lusts of the flesh. All their learning and training
and abilities God utilized. Paul likely trained for three years in Arabia to
prepare for the ministry God called him to, and Jesus prepared for His earthly
ministry His whole life. Paul studied at the feet of Gamaliel, and Moses was
reared and instructed as an Egyptian. God’s
providential works of grooming the human author’s – their intellects, writing
and speaking abilities, love for God, etc., work in tandem with His special
work of inspiring them to write down His words.
The
mode by which God employed human authors to bear His word without error or
corruption is mysterious. The duty of the Christian is to trust God, even when
he cannot fully comprehend how God accomplishes what He says He has done, or
fully grasp what He is like (such as His Trinitarian nature). The Holy Spirit
moved chosen men to speak and record exactly what God desired, and in such a
way that these words were not only what God wanted, but also the sincere
thought and conviction of the human authors. Exactly how God accomplished this
is unknown, and quite possibly unknowable, belonging only to the awesome
majesty of the eternal, infinite, and all-powerful God. It is a beautiful
mystery to be received with wonder, adoration, and praise, quite the opposite
from the doubt and consternation with which many skeptics respond to this
marvelous reality. Nor was God limited in what He could communicate by the
giftedness (or lack thereof) of the human author. God perfectly communicated
all that He wished to reveal about Himself to His people through certain holy
men. If God were to be limited by His creation and forced to record His will
through the risk of human error, He would be no God at all, for His own
creation would frustrate Him and His purposes.
To limit the
errors of Scripture to numbers and geography and scientific information is an
inconsistent and arbitrary distinction that falls under the weight of scrutiny;
Scripture is either infallible in all its parts, or fallible in all its parts.
If fallible in any one part, the ground for faith in the precious promises of
God through Christ is destroyed.
Given
this, it should be noted that it is incorrect to speak of the human authors as
“co-authoring” the Scriptures with God. God did not contribute His bit, and the
human authors added to it or complemented it with something of their own. God
is the final and ultimate Author; He did not consult with man to decide what
should be included or excluded from the Scriptures. While the thoughts came to
the human authors and they put them into writing (or spoke them, to be written
later), the thoughts themselves originated with God. This is the crux of the
mystery – the thoughts were truly the human authors, and yet they were given to
them from God Himself. Indeed, they were borne by the Spirit, but when they
were not borne by the Spirit, the human authors were not infallible and did not
record Scripture. An example is King David in 2 Samuel 11:15, where he pens the
letter to his General Joab, telling him to put Uriah in the thickest part of
the battle and withdraw from him so that he would die and not find out about
the adultery of his wife with David. Certainly the Holy Spirit did not move
David to write such an unholy thing! Though this letter is recorded in sacred Scripture,
this does not imply that God approved of David’s actions. Many sinful acts are
recorded in Scripture for the sake of information and instruction, warning and
judgment. These accounts are true and accurate, but are not exalted as paragons
of virtue.
Chapter 4: Some Reflections Upon Inspiration
Young
now addresses objections to the biblical doctrine of inspiration that he has
outlined. Some argue that the teaching is of no consequence, for the originals
are no longer possessed, nor do most people read the Bible in the Greek and
Hebrew, but in their own language. But again, if the originals err, then God errs,
because it is the very breath of God. The importance of maintaining the classic
understanding of inspiration is quite plain when stated this way. The very
character of God, His wisdom, knowledge, truthfulness, etc., is on the line.
Others
object by relegating the Bible to one of the great works of human history, all
brought about by the gifts of God and His providence. It is true that works
like Homer’s Iliad are impressive,
but they are not the works of men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit. It
is not the very word of God that was written down. This reduces the Bible to
the plain of any other book, even if it is said to be the greatest among them.
It ceases to be God’s breathed word. The Bible itself claims to be more than
any other book, indeed it claims to be the very word of God.
