New Report on a Report

I recently obtained a copy of an imposing 25-page document entitled, “Report to the Six Midwest Reformed Classes on the 1972 Report 44 on the Nature and extent of Biblical Authority.” Why should anyone want to resurrect a document about which there was a good deal of discussion and often wearisome debate twelve years ago? The introduction refers to the importance of the subject, the “unrest” in the churches aroused by the report, and the need to “resolve the issues associated with” the report. Preliminary discussions led to the appointment of a committee “to critically evaluate and rewrite Report 44 in order to simplify the language and clarify the ambiguities that exist in the report, with a view to removing the unrest created by Report 44 and giving guidance to the churches in the area of understanding the authority of Scripture” (p. 3). Plainly acknowledged in this mandate are the complexities and “ambiguities” in the report that have “created unrest” and confusion in the churches instead of removing them.

The committee, instead of rewriting the report “in order to simplify the language and clarify the ambiguities that exist” in it, decided to set aside this major part of its mandate and instead produced a partisan defense of the document and explanations which attempt to “interpret” away its “ambiguities” admitted in the mandate. The committee explains its failure to do the requested rewriting and simplification of the 1972 report by citing differences of opinion among its members “as to what some sections meant” and by a footnote citing the fact that even the synods of 1973 and 1977 have refused requests to revise, rescind, reject, or give a popular version of it. Perhaps also the lack of the “critical evaluation,” which was ordered in the mandate, may be partly explained by the fact that some members of this “study committee” were producers of the report they were supposed to be criticizing. We are rarely good judges of our own work. At any rate the new 25 pages of defense can hardly be expected to clarify or settle anything with respect to this 12 year-old, 53–page testimony to the churches’ confusion about the Bible’s authority.

The Original Compromise Document

Why have the efforts of a denominational committee a dozen years ago to help the churches understand and respond to the authority of the Bible produced the continuing confusion and unrest of which this new document gives fresh evidence? Report 44 and later discussions of it, including this new one, often described the subject as extremely complex.

It became evident in the discussions o f 1972, and even more evident in another decade of developments that deficiencies of “Report 44,” the fact that it has created as much or more confusion and unrest than it settled, are not the result of the complexity of the problems, or of any lack of effort or ability on the part of the committee that produced it. They resulted from the fact that the committee was attempting to do an impossible thing. It was trying to hold and harmonize two inherently contradictory views of the Bible’s authority.

The two opposing views were already represented in the occasions for the appointment of the committee. On one hand the church of Fruitland, Ontario, repeatedly overturned the Christian Reformed synods to take corrective measures against the Liberal views of the Bible, (of creation, the fall, and the life of Christ) being held in the sister churches in the Netherlands and also bringing unrest among us. On the other hand, we were also addressed by the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. The Reformed Ecumenical Synod in 1958 had issued a strong report on the Bible’s inspiration, which the Dutch churches criticized as failing to deal with modern problems. They therefore wanted us to study “the connection between the content and purpose ofScripture as the saving revelation of God in Jesus Christ and the consequent and deductible authority of Scripture.” The committee was thus under pressure from opposite sides, to oppose and to accept the qualifications of the Bible’s authority proposed in the Netherlands. Was the Bible’s authority simply that of God’s Word, or must that authority be qualified? Instead of choosing between these two views, which were both represented also in the committee, the committee, as was once frankly admitted in some discussions with it, set out to bring these two views together. It increasingly tried to argue (first in the earlier “Report 36” and then even more vigorously in the revision, Number 44) that there was no difference between these two, but that they were two sides of the same truth.

These two views are not the same, but they contradict each other. (L. De Koster once wrote that they can no more be combined than oil and water.) The first holds that the Bible be believed and obeyed because it is God’s Word, regardless of what it says. The second holds that its authority over us depends not just on Who says it, but on “its content” or what it says! Although what it says is, of course, important, not that but its Author determines its authority. It makes no sense to say first that we must believe and obey it because it is God’s Word and then to say that we must determine from our study of its contents whether and to what extent we should believe and obey it. Yet that is what the report tries to do. The Authority of the Bible depends on the Author who is speaking, not on our analysis of what was said. The fatal fault of this report is that in discussing the Bible’s authority it permitted attention to be diverted from God the author, to misleading and futile argument about what authority could be conjectured from what was said.

The Bible’s Authority is that of its Author

The Bible itself states clearly and stresses the first point of view, but leaves no room at all for the second. Consider, for example, Jesus’ encounter with and praise of the Roman centurion as an example to His followers of unquestioning recognition of and faith in His authority (Matt. 8:5–13). The basic principle of military authority, that the word of the officer will be carried out without delay or question, is the model for all who will have a place in the Lord’s kingdom. Suppose that a new army recruit is ordered by his officer to pick up the rubbish on the parade ground. If he would reply, “Aye, aye sir, but I will have to study your order in the light of its contents and purpose relating to our national defense to determine in what way or to what extent I am to carry it out,” he would not be congratulated for his profound insight into the “nature and extent” of the officer’s authority. He would likely find himself in the guardhouse for insubordination. The Bible plainly teaches us that its authority is determined exclusively by Who is speaking and is not at all dependent on what He says (James 2:10, 11). The, “Yes, but you said . . .” back talk shows disobedience not faith. While the Bible recognizes differences of importance in various commandments (Matt. 5:19), it leaves no room at all for differences of authority between any of the things which God has said (v.l8). Not a “jot or tittle” of them may be dismissed as lacking authority. This all important point in the Bible’s teaching about its authority drops out of sight when Report 44 tries to accommodate the “second” view.

