Dr. Boer’s Proposal – Professor Harry R. Boer tells us plainly without any double-talk, that the time has come for us to discard once and for all the notion that there is an “infallible” or “inerrant” Bible. His attack on an infallible Scripture is found in the March 1976 Reformed Journal in an article entitled “The Infallibility of the Bible and Higher Criticism.”
Dr. Boer suggests that instead of speaking of an “infallible” or “inerrant” Bible (which implies that the Bible contains no mistakes or errors of any kind) we should join a number of others who prefer to use more relative terms to describe it such as “reliable” or “trustworthy.” He reasons that we should do this, because of the well-known differences between the various gospel accounts of events, suggesting that we therefore abandon the notion that the Bible contains no discrepancies or contradictions. Instead of pleading ignorance or trying to find ways in which these differences might be harmonized, he would have us frankly recognize these contradictions in the Bible as human “mistakes” (although he may not use that word) and try to find in the documents with their imperfections the “common and abiding teaching.”
Boer tries to defend this view of the Bible by an old comparison between Jesus and the Bible. Just as Jesus was truly human as well as Divine, so we ought to admit that the Bible is a completely human document subject to all human limitations (which, of course, include all kinds of mistakes) as well as being Divine revelation. He sees a number of advantages in such a view. (1) When scientists or historians contradict Bible teachings or facts we don‘t, holding his view, have to argue the point with them. (2) When dealing with the Muslims who believe in an infallible Qu’ran “verbally and factually inerrant” we should not oppose them with an equally indefensible faith in an “infallible” Bible ( a suggestion, to put it bluntly, amounts to a missionary converting them from a faith in their false Bible to unbelief in the true one!). (3) Finally Boer argues—as the Old Modernists also usually did -that by giving up the notion of infallibility as far as the Bible is concerned we don‘t really lose anything because we can keep the same respect for and the same feelings toward the Bible that we ever did, still calling what we consider its essential message Divine revelation.
Boer argues that this suggested view of Scripture is not different from the way in which we hold any other Christian doctrine, none of which can be logically demonstrated. And that one does not really lead people to faith or affect their faith by demonstrating that there are no contradictions in the Bible. Our Christian faith docs not depend upon an infallible Scripture but on the revelation of the Holy Spirit.
This claim of Dr. Boer will likely not occasion too much surprise in the minds of any who have been following his writings in The Reformed Journal. He has been leading up to it for some time. In an earlier series of articles he defended Dr. Ralph Janssen who was fired from our seminary in 1922 for teaching “higher critical” views of the Bible, and in six earlier articles of this series he argued that “higher critical” study of the content of the Bible is just as legitimate as the “lower critical” study to determine the most accurate text of the Bible, which conservative Christians have commonly accepted.
What must one say about this proposal of Dr. Boer, that we stop talking of an “infallible Bible,” admit that it may have all kinds of human mistakes in it, and that this doesn’t really make any difference any way? It plainly contradicts our church creeds, which Dr. Boer himself has solemnly promised to uphold and defend. Tn Article V of the Belgic Confession he with us has said of the Scripture that we believe “without any doubt all things contained in them” (cf. also Articles IV and VII). Is not that enough reason to justify discarding his proposal without further discussion and to make its proposer who has been publicly teaching these things, susceptible to discipline and deposition—as his admired predecessor Dr. Janssen was?
All this is true, but Dr. Boer can reckon—and his own experience after attacking the Form of Subscription three years ago and after attacking the Canons of Dort last year demonstrates—that the church is no longer as ready to maintain its creeds or its requirement of adherence to them as it was a half century ago. We can no longer, it appears, assume such conviction, loyalty, or integrity on the part of the church.
These circumstances drive us back -and we ought to be ready at any time to do that anyway—not only to appeal to the church creed but to the Scriptures themselves.
When Boer’s proposal is tested by the Bible, does his long series of arguments, sometimes plausibly presented, prove that he is right and that the church should change its traditional view of the Bible?
The Decisive Question Is Ignored – Throughout his argument for what he claims is a better, more defensible, he even says more “biblical” view of the Bible, than the traditional one which calls it “infallible” or “inerrant,” what is most significant is that Boer never once, as far as I know, raises the question, “What does the Bible claim about itself?” While he discusses at length what critical study (a study, which he admits, has usually been started by unbelievers) permits us to hold the Bible to be, he totally disregards what the Bible says about itself.