A
more nuanced objection states that God could have chosen to dispense His
inerrant word through human agency by working with human error rather than preventing error from appearing in the
transmission of His revelation. This, it is said, no more impugns God’s
character than Christ’s being tempted, suffering, and dying on the cross
tarnished His sinlessness or perfection. This argument falls because it fails
to understand that Christ was tempted, suffered, and died not for his own sin
but for the sin of the elect. There was no error or corruption in Him. The
comparison to Christ, then, actually demands that God’s word be free from all
error. God cannot communicate by speaking lies about Himself mixed with some
truth any more than Christ could save sinners by first committing some sins and
then atoning for both His own sin and others.
Still,
others have claimed that the doctrine of inspiration is relatively new,
something which Calvin did not teach or any of the early church fathers. While
it is true that the doctrine of inspiration has been further developed since
earlier periods in church history, the whole argument is that the Bible itself
claims to be the word of God. If Luther did not stand up to the abuses of the
Church of Rome, which claimed that one must be justified by works along with
faith, and that saving grace was dispensed through the sacraments administered
by priests, the gospel would have remained in eclipse. Claiming that the
doctrine of an infallible, inerrant Bible is a new development is false, even
if it is recognized that the formulation of stating the doctrine in such a
clearly defined fashion is relatively recent. In the early church, men like
Justin Martyr and even Origen regarded the Scriptures as the very words of God
Himself, and as such had absolute, binding authority and determined all
disputes over faith and practice. Regarding one’s understanding of inspiration,
neo-orthodoxy and modernism are a clean break from the attestation of Scripture
as well as the general belief and practice of the church down through the ages.
Another
objection follows quickly, that only that which pertains to faith and practice
in Scripture is inerrant, but things like geography and historical detail need
not be entirely true since it is of no real consequence to the doctrines of
Christianity. This view forgets that the Christian faith is an historic faith,
and Jesus Christ died in space and time, in a certain place, and was in the
grave a certain number of days before He rose from the grave. Yahweh covenanted
with the Israelites and told them to take a particular piece of land as their
own “Promised Land.” History, geography, science, all of it is relevant to
faith, and all of it impacts one’s practice. Does one pursue science divorced
from the guidance of God’s word, so that he is stabbing in the dark with only the
light of his dimmed mind? Or does one have faith that what the Scriptures say
about the universe God created is in fact true because it is God, the Creator,
who is revealing to His creatures the things He has made? One must affirm the
latter if he is to truly believe that the Bible is infallible in all of faith
and life. Further, it is not as if Moses, when writing about creation in
Genesis 1, was appealing to his own thoughts or knowledge; instead, he was
recording what God had revealed to him. The human authors of Scripture did not
have a more advanced knowledge of geography, science, and history than modern
day scientists and others who study in these fields. The advantage they had was
not a superior intellect, but the revelation of God given to them, which they
recorded while under inspiration by the Holy Spirit.
Some
have absurdly claimed that Protestantism has simply replaced an infallible
church with an infallible book, and the Bible itself does not claim
infallibility. The only true infallibility is that of Christ, so Protestantism
has wickedly placed the Bible on the same plain as God. As has already been
shown, the Bible itself claims to be the only infallible authority, and to even
make the claim that the church has any authority one must appeal to the Bible.
The Bible is God’s word, so to think that placing the Bible on par with Christ
is a grave confusion is to tacitly claim that the Bible actually has little to
do with Christ and His Father. The Reformation simply restored the biblical
teaching on inspiration and ascribed to it the authority due God’s word. Protestants
do not love the Bible for its binding and the paper and ink, but for the
message of truth and salvation contained in it. When Luther translated the New
Testament into German he gave the common people access to Christ Himself, and
the people were grateful to receive Christ as Savior through the Bible. Perhaps
unwittingly, the modernists and neo-orthodox are the ones guilty of supplanting
the infallible Scriptures -- with the “infallible” mind of man, which must
decipher what is inspired in Scripture and what is not.
