To address you tonight on behalf of the Reformed Fellowship gives me great pleasure, as I am among like-minded Christians who are keenly interested in a subject, which in my judgment, touches a cancer that is eating away at the heart and mission of the Church in today’s world.
I speak to you as a loyal son of the Christian Reformed Church. As my physical mother was God’s instrument in bringing me into the world and nurturing me, God used the Christian Reformed Church to nurture me in the faith and to lead me to Christ. In that sense she is my spiritual mother and as such, I love her. For more than 30 years I have been privileged to stand in her pulpits. I have served on many of her boards and committees and.even served for a time under her Boards of World and Domestic Missions.
Not only do I love my church; I thank God for all that she has been given. I embrace without reservation her distinctive traditions, practices and confessions to which she has clung for more than 125 years. I am convinced these are strengths and blessings which we should seek to maintain jealously. They represent a heritage we should enthusiastically pass on to our children and give to our world.
But a so n who loves his mother, who fears she has symptoms of cancer does not keep silent. He does not pretend it is not there, try to cover it up or merely wish it away. He will speak out. He does not desert her, but rather he does all he can to help her even though it may disturb her. He does it so that her health may be restored and her life preserved.
To do that with my church manifests a lot more love, and is far more constructive than to keep our mouths shut and do nothing, or to lull God’s people to sleep by deluding them into thinking that all is well in Zion.
I speak on “The Inspiration and Inerrancy of Scripture.” Although there is nothing new in much of what I have to say, it may be helpful to rehearse again truths we have been taught before. My plan is to speak on (1) the confession we have historically made concerning the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture; (2) the threat that is being made to this confession; and (3) the defense of this confession.
(1) The Confession
I begin then with the confession we have historically made concerning the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. Before I state what that confession is, I have a few preliminary remarks about it. As Reformed, we insist that our confession of the Scriptures is based on what these Scriptures say about themselves. In other words, our confession isn’t formulated by what certain scholars may suggest it ought to be. Nor do we accept the truth and accuracy of Scripture because of certain scientific evidence theologians present to us. Our starting point is in God, in His Word which is the only absolutely reliable criterian for truth and falsehood in this world. Ultimately that faith, that trust in the Word comes from the Holy Spirit who moves us to confess with our Lord, “Thy Word is truth.” He compels us to bow before the testimony of II Timothy 3:16, which says “all Scripture is God-breathed.” Faithful Bible students have rightly pointed out that God didn’t just breath into the Scripture some truth (as some modern theologians contend) but rather that the Greek construction indicates that God breathed out His truth. In the same way II Peter 2:21 affirms, “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
That means that God is the primary author of the Scriptures. The trustworthiness and authority of Scripture come from God. The God of this Bible does not lie! Nor does He nurture His people with a Word that contains some truth and some error, a Bible which is absolutely accurate when it speaks about redemption but may well have contradictions and errors in it when it speaks about unimportant things like creation, a man Adam who lived in a real garden of Eden, an actual speaking serpent, an ax head that floated and a prophet by the name of Jonah who lived inside a fish for several days.
In the Form of Subscription which every deacon, elder, minister and seminary professor in the Christian Reformed Church has signed we say that our Reformed Confessions “do fully agree with the Word of God.” We don’t say , as some are suggesting, that this is what the Church in the 16th and 17th centuries regarded as true. We confess that these standards of Unity today too fully agree with the Word of God. “Heaven and earth may pass away but the Word of God abides forever.” Therefore, we unequivocally confess “that we receive all of these books (of Scripture) as holy and canonical for the regulation and foundation and confirmation of our faith; believing without any doubt all things contained in them.” Of these writings we confess “against which nothing can be alleged” (Articles IV & V of the Belgic Confession).
