A Means of Grace: The Word of God and ‘Propositional Truth’

For some decades now it has been a vogue to disparage the confession that the Scriptures are the very Word of God with the claim that since the Bible is made up of “propositional truth” it cannot constitute the living, dynamic, existential, and therefore real Word of God—which is, it may be added when this claim is made, exclusively Jesus Christ himself. The claim has a certain plausibility, the line of reasoning being apparently something like the following: the Bible is full of statements; there is something fixed about a statement; much that is fixed is inert and dead; but the real Word of God is “living and active.” The claim has also notable conveniences. No particular assertion need be faith fully adhered to as a word of God. It is also fraught with fearful liabilities. For instance, even in regard to Jesus Christ, what single definite promise can he be said with assurance ever to have made? Or, for that matter, how can we be sure that even he deserves to be called the Word of God? It is a cardinal truth that the Scriptures cannot be known apart from Christ. But it is just as true that Christ cannot be known apart from the Scriptures. Fantastically presumptive is the readiness of the past one hundred years and more to delineate Christ, both popularly and academically, right out of the blue of fancy and prejudice.

The claim is also sophistical, and it is its sophistry that I would like to expose.

Actually, better words than “propositional” can be used in this connection. By common usage, that is “propositional” which can be entertained for assent or denial, such as a list of resolutions for debate. But though interminable lists of propositions for debate can be formulated out of biblical material, the Bible itself is no such list; it consists of assertions made simply in order that all men might believe them to be true. Thus when the reader of the Scriptures comes to the words, “And it came to pass that …,” the intention is that he should believe that “it came to pass that.…” I shall therefore speak of “assertions,” “statements,” and “predications” rather than “propositions.” My argument is with those who claim that the Bible cannot be the true Word of God since it is made up of definite and repeatable statements.

It is to be observed that one implication of this claim is that no utterance of the Incarnate Logos made in the presence of his disciples or the multitudes was the Word of God except perhaps the syntactically amorphous groans that he emitted before the grave of Lazarus.

The metaphysics corresponding to this claim is the view that reality is not truly comprehended by predication. But this is fallacious. Surely there is no part of reality that does not have its true account as opposed to false accounts. Indeed, even he who disputes the possibility of covering all reality by predication rejects the predicationist’s account only by assuming that there is a better account—but any account is only assertion or predication. Nor need we be troubled over the adequacy of the account that is possible for any part of reality, the whole of which has been seen to be accountable, for if no part of reality is without its true account, no part of any part of reality is without accountability. The possibility of predication thus covers indeed all being. For cognitive purposes it is all a matter of associating all subjects with all their proper predicates, and in the nature of the case there is nothing that cannot be known.

But the association of all subjects with all their proper predicates is a work of God. With him, however, speech is more than reporting. It is itself causative of its object, creative, for before he spake there was nothing, and when he speaks it is neither a lie nor futility. “For He spake, and it came to be” (Ps. 33:9a).

God’s “I AM” is a speech particularly pregnant with marvel. The case is not that God at the commissioning of Moses said, “I am, and I send you to the people of Israel to deliver them from Pharoah.” It is that He in response to Moses’ request for the Commissioner’s self-identification directed him, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” This “I AM” is the preeminent characteristic of God. God does not utter it only when addressing an inquirer like Moses; it is God’s eternal speech, Moses or no Moses, the eternal soliloquy apart from which there is no God. Of the manner of its utterance as divine monologue we can form no just notion; by consideration of its meaning we soon plunge ourselves into the dizziness of a mental fainting spell; but of it we can nevertheless affirm nothing less than that it is true speech, apart from which God is not God, and by which he is what he is. His “I AM” is his essence. So far is God from indulging in anything anthropomorphic when he says, “I AM,” that we should rather say that man, reflecting on his wholly derivative being, is faintly theomorphic when he weakly and falteringly echoes, “I am.” There is no cause to be condescending when talking about assertion and predication!

Patently much of God’s speech besides his soliloquizing “I AM” is transcendent. How his Son is his Logos is a mystery. Even much of what he addresses directly to our hearing is beyond our full comprehension. If he works and creates by speech, consider how thoroughly all our existence and sustenance and every movement are taken up in his speech and to how much of it we are totally deaf!

