1. The certainty of Christian faith is often built upon the Bible. It is there that we discover the personality of God, and the historical truth about Jesus Christ, and the reality of the supernatural world. And, although the Bible has passed, and is still passing, through the fires of criticism, it is coming out unscathed in everything that concerns its essential testimony. Nor can we read that wonderful book, and think of its wonderful history, without seeing and knowing that Christianity is not a thing of “cunningly devised fables,” but a religion that is built upon the everlasting rock.
Yet there are multitudes of persons whose hearts have been filled with the Christian certainty, although they never possessed the Bible, and never read the Bible. It was so in the early years of Christianity; for the first triumphs of the gospel were won before the New Testament was written. It is so still, in heathen lands, where men who have no Bibles, men who could not read the Bible even if they had it, believe in Christ because they have heard the word of the preacher. And, on the other hand, we must remember that there are men who read the Bible, and study it with care, and yet are not persuaded. And all this goes to show that the Bible, by itself, is neither necessary nor sufficient as the ground of Christian assurance.
2. Although the Bible is not necessary as a foundation for the assurance of faith, yet it is true always that faith comes by hearing, and undoubtedly “hearing” comes usually from the Bible. What one hears is the gospel of God. Holy Scripture teaches us the greatness and the hopelessness of our sin, the tender mercy and loving compassion of God, His purpose of salvation, and the gift of Jesus Christ. Holy Scripture also declares to us the arrival of the Son of God within our race by the Incarnation, His life of perfect obedience and law-keeping, His passion and His death. Holy Scripture also explains to us that in His life and death Jesus was a representative of the human race, and that by His resurrection and ascension and endless intercession He has become our Saviour, and Holy Scripture lays down with the utmost clearness, and with overflowing grace, the excellence of Jesus as the Friend and Lord and Redeemer of the human soul. Finally, the voice of God through Holy Scripture appeals to each man that he should make no delay and have no hesitation, but should make haste and instantly commit himself into the hands of Christ. We are commanded and encouraged to believe throughout the length and breadth of the Bible, and therefore every man is justified in this trust, and any one refusing to trust is condemned.
3. But the Bible is not always used fairly. It is treated as an authoritative manual of theology, a text-book of doctrine. Proof texts are collected from any and every part of the Bible in support of the doctrine which has been accepted; and no matter in what connexion they appear in Scripture they are supposed to be fully authoritative for the purpose, as being the word of God, which is eternal, above the circumstances of time and place, and of the individuals who were chosen to utter it. There is no idea, or at least no adequate idea, of a development of revelation in the olden time, or of a real growth of faith in the man of today. It is assumed as a matter of course that any proposed mode of pleasing God and gaining peace with Him must be grievously defective if it does not take account of the fulness of the remedy understood to be afforded in Scripture, and apply that necessary remedy forthwith in its entirety. The rejection of the theology in question is usually declared to be the result of negative or destructive criticism, and of man’s refusal of God’s word and law, and of his resolution to be a law to himself. In truth, it is only a narrow and imperfect interpretation of Scripture that is rejected; and revelation which proves to be infinite in its scope may be upheld and emphasized instead.
If the Bible is an. infallible authority it must be historically inerrant. If that is true and its truth is to be demonstrated, it must come down to us through some medium which also of necessity must be infallible. There must also be some definite and authoritative interpretation of the book which must be infallible as well. The only possible medium and authority would be the Church, and unless the Church itself is infallible, we could never be certain that it had given to us unchanged the infallible word of the eternal God. We all know that the very books to be incorporated as authorities were determined by Church councils. Unless they were guided infallibly how could the results of their deliberations be infallible?
The theory of the inerrancy of the original documents, developed in the higher criticism controversy some years ago, reminds one of the declaration of the infallible Pope by the Catholic Church a few years earlier in the stress of their conflict with the scientific spirit of the age. Calvin’s doctrine was probably the next necessary step in the evolution of the Christian faith. Still we cannot help regretting, however necessary and inevitable it may have been, that the Reformation, having escaped the tyranny of the infallible Church, should have erected in its place that of an infallible and historically inerrant Bible. For this latter authority, though in many respects preferable to the former, is equally futile in the region of religious certainty. We are glad to remember that among the early reformers Luther and Zwingli substituted the theology of experience for that of authority. [Note: W. F. English, in Hartford Seminary Record, xxiii. 282.]