Our Reformed fathers never played games with that. They didn’t hedge on that by making pseudo distinctions between the infallibility and inerrancy of Scriptures. They stood firmly in that tradition of Sola Scriptum. For them that meant that it was to the Scriptures alone that we owe radical obedience. The Scriptures alone are to be a norm for all of our life, including our theology and science. They never sowed seeds of doubt with such absurd statements as “to ask whether the stories of the Bible actually happened is to ask the wrong questions.” For those men and women of God all the Scripture was true and trustworthy. That’s why you find John Calvin busy writing, not just commentaries but also a harmony of the Gospel.
As a result, the church in which I was born and reared, from its pulpit and in its catechism classrooms taught us to confess very simply with the Compendium “By the inspiration of the Scriptures we mean that the Holy Spirit moved men to write the Scriptures and guided them in their work so they wrote the Word of God without error.”
Therefore, we were also taught in our Seminary as well as catechism classrooms that these Scriptures were literally true in everything they said. In fact, they were also to be interpreted literally unless the context or the rest of Scripture demanded something else. For generations we were united in making these affirmations concerning the Word of God:
1. The Scriptures are perspicuous. That means they are clear and understandable. The believing child of God may be helped by a pastor or theologian but he is not dependent on him or the church to understand what God says.
2. The Scriptures are verbally inspired, which means that the guidance of the Holy Spirit extended to the very words of Scripture. 3. The Scriptures are plenarily inspired, which means that this inspiration, this “God-breathedness” extends to every part of Scripture, to Genesis 1 to 11 as well as Matthew 28. 4. The Scriptures are organically inspired. As others have said before, this means that God used the total person as he was. In other words, God did not give us the Scriptures mechanically, by dictation, but rather He used human beings with their own peculiar traits and styles of language. Unfortunately, in our time some try to delude us with the notion that our Reformed fathers looked upon organic inspiration as a way of allowing for the creatureliness, the humanness of the Bible. That then is intended to mean that we should avoid an emphasis on the inerrancy and complete trustworthiness of the Bible in everything it says. To me, that is a distortion of the facts. The full truth is that our Christian Reformed Church historically was wholeheartedly committed to a confession that all of the Scriptures were God breathed in the sense that the Holy Spirit guided the human authors in all their writing so that they wrote the Word of God without error.
(2) The Threat to the Confession
That brings me to the second matter of which I wish to speak, the threat that is being made against this historic confession.
Anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear, anyone who pays attention to what is going on in the theological and church world of today, including our own denomination, knows that we are engaged in what some have called a “battle for the Bible.” Recently Gordon Clark, Professor of Philosophy at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee wrote a book about the Bible to which he gave the title God’s Hammer. In its foreword we are told that “every generation of Christians has had its own doctrinal battles to face.” In one way or another those battles centered around the doctrine of the Bible. That foreword goes on to remind us that Marcion already attacked the Bible. During the dark and middle ages the Roman Church tried to smother the Word of God with the words of men. In the 16th and 17th centuries there were the Council of Trent and the Enlightenment; in the 18th and 19th centuries there was the rise of rationalism, in which men again and again placed themselves, their minds and their reason above the Bible. The author of this book then says, “once again the battle is joined; this time with greater ferocity than ever before. It would appear that in this century the devil has honed both his intellectual and political weapons at unsurpassed sharpness. The simultaneous appearance of totalitarianism, neo-orthodoxy and a revived experientialism looms as the major threat to the church today.”
John Warwick Montgomery, editor of the book God’s Inerrant Word, tells us “opposition to unqualified Biblical authority has begun to erode evangelical testimony from within its ranks; and the importation of Barthian dichotomies has reinforced the natural tendency of pietistic fundamentalism to sacrifice the objective truth of Scripture on the altars of subjective experience.”
