The Authority of Scripture – Grounds, Evidences, Spirit’s Witness and Supreme Authority
The Doctrine of Scripture ~ David Strain & Ligon Duncan
First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi
Miller Hall ~ September 6, 2023
(1) The Grounds of the Scriptures’ Authority, (2) The Evidences of the Scriptures Authority, (3) The Spirit’s Witness to its Authenticity, and (4) the Supreme Authority of the Scriptures in Theological Controversy.
Quick Outline of the Westminster Confession of Faith on these topics:
1.4 The authority of Scripture
Holy Scripture is authoritative because it is God’s Word, and is to be received, believed and obeyed as such, neither because of human testimony nor the church’s witness, but because of its author, God.
“The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.”
1.5 The authenticity of Scripture
Ultimately the Holy Spirit persuades and assures us that Holy Scripture is true and authoritative, though it abundantly evidences itself to be God’s Word, and we may have a high regard for it because of the church.
“We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to an high and reverent esteem of the holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.”
1.10 The supreme authority of Scripture in all theological controversy
God (the Holy Spirit) himself speaking in Scripture is the sole final authority in all matters of theological controversy.
“The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.”
Helpful Books to read and Study about the Bible in general
Tim Challies and Josh Byers, A Visual Theology: Guide to the Bible (Zondervan)
John Blanchard, How to Enjoy Your Bible (Evangelical Press)
William Hendriksen, Survey of the Bible (Evangelical Press)
Leland Ryken, Philip Ryken & James Wilhoit, Ryken’s Bible Handbook (Tyndale)
Kevin DeYoung, Taking God at His Word (Crossway)
Sinclair Ferguson, From the Mouth of God (Banner of Truth)
Greg Gilbert, Why Trust the Bible? (Crossway)
Pete Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Crossway)
Guy Waters, For the Mouth of the Lord has Spoken (Christian Focus Publications/Mentor)
ESV Study Bible (Crossway)
Reformation Study Bible (Reformation Trust/Ligonier)
The Westminster Confession of Faith on the Authority of Scripture:
Grounds, Evidences, the Spirit’s Witness to its Authenticity, and its Supreme Authority in Controversy
1.4 The authority of Scripture – Why is the Bible authoritative for faith and life?
*The Roman Catholic View
“The declaration of the Catholic Church that the books of the New Testament are all inspired by God constitutes the sole authority for the universal belief of both Catholics and Protestants in their inspired character’ (emphasis his).” ~ John O’Brien, The Faith of Millions (1962), 174.
The Protestant View
Holy Scripture is authoritative because it is God’s Word, and is to be received, believed and obeyed as such, neither because of human testimony nor the church’s witness, but because of its author, God.
“The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.”
This section is addressing the question of the basis of Scriptural authority. Why, on what grounds, should the authority of Scripture be accepted? On what basis should it be acknowledged?
The Confession answers: not on the basis of human testimony, nor even on the testimony of the church, but on the authority of the author. Because God is the author, therefore it is to be received as authoritative. It ought to be believed and obeyed as authoritative because it is the Word of God.
The Divines are rebutting the position of the Roman Catholic church, which claims that our acceptance of biblical authority is based upon the declaration of the church.
B.B. Warfield says: “Just because the book is God’s Book, revealing to us His will, it is authoritative in and of itself; and it ought to be believed and obeyed, not on the ground of any borrowed authority, lent it from any human source, but on the single and sufficient ground of its own divine origin and character, “because it is the Word of God,” and “God (who is truth itself)” is “the author thereof”
1.5 The authenticity of Scripture – Why do we find the Bible’s claim of authority compelling?
The Roman Catholic View
“[T]he Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”
“the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church.” (Catholic Catechism)
The Protestant View
Ultimately the Holy Spirit persuades and assures us that Holy Scripture is true and authoritative, though it abundantly evidences itself to be God’s Word, and we may have a high regard for it because of the church.
“We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to an high and reverent esteem of the holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.”
The authenticity, or truthfulness, of Scripture, and our persuasion of that, is based on three things: (1) the church’s testimony, (2) Scripture’s contents, and (3) the Spirit’s witness. Having just said that our acceptance of the ultimate authority of Scripture is not based on the testimony of the church, the Confession immediately reminds us that the church may be part of the reason we acknowledge the truthfulness of Scripture.
