One group of Christians points to the written text of Scripture and declares: “the Bible says.” By contrast, another group affirms: “God speaks to us through the Bible.”

Both Are Right!

Both are biblical. Scripture means writing and Bible means book. The first group, the fundamentalists, can show many biblical passages beginning: “It is written,”; and clearly, if Scripture says it, that is supposed to settle the matter. For the Christian, the Bible is not like any other book. It has divine authority, and we are in danger if we ignore it. The second group, the “liberal” evangelicals, or, interchangeably, neoevangelicals, are equally biblical. They, too, can cite: “The Holy Spirit says,” and “The Holy Spirit … said through Isaiah.” Again, the Bible is not just like any other book. In the Bible God communicates directly to the believing man or woman prepared to hear. Of course, the Bible is only a dead letter to some. By hardness of heart a person may read aimlessly and choose to hear only a wandering Hebrew preacher from the eighth century B.C.; understanding is limited to what such a person can glean from archaeological investigations of the ancient text.

But the “liberal” evangelical knows that God is active now in the hearts of men and women. The spirit transforms human words of Scripture into contemporary speech of the living God. The Bible then becomes a means of grace, and study of the Bible is no mere academic or literary exercise. It is a book best read and studied on our knees. We worship and adore our God as he speaks to us immediately out of its pages.

And Both Are Open To Danger

The historic view of the church encompasses both these approaches to the Bible. Yet unless each is carefully safeguarded it may also pervert the Bible’s own view of its nature and function.

The danger for the fundamentalist is that he will respond to the Bible as a legalistic code. For him it will be only a set of true prophecies, divinely given by a past act of inspiration. Viewing the Bible as a legalistic code, he relates to it as he does to Euclid’s geometry. He is committed to its propositions because that is the way the universe is; no doubt God made it so by original creation. The Bible, likewise, is only God’s ancient word, true because God said it, and binding upon us because he commanded obedience to it. We may then reverance the Bible as a sacred relic from the past on which we set high value, but the Bible does not bring us sharply into immediate contact with God. We are not now face to face with the living God.

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Anyone who sees the Bible this way loses the mystery of the presence of God.

The fundamentalist must not be so fearful of dangerous error that he fails to listen to what the neoevangelical is saying about the living God who speaks to us directly in Scripture. For here the “liberal” evangelical is on solid biblical ground and stands with the faithful tradition of the church from the ancient Fathers through the Reformers and on down to the twentieth century. Even Charles Hodge has a beautiful section on the Bible as the present means of grace, though it is not in volume 1 on Bibliology and the Word of God, but lies tucked away, overlooked and almost forgotten, at the end of volume 3.

Yet the “liberal” evangelical viewpoint too often presents only a partial understanding of Scripture. Its crucial defect lies in that it seeks to separate the Word of God from the word of man.

To some in this group—more liberal than evangelical—this presents no problem. A Scottish theologian, John Baillie, for example, sees the Bible as a human book—a record of man’s response to the God who shows himself not in the revealing of truth but only in wordless acts.

For such thinkers the Bible is neither the Word of God nor a trustworthy witness to the Word of God. It is the ancient prophet’s response to God’s act (truly miraculous or otherwise), seen, understood, and recorded by one who stood wholly in the cultural milieu of his own day. The Spirit of God uses this very human and very fallible record from the past to speak to us what he wishes to reveal to us today. The words of Scripture are only the occasion that the Spirit uses to communicate what he has to say to each of us. Suppose we validly exegete a particular passage with proper attention to grammar, syntax, and cultural milieu. However, in spite of this, what the original author or his various redactors had to say when they wrote their words may not be at all what God wishes to say. Those ancient words are simply the instrument God here and now chooses to use to reveal himself to us in the form appropriate to us.