As a result, we are witnessing a battle going on all over the world in once sound, orthodox and Reformed circles. Even seminaries which were established as champions of the faith, seminaries which should be on the forefront in challenging the subtle attacks of the devil on the Word of God are contributing to that attack in the name of scholarship. A good example is the work of Jack Rogers, a professor at Fuller Seminary (perhaps the largest evangelical seminary in the U.S.A.) who in his book Biblical Authority seems intent on establishing a view of inspiration which allows for inaccuracies in the Bible. For instance, he writes that we must recognize the creatureliness of the Bible and bear in mind that the purpose of the Bible is to warn against sin and offer us salvation in Christ. He then proceeds to tell us that the Scriptures infallibly achieve this purpose but for the rest we should not concern ourselves with the accuracy and inerrancy of the Bible. To defend his thesis he even uses the writings of such stalwarts in the faith as Luther, Calvin, Bavinck and Kuyper. But a careful reading of each of these men will show that in many cases they are quoted out of context, or contrary statements which they make are ignored. John Murray’s book on Calvin’s view on the inspiration of the Bible illustrates how unreliable and unscholarly Rogers’ thesis really is.
Some years ago, a young student visited my office and presented me a textbook used in the college she attended. This college claims to be Reformed. The preface of this text used in her religion class began with a quote from Porgy and Bess: “There comes a time when maturing young people discover the things they are liable to read in the Bible ain’t necessarily so.” And if you think this matter of Biblical inspiration and inerrancy is not a threat to the church, then witness the devastating effects this new view of Scripture and its interpretation has had on our sister churches in the Netherlands.
To say that this is not a threat to us is to delude oneself and hide one’s head in the sand. Besides, I am convinced it is to delude the unsuspecting people of God. Back in 1978, Dr. Alexander DeJong authored a little pamphlet entitled “Christ}s Church, the Bible and Me.” In that pamphlet he challenged the writings of Dr. Harry Boer, for many years a missionary and professor in a seminary supported by our denomination in Nigeria. Dr. De Jong states that “the writings of Dr. Harry Boer in his book Above the Bible, the Bible and its Critics, and in the Reformed Journal underscore the sad fact that we in the Christian Reformed Church are deeply divided theologically on this crucial issue facing our denomination and the entire theological community.” He even gives a quote from Boer’s book in which he also admits that in the Christian Reformed. Church there are two broad positions on Scripture.
A study of our history shows how this developed. In 1958, a seminarian wrote an article in a student publication of Calvin Seminary which challenged our historic confession on the Scriptures. At that time our seminary president in a guarded way defended some of the views expressed by this student by writing rather loosely about the “periphery” of Scripture. One of our Old Testament professors took strong exception to that, presented the matter to Synod, at which time our seminary president at least publicly retreated from his untenable position. Our denomination then produced a rather careful document on the inspiration of the Scriptures. But the problem remained as was evident when Reports 36 and 44 on the Nature and Extent of Scripture’s Authority appeared. No one can deny that these reports said many true and worthwhile things. But even Dr. Boer admits that Report 44 is ambiguous on many points. Dr. De Jong shows how it allows some to use this report to “make room for expressed teachings which contravene our confessions; and contradict the express teachings of the Bible itself.”
Since then we have had what the church has referred to as the Verhey and Libolt cases. Both of these men have taught in our seminary. Both of them received a recommendation for candidacy from a majority of the faculty of Calvin Seminary. In fact, some of the faculty openly defended the theological position of the one who did not receive the endorsement of Synod.
Who in the church today knows what one of our Old Testament professors believes and teaches about the Genesis accounts? The Acts of Synod of 1981 records that a committee of Calvin’s Board of Trustess was informed by him that “because of the evidence amassed by archaeologists and cultural anthropologists, Old Testament scholars have been led to conclude that it is not possible to harmonize those findings with the church’s traditional interpretation of Genesis 1–11.” Since that time no one, according to my knowledge, has been able to learn precisely what he believes about those chapters of the Bible. The person mentioned earlier who was not approved as a candidate for the ministry by Synod, but who has been licensed to exhort in one of our Classes has written an article in The Banner of August 25, 1982 in which he declared that the Genesis accounts are not to be read as history. He even asserted “that games have been played with the word historical. The word has acquired such broad meaning that every professor at Calvin Seminary can affirm the ‘historical Adam,’ though it is not likely that all of them read the Genesis accounts as straightforward history. I will make a modest suggestion: in the interest of clarity, let’s drop the word historical altogether and simply say what we mean.” In view of his having taught in Calvin College and Seminary he must have some competency as well as knowledge of what he speaks. Besides, I am not aware of any professor who has ever repudiated the clear implication of the Banner article.