Under Scripture’s contents the divines list eight evidences that show that Holy Scripture is true and authoritative:
(1) the heavenliness of the matter [the God-centeredness and heavenly-mindedness of its content],
(2) the efficacy of the doctrine [the transforming power of its teaching],
(3) the majesty of the style [the magnificence of its poetry and prose],
(4) the consent of all the parts [the unity, coherence, consistency, and agreement of a library of 66 books, written by over forty different authors, over the course of 1500 years],
(5) the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God) [the aim or purpose which is to give God, not man, glory],
(6) the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation [its complete disclosure and articulation of the way of our redemption],
(7) the many other incomparable excellencies [this is the etcetera clause, they could have named other things!], and
(8) the entire perfection thereof [its faultless freedom from errors of any kind, whether factual or theological].
By all of these things Scripture authenticates itself.
But ultimately, and nonetheless, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth (meaning, the Scriptures are incapable of error) and divine authority of the Scriptures comes from the work of the Spirit, by the Word, in our hearts. This testimony or witness is not merely subjective (though it has a subjective effect in us), but the result of the objective witness of the Holy Spirit to our hearts, which is precisely what Jesus promised in John 14 and 16.
The WLC asks and answers this issue as follows: “Q.4 How doth it appear that the Scriptures are the Word of God? A. The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, by their majesty and purity; by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God; by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation: but the Spirit of God bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of man, is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very Word of God.”
WCF 14.2 “By this faith, a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God Himself speaking therein; and acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come.”
‘But even if anyone clears God’s Sacred Word from man’s evil speaking, he will not at once imprint upon their hearts that certainty which piety requires…For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what has been divinely commanded.’
~ John Calvin (1509-1564) in his Institutes of the Christian Religion I vii 4 (F.L.Battles’ translation).
1.10 The supreme authority of Scripture in all theological controversy – What is the sole final authority in all matters relating to the Christian faith, life and doctrine?
God (the Holy Spirit) himself speaking in Scripture is the sole final authority in all matters of theological controversy.
“The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.”
The Divines again assert the sole final authority of Scripture in faith and life, and all matters of doctrinal dispute, but they say it in a striking way: “The Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture is the supreme judge.” They do not mean that the Spirit’s speaking is a subset of Scripture, they mean that what Scripture says, the Spirit is saying, and what the Spirit is saying is what Scripture says. They are highlighting that the Bible is not a dead letter, but living, and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. It is the Word of the Spirit, God-breathed, and what Scripture says, God says.
Packer says: “Where is God’s authoritative truth to be found today? Three answers are given, and each appeals to the Bible in its own way.
(1) The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches find God’s truth, as they believe, in the interpretations of Scripture that are embodied in their own tradition and consensus. They view the Bible as God-given truth, but they insist that the church must interpret it and is infallible when it does so.
(2) By contrast, individuals labeled liberal, radical, modernist, or subjectivist find God’s truth in the thoughts, impressions, judgments, theories and speculations that Scripture triggers in their own minds. While dismissing the New Testament concept of the inspiration of Scripture, and not treating their Bible as totally trustworthy or as embodying absolute and authoritative transcripts of the mind of God, they are confident that the Spirit leads them to pick and choose in such a way that wisdom from God results.
(3) Historic Protestantism, however, finds God’s truth in the teaching of the canonical Scriptures as such. It receives these Scriptures as inspired (God-breathed), inerrant (totally true in all they affirm), sufficient (telling us all that we need to know for salvation and eternal life), and clear (straightforward and self-interpreting on all matters of importance)” (Concise Theology, Tyndale), and we might add, authoritative (the supreme judge in all theological controversies, and the sole final rule for the Christian’s faith and life).
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Is the Bible the Word of God?
Donald Macleod
Then I come to the question, Is the Bible the Word of God? Why do I believe it is? As a matter of simple history, I suppose, I believe it because it was commended to me by the people of God. And then it was commended to me by the Apostles of Jesus Christ: All Scripture, says Paul is given by inspiration of God (2Tim. 3:16). Above all, it was commended to me by Jesus Christ himself: The Scripture, he said, cannot be broken (John 10:35). It was these three things that sowed in my heart the belief that the Bible is the Word of God: what Christians told me, what the Apostle Paul told me, what Jesus Christ told me. That faith, as I said, subsequently came under attack. Indeed, I have become very conversant with such attacks during the last thirty years or so. Yet I still believe that it is God’s Word, inspired in its every utterance and infallible in all that it says and in all that it intends to teach us.
