Our study tonight is in the Westminster Confession again in Chapter 1, so please turn there with me. We've already gone through the doctrine of general revelation that's found in Chapter 1 and then the ensuing inference that there's a need for special revelation and for that special revelation to be inscripturated. Section 2 then defines the inscripturated revelation of God by giving us the books of the canon and the explanation that these books are considered the rule in the church because they are inspired. Section 3, by negative definition, excludes from the canon the Apocrypha, and the last time I was with you, that's all we studied that night, is what the Apocrypha is. what the books of the Apocrypha are and what's said in them and how the churches responded to them through history. The Westminster Confession says that we are to make no other use of them than any other human writings. They are not religiously special in any sense at all. And tonight we're going to take from our study sections four and five and I'd like to begin by reading them to you. 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." Section 5. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverend 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 grand 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. I'm not exaggerating when I say that these two sections of the Confession could be an entire course in themselves. Because, as it turns out, what the Confession is dealing with here is generally what we call Christian apologetics. How do we defend the faith? On what basis do we say that we take the Bible to be the Word of God? And I'd like to distill my courses in apologetics, and I have many of them, and they go long and so forth, all down to one lesson tonight. Now, do you think that's possible? the age of miracles past, and I know it doesn't seem like we can really do it full justice, but that's what our calling is tonight, and I'll try to help you out. In order to get into and understand section four that we begin with, let me do just a real quick overview of epistemology. That's going to be hard too, since my doctoral work was in epistemology, I tend to think everything is important, better know everything. Get away from that temptation and simply point out that people believe a large variety of things. We have all kinds of beliefs. You believe that it's Thursday evening. Some of you do. You believe that you have a mother and father. You may believe that a certain set of individuals, a couple in this world, are your mother and father. You may believe that sugar is sweet. that the square area of San Francisco is 782 miles and on and on I go. The reason why we study the theory of knowledge is because not all these beliefs that people hold to turn out to be true. And in the end what we want in studying the theory of knowledge is to discover which beliefs are reliable beliefs, which ones can be counted on. Which one should we hold to and live in terms of? Now that leads into a number of other questions. The justification of our belief also leads us to study what is the nature of belief and what are the bearers of truth and matters having to do with logic and we can go on and on and on. But the fundamental question in epistemology I think comes down to how do we justify our belief? Because if you can't justify a belief, it's arbitrary and it cannot count then as knowledge. Just stop and think about it. Having a belief is not the same as knowing something. If I believe that there are 800 ants in the city of Fountain Valley tonight, and it should happen to be that there are 800 ants, my believing it willy-nilly, arbitrarily, doesn't mean that I knew it. There's a difference between believing something even when it's true and believing something in a knowledgeable way or that belief being a case of knowledge. And what distinguishes true belief from knowledge is that you have a good reason or justification or evidence for what you believe. Now when we look at evidential theory, now to move the microscope over and expand on that, In one way or another, all forms of evidence, regardless of what school of philosophy you follow or what theory or science or historiography that you hold to, all attempts at justification are attempts to authorize believing something. So let me go back to some of these things I mentioned as possible beliefs and talk about authorizing believing. What's the authority for my believing that sugar is sweet? Anybody? Okay, first hand experience. I've tasted it, you know, maybe on numerous occasions, and if somebody says, you believe sugar is sweet? What authorizes you to believe that? Now that's not the way we usually speak. We'd say, why do you believe that? Of course, why could be taken in a psychological sense. That is, what is it that motivates you to believe that? But in philosophy, we're not so much interested in what is motivating the belief, but what would be given as the reason, the support, or evidence for that belief. And so we usually say, can you prove that or what's your evidence for that or what case can be made for that? But in all those different locutions we're asking, what authorizes you to believe that? And so in the case of Sugar I'm saying, well I'm authorized to believe that because I've experienced it. How about the truth that I have two parents? Now what authorizes me to believe that? What's my evidence for that? Documentation. I'm sorry? Birth certificate. Well, birth certificate, I'd say if all birth certificates in the world were burned I would still believe that I have two parents. So that's not likely the reason why I believe it. Testimony coming with an enduring relationship. Okay, now I'm not talking about, unless I misspoke a moment ago, the belief that, for instance, Robert and Virginia Bonson happen to be my parents. What authorizes me in believing that I have two parents, even if they aren't the ones that claim to be my parents? You know where babies come from, right? We don't know many exceptions to that sort of thing. It's not just like a personal experience of tasting sugar. But now I'm going on the experience and observation of other people and I've generalized something into a law. Now it's true, isn't it, that nobody has actually studied every single birth in the history of mankind. From a personal