Since October of 1981, the consistory of the congregation I serve in Chino, California, has tried to learn from both the seminary professors and the Board of Trustees precisely what they do believe on a number of matters relating to their view of Scripture. Despite the Form of Subscription declaration that they would always readily and cheerfully give an explanation of their “sentiments” on the doctrine of Scripture, to date we have not received any straightforward answers to such questions.
The Synod of 1984 clearly displayed where we are in respect to our confession on the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. This was most decisively revealed in connection with the discussion and decisions on the issue of women in ecclesiastical office. Already before Synod, the Banner editor informed us that, of course Paul in his writings did not allow for it. But then he dismissed what Paul under the guidance of the Spirit had said, because of cultural considerations. As a delegate to that Synod I did not hear one clear, positive Biblical defense made to change the historic stand of the church. In fact, one of the most able theologians at that Synod stood up, opened his Bible and read to us what he saw as a clear Word of God in defense of the nearly universally accepted practice of the church for two thousand years. As he concluded he challenged the delegates to show him where and how his interpretation was incorrect. The amazing thing is no one gave him a Biblical answer. Rather, Synod was emotionally deluged with such inane arguments as, “what if your granddaughter some day informs you that God called her to the ministry?” “If you were serving where the rubber hits the road, you would think differently;” “The Spirit is leading us into new insights.”
In 1968, two of our brilliant young men wrote a little book entitled, Understanding the Bible. In it they wrote any number of excellent things which needed to be said. For instance, they pleaded for Biblical preaching that would call us to wholehearted service to the Lord in all areas of life. They said that God’s law requires radical commitment and total self-denial. To that I would respond with a hearty “Amen.” But I have wondered where that radical commitment, that total self-denial is when we come to the issue of women in ecclesiastical office? Where is our bowing before and accepting what God Himself says about His Word?
If you read that book carefully, you will understand why these authors who often spoke about being “reformational” have not helped to bring about a reformation in our churches. In fact, I am convinced they and others have contributed to what I regard as a deformation of our churches. For instance, they make this naive but dangerous statement, “to ask whether the stories of the Bible actually happened is to ask the wrong questions.”
All of this I see as a serious threat to our continuing to hold to a faithful confession concerning the inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures. That leads me to the third and final part of my address which has to do with our defense of this confession.
(3) The Defense of the Confession
This needs to be emphasized because there are those who naively contend that the Bible needs no defense. What is even worse, we have leaders who ought to know better, deluding our people with such nonsense. Now of course, our God doesn’t need me to defend Him or His Word. His Word abides forever! That stands, whether I give a speech or I do not give one.
But where do we get this notion that God’s people should not speak out against false teaching? Who ever authorized us to remain silent in the face of teaching which undermines the faith and confessions of the people of God?
By all means, God can do without us. He can evangelize the world without our missionaries. He can prepare men for the Gospel ministry without any seminary. But the facts are that God chose to use men, and He uses our missionaries and our institutions of learning to equip His children for service in His Kingdom.
Let me give you several reasons why we are called upon to contend for and also defend this confession of the church on the Scriptures.
The first is that God demands it. He calls us to radical obedience, to total self denial also in upholding and propagating His truth. The Scriptures demand that we “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), that we “prove the spirits whether they are of God,” that we “hold fast to that which we have,” that no man “take our crown.” No Christian who has been redeemed and loves the Lord can escape the word of Psalm 48 which says “Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider well her ramparts, view her citadels, that you may tell it to the generations following.”