It is Not Only Saving

The mischievous result of letting the Bible’s authority be viewed as dependent on its “content and purpose” becomes more obvious when that is further defined as the “saving revelation of God in Christ Jesus.” If that means anything at all, it means that whatever in the Bible is not “saving” therefore lacks authority. The committee has labored long and often to avoid that consequence by arguing that it is all saving: That faces the committee with the impossible task of showing how the Bible’s teachings about the judgement and eternal punishment can be exclusively “saving.” Although the Bible’s message is for salvation, it is not a bit less authoritative in condemning to hell than it is in saving. It is, as the Apostle Paul said (2 Cor. 2:16) “to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.” Why should we try to defend the unbiblical, false notion that its authority is only “saving”?

An Open-Ended Fence

Some of the criticisms that have been made of Report 44 have been overstatements. It does not, as has been alleged, deny that the Bible is the Word of God. It says a number of good things, that the Bible must not be made subject to men’s scientific opinions and that we must not deny its history, for example. The body of the report contains a number of useful and valuable discussions. The trouble with it is that it is a compromise. As a compromise it contains as the Iowa discussions acknowledged, “ambiguities.” It tries to hold to contradictory viewpoints. It was supposed to help the churches understand and hold the Bible’s teaching about its authority. Because it tried to accommodate contradictory viewpoints, it has added to their confusion, instead of remedied it. The new 25 pages of further “explanation” make that even more obvious than it was. One might say that Report 44 was supposed to be a “fence” to keep out of the church heresies that threaten its faith and life. Despite the fact that some parts of it are well-built, they do little good because the document, accommodating also the “second” point of view, leaves openings at its beginnings and its end for the very things it was supposed to keep out of the churches. This “fence” is open at both ends.

The Report’s Failure in the Churches’ Life

The experiences of the churches in the last dozen years have been amply demonstrating the failure, or worse than failure, of this report . It has been used to protect the kind of errors it was supposed to exclude. That was evident immediately after it was adopted. The same synod which adopted it, with a reference to it, dismissed the objections of Holland’s Central Avenue Church against Dr. Willis De Boer’s treatment of Genesis 1–11. Later we had to object to Dr. Allen Verhey’s questioning and denying the reality of the serpent in Genesis 3 and of the earthquake in Matthew 28. We cited these as violations of Report 44’s warning “against the use of any method of biblical interpretation which excludes or calls into question . . . the event-character . . . of biblical history, thus compromising the full authority of Scripture as the Word of God” (Acts 1972, p. 69). Mrs. L. Vanden Heuvel in our September 1981 Outlook (pp .8–10) pointed out that Dr. Verhey and his defenders appealed to the same part of the same report. Her remarks are appropriate. “Notice that all Synod is requiring of Biblical interpreters (ministers, professors, teachers) is that they maintain the ‘event character’ and ‘revelational meaning’ of biblical history. There is nothing stated about the descriptions or reporting of these events. Thus the door is left wide open for the rejection of these details.”

“It is not hard to see why Report 44 covered Dr. Verhey. He does not reject the event of the fall and resurrection. He just calls into serious question the descriptive details. If all the CRC is going to demand of its leaders is a commitment to the events of Scripture, leaving all the details open for grabs, we are bound for disaster and certainly we are already experiencing it.” (In this connection I pointed out in a footnote that Dr. Verhey subjected not merely details, but even the resurrection to his critical method. (“While this does not deny the resurrection it does make, not only incidental details, but the event itself historically debatable.”)

The Historical Critical Method

What is really involved in this matter is whether or not we tolerate the use of the “historical critical method” of interpreting the Bible. Accepting that method has been a primary factor in destroying the faith of many Christian churches throughout the world in the last 200 years. (Its devastating history has been well and clearly traced in the little book published by Concordja, The End of the Historical Critical Method, by Gerhard Maier.) Our churches rejected it when they fired its proponent, Dr. Ralph Janssen from our seminary in 1922. Now, under Report 44, we are, in fact, tolerating it with a few words of caution against carrying it “too far.” What is stirring up endless trouble among us is that nobody has clearly defined what is supposed to be “too far.” The real trouble with the method, which in fact arose and arises out of an unbelieving approach to the Bible, is not that it is carried “too far,” but that it comes from and proceeds in an exactly wrong direction. An unbelieving approach can never build Christian faith.