Christian standpoint we would say there's one exception to this biological generalization anyway, but forgetting that miraculous conception of our Lord. The fact is, we believe that everybody has parents even though we have not tasted or observed every single case of a baby's being born. In fact, many people believe this and don't even think about it, do they? You probably are looking today saying, oh yeah, I've got two parents. It's just something that's background information because it's just a widespread general truth of science, you might say. And so we'd say, well, if you've ever studied science, that's the accordance of believing this. What authorizes me to believe that the square area of San Francisco is 782? I have no idea if it is, by the way, but let's pretend that it is. If that's true, what would you say authorizes me believing that? Being a reliable man? Well, I could have done it, although I'm lazier than you give me credit for there. Mike mentioned you could do it on the map and do all the... By the way, if I believed it for that reason, then I would need authorization for what? The reliability of the map. So that would pass on too. I might conceivably believe the square area of San Francisco to be what I've said. because I had one of those little wheels, that device you push around, and I walked around the entire city and then I read it and I trusted my measurement, I mean my calibration on my measurement and so forth and I said, oh, ok, so there's the square area. Now, that's right, a fortiori reasoning, from the lesser to the greater, that's right, I'm too lazy to do it from the map, you know I didn't walk around the city, So what authorizes me to believe in this? Probably testimony of an expert. I've looked it up in an almanac or an encyclopedia or something. You know, that would be one of the entrants there. Square area of San Francisco, I don't know. And so when someone says, what gives you the right to believe that? I mean I have the right to believe anything I want in a sense but I'm free to think stupid things when I want to. But what gives you reason to believe that? I'd say well my reason for believing that, what authorizes my believing that is this almanac which everyone takes to be authoritative and accurate and so forth. And then of course if somebody wanted to, if they wanted to play the game of the skeptic and they said why do you trust the almanac and how do you know someone didn't put that figure in there as a big joke and you go through all that. I don't want to get into all the ins and outs in this little thumbnail sketch for epistemology. Beliefs are of various sorts, but beliefs are not cases of knowledge, even when they happen to be true, if our belief is arbitrary. Every belief that counts as knowledge is an authorized belief. And I've tried to illustrate a variety of kinds of authority, the authority of direct experience, of scientific law, of the almanac, experts and so forth. Now I'm going to ask you another question, so you have to put on your thinking caps here and stick with me for a minute. What authorizes you in thinking that experience, scientific generalization and expert testimony is the way to be sure that your beliefs which are true are justified? It's within our Christian presuppositions. Yes, well of course. Here's the back of the book method. Someone knows what I'm aiming for exactly right. Eventually your presuppositions are going to come into this. Some people presuppose, or at least they profess that they presuppose, that everything that we believe is based on direct observation or experience ultimately. So that the case of tasting sugar is a very simple illustration, but Everything, even the square mileage of San Francisco in one way or another comes down to a taste and see approach and then the person who did the tasting, in this case observing, measuring and so forth, that person's reliability, integrity and so forth is justified by people observing that this person always tells the truth or very likely tells the truth and then you have multiple testimony one way or another we get to a point where we say I'm authorized in trusting the expert when he says the following. But now what if I were to ask you, after you've gone through all these theories of how you authorize what you believe in, you get to your last one, what authorizes believing that? Or if you will, what is the authority of that authority? If someone were to say my ultimate authority is observation, this is a common view and it's easy to refute because it's so naive. I mean, you don't even have to be a sophisticated apologist to tell that apart. But people think their ultimate authority is I believe what I can see, touch, taste, etc. Now if I were to say, well then what authorizes you in thinking that's the final authority? That's another question. Now do you taste, see, observe, touch, that observation is the final authority for anything? Is that something you observe? No it's not. And so it turns out when people claim that their ultimate authority, which is supposed to authorize itself, is observation, it turns out really not to authorize itself. because it's not observation that leads them to hold to that view. But they are correct, and I hope that you can see this, that in the end your ultimate authority cannot appeal to something more ultimate than itself. If your ultimate authority appeals to something outside itself to be authorized, then it's not your ultimate authority. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand this. Everybody with me? Well, we seem to have the choice then of saying that an ultimate authority, since it can't be authorized by something more ultimate than it, it wouldn't then be ultimate, the ultimate authority either has no authorization or it authorizes itself. Now if it has no authorization, then essentially the whole task of epistemology, theory of knowledge, is a waste of time. Because we can go through all the different analyses of what knowledge is, what kind of justifications there are, I can tell you all the other kinds of questions, but when all is said and done, there is no authority for anything. So, you know, go out there and believe what you want and have a good time because no one can tell the difference anyway. Not many people want to accept that conclusion. But what I want you to see, because this is usually taken as a defect in Christian thinking, That far from being a defect, it is essential to all philosophy. That ultimately, some authority is going to attest to itself. That is, the authority is going to be its own authority. It's not going to appeal to something outside it for its authority. It will be the final authority. Everybody has that. Not everybody has a good one. But everyone's got to make that kind of claim finally, where the string of reasons, the chain of reasons comes to an end. Okay. A little introduction to epistemology. Now let me ask you Christians this question. What's your authority for believing the Bible to be true? Why should you accept it that it's the Word of God? Confession of faith says because the Bible claims to be the Word of God. And I'm going to make it my task in the time that we have tonight to explain how that should be understood. Understood in one way that is really preposterous. Not every claim to authority makes the claim true. And yet when you say in the case of the Bible, it is. that you want to pick up on from these introductory words is that if the Bible, I'm only saying if at this point, if the Bible is the Word of God, then it must in the nature of the case be self-authorized. Why is that? Because there could be no authority more basic, more ultimate than God himself. And so if the Bible is the Word of God, you wouldn't expect the Bible to say, believe that this is the word of God because Thomas Aquinas said so. I mean, apart from the anachronism there that Thomas Aquinas wasn't around when the Bible was written, you just can't, it doesn't make any sense for God, if he's really God, to point to some human being and say, take his word for it, I'm God. Well, if you're going to take his word for it, then he's more ultimate, more authoritative than God, right? Or how about this, God says, believe that I'm God because, and I know this is going to offend some schools of apologetics, but you think about it, it's really absurd. God says, believe what I'm saying because I'm very logical about what I've said. You can see that there's this logical coherence to the system that I've given you. So, believe that I'm God. No, in the end, the reason why we think logic is so important is because within our worldview, God thinks logically. And if God's that way, then we want to be logical, and so logic derives its authority from God, ultimately. Now I know a lot of people would poo-poo that, but I've been in philosophy departments, I'm used to being ridiculed. You can endure that kind of thing. When someone says, oh logic can't depend upon God because you couldn't even understand God with that logic. You say, well yeah, since God is the source of logic, it is true that we must use logic to understand it. But that doesn't mean that God depends on logic. So you've got it all wrong. Let's say there were no God. Consider the alternative. Well, I would ask this question, why depend on logic at all? Because if you violate the laws of logic, you contradict yourself. Well, in the case of non-contradiction, maybe you do. But not all the laws that appear in Copey or Mates or any of these textbooks have that kind of character about them. Many rest upon intuitions and other sorts of things. The point is, though, that in a world that is thought to be nothing but matter and motion, You have sound and fury signifying nothing. Somebody could say, you know, I don't really care what you philosophers say about logic. The only thing that counts is experience. And I know experience doesn't have the kind of universality and consistency and tidiness and formality that your logical exercises do. And so, conceivably an underleader to say, I don't care about logic. Or I might reduce logic to, well, that happens to be the way the species survives better. Logic itself depends upon biology then. If it turns out that thinking illogically helps you to live longer or the species to survive, then we would think what you call illogically. So, you mustn't be intimidated when people tell you, you can't question logic. Well, you can, in terms of worldview considerations, question logic. You can question observation. You can question the authority of any individual. I mean, if my fear claims to be the ultimate authority, You know, as a human being, maybe everybody here might be intimidated by that claim, but you might know, and I know, somebody out there in the world is going to say, well it makes you think you're right, I have just as much authority as you do, I'm a human being too. So in the end, we have to have something that authorizes itself, the ultimate authority. And if God exists, and if God has revealed himself in the scripture, it stands to reason, in the nature of the case, that the scripture must be self-authorizing. Nothing could be more ultimate than God himself. And so, when people kind of ridicule this, what they'll say is circular reasoning, you say the Bible's authoritative because the Bible claims to be authoritative. What you want to say is, the ultimate authority in any philosophy of life. The ultimate authority in any worldview must, in the nature of the case, be self-authorized. So that's not a defect in and of itself. The real question is, is it really the word of God? And if it is, you shouldn't expect God to appeal to Thomas Aquinas or to logic or to some other consideration or person to authorize him. So our confession, now to get back to the point of our study tonight, tells us that the authority of the Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, and if we had time tonight I'd stress the fact that the Confession says the power is not just there to be idly believed, you're to do something in response to this belief, you're to believe it and obey it. The authority for which it ought to be believed and obeyed depends not upon the testimony of any man. Is that just what we were explaining? God doesn't point to Abraham or Moses or the Apostle Paul or Thomas Aquinas or Dr. Bonson or anybody. God doesn't say, believe this book because some man tells you it's God's word. This is interesting because if you'll trace psychologically I think, I mean I haven't done an empirical study to prove this, but I think I'm on good ground in saying if you'll trace the psychology of belief for