Luther had not based the truth of Christianity on the infallibility of the Bible at all in the same way as later Protestantism, which has, in practice, made this the foremost dogma of theology. Luther had found redemption in the Holy Scriptures because in them he had heard the Word of God, and in them had appeared to him with overwhelming might the redeeming, liberating Person of Jesus. The infallibility of the Bible can never be a fact of experience, but it was as nearly such for Luther as it has ever been for any man: the whole situation was changed when the infallibility of Scripture was made the basis of a systematic theology, being itself a dogma to which, from most men at least, a purely formal assent is all that can be expected. [Note: J. K. Mozley, Ritschlianism, 119.]
4. Is the Bible inspired? Are not the Gospels challenged as historical records? And if we are to give up the infallibility of Scripture how can we rely upon the historicity of Jesus? The trouble with such questions is that people continually forget that the real basis of faith is not, never has been, and never will be, an infallible book. The Bible is the gathered literature of a people, intensely human, wide in its range and variety, unequal in its spiritual value. Its inspiration is to be judged by the simple test of its ability to inspire, and its value lies not in its supposed infallibility, but in its record of phenomena unique in human experience, illustrating the working of God in the human heart, and, above all, the message, life, and death of Jesus Christ, and the beginnings of the Christian Church. The theory of an infallible text is purely mechanical, not spiritual, and inasmuch as the theory dehumanizes the Bible, while distorting- its really Divine quality into a parody of the fact, it has worked untold mischief, destroying the sense of reality and lowering the Bible to the level of an idol or a fetish. We may indeed welcome in the higher critic and all that he signifies a return to an intelligent belief in the Divine worth of the Scriptures, confident that scholarly and reverent study of material so rich in spiritual teaching must be increasingly fruitful. Truth can never be destroyed; in the fiercest light of criticism it can never suffer.
“So long,” says Erskine of Linlathen, “as a man receives his Christianity merely on the authority of a church or a book—so long as it has not commended itself to his higher reason and moral sense, or reached his inner consciousness—he has no real hold of Christianity; he is believing only in his church or in his book.”
Biblical criticism has decomposed and analysed the Jewish writings, assigning to them dates and degrees of authority very different from those recognized by the Church. It has certainly not impaired their significance as records of successive developments of religious and moral progress, nor has it diminished their value as expressions of the loftiest and most enduring religious sentiments of mankind. [Note: W. E. H. Lecky, The May of Life, 202.]
5. The Westminster Confession thus states the grounds for believing in the authority of Scripture: “We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverent esteem of 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 glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellences, 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.”
“Now,” says Dean Inge, “this is an admirable statement of what revelation through the Bible really is. The ‘testimony of the Holy Spirit’ is the response of our inmost personality to the external stimulus supplied by the inspired literature. This testimony is the primary ground of Faith. It is ‘God working in us,’ and working through concrete experiences of various kinds, as it appears that He always does work. But this is not a theory of inspiration which can either erect Scripture into an oracle for determining off-hand difficult matters of conduct, or which can cut the knot of critical problems. The Holy Spirit testifies that the character and teaching of Jesus Christ are divine, and that we may follow Him and believe in Him with perfect confidence. It certainly does not testify that the Mosaic account of creation is scientifically correct, or that the book of Daniel was written in the sixth century B.C.”
The Bible nowhere lays claim to be regarded as the Word, the Way, the Truth. The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the ever unfolding Revelation of God. It is Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” not the Bible, save as leading to Him. [Note: G. Macdonald, Unspoken Sermons, 1st ser., p. 53.]
6. The current maxim which tells us that “the Church is to teach and the Bible to prove” is largely but not wholly sound. Certainly the Church has a vastly important teaching function; the most conspicuous example of its work in that field is the “Nicene” Creed; and what thoughtful Christian would give anything but an attention most reverent and humble to that great didactic voice of Christendom? No mind not altogether careless and self-confident would ignore the affirmations concerning revealed truth collected and embodied there.
But then other and balancing considerations have also to be remembered. The Church, however defined, is not a co-ordinate oracle beside the Bible. Still less is the Church a teacher such that the Bible is, as it were, its attendant, following it everywhere with “proofs” dutifully furnished to teachings assumed to be always correct. History shows the Church, the Jewish Church in our Lord’s time and the Christian Church since then, greatly needing now and again to have its teaching not proved but corrected by the Bible. The reverent Christian will reverence the Church. But he will also ask, reverently and on his knees, “How readest thou? What saith the Scripture?”