Young
concludes the chapter by laying out the real reason that many take umbrage with
an inspired, infallible Bible. It is not over tertiary teachings, but over the
heart of Christianity itself. It is over the gospel and the atoning work of
Christ on the cross. Few there are who accept the atonement of Christ as
presented in Scripture and also maintain that the Bible is not entirely free
from error. The problem at the most fundamental level is not an intellectual
one but a moral one. Man wants his mind, his will, and his desires to rule over
God’s, and so he has begun to attack God’s very own self-disclosure, His
revelation to man, ripping away the parts he doesn’t like and twisting the torn
remains to fit his own sinful fancy. What is needed in the church today is a
mighty work of the Spirit that overcomes man’s resistance to His word and
causes him to submit to it, and in so doing find forgiveness, cleansing, and life.
Chapter 5: What is Inerrancy (I)
Young
gives a full definition of inerrancy and infallibility. Infallibility of
Scripture refers to its “indefectible authority” (113). Scripture is perfect
truth and cannot be refuted or relegated to the realm of unimportance. Closely
related, inerrancy defines Scripture as not having any errors in it. The
Scripture is irrefutable, perfect truth that cannot and does not err. One must
not engage in circular reasoning or a priori when determining the inerrancy of
Scripture; he must instead go to the Bible directly and determine from it what
the doctrine of inerrancy ought to be.
Examining
Scripture reveals that it is written in a variety of styles. Poetry, prose,
narrative, apocalyptic, all of this is found in God’s word. In this variety
there is an intricacy that breaks up what would be a dry monotony, but there is
also abnormal usages of grammar that some have regarded as “errors”. Does this
destroy biblical inerrancy? It does not, since the usage of grammar by God is
always inspired and intentional. It behooves the reader to carefully examine
the text of Scripture when the Greek or Hebrew is used in a way that is
grammatically unconventional. It is not due to accident or ignorance, but for
clarity or to accent a theological point. Further, the human authors of
Scripture wrote in the customs and idioms of their day. Isaiah 2:1-4 likely
reports what is contained in Micah 4:1-3, but it does so with slight
variations. Inerrancy does not require verbatim reproduction in parallel passages,
nor was this the custom in Bible times (evidenced by the annals of the Assyrian
King Sennacherib, containing small differences in various copies). These
differences do not rise to the level of contradiction, however.
Some
have argued that the first two chapters of Genesis are parallel and yet
contradictory accounts of creation. Supposedly they were compiled and placed
next to each other from two different sources. Chapter two is said to present a
different chronology than chapter one, but chapter two is structured along
various emphases, and is not intended to depict events chronologically. The
writing styles of the first two chapters are admittedly different, but this
does not mean they are two separate creation accounts. There are also
similarities between the two chapters (e.g., God is presented
anthropomorphically, the only way creatures can comprehend the Creator).
Further, the toledoth structure of Genesis 2:4a, with the phrase “these are the
generations of the heavens and the earth,” is repeated throughout the book of
Genesis (see, e.g., “these are the generations of Noah” in Gen. 6:9),
indicating the book’s God-given structure. The focus is on what is generated
from the heavens and the earth, namely, man. So the focus of Genesis 2 is not
to give a repeat but contradictory creation account in comparison to Genesis 1,
but is rather focused on the creation of man, the crown of creation. Chapter
two explains the creation of the Garden of Eden in order to prepare the reader
for the temptation in the Garden in chapter three.
Young
encourages Christians to seek to harmonize Scripture when they can, for its
divine origin guarantees that it will harmonize, and yet it is not the
obligation of the Christian to resolve every textual difficulty in order to
have confidence in inerrancy. In pursuing harmonization one must be
intellectually honest, for it is better to admit the difficulty than to resolve
it with absurdity. The difficulty of 1 Kings 15:14 and 2 Chronicles 14:5 may
resolve quite simply by arguing that some of the high places in certain regions
were indeed taken down, but in others they were not. One passage refers to those
taken down, while the other passage reveals that though some were taken down,
others were left standing. 2 Chronicles 15:17 could be said to contradict what
it just claimed a chapter earlier, but it is doubtful that such a glaring error
would go undetected in such close proximity in the same book! The obvious
answer is that students of Scripture do not have all the pertinent data to make
a final determination on the apparent discrepancy, but that the original author
did and his contemporary readers would have understood what was meant without
real difficulty. Similarly, in the account of the rich young ruler coming to
Christ and asking about eternal life, it is possible that none of the authors
of the Gospels gave the complete question and answer, which would account for
the differences. The rich young ruler and Christ would have been speaking in
Aramaic, and the different authors of the Gospels reported selectively to fit
their own theological emphases. To do so is not dishonest, in fact it is a
strong defense for why God has given His people four different Gospels – each
one is painting a different yet harmonious portrait of the God-Man, Jesus
Christ. Young emphasizes that inerrancy does not preclude the possibility of
the human authors emphasizing different themes or not revealing all the
information (in fact it would be quite impossible to reveal every single fact
or relevant piece of information without having an unwieldy Bible). John 21:25 makes
clear that much more could have been said about Christ.
Some
careless advocates of inerrancy and infallibility claim that Scripture must
always be interpreted literally. Young counters that Scripture must always be
interpreted in the way in which the author of Scripture intended it to be
interpreted. This is known as grammatico-historical exegesis, and simply means
that when the Bible records prose, it should be interpreted prosaically, when
poetry, poetically; prophecy and apocalyptic writings like the book of
Revelation must also be interpreted according to the genre that the Author
(both human and divine) intended. For the word of God to be inerrant, the human
authors simply had to write down what the Spirit intended them to say; any
further restrictions puts a straight-jacket on God’s freedom of expression (and
the human author’s particular style and skill) and is unwarranted. Yet despite
the variety of styles of the human authors who lived spread over some 1500
years, their message of redemption through Christ is the same because the
Spirit that moved them to write was the same and only God.
Chapter 6: What is Inerrancy (II)
Young
continues the theme of inerrancy, now focusing on the New Testament authors’
quotation of Old Testament passages. Some claim their loose and imaginative
interpretations disprove inerrancy, but Young notes that the Old Testament is
not always being quoted verbatim but may be paraphrased or applied to a
different context, no different than how one may refer to an older text today.
Other differences (verbal but not doctrinal) can be accounted for by remembering
that the authors were translating from Hebrew or the Greek Septuagint. It must
also be remembered that only the autographs are regarded as inspired, though
many translations and manuscripts extant today so approximate the original that
they are in fact inerrant and infallible, truly the word of God. Thus when
Matthew uses the Septuagint, this does not mean the Septuagint is inspired.
What they wrote down was inspired because they were moved to write it down by
the Holy Ghost, under His inspiration.
Some
have found the New Testament phrase “It is written” to require strict, verbatim
agreement with the Old Testament passage being quoted. This is not the case,
and often times this phrase signifies a summary of the teaching of a particular
Old Testament passage. All that must be maintained is that the New Testament’s
use of the Old does not contradict what was originally stated and in fact
accurately represents what was said. New Testament authors may also bring out
certain implications (as they are led by the Holy Spirit and the context of the
Old Testament passage) from the Old Testament and include that in their
reference. This is to bring out more clearly the meaning of the text, much as a
preacher does from the pulpit. One example is John 12:40 where John attributes
to God the hardening of the hearts, which Isaiah 6:9-10 does not directly do, though the context and the
overall teaching of Scripture indicates that it is God who hardens the heart of
the reprobate so that they do not repent and believe in Christ in order to be
saved from their sins. The parallel passages in Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8, and
Acts 28 follow more closely the precise language of Isaiah 6, but this is not
to say that they reject God as the one causing the hardening. In these other
passages, it simply does not say one way or the other who has done the
hardening, but simply states that hardening has occurred. John is simply
drawing out the implication that it is in fact God who has brought about this
hardening. This is an example of the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit,
shedding a fuller, inspired light onto the Old Testament teaching through the
New Testament authors’ use of the Old.
Chapter 7: Are There Errors in the Bible?
