A Question of Authority

This post comes out of something that was said in my Introduction to Pastoral and Theological Studies course about a week and a half ago, that I've been kicking around in my head. We were studying the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and Dr. Anderson made the point that scripture is, by necessity, self-authenticating. What this means is that Scripture is true not because the church says it is, or even because all sorts of historical evidence confirms it, but simply because it IS true. Now, I understand why this is true and must be true, but initially I didn't really feel comfortable with it. It seems far too close to that often used parody argument of why Christians believe in God. You know:

"Why do you believe in Christianity?"
"Because the Bible says it's true."
"How do you know the Bible is true?"
"Because the Bible says it's true."

You can see Stephen Colbert parody this kind of circular reasoning in this classic clip from The Daily Show. So what's the difference? Why isn't the idea of the Bible being self-authenticating a logical fallacy? Well, lets back up a second. You may wonder what I mean when I say the Bible is self-authenticating, so lets start there.

What does it mean to say the Bible is self-authenticating?
In Christianity, the Bible is to be our highest authority. It is the word of God, and there is no authority greater than God, so his Word to us must be the highest authority in our lives. Because of this, there is nothing else on this earth which can authenticate the Bible. If something else could endorse the scriptures as true, it would, by very definition, be a higher authority. So, if the Bible is truly the word of God, it is self-authenticating. It doesn't rely on the church fro it's authenticity and authority (as the Roman Catholic Church believes), it doesn't rely on historical evidence, it doesn't rely on logical proofs. Those things may be good, but they don't grant the bible its authority, they can't. The bible is true simply because it is the Word of God, and it is true.

Ok, so how is that not circular reasoning?
The difference here is subtle. What we're stating is not that "The Bible is true because it says it's true." What we're saying is that the Bible is true because it IS true, and more than that, because it is THE truth. The authority of the Bible comes from the fact that the Bible is the Word of God, and we recognize the voice of our creator. The Bible itself attests to this. As Jesus says in John 10:1-5, "The follow him, for they know his voice." In verse 14 he says "I know my own and my own know me." 1 John 4:6 says "We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." ([aside]Note, I'm not citing the Bible to prove the Bible, I'm showing that the Bible internally supports the idea of itself being self-authenticating[/aside]) Is this illogical? Well, no. Consider the laws of logic. Most of us are not going to argue that the laws of logic are not true. For example, the law of non-contradiction, which states that two mutually exclusive propositions cannot be true at the same time. That's true, we know that instinctively. However, you can't prove the law of non-contradiction, because any kind of logical proof would require the very laws of logic that you are proving. We recognize the laws of logic because they are true, not because we can prove them. In the same way, we recognize the truth of the Bible because it is true.

Ok, so if that's true, why doesn't everybody acknowledge the truth of the Bible?
Well, the Bible has a pretty simple answer to that. Everybody does, in fact, know that the Bible is true. However, we've all rejected that truth because of our fallen nature. Romans 1:21 tells us that all men know the truth of God, but we reject him and our hearts are darkened, then later says "they exchanged the truth about God for a lie." Romans 8:7 says that "the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot." In the passage I quoted from 1 John above, John says that "whoever is not from God does not listen to us." Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:18 that "the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." The truth is the truth, regardless of whether or not people deny it. We've all rejected the truth, and it's only by the work of the Holy Spirit that some are able to recognize the Bible's authority.

Right, so why does this matter?
It all has to do with what our authority is. If the Bible is the highest authority and self-authenticating, one of the things that means is that it doesn't need us to defend it. In Amos 3, he says of God's Word that "The lion has roared; who will not fear?"and as Spurgeon says, "Scripture is like a lion. Who ever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself." The Bible itself attests to its own truth. Now, don't get me wrong, there's definitely a place for apologetics and applying logic and science to the Bible. However, it's not the ultimate authority which gives authenticates the Bible. If the Bible is about a God who is beyond our comprehension, then we should expect that some things might not fit with our logic (the Trinity, for instance). If the Bible is about a God who is supernatural, then we shouldn't expect everything in it to be explainable by natural science. This isn't a problem, because the Bible is our highest authority. My favorite book on apologetics is Tim Keller's The Reason For God, and one of the reasons is because he goes over all these different evidences from logic and whatnot, but in the middle of it he says this: "I have not tried to prove the existence of God to you. My goal has been to show you that you already know God exists." It's the same principle. The fact that I don't have to defend the Bible is a tremendous comfort, for a couple reasons. First of all, it means that the Bible's authority doesn't rest on my ability to completely understand it. If I can't work out exactly how the Trinity works, I don't have to throw out the Bible because I can't logically explain it. Second, my ability to witness to other people doesn't rely on my ability to put forward an ironclad defense of the Bible. Ultimately it's the work of the Holy Spirit that will reveals the truth of the Bible to others, not my ability to debate and reason.