Speech from the Transcendent

But not all God’s speech is transcendent. Capacity to speak transcendentally does not imply incapacity to speak untranscendentally, nor is it beyond God to say something that is not beyond our hearing and understanding. A biochemist can talk for days entirely beyond the comprehension of his little son, but he can also say, “Johnny, when we get to the park you shall have a sandwich.” Nor are the to-Johnny-understandable words about the sandwich unworthy of his bio chemist father. To love children is to want communication with them. He who can speak exclusively over the heads of angels would be a poor father of men and a poor communicator to them if his speech to them were such that even those who prayed for his help to understand what he said would have to say that though it was all very vibrantly over whelming, not a single assertion could be captured by man for exact retention and repetition. In view of our obtuseness and fickleness we need words of God that can be gone over again and again in the mind, and in view of the dark silence as regards divine truth that prevails over the majority of mankind we need words of God that can be repeated to the ends of the earth with assurance that we know exactly what God has said. Therefore God has to speak to us as to men. Speech to men need not be restricted in such a way that in its upper reaches of meaning it does not far outdistance man’s grasp, but unless in its lower levels of intention it makes such sense to man that he can distinguish it from variant speech and repeat it, it is not beamed to man’s kind of receptivity nor can it be a speech to man. But if the kind of hearer man is places a limitation of a kind—the presence of a reachable nearer boundary—upon the transcendency of God’s word to him, the kind of speaker God is places the necessity of being unreservedly true and good upon all his word to man. Even talk about sandwiches must be true to be his talk. After all, claiming for something that it is the Word of God in the normative and authoritative sense is claiming for it something more than that it is the word of godly men, even men most thoroughly instructed, for instance, in the facts and meaning of the whole course of God’s saving work in Christ for man and most sensitively participant in the Christian community. We have whole libraries of the latter category of words.

God’s Word and the Time Barrier

Another point about which there is confusion that has led some to reject the possibility of definite Scripture statements’ being the real Word of God is the relation of statement to time. It is asked, “How can statements two and more thousand years old be the contemporary Word of God?”

Whatever the time of the making of a statement, that statement is of course repeatable as true for as long a time as the fact to which it gives expression remains a fact. If anything ever was true, it will obviously always be true that it was true, and thus true history will always be true history. But of ongoing situations it may always be said not only that at one time the situation did obtain, but also that for as long a time as the situation obtains, a statement of it as current situation is repeatable as true. The continuing force of once-made statements of continuing situations underlies the principle that laws once gazetted are deemed binding until repealed, without the need of repeated gazetting. Nor do we require that the sign “30,000 Volts!” be painted freshly every morning in order that its deterrence may have a current force. Written words have a particular character in this regard. Though the act of writing is definitely dated, the words have a quality of being uttered afresh every time they are read. Thus written words have a peculiar fitness for the in definitely repeated expression of definite and unaltered statement. Where the speaker has veracity and adequate knowledge, including, where it is relevant, knowledge of his own power, whatever he says is true for whatever time he says it, regardless of the time he says it.

Take the case of a well-operated airline. The published schedules of services and tariffs are conclusive for the period concerned regardless of date of printing. One learns as much from these printed schedules as from the viva voce proclamations of the announcer, or indeed from the very roar of the jets warming up on the apron. If fussy travelers with a light opinion of printed timetables insist on face-to-face encounter with the executive, they may be admitted to the inner office or they may not. If they are, it may well be only to be told: “It’s all in the published schedules. Let’s see what they say.… I wish you a very pleasant flight.” In fact, reading a timetable is a true encounter with the executive as regards his present will in all the essentials of the services as far as they concern the prospective traveler. If the latter will conform to the announcements, he will find the executive and his organization doing everything that was said in the printed word.