Church Destruction by Historical Criticism

The destructive effects of using the historical critical method on the Bible are being clearly demonstrated by further developments in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands which introduced among us the “second” view of the Bible’s authority.

Those churches in 1926 rejected the “critical” approach to the Bible when they deposed Geelkerken for questioning the Genesis story. In 1967 they officially reversed that position. Now they have gone much further in discarding the Bible’s authority. In their document “God Met Ons” the door is wide open to Liberal denials of the Bible. Their loss of Christian morals is equally evident in their welcome to practicing homosexuals and extra–marital sex relations. The deterioration has become so plain that even our badly divided churches have felt compelled to break off most of our traditional relations with them.

Stop Compromising the Bible’s Authority

The meaning of all of this for us is obvious. Our churches’ faith in the Bible as God’s Word is being rapidly eroded just as that has been destroyed in many others, notably the old mother churches in the Netherlands. Report 44 was supposed to help us take a stand against this movement and maintain and promote the Biblical faith. It has failed in that purpose, and it has, in practice even been used as a tool to help destroy that faith. Why has it turned out to be such a failure? Instead of opposing the attacks on the Bible’s authority, it has sought to achieve a satisfactory compromise with them. It deliberately avoided identifying the actual false views and naming names of those who were advancing them. It argued that by speaking only in generalities it could be briefer and more effective. The churches in our time are facing a life-and-death battle against those who are attacking the Word of God. Report 44 which was supposed to help us, deliberately tried to avoid aiming at particular targets or even embarrassing individuals who hold opposing views. No battle can ever be won by that kind of tactic. Although the Bible teaches us to be kind, it also forbids us to compromise with error or evil. In its treatment of its authority as God’s Word it never leaves room for us to compromise provided the erring “doesn‘t go too far.” The warning words with which the Scriptures come to an end must resound in our hearts and determine our behavior and course. “I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book: and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book” (Rev. 22:18, 19).

A Helpful Explanation

Is this subject of the Bible’s authority so complicated that a 12 year-old 53-page document had to increase confusion, and a new 25-page explanation can’t help but make it worse? The subject isn’t that complicated. The Orthodox Presbyterian Churches fourteen years ago faced the same question our churches did. They tried to say without any compromise what the Bible said. They said it simply and clearly in less than one page. At their 1970 General Assembly they said:

(1) The Inspiration of Scripture. In the production of Scripture God employed men, and he did so without violence to the full range and integrity of their personalities. The mode of biblical inspiration places the church before a deep mystery which gives rise to continuing reflection upon the way in which the human writers function. The validity of these observations is beyond question. Indeed, it is just this careful attention to the writing of the various authors in all their respective individuality and particularity which serves to disclose in all the richness of its diversity the organic character of the unity of biblical revelation. Nevertheless, all such reflection must remain within and be controlled by the recognition that in the most proper sense of the word God is the final and sole author of the text of Scripture. It is striking that when Scripture itself explicitly conjoins the activity of God and men in the production of Scripture, it does so for the express purpose of subordinating the function of the human-writers that it may thereby magnify the divine origin and character of what is written. In the words of the Report, “The real author of the Bible is the Holy Spirit, who employed the prophets and apostles as his organs, and since the action of the Holy Spirit in inspiration was pervasive, the Bible is wholly divine in all its parts and in all its elements, in its forms of expression as well as in the contents of its teaching. In short, the Bible is the absolutely reliable and authoritative Word of the Most High God” (Acts, 1958, p. 49).

(2) The Authority ofScripture. Holy Scripture ought at all times to be obeyed without reservation. At the same time, the church’s obedient response is not the measure of biblical authority. It is not the case that Scripture is authoritative only insofar as its message is obeyed, or only by virtue of the fact that it functions authoritatively. It must always be recognized that the ongoing activity of the Holy Spirit in the church is not “the authority-imparting factor” (p. 46). It does not make Scripture authoritative. Rather this witnessing activity compels a recognition of the authority antecedently inherent in the text of Scripture because God is its author. Until that day when her Lord returns, the Church will continue to be faced with perplexing questions in her concern to be obedient to the authority of Scripture. But what will remain certain and must ever serve as an immovable point of reference in this concern is the conviction that Scripture possesses authority because God is its author so that the authority of the text is nothing less than the absolute and irrefragable authority of the Most High God.

Any notion of the authority of Scripture in disjunction from its content and purpose is a meaningless abstraction. Indeed, the authority of Scripture is the authority of redemptive revelation; its central purpose is to lead sinners to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and to bring them into willing subjection to his Lordship. Nevertheless, that authority ultimately derives from and is grounded in not the message of Scripture but God its author. Together with the report we affirm in the word of the Westminster Confession of Faith: ”The authority of the Holy Scriptures, 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” (I,iv).

Respectfully submitted,

George W. Knight, III 

Norman Shepherd

Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Chairman)

On motion the report was adopted for transmission to the other members of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod.