Revelation and the Bible (Part I)

(Part II will appear in the next issue)

No theme is more worthy than the Word, whether the Incarnate Word or the Inspired Word. And surely renewed interest in special revelation is timely and necessary for our befuddled world of thought and action. We are all aware that in this century speculative idealism has passed its prime, naturalism has gained ascendancy, and Communism incorporates into modern history a world-life view resolutely anti-supernatural. It is indeed the good providence of God that we are once again permitted, even forced to, the biblical heritage of Western culture.

Emil Brunner has said, and I think rightly, that “the fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity.” When we interpret such expressions, we are all concerned to avoid both understatements and overstatements of the significance of the Bible. How shall we properly relate the Bible to divine revelation? This question continues to be a fundamental issue in modern theology. Karl Barth, for example, in The Doctrine of the Word of God, speaks of doing the Bible “a poor honor” by identifying revelation with the Book. On the other hand, evangelical Protestantism believes that despite the new emphasis on the Bible as “witness” to special revelation neither Barth nor Brunner nor neo-orthodox theologians generally honor Scripture as they ought. Meantime evangelicals are charged with exaggerating the role of the Bible—with making it a “paper Pope,” with worshipping it, with allowing it to crowd out the authority of God, the authority of Jesus Christ. What shall we think and say of these matters?

We dare allow only one final authority in the Christian life. We dare acknowledge the authority of no other god than the living God who made heaven and earth and man in his image. We dare acknowledge only the authority of the living God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, the authority of the living God who regenerates and reigns in the life of believers by the Holy Spirit (“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” 1 Cor. 12:3, RSV). Must we not also acknowledge the living God, incarnate in Jesus Christ, renewing believers by the Holy Spirit, as the authoritative source of sacred Scripture, the divine rule of faith and practice (All scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable … that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, 2 Tim. 3:16)? To affirm the authority of Scripture neither undermines nor threatens the living God as final authority in the believer’s life; but rather, like the recognition that the Spirit regenerates and rules, and that Jesus of Nazareth is Saviour and Lord, it guarantees the removal of illegitimate aspirants or pretenders to his authority.

Thrust Of Neo-Orthodoxy

To exhibit the divergent views I shall present the basic issue from two sides, noting first, that the neo-orthodox rival view fails to do justice to the status of the Bible as revelation; and second, that the evangelical view honors the revelation-status of the Bible.

The main premises of the neo-orthodox view of the Bible, as I see them, are (1) the Bible is the indispensable witness to special redemptive revelation; (2) no identity exists between the Bible, in its written form of words and sentences, and special revelation; (3) the Bible is the instrumental frame within which God personally encounters man and actualizes revelation in the form of dynamic response.

Instability Of Liberalism

This view brought welcome relief to the problems that harassed Protestant liberalism for half a century. Remember that Wellhausen’s post-evolutionary criticism had narrowed the traditional confidence in the infallibility of Scripture by excluding matters of science and history. The Bible was then considered reliable only in matters of faith and practice. Next, William Newton Clarke’s The Use of the Scriptures in Theology (1905) yielded biblical theology and ethics to the critics as well as biblical science and history, but reserved “Christian theology,” or the teaching of Jesus Christ, as reliable. British scholars took a further step. Since science and history were involved in Jesus’ endorsement of creation, the patriarchs, Moses and the Law, English critics more and more accepted only the theological and moral teaching of Jesus. Contemporaries swiftly erased even this remainder, asserting Jesus’ theological fallibility. Actual belief in Satan and demons was intolerable to the critical mind, and must therefore invalidate his theological integrity, while the feigned belief in them (as a concession to the times) would invalidate his moral integrity. Had not Jesus represented his whole ministry as the conquest of Satan and invoked his exorcism of demons to prove his supernatural mission? The critics could only infer his limited knowledge even of theological and moral truths. The Chicago school of “empirical theologians” argued that respect for the scientific method in theology disallows in toto any defense of Jesus’ absoluteness and infallibility. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s The Modern Use of the Bible (1924) championed only “abidingly valid” experiences in Jesus’ life that could be normatively relived by us. Gerald Birney Smith took the final plunge in Current Christian Thinking (1928): We are to gain inspiration from Jesus, but it is our own experience that determines doctrine and a valid outlook on life.