Misapprehension may also exist in regard to the motive potential of the indicative mood. It may be asked, “How can a book so largely written in the inert story-telling mood have a dynamic appropriate to the true Word of God?” But consider, for instance, that in the former British colonies of Africa—as, presumably, elsewhere in the Common wealth—a large “L” (for “Learner”) displayed on the front and back of a car actually means, “Give this driver a lot of room.” So imperative is this indicative that it is printed in bright red. I have read somewhere that in the Chinese Revolution of 1911 the wells of the great Manchu garrison cities were stopped with the bodies of Manchu women and girl suicides. It is probable that the stimulus to this tragic wave of self-destruction was—perhaps next to example itself—more often the plain but terrible indicatives, “The Revolutionaries are now in the next compound,” or, “They are breaking down the gate,” than the formal imperative, “Go, jump in the well!” The difference between “30,000 Volts” and “Beware of High Tension Cables” is entirely formal; one is as deterrent from careless action as the other. Indeed, imperatives are powerless apart from sanctions that can be directly described only in the indicative. Hearing the cry “Jump in the well!” no one will comply unless he is ready to put this (mistaken) evaluation on his case: “Something worse than perishing by my own leap is overtaking me.” The dynamics of words therefore depends on the hearer’s view of the relation between the matter they indicate, or seem to indicate, and his own well-being, not on grammatical mood, nor on the actual time of enunciation, nor yet on decibles, except insofar as these bear upon the attention-getting property of the words. Did men and women not fade so quickly, a marriage proposal of forty years past might be reread with more inclination to acceptance now than when first received. “You are beautiful, my beloved, truly lovely” (Cant. 1:16)—these are probably the most consistently moving words of courtship ever expressed. And of course no wooer uses a mega phone.

Not only does the dynamics of words depend upon the hearer’s estimate of their bearing on his own welfare: their motive power will be in proportion to the degree of such bearing. The things that the Scriptures say make them the most dynamic words ever addressed to men. In fact, no more powerfully moving words are conceivable than those of the Bible. By way of warning they threaten the ultimate in woe: everlasting destruction of man’s being, body and soul, through eternal separation from the Source of life and bliss, and this plight consciously sustained forever with the self-judgment that it has been justly imposed by the holy and perfect wrath of God in retribution for breaking his holy and perfect law and for spurning his offer of full and free forgiveness through Jesus Christ. By way of heart-lifting assurance they offer the ultimate in weal and bliss: everlasting salvation of man’s entire being through the forgiveness of sins, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, and the imparting of the life of God which is victorious over the flesh, the world, Satan, sin, and death, the enjoyment of this life of God and with God to begin right now, to be consummated at the end of the world and at Christ’s return in fullness of glory, and to endure ages without end, all for the sake of Jesus, who through the eternal appointment of God’s love died on the cross in payment of the penalty of sin and in appeasement of God’s righteous wrath—all this to be had for the mere taking in faith, the very faith for acceptance being offered with the object to be accepted! Surely these are words to raise the dead. If any heart is stonily deaf and impassive to such words, what kind of words could it possibly hear? Were the rejecters of the possibility of definite statements’ constituting the true Word of God not spared from compliance by the very terms of their rejection, we should certainly press them for a sample of what they consider a more dynamic word, a true Word of God.

But we face the enigma that these most powerful words that can be conceived do in fact bring only the minority of men to repentance and faith. In further definition of the dynamics of words we may distinguish between the estimate hearers actually make of the bearing of the words in question on their own welfare and the estimate which that bearing ought to lead them to make, for as far as most men are concerned the motive power of the words of the Scriptures can be said to be the greatest possible only with the latter estimate in mind. This distinction may help one to see how it is true both that the Word of God is always efficacious unto salvation—God has said things that should always move men to repentance and faith and with such words he offers the grace to be so moved—and that nevertheless it does not always accomplish the effect of salvation. But the distinction does nothing to solve the mystery of men’s various responses to God’s saving Word. Why some are alerted by repeated flashings of timetable particulars on the closed-circuit screens of their innermost consciences or by the solicitous tap of an attendant’s hand and so come to with a start and a dash for the ramp, while others doze glassily on right through their whole day at the airport—this is one of the abiding mysteries of theology, one of the most baffling and most inscrutable. The management has offered no explanation.

Outer or Inner Word?

An explanation has been attempted by distinguishing between an inner and an outer word: the outer word fails to effect a hearing; the inner word, on the contrary, or the word that reverberates in the innermost tympanum of the ear of the soul, that gets through and awakens a man from the sleep of death and brings him to spiritual response. Those who are saved have all heard the inner word; those who are lost have heard nothing but the outer word.

This explanation implies one of the strangest confusions in theology and if consistently followed through is seen to embrace the most pernicious tenets, for it involves a transfer of the blame for man’s monstrous unresponsiveness from himself to the Word of God. Actually it is compounded confusion. In regard to man, while recognizing his deafness, it locates this affliction not in the inner ear, where it belongs, but in the outer ear, where his hearing is quite perceptive. Market reports, political forecasts, lascivious stories, prudential ethics, even Red Cross appeals and formal religion—these all get through and move to appropriate action. It is the inner ear, an ear for the things of the Spirit, or rather for things spiritually reported, that is utterly deformed in natural man. Further confusion lies in a division of God’s Word that that Word will not bear. It is true of God’s Word that it has an aspect which is naturally, not supernaturally, grasped, and to which no man is deaf. Thus a devoted Buddhist might make political and ethical observations of considerable penetration on reading the biblical account of the Jewish monarchy—he might even make religious observations of some truth and insight. But the same Word, even that relating to the history of the Jewish monarchy, has another aspect by which it calls unto a thorough brokenness of heart and a living confidence in God, which aspect is spiritually perceived and to which natural man is totally deaf. But there are also words of God of which the former aspect is so largely swallowed up by the latter that one is driven to ask, If they are not addressed to man as intended for the most spiritual communion with God, how else could they be addressed to him? Such words are, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,” and “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” These words touch a man only at a point where he is dealing with his Creator, Judge, and Saviour, and if words which resound through that location do not deserve to be called “inner,” what words would? Even if a man rejects them, that is where he does so. And if God would have all men be saved, why should he first employ a word which has no chance to get in where the critically important hearing must take place if it is to take place? Why should he not immediately have recourse to the only suitable medium, a better word? The doctrine of the inner word exalts man and degrades both God and his Word.

But a turning from the Scriptures to the chimera of a better Word of God that is more dynamic, more penetrating, more compulsive, is inveterate with man. God, however, has denied the existence of such a word. In answer to Dives, who in his post-mortem missionary interest distrusted the Scriptures and showed strong existentialist leanings, our Lord puts into the mouth of Abraham the categorical dictum that where Moses and the prophets are not heard, nothing will be heard even if it comes straight from the other side.

A True Means of Grace

Where God does get himself a hearing, it is not apart from Moses, the prophets, and the evangelists, but by them as a true means of grace. Why some remain deaf when others do not is a mystery, but why any at all hear is simply because the Scriptures, like the voice that cried, “Lazarus, come forth!,” themselves confer upon the dead and the deaf the hearing by which they are heard, and this hearing God is always pressing to confer by them. The Word accomplishes its own hearing and reception. Luther’s preface by attention to the reading of which Wesley’s heart was strangely and determinatively warmed was to the Epistle to the Galatians. The words the great saint and doctor of Tagaste read at the personalized command, “Take up and read”—by which words he was introduced to the City of God—were from Romans 13, verses 13 and 14: “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh.” Even our Lord, Jesus Christ, whose word was directly and authoritatively God’s without his quoting the Scriptures, nevertheless deigned to use the Scriptures. The matter he “opened” by his talk to the Emmaus-walkers was the Scriptures. Indeed, he, the Personal Word, by whose opening of the written Word they were brought to such a pleasurably burning state, charges their whole befuddlement and sadness to the folly of being slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken.

There is an existentiality without being smitten by which the soul goes on in death, but it is an existentiality of the Scriptures, an overpowering aliveness of the continuing relevance of what the Bible says, a peremptory self-assertion of the Scriptures as the speaking of God, as God’s talking to me, as his calling for my trustful obedience to what he tells me, and that in the moment that now is, and with the momentous issue of eternal life or eternal death.

H. DANIEL FRIBERG

Lutheran Theological College

Usa River, Tanganyika, Africa

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