A View Refuted by the Synod of 1961 – The objection to the description of the Bible as “infallible” and the proposal of Dr. Boer that it be discarded are not new. The Report accepted by the Synod of 1961 (Acts, pp. 281–294) treated exactly this matter. After an extended survey of both the general usage of the Bible and of particular texts it concluded, “These conclusions regarding the infallibility of the Bible are remarkably confirmed by the Scriptural studies undertaken above. Jesus, Peter and Paul are in complete agreement regarding the nature and extent of Scriptural infallibility. All Scripture, to its very ‘jots and tittles’ is from God. The question whether or not the word infallibility adequately conveys Scripture’s claim to its own trustworthiness can be confidently answered in the affirmative.”
Thereupon the 1961 Report takes up the question: “is it more proper to handle the phenomena of Scripture, among which the problem passages appear, inductively with a view of formulating a doctrine of Scripture infallibility which is in harmony with the discovered ‘facts,’ or is it more proper to formulate the doctrine of infallibility from the self-testimony of Scripture alone and then approach the phenomena of Scripture with an a priori commitment to that doctrine?” (Totally ignoring the latter viewpoint—asking what the Bible says of itself—Boer is advocating that the former approach is the only one to take.) The 1961 report goes on to observe that many were advocating just such a “scientific” approach “suggesting that any other approach fails to do justice to the facts of Scripture and may lead to a concept of infallibility which would ultimately prove untenable”—again the very point Boer is arguing.
The Report answered that argument, “There are, however, decisive considerations which point in another direction. Pre-eminent among these is the fact that Scripture has an explicit doctrine of its own infallibility. Infallibility is not merely an inference drawn from an examination of the phenomena of Scripture. It is rather an explicit claim of the Scripture for itself. Nor is it an obscure doctrine locked away in some difficult and unstressed passage. To the contrary, when one considers the number of passages in which Scripture‘s confidence in Scripture is demonstrated he discovers that this is one of the best attested of all the doctrines of Scripture. In view of this obvious fact, it remains for faith to listen obediently to Scripture’s own testimony to its infallibility. Faith does not presume to know better than Scripture. Neither does it nor may it allow its inference drawn from the phenomena of Scripture to modify Scripture’s doctrine of its own infallibility. It may no more presume to rest on its own independent judgment here than it may do so in respect to the sinlessness of Jesus. The doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus rests solely on the explicit teaching of the Bible and in no degree on our examination of the life of Jesus. Even so, our doctrine of Scriptural infallibility must rest solely on Scripture’s own claims.”
Boer’s article claims that the view he advocates denying infallibility is not “in any way different in character from any other doctrine taught in the Scripture. “It is of one piece with the truths taught in the Apostles’ Creed.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. None of the truths of the Christian faith rest on the kind of critical investigation which he proposes must be the basis for our view of the Bible. That kind of critical approach and investigation, followed through, has in innumerable cases attacked and led to the denial of every Christian doctrine! It starts out from the assumption of unbelief, “Has God said?” and, continuing on that assumption, it can produce only unbelief and the destruction of the Christian faith it is supposed to promote.
Packer’s Case for Infallibility – In a fascinating little 95-page book entitled God Speaks to Man Revelation and the Bible, J. I. Packer in 1965 traced what was happening in churches all over the world as they adopted the view of the Bible which Dr. Boer is advocating.
This Englishman observed within the churches a development strikingly like that predicted in Amos 8:11f., “a famine . . . of hearing the words of the Lord. “What . . . must be said of the mass of our churches today? For at no time, perhaps since the Reformation have Protestant Christians as a body been so unsure, tentative, and confused as to what they should believe and do. The outside observer sees us as staggering on from gimmick to gimmick and stunt to stunt like so many drunks in a fog, not knowing where we are or which way we should be going. Preaching is hazy; heads are muddled; hearts fret; doubts drain our strength . . . We stand under divine judgment. For us, too, the Word of God is in a real sense lost.” The source of this problem, despite all of the study devoted to the Bible, Packer sees in “Biblical Criticism” (the very thing Dr. Boer is advocating!).
Packer traces the development in this way: “Liberal Theology, in its pride, has long insisted that we are wiser than our fathers ~bout the Bible, and must not read it as they did, but must base our approach to it on the ‘assured results’ of criticism, making due allowances for the human imperfections and errors of its authors. This insistence has a threefold effect. (1) It produces a new papalism—the infallibility of the scholars, from whom we learn what the ‘assured results’ are. (2) It raises a doubt about every single biblical passage, as to whether it truly embodies revelation or not. (3) And it destroys the reverent, receptive, self-distrusting attitude of approach to the Bible, without which it cannot be known to be ‘God‘s Word written’ . . . . The result? The spiritual famine of which Amos spoke. God judges our pride by leaving us to the barrenness, hunger, and discontent which flow from our self-induced inability to hear His Word.”
Observing the valuable results of much of the modern careful Bible study, Packer asks how it at the same time could prove so destructive. Its error was that it separated the Bible from the Word of God, regarding that Bible critically as a human document: “It told the Church that the Bible could never be rightly understood till belief in its inerrancy was given up” (Dr. Boer’s very point!). “It is well to say at once where, at bottom, this approach seems to go astray.”
Packer continues, “Its mistake is to ignore the fact that Jesus and His Apostles taught a definite doctrine of the nature of Scripture, a doctrine just as integral to their message as were their beliefs about the character of God. This doctrine appears in such statement as ‘the Scripture cannot be broken’ (Jn. 10:35); ‘it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fall’ (Lk. 16:17); ‘all Scripture is inspired by God’ (II Tim. 3:16, RSV); and it appears also in the designation of the Old Testament as ‘the oracles of God’ (Rom. 3:2; cf. Acts 7:38). It is further manifested whenever Christ and his apostles cite an Old Testament text to settle a point and clinch an argument, or quote an Old Testament statement, not ascribed to God in its context, as an utterance of God spoken through human lips.”
Limitations of space forbid us to trace the way Packer in greater detail than the 1961 Synod committee did, canvassed the abundant material which the Bible itself contains to answer the century-old critical attack especially on “the idea of inerrancy.” He concludes his little book seeking to lead men to receive the Bible again on its own claims as the verbally inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word of God, as the way to escape the current judgment of a “famine of hearing the words of the Lord” which is afflicting Christendom.
The Destructive Effects of this View in Dr. Boor‘s Own Career – The consequences of this unbiblical view of the Bible, and the failure to base one’s position and teaching on the infallible Scriptures are plainly evident in what I, as an old friend have seen of Dr. Boer‘s own career and efforts to lead the church.
Although he emerged from the military experiences of the war years as an enthusiastic advocate of the Reformed faith, he some time later on the Nigerian mission field took the lead in promoting and establishing a union seminary (TCNN) which was devoted to teaching among other church doctrines some of those explicitly condemned by the Canons of Dort!
When I and other mission board members pointed out how this policy contradicted what everyone who holds office in the CRC promises when he signs the Form of Subscription, Dr. Boer’s reply was that we were Reformed because of 400 years of Dutch history. Nigerians, not having passed through that history, could not be expected to hold such doctrines. To that reply I had to answer that his was not an argument merely against the Reformed faith; if history instead of the Bible decides our doctrines the Nigerians should remain pagans! Although the denomination then still talked of the ideal of Reformed training, it was persuaded, principally by Dr. Boer, to give at first limited and temporary, later more extensive support to his union program. When later the Tiv churches, sensitive to the need for training ministers in the Reformed faith rather than in confusing or contradictory doctrines, determined to establish a Reformed Seminary, Dr. Boer opposed this in every possible way. Over his opposition that Reformed seminary became a reality.
Of the direction in which his view of the Bible has been taking him, the church was given a public glimpse in a series of three articles in the Reformed Journals of December 1974 and of January and February 1975 on Revelation 20. “Apocalypse” comes from the Greek word for “revelation” and its Greek form is the first word of the book of Revelation. The first article suggests that we in our time find such “apocalyptic writing” strange, but that for about three centuries it flourished and was very popular and that John‘s apocalypse “is by common consent considered to be the climactic flowering of all preceding apocalyptic writing.” One must learn to understand it much as one understands Grimms’ fairy tales or Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or a painting of Picasso. A second article considers the Premillennial and common Amillennial views and finds the Pres having the better of the argument if one is to read the Bible as both do. In the third article the writer gives his view. That view of the martyrs living and reign ing with Christ a thousand years is that John “singles them out for special mention.” He could have designated them for honor and distinction in a hundred other ways, but this is the way his sanctified imagination chose to express itself.
Accordingly we are not, thinks the writer, to consider this as “history,” past, present, or future, but as “drama.” “At the close of the heroic-tragic spectacle of Revelation the martyrs as chief actors in the unfolding drama are called to the center of the stage to receive the grateful applause and recognition of the Lord and of the church on whose behalf they suffered and died.”
What of the “binding of Satan” during these 1000 years? Boer‘s answer is, “Remembering Karl Barth‘s admonition not to be too curious about the Devil, we can put Satan into the background slot where he belongs.” Regardless of how we deal with the difficult matters of prophecy, can any Bible-believing Christian consider this flippant way of dismissing the chapter as doing justice to the Bible and to this book in particular as “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave . . .” (Rev. 1:1)? And the matter becomes the more serious when we are informed in the table of contents of the magazine: “One of the textbooks for Nigerian Christian students on which Journal editor Boer is now at work deals with the interpretation of the Bible’s final book.” Is this the kind of Bible study and preaching the coming ministers of churches on our most flourishing mission field have been and are being taught?
