How do we know the Bible is the Word of God?


Christians claim the Bible is God’s Word. That means that they believe the Bible is a verbal revelation from God that makes it unique from every other book. But how can such a claim be verified?

First, we would expect certain things to be true about a book from God. Such characteristics might also be true about humanly-authored books, but we would expect that, at the very least, they would be true about God’s book. Such characteristics would include the following:

  • It would claim to be God’s Word.
  • It would be historically accurate when it speaks on historical matters.
  • Its authors would be trustworthy.
  • It would be thematically unified and without contradictions.
  • We would have received accurate copies of the original manuscripts.

Second, because God is unique, His book would bear characteristics that could be true of it alone. Such characteristics would distinguish God’s book from all other books in such a way that it could not be counterfeited. These characteristics would include the following:

  • It would make statements that would reveal knowledge about the way things work beyond the knowledge of its day.
  • It would make predictions about the future that could not be known through natural means.
  • The message would be unique.
  • The messengers would be confirmed by miracles.
  • The words would have a transforming power.

Now let’s look at the characteristics listed to see if they are true about the Bible.

Characteristics That Must Be True of God’s Word, But Could Also Be True of a Human Book                                

1. The Bible Claims to Be God’s Word

  1. The Authors Claimed to Speak God’s Words Much of the Bible was written by prophets of God. The prophet was someone who was to say exactly what God told him to say, no more and no less. Jeremiah was commanded:

“This is what the LORD says: Stand in the courtyard of the LORD’s house and speak to all the people…Tell them everything I command you; do not omit a word” (Jer. 26:2). The prophet was to speak “everything the LORD had said” (Ex. 4:30).

Throughout the Scriptures, moreover, the authors, whether they were called prophets or not, claimed to be under the direction of the Holy Spirit: “Prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21; cf., 2 Sam. 23:2; Matt. 22:43).

  • The Bible Claims to Be “Breathed Out” By God Writing about the entire Old Testament, the apostle Paul declared: “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16; emphasis added). Jesus described the Scriptures as the very “word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4; emphasis added).

C.  The New Testament Was Seen As Being Revealed Scripture As Well

When the New Testament authors used the word “Scripture” they usually had the Old Testament in mind, since the New Testament was still in the process of being written. Nevertheless, they were also well aware that Jesus had told the apostles that the Holy Spirit would continue the process of inspiring new Scripture (John 14:26; 16:13). Paul, for example, understood that his writings were “words taught by the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:13; see also Gal. 1:11-12; 1 Thess. 2:13; 2 Peter 3:15-16), and he taught that God was continuing the process of revelation in others as well (Eph. 3:4-5).

1

  • What the Bible Says, God Says, and Vice Versa Another way the Bible claims to be the Word of God is expressed in the formula, “What God says, the Bible says.” This is manifested in the fact that often an Old Testament passage will claim God said it, yet when this same text is cited in the New Testament it asserts that “the Scriptures” said it. The reverse is true as well: What the Bible says, God says. The chart below cites only two of many examples.
What God Says…The Bible Says.
“The LORD said to Abram, ‘…all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’” (Genesis 12:1, 3).“The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you’” (Galatians 3:8).
What the Bible Says…God Says.
“Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?” (Psalms 2:1, written by David).“You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?’” (Acts 4:25).
  • The Biblical Writers Claim “Thus Said the Lord” Phrases like “thus says the Lord” (Isa. 1:11,18; Jer. 2:3,5; etc.), “God said” (Gen. 1:3,6; etc.), “the Word of the Lord came to me” (Jer. 34:1; Eze. 30:1; etc.) and other similar phrases occur hundreds of times in the Old Testament. Their significance is that the writer is claiming to be giving the very Word of God.

The Bible is also spoken of as being “the Word of God.” For example, Jesus told the Jews of His day: “Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition” (Matt. 15:6, emphasis added). Paul speaks of the Jews as having “been entrusted with the very words of God” (Rom. 3:2, emphasis added; see also Heb. 4:12).

F.  The Bible Claims to Have Divine Authority in All Its Parts

The Bible claims to be divinely authoritative with respect to all that is written within it (2 Tim. 3:16). That includes its very words (Matt. 22:43; 1 Cor. 2:13; Gal. 3:16), the tenses of the verbs (Matt. 22:32; Jesus draws significance from the present tense of ‘I am’) and even to the smallest parts of the words (Matt. 5:17, 18). Even though the Bible was not verbally dictated by God to the authors, nevertheless, the result is just as perfect as if it had been. For the biblical authors claimed that God is the source of the very words of Scripture, since He supernaturally superintended the process by which they wrote but still used their own vocabulary and style: “but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).