Karl Barth On Biblical Authority

The more conservative among the “liberal” evangelicals are troubled by such looseness with the biblical text. They want to retain a divine authority for the written text of the Holy Scripture. No one struggled more earnestly with this problem than the famous Swiss theologian, Karl Barth. At Amsterdam in 1948, Barth publicly rebuked Reinhold Niebuhr for his selective attitude toward Scripture. Niebuhr and others at the conference, Barth affirmed, were picking and choosing out of the Bible the parts that supported their own views rather than going to the Bible to discover what it said, and then accepting it as determinative for their views. No one should approach the biblical writers as “a high school teacher authorized to look over their shoulder, benevolently or crossly, to correct their notebooks or to give them good, average, or bad marks.” The very opposite is true. A theologian must agree to let the biblical writers look over his shoulder and correct his notebook. So Barth speaks boldly and often of biblical authority. We must test our theology by the word of the written text. Not one word of Scripture dare we set aside as irrelevant to the truth of God.

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The importance of the biblical text to Barth has not been adequately recognized—especially by American evangelicals. We are grateful for Barth’s strong defense of biblical authority. The written text of Scripture must stand in judgment over against us and our theology.

Karl Barth On The Humanity Of Scripture

Yet Barth also insisted that we must give equal place to the radical humanity of Scripture. Barth himself struggled through the critical approaches to Scripture stemming from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He was trained in the radical liberalism of German universities at the turn of the century. He read deeply in the history of biblical criticism from Strauss, Baur, Wellhausen, Ritschl, Troeltsch, Harnack, Bultmann, and a host of lesser scholars. He accepted the basic outlines of their construction of Hebrew-Christian history. For him the humanity of Scripture lay so evident on every page of Scripture that to deny it would require a sacrifice of the intellect he is unprepared to make. He took the humanity of Scripture in the fullest possible sense, holding that every word of it completely reflects the culture of its time. He made no attempt to harmonize Gospel accounts, and freely admitted discordant elements in the record of the resurrection of Christ.

Essential to this full humanity of Scripture is error, and he found error not only in the historical and scientific but also in the theological teaching of Scripture. When challenged on this point, he once responded that if God is not ashamed of errors in the text, why should we be?

What Evangelicals Can Learn From Barth

Barth’s rationale for this is easy to follow. In revealing himself to us finite, sinful human beings, God did not choose to invent a new language. He certainly did not destroy our humanity or eliminate our culture. Rather, he choose to reveal himself to us within the framework of our sinful, erring human culture. And so far from being the language of heavenly perfection, Canaanite Hebrew was the speech of one of the foulest societies ever to pollute God’s fair earth. Every page of the Old and New Testament reflects the culture of which it is a part, with all the infelicities, inexactnesses, and even crudities (to our taste) that were part and parcel of that culture.

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There is unity in the Bible, but it is not the facile unity that lends itself to easy harmonization. To take the humanity of the biblical text in all its full diversity drives us to a comprehensive understanding of reality, and above all to the mystery of the triune God. The discordant elements of Scripture simply reflect the complexity of reality and the variegated picture of the real God revealed in it. Barth writes, “The eternally rich God is the content of the knowledge of evangelical theology. Its unique mystery is known only in the overflowing fullness of his council, ways, and judgments.”

It is possible to argue that every word of the Bible from cover to cover is so tainted by its sinful culture that it is less than perfect in the way it lays hold of the truth. Some philosophers (Thomas Aquinas, no less) argue that all human thought forms (and, therefore necessarily, all biblical statements) fall short of the perfect truth of God and in a sense are erroneous. They call this the analogous nature of all our human knowledge.

If this were all Barth meant, we would have no quarrel with him, because we heartily applaud the unequivocal way in which he recognizes the complete humanity of Scripture in every way. Indeed, evangelicals are grateful for Barth’s radical insistence on the humanity of Scripture. In their earlier battles against liberals, fundamentalists so stressed the divine authority of Scripture that the reality and importance of its humanity was lost.

Where Barth Went Awry

Hence it is not to the radical and all-pervasive humanity of Scripture that evangelicals object, but to Barth’s teaching that the Scriptures must contain falsehoods because error is essential to their full humanity.