Secondly, our integrity demands our defense of this confession about the Bible. Our office bearers, our ministers and professors signed a form of subscription. As we made our profession of faith and as we presented our children for baptism, we declared that we believe that the doctrines of this church are the true and complete doctrine of salvation. My conviction is that one of the biggest problems facing our church, one of the main reasons for our disunity may not be heterodoxy, but lack of honesty and integrity. As I mentioned before, since 1981, the consistory of my church has tried to learn what our professors believe and teach. They did so in good faith expecting to be treated as brothers in the Lord. But, for the most part, our professors have engaged in “stonewalling.” As time goes by, I am increasingly becoming convinced that those seminarians may well be right who informed me that my consistory will never get forthright answers to our questions. For, if the professors were to give those, they would have a few problems, because our Christian Reformed Church isn’t ready for that yet.
In any case, I believe, integrity in our commitment to God, to His word, to our church’s confession, and in our signing of the form of subscription demands that we defend this confession concerning the inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures.
Thirdly, the effective, fruitful mission of our church demands it. Some years ago, a theologian who made no claims to being conservative authored a book Why Conservative Churches are Growing. He defended the thesis that churches which were committed to definite confessions were those who experienced growth in outreach and evangelism. An analysis of our evangelistic efforts in this country reveals that we aren’t exactly turning the world upside down. In many of our domestic missions, despite the presence of several staff members, despite the millions of dollars spent, I fail to see the kind of growth we should expect from a faithful presentation and preaching of the Gospel. For four years I worked with American Indians in the ghetto ofSan Francisco. We grew from two members to twenty-two families in those years. Today, ten years later, that mission is dead. We have so much to give as a Christian Reformed Church. We have such a rich heritage. But instead of championing that which is distinctive to our Reformed world-and-life view we seem to have been caught up in an inferiority complex, of apologizing for, rather than excitingly proclaiming it.
Along with that development, we can also expect an erosion of our financial support of missions. As Dr. Alexander De Jong writes to Dr. Boer: “Why should I, and how can I in good conscience subsidize your mission?” Perhaps God’s people cannot force our ministers and missionaries to maintain our historic confession of Scripture, but they will not long support generously missions or ministries which do not wholeheartedly declare “Thus saith the Lord.”
Fourthly, the unity of our churches demands that we maintain and also defend this confession. I agree with Dr. A. DeJong when he states that on the Bible we are “a house deeply divided.” In recent years, much has been said and written about polarization in the church. Our most recent Synod was pressured into sending out a pastoral letter as a way to retain as well as regain our unity. But what can such a pastoral letter accomplish other than seek the peace of a cemetery? Who are those who are troubling Israel? To urge concerned members of our church to be silent and if nothing more reminds us of the ploy used in Jeremiah’s day.
We have always maintained that our unity is a unity of faith. If the majority of delegates at the Synod of 1985 were seriously and genuinely interested in the unity of the church, why did they not give the clear, compelling Biblical evidence for the church’s decisions on women in office, which hundreds of churches and many classes asked of the Synod? As long as the Scriptures are interpreted to conform to the sociology and anthropology of the contemporary feminist movement, and as long as we hear leaders piously repeating the refrain “The Spirit is leading into new insights,” without giving compelling Biblical evidence for those insights, there will be no furthering of our unity.
That is why I want to add one more thought on defending our confession of the Bible. That is that the future of our denomination as a vital, strong and vibrant church is at stake. I believe it was Francis Schaeffer who in a speech in Chicago said that this question of the Bible will be the “watershed” of the church and its future. But a greater authority on that point is the God in whom we profess to believe. In I Corinthians 14:8, Paul under the guidance of the Spirit, addressing the confusion in the church of his day, wrote, “If the trumpet does not give a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” Isaiah, the prophet, said to the church of his day, “to the law and to the testimony; if they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn” (Isaiah 8:20).
To the church of Philadelphia (Rev. 3), our ascended Lord gave the promise “Behold I have given you an open door.” Do you know why? He said “Because you have kept my Word.” To that church and to us today He says “Hold fast that which you have that no man take your crown.”
Richard J. Venema is a retired Christian Reformed pastor at 1660 So. Oaks Ave., Ontario, California. This material was presented at meetings at Edmonton and Calgary, Alberto, Canada on Nov. 14 & 15.