Brownlow North had an intense veneration and love for the Bible, as the word of the living God. It was inwoven with his whole spiritual experience. From that day in Elgin, when, striking his hand upon his open Bible, as his eye rested on the text Rom_3:22, he exclaimed, starting to his feet, “If that scripture is true I am a saved man,” till the day twenty years afterwards, when on his dying bed in the house of a stranger he turned to a young officer, and said, with his fast ebbing breath, “You are young, in good health, and with the prospect of rising in the army: I am dying; but if the Bible is true, and I know it is, I would not change places with you for the whole world,” that Bible was the daily food of his soul, his lamp in the night, his teacher, his counsellor, his trust, and his treasure. Never for an hour did he swerve from his childlike faith in these Scriptures of truth, or from his manly allegiance to all the doctrines, precepts, and promises of the Divine Word. And he spent his whole time, talents, and toil in preaching to the people, wherever they would come to listen, all the words of this life. [Note: K. Moody-Stuart, Brownlow North, 237.]
At the last, during the long communings of the night when he lay sleepless, happy to be free, if only for a few moments, from pain, the simple old faith came back to him. He had arrived long before, as we have seen, at the grand discovery: that the perfect soul wants the perfect body, and that the perfect body must be inhabited by the perfect soul. To this conclusion he was led by Nature herself. Now he beheld clearly—perhaps more clearly than ever—the way from this imperfect and fragmentary life to a fuller, happier life beyond the grave. He had no need of priest; he wanted no other assurance than the voice and words of Him who swept away all priests. The man who wrote The Story of my Heart; the man who was filled to overflowing with the beauty and order of God’s handiwork; the man who felt so deeply the shortness, and imperfections, and disappointments of life that he was fain to cry aloud that all happens by chance; the man who had the vision of the Fuller Soul, died listening with faith and love to the words contained in the Old Book. [Note: W. Besant, The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies, 355.]
7. Both the Bible and the Church point to Christ, and therein lies their value for faith and assurance.
(1) The history of the Bible has its centre in the Gospel record of His manifestation on earth; all that goes before it in the Old Testament is the preparation for His coming as the Messiah of the expectation of Israel; all that follows it is the proclamation to the world of the first Advent and the foretelling of the second. The law of the older times is “the schoolmaster to bring men to the righteousness of God in Christ”; in His teaching it is perfected; by His Spirit it is to be written on the heart in the fulness of the Gospel dispensation. The prophecy of Israel with ever-increasing clearness reveals Him as the Seed of Abraham, the Prophet of prophets, the Son of David and his Lord, the Emmanuel of the Presence of God with man. The Apostolic prophecy of the New Testament sets Him forth as the Son of God and man, in whose humanity dwells all the fulness of Godhead. The Psalmic element of response to the Divine revelation realizes in aspiration and devotion the communion with God in Him, in foresight in the Old Testament, in thanksgiving and adoration in the New. Every way we are taught to pass through God’s revelation of Himself “in divers times and measures” to One who is “the effulgence of his glory and the very image of his substance.” We sin against that scriptural teaching if we fail to pass beyond it to rest on Christ Himself, as in His Gospel and His Person the Word which is from the beginning was and is God.
(2) So also it is in the parallel witness of the Church. In every metaphor as in full utterance of express teaching, He is set forth as all in all—the foundation and corner stone on which the Church is built, and by which its fabric is built up—the Vine of which we are the branches—the Head in whom as a body it has its light and life, the extension (as it has been called) of the Incarnation of the Divine in the human. The word which the Church sets forth in authoritative teaching and exhortation is the word of Eternal life, which is directly and indirectly, implicitly or explicitly, the word of Christ Himself. The Sacrament of entrance into the Church is the “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and the regeneration in Him. The worship of the Church is simply the representation on earth of His Intercession in Heaven, offered, whether in Confession and Prayer or in Thanksgiving and Adoration, through Christ and in Christ. Of the whole spiritual life of the Church collectively and of its members individually it is said that “to love is Christ.” “I live; yet not I, it is Christ that dwelleth in me”; of its future life the one secret is that Christ is in you, the hope of glory.