The simple truth is that in ordinary language we do call some statements true. It is possible for even finite, sinful human beings to make statements we call true. I sat in three courses of Karl Barth for half a year. I heard him refer to Rudolph Bultmann dozens of times, but I cannot remember that Karl Barth ever made a single approving reference to any writing of Bultmann. According to Barth, Bultmann’s statements were false, and he hoped that we would not accept them as true. By contrast, Barth’s own statements were in a different category—and Barth tried to persuade us they were true. Certainly his own statements were thoroughly involved in our twentieth-century culture. He spoke in no language of heavenly perfection, but in schrift Deutsch (with occasional asides in Bernese Swiss, to the dismay of all except Swiss students).

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Now we ordinarily make a distinction between, on one hand, statements that are less perfect (reflecting the human culture of which they are a part) and, on the other hand, statements we call false. Barth believed he was not making this latter kind of false statement, but was stating what we ordinarily call the truth. Evangelicals insist that every sentence of the Bible is thoroughly human and fully reflects the human culture of its own time and place. Yet they also believe the Bible contains only the kind of statements Barth thought he was making—the kind we ordinarily call true—and not the kind Bultmann made, the kind we call false. Barth does so because he is convinced that this was the view of Holy Scripture held by his Lord Christ and taught by him to his disciples. And it is the Bible’s own view of itself.

In his early years, Barth taught a Christology that was consistent with his bibliology. In his Incarnation, Jesus Christ took upon himself our sinful humanity. Even then Barth never accepted the radically liberal view that Jesus performed sinful acts. Later he shored up his Christology to make clear that there were no moral imperfections in the character of Christ. Unfortunately, he never got around to similarly straightening out his bibliology. Still, though Barth continued to assert the presence of errors in Scripture, it is exceedingly difficult to locate any instances in his writing where he sets forth any particular error in Scripture. More and more he came to stress the radical humanity of Scripture and, at the same time, a complete trustworthiness of Scripture. And that is just what the church has always meant by its doctrine of the infallibility or inerrancy of Scripture.

What About Biblical Criticism?

Fundamentalists and evangelicals of all types have always acknowledged the legitimacy of “lower” or textual criticism, although they have vigorously disagreed over conclusions. The same is true of “higher” criticism, that is, historical criticism that deals with the background, origin, authenticity, and historical truth of the biblical text. In this area, however, the antisupernaturalism that dominates the thinking of most liberals on critical problems places a sharp cleavage between them and all evangelicals (both fundamentalists on one hand, and “liberal” evangelicals, also called neoevangelicals, on the other). Even so, there was no party line among fundamentalists and there is none today among evangelicals. For example, J. O. Buswell, Jr., fundamentalist president of Wheaton College (1926–39) and former professor of systematic theology at Covenant Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, accepted B. F. Streeter’s rather liberal view of the orgin of the Gospels. Among other things, he taught an original Mark and “Q” used by both Matthew and Luke, who added much material on their own and arranged all to suit their own literary purposes.

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Evangelicals are pretty much united that the pastoral and Petrine letters were at least in some legitimate sense authored by the apostles Paul and Peter. But the particular sense in which these two men are to be reckoned as the authors is certainly not a part of this consensus. They are also agreed that the Book of Daniel stands from an early sixth-century date and represents predictive prophecy, not merely an imaginative exhortation to discouraged Jews of the Maccabean period.

The basic principle that guides evangelicals is that which has guided the orthodox church down through the centuries. This was brilliantly stated by E. J. Carnell: a consistent evangelical is open to accept any view of the critical origin of the books of the Bible except one that would flatly contradict the Bible’s own view of itself.

A Redaction Criticism?

Robert Gundry tied the conservative Evangelical Theological Society in knots last Christmas by defending redaction criticism as a legitimate tool for understanding the Gospel of Matthew. (According to this criticism, the sayings of Jesus and the events recorded in the Gospels were worked over [redacted] by the biblical authors to meet the needs of the early church, and often tell us more about the message of the biblical writer than about Jesus.) Among other things, Gundry argued that Matthew did not intend that stories in historical format need always be taken as actual events, but only as an effective way to make a theological point. While asserting his adherence to inerrancy, he ascribed the Trinitarian formula to Matthew, not to Jesus (Matt. 28:19), and on exegetical grounds contested the factuality of the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem.