many Christians, maybe most, my guess is you'll find that at the beginning of their Christian experience and sometimes all the way through it, they do believe the Bible because they have respect for the man who evangelized them or for some, you know, glib speaking apologist or some book they've read and so forth. When somebody then comes along and shakes their confidence in this public speaker or this particular book or something, they really get rattled because they think, well, if that person or that book or that line of evidence's authority is shaken, then I don't know if I can trust the Bible either. The Confession says, the authority for which it ought to be believed does not depend upon the testimony of men. Romans 3.4. What does Paul say? If all men were gathered together and they said the Bible is not the word of God, what should be the response of the believer? Let God be true and all men are liars. So, I think the Puritans were exactly right. What authorizes believing the Holy Scripture and obeying it is not the testimony of men. And then it adds something else. Or the testimony of the church. Tell me real quickly, who is being attacked here? The Roman Catholic community, exactly. To this day, in fact some of you may have heard my radio dialogue with Jerry Matikix or have read some of the interaction with these former Protestants that are now apologists for Romanism. To this day, Roman Catholics tell you that the authority of the Bible depends upon the testimony of the Church. The Church determines the bible, the church determines the canon, we've already seen that's untrue, what I told you in our last lesson, but the authority for believing the bible is because the church tells you to. It's not a very protestant outlook, is it? Protestants say we don't care what any church council says, in the end we go back to the bible. Now if they go back to the bible against church councils, or against the decrees of popes, And quite clearly, the reformed or Puritan outlook is not going to save the authority of councils, it's fundamental to the authority of the Bible. So we've learned two things. Somebody, and you're asked this, I hope you're asked it and you give a good answer, people will come along and look at your Bible and say, why do you believe that? Why do you obey that book? You're not going to say, well, because some human being tells me to, or some human being has proven things to me, or even some counsel of the church is declared to be so. 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. Notice the word wholly. See, they didn't have this idea that you get a little bit of authority from the Bible and then you kind of shore that up with all these evidences that we're going to read about in the next section. It's appalling to me, just from the standpoint of scholarship, that we have some Presbyterians, conservative Presbyterians, who are committed to the Westminster Confession, who nevertheless can say that the Confession teaches that you've got to take the claim of the Bible and that goes so far, but then you have to have these evidences that come and convince you that the claim of the Bible is credible. That is not what the Confession says. Notice the word holy. The authority of the Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed and obeyed depends, not upon these other things, but depends wholly upon God. Now this little parenthetical expression that follows has sometimes been read by people as a pious testimony to God, praising God, where it says, who is truth itself. But it's not just a passing pious testimony. The reason why the authority of the scripture depends wholly upon God is because God is the ultimate standard of truth. And your ultimate standard doesn't appeal to anything outside itself. Since God is truth itself, how could you prove that? What verse of the Bible, I mean there are many, but what verse of the Bible comes to your mind when we say God is truth? That's right. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes from the Father but by me. God is truth itself. And so we started our little class on epistemology by saying well how do we know that what we believe is true? What justifies believing? Well if God is truth itself, if he's the ultimate standard, then when God speaks There isn't anything more ultimate than God himself, is there? I'll give you a limited earthly analogy. It so happens that in Paris, France, there is a platinum bar in a museum, well kept and so forth, that is known as the standard meter. Do you know why there's a standard meter? Because every other meter that we use for measuring might be just off a little bit. I know in some scientific settings even just the slightest shaving off will make a difference. In other settings we don't care that much. But there's got to be something that is the measure for all the other measures. So it's called the standard meter. Now I'm going to ask you this. How do you know that the standard meter is a meter long? Because it's definitive, you're exactly right. You see, in one sense it doesn't need, I mean it makes sense, there is some sense to the question, how do you know the standard meter is a meter long, we can think that through. But ultimately you're going to go to the standard meter for the standard meter, which is to say it will be self-authorizing only. Now if God is truth itself, if he is the highest authority, then God's authoring the Bible means that it's authorized by its author. Why should I believe it? Because God's the ultimate authority and God's the one who speaks here. Now just so that no one misses that the Confession teaches this view which you can call the self-authorizing nature of Scripture or sometimes it's called the self-attesting character of Scripture. They go right on to bluntly draw the conclusion. And therefore, therefore, since the authority of the Holy Scripture depends wholly upon God, the author, therefore it is to be received because what? It is the Word of God. It is to be received because when God speaks, He can't appeal to anything more ultimate than Himself. And so what does God appeal to when He wants to verify His Word? He appeals to himself. Remember how the book of Hebrews tells us that in the case of Abraham, Hebrews 6. And God made promise to Abraham, since he could swear by nothing greater, he