This history of concession and retreat had one pervading theme, namely, that the Bible differs from other so-called sacred books only in degree; it contains the highest religious and ethical insights gleaned from universal divine revelation. Liberalism moved from the fallibility of the Bible to the fallibility of the God-man to the fallibility of the indwelling Spirit to the fallibility of everything except, perhaps, of contemporary criticism! The resulting confusion and chaos were therefore a propitious time for a view which recognized that the perplexing problem of religious knowledge could not be solved in so narrow, so artificial a framework. If that new view, moreover, could dissolve the need for identifying the Bible in part or whole as the Word of God—thus rising above the fatiguing and exasperating game of epistemological “blind man’s bluff”—it could attract the liberal theologian and critic even while it disputed him.

Neo-Orthodoxy’S New Look

Neo-orthodoxy sets out with a new look at controlling ideas of the nature and activity of God. It rejects liberalism’s metaphysics of extreme divine immanence and accepts instead a reactionary doctrine of extreme divine transcendence. Furthermore, neo-orthodoxy rejects the post-Hegelian epistemology of extreme monistic realism that virtually identifies God’s knowledge with man’s knowledge. But its doctrine of subjectivity perpetuates the error of epistemological dualism, bridging the tension between eternity and time not conceptually but dialectically and/or existentially in dynamic faith-response. Gordon H. Clark traces this development of modern counter-thrust to the excesses of Hegelian rationalism in his book Thales to Dewey. He discloses the generous philosophical rather than biblical indebtedness of recent theories of God and revelation. One could say of the contemporary theology of revelation that its vocabulary is the vocabulary of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but its plot is the plot of Kant and Kierkegaard, of Ebner and Buber.

Our immediate concern, however, is the role of the Bible in the new theology of the Word of God. Assuredly, the current interest in special revelation has stimulated fresh exploration of the Bible. As opposed to the old liberalism, neo-orthodoxy no longer gears Scripture to a naturalistic, evolutionary development of religious experience, nor demeans the Bible as a human interpretation of a universal divine activity. Instead, the Book’s theological message is an authentic witness to God’s unique self-disclosure in Jesus Christ.

Evading The Biblical Witness

Precisely this profession of neo-orthodoxy, however, to honor the Bible as a witness to special divine revelation, is an Achilles’ heel. For the witness of the Bible does not conform to the dialectical and non-rational exposition of revelation affirmed by the contemporary theology of the Word of God. Because of this divergence, neo-orthodoxy ultimately must choose one of two alternatives: either the new theology must abandon its merely formal appeal to the Scriptures as witness to special divine revelation, or neo-orthodoxy must dissolve its antithetical exposition of revelation and reason.

If the inspiration and revelation-status of the Scriptures as depicted by neo-orthodox writers is set alongside the witness of the biblical writers, their conflict becomes apparent at once. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, translator of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, has long observed that whereas Barth emphasizes the “inspiringness” of Scripture, that is, its dynamic potency in religious experience, the Bible itself moves beyond this claim to assert the very “inspiredness” of the writings. The decisive reference here, of course, is 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is inspired by God.…” This passage identifies Scripture itself as “God-breathed”; the writings themselves, as an end-product, are a unique product of divine activity. The divergence of crisis theology from the biblical witness is even more apparent in neo-orthodoxy’s claim that divine revelation does not assume the form of concepts and words. This assertion runs so directly counter to the specific claim of the biblical writers that Emil Brunner, uneasy in the presence of the repetitious Old Testament formula “Thus saith the Lord …,” concessively called this prophetic ascription of words and statements to Deity “an Old Testament level of revelation” (Revelation and Reason, p. 122, n. 9).

One of Brunner’s students, Paul King Jewett, has long since pointed out that to admit such propositions as revelation, whether low or high, breaks down the assumption that revelation is conceptually and verbally inexpressible, and unwittingly surrenders the thesis that divine revelation must take a form that impinges dialectically upon the mind of man. Not alone do the Old Testament prophets provide a biblical basis for identifying the inspired spoken and written word with the very Word of God; this selfsame identification is made by the New Testament apostles as well. Paul wrote that the Thessalonian converts “received the word of God which you heard from us … not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13, RSV). Peter declared that “no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21, RSV). The writer to the Hebrews repeatedly ascribes to God what the prophets had spoken. One senses their uniform readiness to regard the sacred teaching as sharing the authority of divine revelation.

Certainly both the evangelists and apostles distinguish Jesus of Nazareth as the supreme and final revelation of God. Matthew records Peter’s confession that he truly is the Christ, the Son of the living God (16:16). John writes that “no one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (1:18, RSV). Paul finds the climax of the gospel in redemption personally secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:1–4). But the New Testament writers never make this staggering fact of God’s personal relevation in the flesh by Jesus Christ the occasion for depriving the inspired utterances of the sacred writers of a direct identity with divine revelation. In thus honoring the prophetic word as the veritable Word of God (cf. Paul’s characterization of the Old Testament as “the oracles of God” in Romans 3:2), the disciples and apostles had the sacred example of their Master and Lord; he spoke of himself indeed as the one “the Father consecrated and sent into the world,” yet he spoke at the same time of those “to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken)” (John 10:35).

Besides this validation of the divine authority of Scripture, Jesus’ followers heard him ascribe absolute significance to his own words and commands uttered in their hearing. The dialectical theory, if true, would preclude any direct identification with divine revelation of the spoken words of Jesus, no less than of prophets and apostles. In line with its presuppositions neo-orthodoxy distinguishes constantly between the Word of God as revelation and the “pointers” to revelation or assertedly fallible human ideas and words. But this distinction will not bear the scrutiny of Jesus’ teaching. For Jesus held men responsible not only for hearing his “word” (John 5:24), but for Moses’ “writings” and his own “words” (5:47). Indeed, he specifically identifies his own words and commands with the Father’s word: “The words that I say unto you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.… He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.… If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.… If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 14:10, 24; 15:7, 10, RSV).

Integrity Of Theology

All this may seem like a needless revival of marginal concerns in circles throbbing to modernist traditions. But the very integrity of theology is at stake. As a theology that professes to honor the biblical witness to revelation, neo-orthodoxy must face the fact that it does not really derive its doctrine of revelation from the witness of Scripture; it does not have an authentically biblical concern for the fundamentals of that doctrine.

The new theology may disparage identification of the Bible in whole or in part with revelation as a kind of bibliolatry, as dishonoring to the idea of revelation, or as injurious to faith. Yet several facts remain clear. The new theology cannot find support for its anxieties over the evil implications of the traditional view in the biblical witness itself. The Bible nowhere protests nor cautions against identifying Scripture with revelation, but rather approves and supports this turn. Whoever evades these verities in constructing a doctrine of revelation, however vocal his plea for biblical theology, shows greater concern to baptize biblical criticism with an orthodox justification than to confirm the central features of the scriptural view.

The neo-orthodox rejection of the Bible as revelation rests actually on rationalism rather than on reverence. To expel Scripture from the orbit of revelation itself to the sphere of witness, and subsequently to ignore that witness in forging a doctrine of revelation, reveals speculative rather than scriptural and spiritual motives. The devout considerations by which neo-orthodoxy ventures to support its maneuver are unpersuasive. A radical skepticism in metaphysics, a relational theology still tainted with the philosophical influence of Kant and Schleiermacher, determine its elaboration of divine revelation.

Editor Carl F. H. Henry’s address was delivered at Union Theological Seminary in New York City recently under auspices of the Student Forum Committee. An evangelical symposium on the same theme will be published later this year by Baker Book House. Dr. Henry is serving as general editor of the project, which will include chapters by distinguished scholars chosen from the major denominations in many lands.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.