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Other evangelicals noted that such methodology, if applied to the bodily resurrection of Christ, would allow us to understand it merely as Christ’s continuing spiritual existence. And likewise, by this line of thought, the Virgin Birth could simply be an honorific title! Yet, however misguided his exegesis, Gundry is not arguing with what he thinks the text really says. Evangelicals must answer him on their common premise—the truth of the text. They must show why, fairly interpreted in light of history and grammar and cultural data, his interpretation really misses the true meaning of the author.

Is Authority Limited To Faith And Practice?

According to one view, inspiration guarantees the truth of biblical statements only in the area of religious faith and ethical practice. On the surface this has considerable attraction. The Bible is not a book of history and science. It is a religious book to teach us about God. We do well to go elsewhere for what we need to know in history and science.

Of course, this view runs completely counter to the basic argument of Barth against inerrancy. If error is essential to the full and free humanity of biblical writers, then the Bible will err in its theological and ethical statements just as much as it will in its history and science. Barth saw this clearly and accepted its consequences by insisting that there were theological and ethical errors in the Bible as well. But his contemporary followers are seldom so clear-sighted.

Our doctrine of Scripture, like all other Christian doctrines, is based on the teaching of Scripture, but the Bible knows no such distinction as that between faith and practice on one hand, and history and science on the other. In fact, the biblical teaching is that the Bible is trustworthy of all that it really teaches, including its facts. The Lausanne Covenant of 1974 caught the biblical sense: the Bible is inerrant in all that it affirms. Of course, evangelicals do not insist that biblical grammar is perfect, but rather that its statements are all true. Each portion of the Bible is imbedded in its own culture and, indeed, is part of that culture. Its vocabulary may be drawn from mythological and unscientific views. It is certainly inexact and general beyond what we approve of today in our twentieth-century scientific world. The biblical authors speak loosely and popularly. Their language is certainly not scientific. We cannot take the words of the Bible and assume that the biblical author means what we would mean were we to use those same words in our twentieth-century Western context today. But the biblical statements are always true and never false.

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It should be added that when evangelicals describe the biblical statements as true, they are using the word “true” in its epistemological sense as describing a statement that conforms to reality in a meaningful way. “True” is contrasted with “false.” The biblical statements are always true and never false. Some writers today are unwilling to admit that in their view the Bible is false or untrue in this sense. They continue to describe the Bible as true, but shift the meaning of “true” to its ethical sense. The Bible conforms, they say, to what is good or ideal. On occasion, we use the English word “true” in its ethical sense. But in ordinary language, when we apply the word to statements, we use it in its epistemological sense. The evangelical is not playing with words. He means that the Bible is true in this particular sense. Our interpretations of the Bible may be, and often are, false. But the Bible is always true and never false.

On the practical side, moreover, the evangelical points out that faith and history are closely related, and so are faith and the facts of science. If the Bible is not entirely trustworthy, it loses its authority for us unless we are able to distinguish what in it we have a right to trust and what not to trust. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any clear line we can draw between important history and unimportant history, or between important fact and unimportant fact. The end result, if we do this, is that we build a theology not on the whole teaching of the Bible but rather on our own very selective use of what we choose to take from the Bible. We then stand in judgment over the Bible. The Bible does not stand in judgment over us. And we are back once again where even Barth does not wish to take us: having to pick and choose from what the Bible affirms to be so. We find ourselves looking over the shoulder of the biblical text to correct, reject, or approve it as the case may require.

No doubt there are problems with holding both to the radical humanity of the Bible, and the truth of all it affirms or says. But surely we do not have to solve all problems before we may legitimately accept it as our own conviction. If we were to clear up every difficulty before we believe anything, science would be chaos and history meaningless. Therefore, in spite of problems, we choose to turn to the Scripture just as our Lord directed. In its pages, we find his instructions; through its words, inerrantly inspired long ago, our living Lord speaks to us today his word of grace and truth. And where we now see only dimly, we humbly pray for more light.

KENNETH S. KANTZER

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