A closer look is
taken at purported errors in Scripture, starting with the Genesis account of
Creation. Young stresses that the author understands Adam to be a real and
historical figure, and that the account of creation was a real and true account
of what took place, not a figure or symbol. The Apostle Paul likewise saw Adam
and the creation account as historical; if he did not then Christ could not be
regarded as an historical person either! Young finds belief in evolution absurd
and says this is an untenable position for Christians because (among other
things) Genesis states that all things reproduce after its own kind. Genesis 1
is geocentric, but only because things are presented from the perspective of
one living upon earth. This shows the theological significance of the
centrality of the earth, for it is there that God places man in the garden and
unfolds the cosmic work of redemption after the fall.
Young believes on
exegetical grounds alone that the creation days were longer than 24-hours, but
heartily affirms that God could have created in that span of time if He so
chose. Time and space were brought into existence by God, so scientists who say
that the creation account asks one to believe in infinite time and space do not
understand the nature and power of the eternal God. They fail to maintain the
Creator/creature distinction and thus say that Genesis 1-3 is bad science and
therefore contains error. The Scriptures plainly state that God, by divine fiat,
brought the world and all things into being from nothing. This is the accurate
scientific account of the beginning of all created things.
The rest of the
chapter deals with specific “cases” of supposed error in Scripture. In Matthew
27:9, is Jeremiah quoted as saying something that Zechariah in fact said?
Perhaps the solution is that the material originally came from Jeremiah, the
senior prophet, and Zechariah was borrowing from him. In the speech of Stephen
he seems to get the timing of when Abram left Haran (after the death of Terah)
wrong. Some argue that Stephen was not inspired by the Holy Spirit when he
spoke, and so he simply made a mistake, and Luke merely records his speech.
This is unlikely as nobody questioned Stephen’s account of events in the Old
Testament and Stephen was said to be “full of grace and power” (Acts 6:8). The
solution may not be known at this time, but there is no reason to assume that
Stephen made a mistake. What of the discrepancies between the lengths of time
of the bondage of Israel? Do Paul and Stephen contradict one another? They do
not, as Paul is using an approximate number and his concern and focus is
different from Stephen, namely, to look at the contrast between the promised
seed and the law, rather than give the exact length of time between the two
(see Gal. 3). Other textual difficulties might be due to insufficient
historical information given the two thousand years that separate today’s
reader of Scripture from the actual recorded events.
Chapter 8: Does it Matter How We Approach the Bible?
Next, Young
addresses how the Christian should approach Scripture. It must be submitted to
and received by its own testimony, regardless of how the modern man may find
this incredibly naïve. The one who does not embrace the Christian God and the
Bible as His word does not have the proper presuppositions to receive the word
of God as the word of God. He can never say, “not my will be done, but yours,
Lord.” Rather, he will always want to check God’s word with his own thoughts
and opinions. One who begins with himself will end with himself, never
embracing the Scriptures as infallible authority over their lives.
To submit to God’s
word does not stifle historical and scholarly investigation of Scripture any
more than it stifles scientific inquiry. What it does do is cause the Christian
to pursue these studies in submission to God’s will. The Christian will not use
unbiblical methods to critique the Scriptures, nor operate from a godless base
when investigating the cosmos. By submitting to the parameters of Scripture,
the Christian knows he will find truth in the world that God has made, whether
that is historical or scientific truth. If it is alleged that accepting the
Bible as God’s word because it claims to be the word of God is a vicious
circular reasoning, Young counters that, as creatures, the only way one can
argue is circular, and the ultimate source of truth must be God Himself. If He
has spoken and revealed Himself in His word through the inner work of the Holy
Spirit, the Christian must submit to that revelation of God.
