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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.
05 - Holy Scripture Ch. 1, Sec 4-5 (5 of 46)
Series Westminster Confession Faith
5 of 46
GB1504
| Sermon ID | 1028201912308111 |
| Duration | 1:01:27 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 2:9-10; 2 Peter 1:19-20 |
| Language | English |
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