G. Christ Testified That the Bible Is from God Jesus had an extremely high view of Scripture. For example,

  • He said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).
  • He said that the Bible is imperishable (Matt. 5:17-18).
  • He asserted that the Bible cannot be broken, or fail in its purpose (John 10:35).
  • He affirmed the ultimate supremacy of the authority of the Bible over human tradition (Matt. 15:3,6).
  • He considered the Bible to be without error (Matt. 22:29; John 17:17).
  • He considered the Bible to be historically reliable (Matt. 12:40; 24:37-38).

2. The Bible Is Historically Accurate

The Bible is not merely a book containing theological teachings that are unrelated to history, but the theological statements of Scripture are closely linked to historical events. For example, Paul maintained that if Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead was not an historical fact, then our faith is futile (1 Cor. 15:17). Scriptural characters, like Paul, were not a group of gullible religious people who were ready to believe anything that came along.

The history given in the Bible has been confirmed by archaeology to a remarkable degree. Noted archaeologist,

Nelson Glueck, states,

It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.

Glueck, 31, emphasis added

Archaeologist Millar Burrows notes that “more than one archaeologist has found his respect for the Bible increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine” (Burrows, 1, emphasis added).

William Ramsay is one such example of an archaeologist who went from believing that the Bible contained fabricated myths to believing that the Bible was not only accurate historically but that it was the Word of God.

Earlier in his life Ramsay had been influenced by a liberal theology, which taught that the writers of the Bible were more interested in promoting a biased theological perspective than in accurately recording history. In the course of his studies, however, Ramsay was surprised to find extensive archaeological evidence for the accuracy of the biblical narratives. One thing that impressed Ramsay about Luke, the writer of Acts, was his accuracy with respect to ostensibly insignificant details. For example, Luke accurately names the rulers of Thessalonica “politrarchs,” Gallio the “Proconsul of Achaea,” the official in Ephesus a “temple warden,” the governor of Cyprus a “proconsul” and the chief official in Malta “the first man of the island.” Such titles have since been confirmed in numerous Greek and Latin inscriptions.

What Ramsay began to realize was that the Bible was not mythical, but that it was a document that recorded history with extreme accuracy. He wrote, “Luke is an historian of the first rank” (Wilson, 114). And if the Bible was accurate in its historical details, then he considered there to be a good chance that the biblical authors could be trusted to accurately relate the spiritual significance of the historical events as well.

3. The Trustworthiness of the Biblical Authors

As we saw in point 1, the biblical authors claimed to be receiving their messages from God. Now, if the biblical writers were known perjurers, there would be no reason to accept their claim. But they were honest men of integrity, which lends support to the credibility of their claim of having been inspired by God. Their honesty and integrity is evident by the following things.

First, they taught the highest standard of ethics, including the obligation to always tell the truth: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor” (Eph. 4:25; see also Ex. 20:16; Ps. 15:2; Rev. 22:15).

Second, the writers of the Bible paid a high price for their truthfulness. For example, Peter and the eleven apostles (Acts 5), as well as Paul (Acts 28), were all imprisoned. Most were eventually martyred for their witness for Christ (2 Timothy 4:6-8; 2 Peter 1:14). Indeed, being “faithful, even to the point of death” was an earmark of early Christian conviction (Revelation 2:10).

People sometimes die for what they believe to be true and isn’t. But few are willing to die for what they know to be false. Yet the biblical witnesses died for the truth they proclaimed, believing that their message had come from God. While not being proof, such evidence is an indication that the Bible is what the biblical writers claimed it to be—the Word of God.

4. The Testimony of the Amazing Unity of the Bible The Bible is amazing in its unity amid vast diversity. Even though the Bible was composed by many persons of diverse backgrounds and different time periods, nevertheless it manifests a unity that would indicate there was one Mind behind its writing.

Consider the diversity of the Bible. The Bible:

  • was written over a period of some fifteen hundred years or more (from at least 1400 B.C. to nearly A.D.100), •        is composed of 66 different books,
  • was written by some 40 different authors,
  • was composed in three languages—Hebrew, Greek, and some Aramaic,
  • contains discussions on hundreds of different topics,
  • was written in a variety of different literary styles, including historical, poetic, didactic, parabolic, allegorical, apocalyptic, and epic,
  • was composed by authors of many different occupations.

Yet in spite of all this vast diversity, the Bible reveals an amazing unity. First, it is one, continuous unfolding drama of redemption from Genesis to Revelation; from paradise lost to paradise regained; from the creation of all things to the consummation of all things (Sauer, The Dawn of World Redemption and The Triumph of the Crucified).

Second, the Bible has one central theme—the Person of Jesus Christ (Luke 24:27). In the Old Testament, Christ is seen by way of anticipation; in the New Testament by way of realization. In the Old Testament He is predicted, and in the New Testament He is present (Matt. 5:17-18). The Old Testament expectation of Christ came to a historical realization in the New Testament.

Third, from beginning to end the Bible has one unified message: humanity’s problem is sin (Gen. 6:5; Rom. 3:23), and the solution is salvation through Christ (Luke 19:10; Mark 10:45).

Such incredible unity amidst such great diversity is best accounted for by a God who stands outside time and history and who was therefore able to direct the writing of the Bible. The very same Mind that the writers of Scripture claimed to have inspired them also appears to have superintended them, weaving each of their pieces into one overall mosaic of truth.

To highlight the incredible unity of the Bible by way of contrast, suppose that a book containing family medical advice was composed by 40 doctors over 1500 years, in different languages, on hundreds of different medical topics, etc. What kind of unity would it have, even if all the succeeding authors knew what the preceding ones had written? One chapter would say all disease is caused by demons that need to be exorcised. Another would claim that disease is in the blood, which needs to be drained out. Still another would claim disease is psychosomatic—mind over matter. Such a book would lack unity, continuity, and no one would seriously consider it a definitive source to answer what is the cause and cure of disease.

Yet the Bible, with even greater diversity in the topics addressed, is the world’s perennial best seller and is sought by multiplied millions as the solution to humanity’s spiritual problems. It alone, of all books known to humankind, needs the Deity to account for its amazing unity in the midst of such diversity.

5. The Documents We Possess Are Accurate Copies of the Originals

In 1948, Bedouin shepherds discovered Old Testament manuscripts in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea. These manuscripts had been hidden for 2,000 years. They serve as a control by which to gauge the accuracy of the manuscripts that had been copied during the time that they were hidden in the caves.

What did the scholars find when they compared the Qumran manuscripts with the present-day copies? Millar Burrows, who wrote a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, said,

It is a matter of wonder that through something like a thousand years the text underwent so little alteration.

Geisler, 1986, 366-367

Old Testament scholar Gleason Archer wrote concerning the two copies of the book of Isaiah found in the caves,

“[they] proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text. The 5% variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling” (Geisler, 1986, 367).

Thus, we can say with assurance that those who copied the text of the books of the Old Testament did so with great care.

What about the textual accuracy of the New Testament? The degree of accuracy of the New Testament exceeds 99%, which is greater than that of any other book from the ancient world (see Geisler, 1986, ch. 22). The reasons for this amazing accuracy are that, with respect to the Bible, the number of New Testament manuscripts that we have is greater than for other books from the ancient world, and the biblical manuscripts are much closer in time to the originals than those of other works from ancient times. Consider the chart below.

It must be clarified that Christians claim that God inspired, or “breathed out,” the text of the original manuscripts, not everything in the copies. The copies are without error only in so far as they were copied correctly. It is nevertheless true that the copies were copied with great care and a very high degree of accuracy. Christians believe that God in His providence preserved the copies from all substantial error.

There are, however, some minor copyist variants in the biblical manuscripts. It is important, though, to note of these copyist variants that:

  • Such variants are relatively rare in the copied manuscripts;
  • In most cases we know which one is wrong from the context or the parallel passages;
  • In no case do the variants affect any doctrine of Scripture;
  • The variants actually vouch for the accuracy of the copying process, since the scribes who copied them knew there were variants in the manuscripts, still they were duty-bound to copy what the text said;
  • The variants don’t affect the message of the Bible.

In fact, one must make a distinction between the text and its message, for one can receive a text with variants and still receive 100% of the message. For example, suppose you receive a message from Western Union as follows:

#ou have won seven million dollars.

No doubt you would gladly pick up your money. And if the telegram read this way, then you would have no doubt at all about its message:

Y#u have won seven million dollars.

Yo# have won seven million dollars.

You #ave won seven million dollars.

