The Authority Of Scripture

The things I learned in Systematic Theology Chapter 4 - The Four Characteristics of Scripture: (1) Authority.

The authority of Scripture means that all words in Scripture are God’s words in such a way that to believe or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God.

A) All words in Scripture are God’s words.

1) The Bible claims for itself to be God’s words.

a) The Old Testament text frequently begins with “Thus says the Lord…”
b) Not every word in Scripture was audibly spoken by God Himself. But the quotations of other people are God’s reports of what they said, and rightly interpreted in their context, come to us with God’s authority.
c) The New Testament affirms that all of the Old Testament writings are God’s words (e.g. 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:21).
d) The New Testament writings are put on the same level with Old Testament writings as “scripture” (2 Peter 3:16, 1 Timothy 5:18). Thus, once we establish that the New Testament writings belong to the special category called “scripture”, then we can correctly affirm the New Testament writings as part of the canon of Scripture (hence as God’s own words as well).

2) We are convinced that the Bible is truly God’s word as we read it ourselves.

a) Our ultimate conviction that the words of the Bible are God’s words comes only when the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our Creator speaking to us.
b) Although other evidence (e.g. historical accuracy, internal consistency, fulfilled prophecies, etc) is useful to help support the claim that the Bible is God’s words, the persuasion and convincingness of such evidence is nothing compared to “the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” It is incomparably the work of the Holy Spirit, through Whom “our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority (of the Bible)” comes (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1643-46).

3) The words of Scripture are self-attesting.

a) Scripture cannot be “proved” to be God’s words by appeal to any higher authority, because it is already the highest authority in itself.
b) If we ultimately appeal to human reason, logic, historical accuracy, or scientific truth as the authority to prove Scripture to be God’s words, then we have assumed that those things that we appealed have a higher authority than God’s words itself, and that those things are more true or more reliable than Scripture.

4) The self-attestation of Scripture is not a typical circular argument.

a) E.g. We believe that Scripture is God’s Word because it claims to be that. And we believe its claims because Scripture is God’s Word. And we believe that it is God’s Word because it claims to be that. Etc, etc…
b) Even though this is admittedly a kind of circular argument, it does not make its use invalid. Because all arguments for an absolute authority must ultimately appeal to itself for proof. Otherwise, that authority would not be an absolute or highest authority.
c) Everyone either implicitly or explicitly uses some kind of circular argument when defending his own ultimate authority for belief anyway.
d) E.g. Logical consistency is my ultimate authority because it is logical to make it so. And it is logical to make it so because logical consistency is my ultimate authority. And logical consistency is my ultimate authority because it is logical to make it so. Etc, etc…
e) The argument for the Bible as God’s Word is more like a spiral instead of a circular argument, because the increasing knowledge of Scripture and increasingly correct understanding of God and creation tend to supplement one another in a harmonious way, each tending to confirm the accuracy of the other.

5) Dictation from God is not the sole means of communication from God.

a) Sometimes, direct dictation is a means of communication from God as it becomes written as God’s word (e.g. John on Patmos Island, Isaiah). At other times, at the other end of the extreme, God’s words can come via ordinary historical research (e.g. Luke).
b) God’s providential oversight and direction of the life of each author was such that their personalities, their backgrounds and training, their abilities to evaluate events in the world around them, their access to historical data, their judgment with regard to the accuracy of the information, and their individual circumstances when they wrote, were all exactly what God wanted them to be, so that when they actually came to the point of putting pen to paper, the words were fully their own words but also fully the words that God wanted them to write – words that God would also claim as His own.

B) With all this in mind, therefore it is reasonable to conclude that to disbelieve or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God Himself.

C) The truthfulness of Scripture.

1) God cannot lie or speak falsely (Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:18). Therefore…
2) All the words in Scripture are completely true and without error in any part (Proverbs 30:5, Psalms 119:89, Numbers 23:19). Therefore…
3) God’s words are the ultimate standard of truth (John 17:17). Therefore…
4) It is impossible for any new fact to ever contradict the Bible. Therefore, whenever we are confronted with some “fact” that is said to contradict Scripture, we must not only examine the data that claims to demonstrate the fact in question; we must also reexamine the appropriate biblical texts to see if the Bible really teaches what we thought it to teach (e.g. the passage of the sun around the earth, the age of the earth).

D) We confidently conclude that the written Scripture is our final authority.