Louis Praamsma is a veteran church historian and retired Christian Reformed pastor living at Hamilton, Ontario. He recently wrote a 4-volume church history, De Kerk van Alle Tijden (The Church of All Times) which is being translated into English. In this article he analyses for us the 1980 report of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands on the subject of the Bible’s Authority. This is the issue which underlies most of those churches’ as well as our own current problems.

I. Which Quality?

Nov. 4, 1980 the synod of the Reformed (Gereformeerde) churches in the Netherlands adopted a report “On the quality (Dutch: aard) of the authority of Scripture.”

This report was not only included in the Acts of Synod, it was also separately printed under the title: “God with us” and made available to t he consistories and the membership at large.

I am still a reader of my old weekly church-paper, the Groninger Kerkbode, and I like to read the reports of the meetings of my former consistory in that city. In one of them I read that the chairman brought up the above-mentioned synodical report for discussion. The only answer he got was, that it was so very difficult, so hard to read. It was decided that the minister would introduce the first part of the report in one of the next meetings. In the following weeks I looked for such an introduction in vain, but I may have skipped an issue.

   

II. Background

The Dutch report is no easy reading–material indeed. Especially its first part, which bears a more philosophical than a theological character, must be a real headache for an elder who reads it; and I have the idea that the entire report at times must have been a real headache for the committee that composed it.

That committee did not have an easy task. One of its members was Dr. T. Baarda, now a professor of the Free University. Baarda had published in 1967 his study on “The reliability of the Gospels,” in a series of brochures (The: Cahiers voor de Gemeente) composed by “New Theologians” who tried to give guidance to the men in the pew. In that brochure he had declared that from a historical point of view the Gospels are unreliable in several respects; he had even spoken of some “legendary features” in them. At the synod of Dordrecht (1971/72) letters were received in which objections were raised against Baarda’s ideas. A committee was appointed to look into the matter. That committee got its own history. Its mandate was not an easy one. “The question should be studied, to what extent the church, claiming the authority of t he Bible and professing the historical revelation of God in Jesus Christ, can determine a norm for historical studies, without curtailing scientific theology.”

In other words: how can we save the Bible with a capital B and save Science with a capital S?

The background was the situation in the sixties, in which the Cahiers voor de Gemeente had been published. Prof. Kuitert had told his readers that some miraculous stories of the Bible did not need to have happened so, and that the name “Adam” in the Bible did not refer to a real man but to a “teaching-model”; Baarda had found all sorts of irregularities and inconsistencies in the gospel–stories and Professor Augustijn, also of the Free University, had claimed the right to freely criticize the confessional standards and yet to sign them in their unchanged original form; Professor Hartvelt of Kampen had come wit h his ingenious formula: although Scriptures are not simply God’s Word, t hey are good for God‘s Word.

All that and much more had happened, but in the mean time the dialogue had continued, according to the rule that we should never say “no” to each other, but always remain on talking terms. That was the climate in which the committee had worked. Their report, sent to the churches, was finally adorned with the title: “God with us.”

The term “relativism” which means that all things are relative and depend on times and circumstances, that the truth will never be found, is carefully a voided. Yet the concept of “relationism” is not too far removed from it. It means that the truth as we know it, always has come to us by human mediation and always is colored by human insights. We read literally in this report: “The truth of God, his revelation, is only there where human tongues begin to move.” (p. 14).

These human tongues have spoken and human hands have written the Bible. That Bible is a wonderful book of human encounters with God, but essentially it is not an exceptional book. On the one hand, “from a scientific point of view there are no sufficient grounds for the assertion that the Bible would be more reliable, in respect to history, than other sources” (p. 67). On the other hand, “what we call inspiration by the Holy Spirit is actually a whole history of the truth revealing itself. A history that is marked by far–away events, words of patriarchs and prophets, tradition, many sources, the formation of the canon of the Bible, work of scribes, redactors, theologians, congregational groups. All this was continued through the ever renewed confessions and exegesis of the Christian churches up to today” (p. 15).

An always continuing inspiration!—but what is the quality of this kind of “inspiration?” Does it not entail a leveling down of this special work of the Holy Spirit?

It certainly does, and we should not speak any longer of an infallible, inerrant Bible. The entirely human book that the Bible is, and through which the truth of God is transmitted, is a very relational book. The authors were related to their times and circumstances, and in their work we find the insights, sometimes also the errors of those times and circumstances; the reader easily finds out when he only is aware of the fact that we find several literary genres, more or less trustworthy, in the Bible.

One of those genres is that of the so-called popular stories (Dutch: volksverhalen). These stories tell us something of the power of imagination of the men of those far–away times, sometimes something of their humor, but they need not to have happened as they are told.

Among the popular stories of the Old Testament are mentioned those of David’s slaying of Goliath (p. 65) and of Lot‘s intercourse with his own daughters (p. 66). With respect to the story of David and Goliath it is said that there is a contradiction between 1 Sam. 17 and 2 Sam. 21:19.¹ As far as Lot‘s story is concerned, we read that the Israelites were constantly at loggerheads with their neighbors, Ammon and Moab, who were evidently related to them. In order to express their contempt of them, they called them “bastards.” This appellation must have been the origin of the “popular story” of Lot and his daughters.²

A similar met hod is applied to the New Testament. It is said that the evangelists sometimes have put words in Jesus’ mouth which He has never spoken, and that they pictured his life in terms of their new insight in the Old Testament. “In many cases,” so we are informed, “Jesus may not exactly have used the words or performed the acts m the way the evangelist describes it. In that case the evangelist, following an accepted practice in the ancient East, made use of a historical design, to preach the good tidings of Jesus Christ from (what was told about Him in) the Old Testament” (p. 77).

Most remarkable is the view of the report on Jesus’ great prophetic discourse (Matt. 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21). We read: “This discourse may have been linked with certain historical sayings of Jesus, for instance His prophecy of the destruction of the temple. But its point of departure is the situation of the later congregation which was threatened and persecuted. The discourse is built up from that situation, and offers fro m that point of view certain interpretations and expatiations”¹ (p. 82).

What about the first man Adam? The report does not mention his name. It does not speak of the first man who fell into sin, but of “the reasonable supposition that man for the first time fell into sin” (p. 85). It finds fault with speaking of history with respect to Gen. 3, prefers to speak of pre–history and applies again the idea of a special literary genre. It concludes this part by saying that we should ask no longer how the fall into sin took.place, but rather should ponder the problem that man from the start has neglected his duty toward God.

We might mention many more instances of this “relational” approach to the truth, for this report is very extensive. We choose only one more, that of the possibility of miracles.

1. This is an old question which often has been discussed – The Dutch Dr. K. Roubos assumes that the name “Goliath” indicated a special group of giants. Dr. C. J. Goslinga points to the possibility of a scribal error. 2. The same “explanation” was given by liberal exegetes is the beginning of our century. Dr. G. C. Aalders wrote about it:. This kind of opinion is diametrically opposed to our conception of Scripture.” (K. V. Genesis II, 1936, p. 94).

It is an amazing fact that the words quoted are written. not in a liberal Introduction of the New Testament, but in a report of a Reformed Synod – A handful of the many confusing constructions of the background of this passage can be found on p. 530 of the Commentary on the Gospel of Luke by Prof. N. Geldenhuys.

1. Dutch: “Wie een relationeel waarheiasbeg·n.p aanhangt, zal de mogelijkheid van een wonder principieel open moeten houden.” This is a specimen of the philosophical language of the report. Instead of. “Anyone who believes”–Anyone who adheres to a relational conception of truth.”