Others argue that
there needs to be an umpire to appeal to when man disagrees with or wishes for
a different interpretation of Scripture. Some have tried to make Christ this
umpire, others the Pope, still others their own private interpretations and the
conscience of man. All are efforts to submit Scripture to the subjective mind
of man, rendering its meaning dependent, not upon God’s word, but man’s carnal
desires. Man’s shifting thoughts will turn the Scriptures into a wax nose that
can be bent by wicked men. Such is seen by those who posit a theistic evolution
or who tried to splice Wellhausen’s ahistorical, carved up Pentateuch with the
first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith. In the 1920’s,
archaeological discoveries in Nuzi and Mari fully discredited Wellhausen’s
theories and showed that the life-setting and customs of Patriarchal times were
real and historical. This brings comfort for the Christian, and also a reminder
that the Christian must trust God’s word, independent of what archeology
uncovers; by God’s word alone man must trust that, in time, evidence will
likely come out that supports the biblical record, but in the meantime, let God
be true and every man a liar (Rom. 3:4). The Christian must take God at His word,
trusting that He rewards those that diligently seek Him (Heb. 11:6).
Chapter 9: Some Modern Views of the Bible (I)
Modern
views of the Bible reflect the modern views on God and man. Rather than taking
God at His word in Scripture, man has placed his own word and stamped it upon
the Bible. It follows Kantian skepticism and seeks to go beyond 19th
century critical scholars, who simply deconstructed Scripture without actually
offering a message that the Bible proclaims. Attempts are made to find a moral
from Scripture that can be regarded as special revelation. Young expresses his
doubt that this revelation is truly from God in the biblical sense, given that
these scholars are the ones who turned the Old Testament into a piecemeal
conglomeration of data and authors that runs contrary to what the Old Testament
claims for itself. Sterile critical analysis was inadequate to cope with the
world wars, and so a supposed “rediscovery” of the Bible was in order to address
the modern man’s soul. Of course, this rediscovery is along the lines of man’s
reconstruction, and not a submission to the Bible as the infallible word of
God.
Some
modern erroneous views of Scripture are that one should not use it as a source
of proof texts (despite Christ doing this very thing), nor should one think
that the Bible is the final, full, and complete revelation of God. Rather,
revelation is still trickling in, and can even correct what one might deduce
from a proof text in Scripture. Further, Scripture itself is not static truth
of unbendable doctrine; it is a living thing that God still breathes through
and speaks in fresh and different ways to the modern man. It is also contended
that the Bible presents no systematized doctrine but speaks through history and
the experiences of real people. Young’s response is that what is left to the
Christian is only the written word, not the expression on Pharaoh’s face, and
that the experiences of man throughout history cannot have any eternal significance
without God explaining to man what the events of history mean. History must be
interpreted and explained by God for its significance to be truly grasped, and
that is just what the Bible gives to us – in such a way that the doctrine can
be systematized to boot.
Young bemoans the
wedge that liberal scholars have created and by which they have mislead genuine
Christians, particularly by teaching that the Bible can record God’s dealings
with mankind in history, and yet that account does not need to be regarded as
dogma. Men such as Karl Barth and Emil Brunner have argued that the Bible
itself is not the word of God but contains
the word of God. The Bible is constructed with words which serve as a framework
through which the Spirit speaks the word of God to the reader. Thus the Bible
is said to contain the false words of man, words which the Spirit uses to
somehow convey the true message of God. But what determines which parts of the
Bible are truly inspired or at least used by the Spirit to convey the truth of
God to man is now ultimately left to each individual person to decide.
Subjectivism reigns once more, and Young calls for the church to proclaim the
biblical doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture (which Calvin, Luther, and
the Reformers embraced), proclaiming that the Bible itself is the very word of
God.
Chapter 10: Some Modern Views of the Bible (II)
Neo-orthodoxy,
explained above, goes quite far when it claims that the Bible offers only
personal truth, and only when it speaks to an individual and that individual is
moved to obedience. Only then does the Bible become the word of God. This means
that man must make a favorable response before God can be said to have spoken
through the Bible. Thus the authority of Scripture is not inherent, does not
reside in itself alone, but must be activated or triggered by man’s response
(not unlike an Arminian understanding of the atonement). Young reminds the reader
that the Bible itself claims, and the historic position of Christianity
heartily affirms, that Scripture alone is the word of God; therefore, its
authority exists in itself, regardless of whether the reader receives it as
revelation.