Why do I believe this? Why do I love and adore the Bible as the Word of God?
First of all, because the Bible describes me with incredible accuracy. It seems to me to paint me so vividly when it speaks of the depravity of man, of the duplicity of man, of all the imaginations and thoughts which are only evil continually. I understand that there are some who very much resent that teaching. But I don’t resent it for a single moment. It describes me with perfect accuracy. I cannot by myself see the Kingdom of God. In myself I hate God. In myself I am selfish. My temperament is difficult to manage. I find great teaching in God’s Word about anxiety, about discontent, about depression, about paranoia; and it has never told me a lie about myself. I find that it describes me, that it understands me so very well; there is not a single statement in the Bible about men, about the human race, about Christians with which I would quarrel, because I know that all its judgments and its pronouncements are true of myself.
Secondly, I find in this Bible the proclamation of a matchless remedy. As well as finding the description of my own sin, I find a matchless remedy. Samuel Davies speaks of God in these terms:
Great God of wonders, all thy ways
Are matchless, Godlike and divine.
The way the Bible describes God and God’s salvation to me is exactly and precisely that. It is matchless, Godlike and divine. It meets my highest expectations. I could not imagine a greater salvation than the salvation that has
been secured by the incarnation, by the enfleshment of God. I cannot imagine anything more moving or more eloquent of God’s love and God’s concern than that God should give his Son for my salvation and that this Son should in my nature hang on the cross of Calvary bearing what my sin deserved. That to me is matchless, Godlike and divine. And I cannot imagine anything more splendid in terms of divine provision to help me along the Christian way, than the great promise and great reality of the indwelling of the Spirit of God. I am saying the remedy is matchless. The incarnation is matchless. The atonement is matchless. The indwelling of the Spirit is matchless. These things are the great central message of the Bible and they are the marks of the Bible’s own divinity, its own heavenly origin. The Bible speaks in a way that is matchless, Godlike and divine.
Thirdly, I believe the Bible because for thirty years now I have tested it and tested it and tested it. It has been my privilege to be called to preach the gospel – and that is a privilege – and if there have been days when I wanted to quit, it was not because I was tired of the work but because I was convinced that I was ill-equipped for it and undeserving of it. But in pursuit of that calling I have had to look at the Bible—especially at the New Testament—
with microscopic intensity. I have looked at the plans of the books, and at questions of authorship, purpose and origin. I have looked minutely at particular verses. I have looked at the word endings, at the tenses and the genders and the cases. I have looked at the question of punctuation—where should the commas go?—and at the question-marks, because we do not have these in the original. I have looked at the textual variants. And not only have I done it, of course, but all my colleagues at the College have done it; and millions of others have done it. I can say, as all preachers of the gospel can say, that it is the greatest thrill in life to sit down with a verse from the Gospel of John or the Epistle to the Romans and look at it closely: the beauty of it! the grandeur of it! the surprise! So very, very often I have gone to a verse with some pre-conception of its meaning and it has come to me with a completely different message, more profound, more glorious, more moving. I am not sure, but I sometimes think that the greatest single argument for the existence of God is the Gospel of John. Whoever wrote that Gospel, whoever is behind it, I would worship him. There is something there that is unparalleled anywhere else. John’s use of little, little words to build up great massive truths. The greatest sentence ever penned consists entirely of tiny, little words:
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1).
Wee, tiny words. Little words. You take them and put them under the microscope and they are matchless, Godlike and divine. We ought to be literally driven from our chairs as we study this Word and see something of what it says. Looking at its accents, its syntax, its grammar, we have to ask, “What is God saying to me? Why is it aorist and not present? Or why is it perfect and not aorist? And so on.” All this incredible complexity of grammar in this great work! If my faith ever flags—and I thank God it does not do so much nowadays— the remedy is to go back to the Bible and there come face to face with the mind of God. To me, his Bible is itself a great object of wonder; an outcropping of God; a proof that he is there. Here, someone speaks who knows me. Here, someone offers me something that is quite matchless; and here somebody uses words in a way that is absolutely peerless. In that Greek grammar there is so much of the living God!
~ Donald Macleod, in He Found Me (Christian Focus Publications)
Visual Depiction of the Interconnections between Bible Texts
In 2007, Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild assembled a digital dataset of cross references found in the King James Bible. These cross references are conceptual links between verses, connecting locations, people, phrases, etc. found in different parts of the Bible. There were 63,779 cross references in total. Here is how they visually represented them.