swore by himself. Jesus tells his followers that they are to believe his word on the authority that he is speaking of. That's pretty offensive. It's offensive to the mind that says, hey, I'm my final authority. I'm the law to myself. But we have to ask unbelievers, and in some cases we have to ask believers too, sadly, to consider that when God speaks, what could be more authoritative than God speaking? When God speaks, it has to be the ultimate authority. Therefore, it should be received because it is the word of God. Somebody says, why do you believe the Bible? Because it's the word of God. Why do you believe it's the word of God? Because it claims to do so. And it is so. There's nothing more ultimate than that. That's a real offense to people who say, oh wait a minute, nothing gets believed that doesn't pass my scrutiny first. The Bible calls for unconditional surrender. The Bible comes to men not as just one more opinion among men, but it claims that it stands above all human opinion and everyone is to bow, not just to me, but the mind, to God, because when He speaks, there can't be any question about it. In a previous lesson, I had used the analogy, and that's a weak one, but I hope it helps a little, of sometimes in the Bonson family, when Daddy Bonson speaks, Just the tone of voice, everyone says, ooh, he means it this time. Somehow, living with me for all these years, my fellows have come to understand, maybe not perfectly, but you get the idea, that sometimes dad's just giving a suggestion or making a request and sometimes he's laying down the law. And you know that because you know your father, you know his voice. And Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. And we make this claim, which is not a mystical claim, we're not trying to be irrational or pure subjectivist. We make the claim that when those who are children of God, here by creation, not by redemption, but those who have been made by God, open the Bible and they read it, they go, ooh, these people have authority. They know the voice of God. Of course, as sinners, they're not willing to admit that. That's why they won't argue about it. But where God truly does speak, it must be self-authorizing. It carries that kind of weight with it. Now the problem. But there are other books that can make this claim too. And this is, I have found, even reformed people who have been educated well in the doctrine of revelation and presuppositional thought and so forth, they kind of get off the mark here because they're thrown by this idea that you can have competing authority claims. I'm going to go back to something I said earlier and elaborate here for a minute. Not all claims to authority are in fact self-authorizing. Take the person who says, Well, for me, sense experience is the final authority. And it's self-authorizing. Let's look at that. Is it self-authorizing? Did you have a sense experience, an observation, that observation is the final authority? I'm not trying to be a Christian, I'm not trying to beat you up here and dogmatically think you have to believe what I... I'm just asking you. Is it true that observation is its own authority? Did you observe observation's authority? No, you didn't. And so, what we need to pick up on is that the self-attesting authority of scripture is not a, what I'm going to call, bare authority claim. Here's a bare authority claim. I'm walking around the zoo. No, better, I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. I was in the doctor's office this week and this actually happened. A woman had brought in two of her children to see the doctor. And these were, if not the most unruly children I'd ever seen. Certainly, you know, in the short list, the finalists, for decades before. Horrible. And I'm already feeling sick. I've got a headache. I've got all this... And here are these kids that are just going... And what's the temptation? What if Dr. Bunsen didn't exercise sanctified self-control? And finally he says, shut up! Sit down! When's your turn? Now, what do you think the mother would do? I mean, she might be intimidated, but most mothers are like, you know, she-bears when the cubs are attacked, you know. And she'd say, what gives you the right to talk to my children that way? Now, what if I would have said, I'm God and you will shut up! And that's a bare authority claim. I'm just claiming this. I have the authority. Now, of course if she was well trained in philosophy and she could control herself because of her kids being insulted, she should say, you're not God any more than I am. I can make a fair authority claim just like you can. Now, I realize you don't really do that in the doctor's office, but I bet you have thought about it. Anywhere in life, the fact that someone claims to be an authority doesn't automatically make it so, right? When I was in Moscow recently, of course you're learning the whole time you're there about the culture and I didn't understand this. We're going down the street and we came to a stop sign, I'm not sure if it was a signal or just a regular stop sign and somebody walked up and put this wood stick across the windshield and said stop. Well, what's going on here, you know? So the driver stops and I can tell the driver, he's really not happy about this, this is not good. And the fellow who's our guide in Moscow, he starts, I mean, it's not in English, but you can tell from the tone of voice and the way it's going back and forth, well, they're really going at each other, you know? And so they go through this for a while and finally the guy at the stick and the uniform walks away and we drive off. And so then I finally say, Vladimir, what was that all about? He said he wanted to find out if our driver had a permit to drive in Moscow. I said, oh, you have to have a special permit? He said, not anymore, we don't. I said, then why was he asking for it? He said he had no authority to ask for it and that's what I told him. So here's the guy. I'm glad he didn't pull out the gun at that point and say, here's my authority to check for your license. But what he was arguing is that you have no authority to ask for that, back off. In this world, a mere claim to authority doesn't make somebody the authority, right? But when we say that the Bible is self-authorizing, we are not talking about a bare authority