In contrast, the neo-orthodox
man can accept modern critical scholarship and all the alleged errors it finds
in Scripture by simply saying that it is attributed to the human authorship of
the Bible but not the divine. When the Bible speaks to the reader and compels
him to higher virtue, then that part of Scripture is said to be inspired by
God. The neo-orthodox applies Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and
phenomenal realms to maintain this position. Only the phenomenal realm, which
pertains to the senses, can be known with certainty. That which goes beyond one’s
experiences is unknowable and incomprehensible. The transcendental reality or
pure essence of the things sensed cannot be known because they go beyond the
phenomenal into the noumenal realm. The result is catastrophic, for the
neo-orthodox applies this teaching to Scripture, relegating all the miraculous –
for the miraculous comes from the noumenal realm by definition – to an ahistorical
reality. Real history is only that which can be sensed, and miracles are not
witnessed, so certainly God becoming man is not possible. The atonement and
subsequent resurrection of Christ, then, is not real history, though it is a
source of “real” inspiration for the neo-orthodox advocate.
Young states the
obvious – that if Christ did not really pay for man’s sin in history, then man
is still dead in his sin, no matter how the ahistorical story of the cross
makes him feel, and is without hope of salvation in this life. What Kant and the
neo-orthodox fail to grasp (or do and simply reject) is the truth that God,
from the noumenal realm, can create a phenomenological world that corresponds
to Him, whereby He can truly communicate Himself to His creation, especially
His people made in His image. The preeminent example of this is the eternal word
being made flesh, dwelling among His people, in His own created world,
perfectly revealing His transcendent glory to it by entering it (Jn. 1:14). The
Bible itself is revelatory, from above in the noumenal realm, yet it is
precisely this truth that the neo-orthodox reject to their own destruction. Indeed,
all of Scripture is real history, and the atonement took place in real space
and time on planet earth. It is necessary that a real atonement has been made
for sinners, because man really fell from grace into sin at a point in time in
history. The power of the cross isn’t that it tells a great story or is a
clever myth, but that it is true history and real satisfaction to the Father
for the sins of His chosen people. Young concludes, contra the neo-orthodox,
that Scripture is not merely a pointer to revelation, but is true revelation of
God itself, and as such is real history of God’s creation and dealing with man
in space and time.
Chapter 11: The Bible and Salvation
In
this brief concluding chapter Young refers to John 17:17 where Christ is
praying to the Father and petitions Him, “Sanctify them by thy truth; thy word
is truth.” Young explains that this truth is not Christ, who refers to Himself
as the truth in John 14:6, but rather
Christ is referring to the truth of the Old Testament Scriptures by alluding to
passages such as Psalm 119:142. As truth, the Scripture is reliable and
dependable, the very word of God. It does not contain truth or point to the
truth, but is truth, and as such Christ prays that the truth of the Scriptures
would sanctify His people.
Because
of this, the Christian cannot deny the inspiration, inerrancy, and
infallibility of Scripture. To speak of a Bible that contains only trifling
errors that does no harm is to fail to grasp the nature of Scripture itself.
Scripture is either God’s word through and through, or it is not. And even if
there is only one error in the Bible, the credibility of it is completely lost
because it is not the words even of a very wise sage, but of God Himself. If God
can err at just one point, His promises and words cannot be completely trusted
at any point. The gospel cannot be proclaimed with confidence, or trusted in
with confidence.
The
book concludes by stressing the importance of taking God’s word seriously, and
trusting in it totally. The only explanation of reality, the sinful and
desperate state of man, and the saving remedy for that state is presented in
Scripture. How to grow in holiness by glorifying God and enjoying Him forever
is revealed nowhere else but in the Bible. The Bible is the word of God, and as
such it must guide the life of the Christian from first to last, in every
detail. The great need of the day is for the church to faithfully proclaim the word
of God as the authoritative word of God
(and not as some nebulous pointer to the word of God), binding all men and guiding
all men for all of life. God’s people must revere it as such, study it, and be
sanctified by it as the Spirit wills.
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