Humility, Whether I Like It Or Not

So, I had decided to write a blog post on humility. I’d been mulling it over and thinking about some various things to write, and decided I had something to say on the subject. Then I got to my Hebrew class this afternoon. Let me tell you, I’m not sure I’ve had many more humbling experiences in my life than this first foray into Hebrew.

Look, I’m not very good at languages in the first place. I took my 2 years of German in high school and got out. Now, I'm excited about the idea of learning Hebrew. I think it'll be super-cool once I'm done, and I know it's important to preaching. The learning part though, that I'm not excited about. Have you ever seen the Hebrew alphabet? They all look the same. Seriously, take a look at these letters:

Those are all different letters. Crazy, right? That's not even accounting for the vowels or pronunciation. It's hard enough to just learn how to differentiate letters, much less learn full words. So Hebrew is going to be humbling for me, and that's a good thing.

I find that very often these days, as I look forward to learning how to be a better preacher, I have to reign in my pride. I slip into "I want to preach well so that others praise me" instead of "I want to preach well to be an instrument of God." It's something I wrestled with sometimes in preparing talks for youth group, unconsciously slipping into "Will people like this? Is this sufficiently clever and witty?" mode. Not to say that there's no place for wit in a talk or sermon, it just can't be the end in itself. There's a fine line to be walked, and it's especially dangerous in an environment where I'm learning so much. It's going to be easy to slip into thinking all this knowledge makes me better than others, makes me important. "Knowledge puffs up", and all that.

So Hebrew is good for me, keeps me humble. Another thing that keeps me humble is the reading we've been doing for my preaching class, which continual reminds, in no uncertain terms, that we are weak. Left to his own devices, even the greatest preacher in the world can't bring a single soul to Christ. It doesn't matter how much Greek and Hebrew you know. It doesn't matter how dynamic a speaker you are. If the Holy Spirit doesn't move people, if you aren't combining preaching with an urgent prayer for the Spirit to move through your words, then it's all for nothing. Here are a few great quotes on the matter.

"Ultimately, preaching accomplishes its spiritual purposes not because of the skills or the wisdom of a preacher, but because of the power of the Scripture proclaimed...The human efforts of the greatest preachers are still too weak and sin-tainted to be responsible for others' eternal destinies." - Brian Chapell

"A man's 'natural' gifts cannot add up to a probability that he should choose the ministry. God has chosen the weak and foolish, not the mighty and wise, so that it might be quite clear that he alone is the savior." - Edmund Clowney

"Apart from the quickening power of the Holy Spirit in the act of proclamation, even the best and most essential technique falls miserably short of transforming those to whom we preach." - Arturo Azurdia

"The best man here, if he knows what he is, knows that he is out of his depth in his sacred calling." - Charles Spurgeon

Adding on to that, I recently finished a fantastic book about the Reformation (it's call The Unquenchable Flame, and I highly recommend it). I started reading the assigned chapters, then just couldn't put it down. One of the things that is striking about the Reformation is that all these great men you associate with it: Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, Knox, etc. They were all great theologians, great preachers and expositors of the Word. They were galvanizing figures, and yet it wasn't really them that fueled the Reformation. No, the fuel for the Reformation was the Word of God, and getting it into the hands of people. Men like Erasmus, whose translation of the New Testament which differed from Rome's Latin Vulgate would be the basis for much of Luther and Zwingli's theology, and Tyndale, who was dedicated to translating an English bible and getting itin the hands of the people, were as influential, if not moreso, than any of those preachers. The Reformation was not a human-driven movement, and in fact the humans often threatened to clog it up royally. The Reformation was unstoppable because once people started getting their hands on the Word of God, Rome's days as the dominant power were numbered. Luther himself said "I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing...the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything."

So pray for me. Pray for humility. Pray that I would constantly be reminded of these things that I'm writing here. Not just in preaching or my studies, but in everything. Ultimately, living by the Word through the Spirit is the only thing that's going to produce anything worthwhile in my life. I've tried to do things on my own enough to know that I'm really a great big screwup. I can't seem to remember that most days, but it's still true. God's going to do the work, he just needs me to get out of the way.