claim. There's somebody showing up saying, hey, I've got the authority. Because if we were, and this is why many people who don't like presuppositional apologetics think I just answered a letter from a seminary student who wrote to me about this today. It happens over and over. He says, I understand how to use presuppositionalism in every case except the Muslims. What do you do with the Muslims? Because they've got their revelation as well. And I wrote back and told him what I'm now going to tell you tonight. We're not claiming the Bible as the authority. And it's just that bare. We're going to begin with the Bible as the final authority. And until you accept that, there's nothing more to talk about. Because then the Muslims would say, no, the Koran is the ultimate authority and until you accept that we have nothing more to talk about. And that's what people think presuppositional apologetics is all about. But we're not just comparing authority claims, though the authority claims are there, we're comparing what? World views. It's what the Bible says that I set over against the Koran. Or what the Bible says that I set over against the pragmatist, or the atheist, or the hedonist, or whatever it is that we're talking about. We look at the worldviews with all of their claims, including the authority claim, and then we do an internal investigation of them and we do a comparison of the two systems. And when you do an internal investigation of every other claim to ultimate authority, Since you know as a Christian, I'm working from the back of the book forward now, since you know the Bible is the only true word of God, every other one has been approved to what? Have defects and not be self-authorizing, but actually self-contradictory. Although the contradiction is a lot more obvious in some cases than others, all of them come down to that. Let me give you just a couple, pardon me, examples from the Koran. If somebody tells me they believe the Koran to have authority, then I'm going to say, well, do you believe the Koran when it says that Allah is so different from everything in human experience that nothing can be likened to it? Yes, I do. If that's in the Koran, I believe it. I say, OK, well, that's in the Koran. Here's the verse. Yes, we believe that. I say, well, if nothing in human experience can be likened to Allah, then nothing you can say in human language can be used of Allah then, because all human language is based upon our experience. Yes or what? Well, so then, if the Quran is true in what it says, the Quran can't be what it says that it is. A revelation of Allah in human words. Now, in that particular case, this claim to ultimate authority, when you look at the world you presented, is self-refuting. Another way you can see it's self-reputation is that it so happens, that Muhammad thought that he would get the following of Jews and Christians, or more likely get it, if he honored their religious books. That was a real big mistake from a debate standpoint, not a very good strategy. But he said, of course we believe that the law and the Psalms are revelations of a law previous to the Koran. And we accept the Gospel of Jesus. Now that is in the Koran. Now, if you look at the law of Moses, law. Moses lays down in the law a test for any future prophets who come along, right? And that test is, among other things, conformity with previous revelation. So let's put this all together now. Take the worldview of the Koran. The Koran says it is the climax of all these revelations of Allah going back to Moses, David, Jesus, and now Muhammad. It has authorized, therefore, the word of Moses in saying that all future prophets must agree with previous prophets. And then what you do is you compare what the Bible says, say about the deity of Jesus, what the Koran says, which utterly denies the deity of Jesus as its unbecoming of a law to have a son, for instance. And you say, so it turns out that the Koran contradicts previous revelation. And so on the Koran's own terms, it is refuted. Please notice that's different from my saying, hey, you've got your football team, I have mine, and mine's better than yours. I've got the Bible, you've got the Koran, I'm right, you're wrong. What I'm saying is, if you're right, then you're wrong. Because you have a self-contradictory authority. And tonight's lesson is not on Muslim theology, I'll let it go at that. I just want you to see that not all claims to being an ultimate authority are necessarily bearing that authority. They're not authorized. In the case of the Bible, they are. And we can do more apologetics at another time to point this out. One of the ways in which you know the Bible is itself attesting authority, has that authority, is that without it you can't prove anything else. Which is what you really would expect, right? If you've got the ultimate standard of truth on your side, somebody denies that, you're not going to be able to prove anything to be true. And when someone denies Christianity, then what we say is, you're left with foolishness. Not just like, you've got a few truth claims over there, we have a few truth claims, but we have a few more than you so believe us. Now I know I can kind of What am I doing here? Making a caricature of the evidentialist. But evidential apologetics comes down to that. It's kind of like, we got a few things that make it look probable that Christianity is true, of course there are some problems over here and you got something to say too, but we think we have more than you do. That is not what the Bible or what the confession teaches us to do. It's certainly not what we call presuppositionalism. Presuppositionalism says you deny the ultimate truth, God's authority, and in the end you can't prove anything. The Bible doesn't lay out very likely true versus a lower level of probability. The Bible says you have wisdom and foolishness, truth and error, darkness and light. And so, not all authority claims are in fact self-authorizing. But the ultimate authority must, in the nature of the case, be self-authorizing. And so that's what this section of the Confession teaches us. Let me read it again and see if you can kind of pull together the lesson as you hear this repeated. 