Three years ago, we observed, Dr. Boer attacked our Form of Subscription to the Reformed creeds as being too restrictive and as interfering with progress in the church. The denomination, instead of telling him to take his promises seriously, was moved to give heed to his plea and is still considering modifying those promises. Last year, in a totally irregular way via a Reformed Journal article he publicly questioned the doctrine of reprobation as taught in the Canons of Dort saying that he had not found biblical arguments advanced for it convincing. Last year‘s Synod, instead of referring this public attack on the creeds (which Dr. Boer as well as every office-holder in the church has promised to maintain) to his church for disciplinary action, temporized by appointing a committee to advise this year‘s Synod what to do. When Dr. Boer’s consistory finally suspended him for his irregular attack on the creed, the classis was prevailed upon to sustain Dr. Boer. Now a committee is recommending that his attack be viewed as a gravamen, an objection against the creed, but not to be judged by the consistory, classis, or synod as the regular procedure demands, but to be made the subject for public discussion and study!
Now, before these matters of creed and subscription have been resolved, we are confronted by a head-on attack on the infallibility of the Bible, the authority to which the Lord and His apostles have always taught us to appeal as God’s Word. One senses that this is really bringing us to the source of the other problems Dr. Boer has raised. We can understand them more easily when we read his attack on an infallible Bible.
The ecumenical theology that cannot find itself at home with a double-predestination and that finds the texts which teach it unconvincing, that feels cramped by such confessions as the Canons of Dort and the Form of Subscription to them, the Bible teaching that turns Revelation into a drama in which John‘s inspired imagination is free to nm off into “a hundred” different directions, all this is not the doctrine of the Bible which Jesus and His Apostles taught and the doctrine which the Reformed faith aims to be.
Confronting the Basic Heresy – One of the plainest teachings in the Scriptures about their own inspiration is that found in II Peter 1:19–21 which describes them as resembling “a lamp shining in a dark place” because “no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.” Immediately thereafter and in sharp contrast with this teaching inspired by God, there comes a warning and prediction about “false teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies.”
The word translated “heresies” is most interesting. It comes from a Creek verb meaning “to choose” and means literally (as Souter‘s little lexicon puts it) “a self-chosen opinion.” The Bible here, in other words, is setting off against the teaching of God’s Spirit all “self-chosen” human opinions which diverge from it and is sternly warning us against them. These are “heresies” in the original and basic sense of the word, and Dr. Boer‘s critical attack on the Bible’s teaching about itself falls right into that class. He is attacking the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible as God‘s Word as the foundation upon which the Lord Himself said our faith and life must be built (Luke 6:46–59). Only as they are built on that foundation, the Lord assures and warns us will they be able to stand.
If we let that foundation be removed from our teaching and life, if we let the creeds of the church based on that foundation be contradicted at will by church leaders, if we let the promise to uphold this biblical faith and life be ignored by those in office we become responsible for betraying the faith and the Lord of it and we can expect the judgments He warns us will come upon all such unfaithfulness.
Revelation, the book which we saw getting particularly cavalier treatment, ends with the special warning that “If any man shall add unto [the words of the prophecy of this book] God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and out of the holy city, which are written in this book” (22:18, 19).
Let no one minimize the seriousness of what is happening, suggesting we are only talking about one man, nearing retirement, unusually independent, airing some far-out views. That would be to treat Boer’s public attack and appeals to the church with much less seriousness than they deserve.
Someone might say that Boer has not denied such fundamentals of the Christian faith as the Deity of Christ or the Atonement. That is not necessary to accomplish the devil’s objective of destroying the church. When once the church‘s faith in the Bible as foundation, as God’s verbally inspired “covenant” is removed, and the creeds as founded thereon and the requirement to adhere to them are breached, if the history of other churches reveals anything it shows that the devil can soon find others to deny any and every teaching that the Lord ever gave.
Dr. Boer has attacked the Biblical basis of the church‘s faith. The church must either tolerate and open itself to the teaching of this anti-Biblical theology, or it must call him to account for it, and, if he refuses to retract, subject him to discipline. Let us pray that the church, finding its faith so frontally challenged, will be aroused to insist on its commitment to the Word of God and the doctrines it tea.ches and discipline any leaders who reject them. The alternative to such a course is to let the increasing denials of the Christian faith and life take over the denomination. If, or as, that happens, those who, by the grace of God, want to remain faithful to Him and His gospel will eventually be compelled to seek Christian fellowship in the Biblical, Reformed faith where it can be found.
Let us pray that the Lord may bring about the first rather than the latter alternative, and will give us boldness and strength to do what He would have us do for His gospel against what we are being compelled to recognize as the inroads of Anti-Christ.