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. Why do you believe that's the word of God? Well, because it's the word of God. People say, well you're begging the question. Well, in the end, all ultimate authority must be authorizing itself. That's not begging the question, it's the only alternative you have. So what I'm telling you is that this is my ultimate authority. If God's word has that ultimate authority, it has that authority whether anybody believes it or not, right? Does God get more divine as people believe in him more and more through history? You know, God gets more people signed up for the kingdom of God so now his authority is growing. I mean, that's preposterous, isn't it? God has that ultimate authority even if all men deny it. And so what men think and what they are persuaded of is utterly irrelevant to the ultimate authority of God. I'm pointing this out because I want you to see just how un-evidentialist the Puritans were. You notice section 4 talks about the authority of the scripture. And it doesn't stop running evidences before our eyes, you know, to say, okay, aren't you real persuaded now? Your persuasion is completely a different issue. And that's what the next section takes up. God's word has this authority, now what about persuasion? We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. The testimony of the Church might very well incline us in that direction. So if you have respect for the church and you hear that the church respects the Bible, that might very well induce you to a high view of the Holy Scripture. Another thing that might impress you is the heavenliness of the matter. And the Bible is not just talking about the price of tea in China, it's talking about high and holy things. The glory of God, the origin of man, the purpose of life, the nature of sin, how we are redeemed. These are heavenly matters. Anybody that has the basic ability to read and has read anything else besides the Bible should be impressed with the solemnity of the subject matter. So, the heaviness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine. People might study, say, Charles Hodge's systematic theology or some other reformed work and come away saying, well, the Bible, it's amazing how all these parts work together, how effective the doctrine is. the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God. Some people might be really taken back, kind of open their eyes at the full discovery the Bible makes of the only way of man's salvation. And I've read the testimony of people who though they had no respect for the Bible and reading it just feel so convicted of their sins they can hardly believe how well the Bible knows them and picks out their veniality and their malice and their bad motivation and so forth. There are people who see the convicting power of the biblical testimony against sin and are taken by the way of redemption, the only way that man could be saved. If men are guilty before God because they are rebels, then if you're thinking clearly, nothing man can do could ever make it right. In the nature of the case, salvation has to be the work of God. So, because there is that inner logic, when people read the Bible and read of the grace of God, it clicks. They say, that's right, the only hope I can have is if God makes provision. Are you with me? Here are many things then that will impress people about the Bible. Maybe the testimony of the church, the heaviness of the matter, the majesty of the style, of all the parts and so forth. And then they add, and many other incomparable excellences. That's the nice way of saying et cetera, et cetera. We may be moved by and induced by all these sorts of things and many other incomparable excellences and the entire perfection thereof. are arguments whereby it does, now listen, abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God. Is that contrary to what we've just been talking about? Is the fact that God has ultimate authority mean that he never gives any evidence of his authority? Of course not. If you think about a corporation, the CEO of a corporation on one view of corporate authority as the ultimate authority. But you see the CEO doesn't demonstrate his authority by all day issuing memos saying, I'm the authority, I'm the authority, don't question me, I'm the authority. But sometimes you see the authority of the CEO in what he actually does, right? and the directions he gives, the way he negotiates with other companies, resolves disputes, whatever it may be. He evidences his authority, he doesn't just claim his authority. And likewise, God has evidenced that this self-attesting revelation, this ultimate authority which is his book, is the kind of book that you'd expect from God. We don't for a moment, those of us who understand what presuppositional apologetics is all about, we don't for a moment deny that there are evidences of the truth of the Bible. We do, I think, have the sagacity to understand that if a person's ultimate presuppositions are not challenged, the evidence is going to be washed away. Jesus tells us that he gives the sign of Jonah in the belly of the fish. as a sign for what right he has to say the things that he's saying. When he's challenged by his opponents, he says the only sign I'll give you is that sign of Jonah, meaning the resurrection, three days after being buried in the earth I will rise, even as Jonah was expelled from the belly of the fish. So does the resurrection have evidential power? Does the resurrection show us the power of God? Absolutely. Now, does that mean that no matter what your presuppositions are, that when you put the resurrection out there in front of somebody, boy, they're just going to have to fall dead. They're going to have to just say, wow, I was wrong. If Jesus rose from the dead, then he must be God. No, you know that's not true. Somebody might say, Jesus rose from the dead? Boy, there's a lot about the physical world we haven't discovered yet. There are some laws of nature that don't often work in this particular time of day. Opportunity to study life cases or if you can get more historical background maybe we'll be able to come up with the explanation. How Jesus' body naturally resuscitated. You see if you don't challenge the naturalist at his presupposition, with his presuppositions, Ultimately the evidence that is so persuasive and really does show the power of God is still not going to be taken for what it is. So we do not deny that the CEO in this case does not deny that he evidences his authority. God's authority. He raises the dead. He issues commands. He parks the Red Sea. God does things to show his ultimate authority and power. He doesn't just all day long say I'm the authority, I'm the authority, I'm the authority. Bare authority claims. So all these things according to confession that we have talked about are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God. Why didn't they say conclusively prove it to be the word of God? Well because if they did, than what they previously wrote in the section just before, they'd have to throw out, right? The Puritans were not infallible, no confession of faith would they have us believe is infallible and theirs isn't. But I think it was written with great care and I don't think it's insignificant. that when they talk about these evidences being arguments, well, when they look at these marks, they say these are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself rather than demonstrably prove. They don't think that proves it, but they do think it's a display of the authority of God. That's what you'd expect if God's speaking here. A wondrous book with all these marks that we've talked about. And notice what they say, having talked about abundant evidence, of the authority of God in his words. 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. It is beyond me, I won't mention names, but certain evidentialists in Presbyterian circles will go to this section of the Confession and say, see, they were evidentialists back then too. They were. Why? Because they thought there were evidences of the authority of God in the Bible? We all believe that. That's not the issue. When the Puritans said that God has given evidence of his authority in the Word, they immediately make sure that you won't misconstrue that as proving it to be the Word of God. Yet notwithstanding, Despite all of that, they say, our full persuasion and assurance is not based on those evidences. I'm going to draw a distinction for you. Section 4 talks about the authority of the Holy Scripture and we've gone on to talk about self-authorization. You notice that section 5 is talking about our persuasion of the divine authority. Those are two different things. As I told you a few moments ago, God's word has authority whether anybody believes it or not. And God doesn't become more authoritative when more people get on his side. And so there's an absolute watertight difference between the authority of Scripture and our subjective persuasion of that authority. And here in Section 5, the Confession is not telling us what gives authority to the Bible, it's talking about where the persuasion of that authority comes from. And it begins by saying, we might be induced, moved in that direction by all the wonderful marks that we've talked about. And yet, even with all those evidences, that's not enough to persuade the sinful heart of the self-authorizing nature of scripture. Yet notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, It's not from those marks or evidences, but what? From the inward work of the Holy Spirit. So the confession teaches us that God's word has its own authority in itself and there's nothing higher than that. And then it teaches that our persuasion, our subjective willingness to acknowledge that authority comes because of the work of the Holy Spirit. changing our minds, bringing us repentance, enlightening our minds, giving us confidence for faith that this is the Word of God. Is this subjectivism? Notice how the section ends. This comes from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness, and this expression is very crucial theologically, by and with the Word in our hearts. Subjectivism would be the view that the Holy Spirit has led me to believe the following things. And you say, well where's the objective public evidence of that? There isn't any, I just have this inward conviction. You'll never find that in Puritan or Reformed theology. The Spirit does not work apart from the Word. And so when somebody says, oh well then I guess you Calvinist or you Presuppositionalist, whichever they're trying to attack here, then ultimately you just think it's a subjective leap, don't you? I say no. We don't think the spirit has just come in some subjective way and changed an individual and he has no other guide but this inward feeling. What we're saying is the spirit works by the word and with the word in our hearts. Way back when I told you that anybody who opens the Bible should hear the Word of God. And they actually do. The Bible says they suppress it in unrighteousness. But when someone reads the Bible, they know in their heart of hearts my Creator is speaking to them. But they're not willing to admit that. And when the Holy Spirit takes away their rebellion and their opposition, The Holy Spirit is not adding evidence to the Bible. It's not as though the Bible wouldn't have this authority unless the Holy Spirit came along and imputed that authority to it. No. The Bible carries its own authority. That's what section 4 has taught us. Section 5 says the Spirit now works with the testimony of the Bible so that in our hearts we stop rebelling and refusing that. But we don't think that the Bible stands by itself without the Spirit, or that the Spirit works by itself without the Scripture. It's always the Spirit and the Word working side by side. So we've learned two things tonight. We've learned about the authority, that which authorizes believing the Bible to be the Word of God, and we've learned about the persuasion, or what brings us to believe that authority to have its ultimate self-authorizing character. And I really wish I could do the whole course with you because we can't animate it. This is about what the confession has taught us tonight. Brief apologetic right there. Go ahead Mike, I know you're a good spokesman. I don't have one. Really? I thought you were building up to one. I don't have one. Go ahead. It's for sure authoritative as well. And ultimately it's very necessary. Yeah, I would say it a little bit differently but you're on the right track. Any ultimate authority must be its own authority, because incentive, what I'm giving you is a trivial point, might be the ultimate authority it authorizes.