Why are we more sure of the message when there are more variants? Because each variant is in a different place, and with each new line we get another confirmation of every other letter in the original message.

Three things are important to note:

  1. Even with one line—variant and all—100 percent of the message comes through.
  2. The more lines, the more variants. But the more variants, the more sure we are of what the intended message really was.
  3. There are hundreds of times more biblical manuscripts than there are lines in the above example. And there is a greater percentage of variants in this telegram than in all the biblical manuscripts combined.

Characteristics That Could Be

True Only of God’s Word                            

1. Scientific Knowledge Before Its Time

One of the amazing things about the Bible is that it makes scientifically accurate statements about the body, the earth, and the heavens that predate their discoveries by usually 2,0003,000 years. Moreover, such scientific statements were made in the midst of cultures that were largely superstitious and not scientific in their approach.

A. The Body

In the 1840s, there was a one in six rate of a pregnant woman dying from “childbirth fever” after entering a particular hospital in Vienna, Austria. Ignaz Semmelweis, one of the doctors, noticed that their deaths were not random, but that the patients had been examined by doctors who had just autopsied victims of “childbirth fever.” So Dr. Semmelweis implemented a policy that all doctors must wash their hands after doing autopsies. As a result, the mortality rate among pregnant women dropped dramatically to one in eighty-four. But instead of Dr. Semmelweis receiving accolades, the other doctors failed to see the connection, and considered the constant washing of hands to be a bother. Dr. Semmelweis was ostracized and eventually left Vienna to practice medicine in Budapest, where the same story repeated itself (Cairney, “Prescience 2,” 137-142).

What is significant about Dr. Semmelweis’s story is that the cleanliness laws set down by God through Moses predated by 3,500 years the principles of washing to prevent the spread of disease. Moses wrote:

“For the unclean person [someone who has touched a dead person or animal], put some ashes from the burned purification offering into a jar and pour fresh water over them…. The person being cleansed must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and that evening he will be clean” (Num. 19:17,19).

Such a statement assumes a knowledge about how that which is unseen to the naked eye—germs and bacteria—are responsible for spreading disease. But such knowledge was not discovered until the 1800s! Moreover, washing was not a common practice in the surrounding cultures at the time of Moses (Cairney, “Prescience 2,” 129).

B. The Earth

The following are physical phenomena mentioned in the Bible that not only went against the wisdom of the surrounding cultures at the time but that also predate the earliest scientific discoveries of such phenomena by usually 2,000-3,000 years:

  • The ocean floor contains deep valleys (2 Sam. 22:16; Job 38:16; Ps. 18:15) and towering mountains (Jonah 2:6). The ancients thought the ocean floor was “flat, sandy, and bowl-like” (Barfield, 170).
  • The ocean contains underwater springs (see Gen. 7:11; Job 38:16; Prov. 8:28). The other civilizations believed the ocean was fed only by rain and rivers (Barfield, 171).
  • Moses wrote, “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused” (Ex. 23:10). Allowing the ground to lie fallow every seventh year was not a custom in the nonbiblical cultures. It is a practice, however, that scientists have since discovered was way ahead of its time (Cairney, “Prescience 1,” 134).

C. The Heavens

One of the amazing things about the Bible, when it comes to statements about the heavens, is the errors that the biblical writers did not make, even though such errors were common beliefs in the surrounding cultures. The biblical writers…

  • Did not consider the stars to be near us and fixed in their positions. Genesis 1:8, 14-17 speaks of the heavens as an “expanse,” which literally means “spreading out.” Jeremiah implies that the heavens cannot be measured (31:37; Barfield, 102).
  • Did not consider the heavens to have existed from eternity, but taught that they had a beginning (Gen. 1:1).

The biblical statements about the heavens are common assumptions today, but they were anything but common in the days when the books of the Bible were penned.

2. The Supernatural Predictions of the Biblical Prophets

Unlike any other book in the world, the Bible is the only one to offer specific predictions hundreds of years in advance that were literally fulfilled. In some cases very different prophecies were made—and then fulfilled—about cities that were relatively close to each other. The following is only one of several possible examples.

A. Memphis and Thebes:

The prophet Ezekiel wrote in the sixth century B.C.:

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘I will destroy the idols and put an end to the images in Memphis…I will…inflict punishment on Thebes. I will…cut off the hordes of Thebes”

Eze. 30:13-15

Both Memphis and Thebes were destroyed hundreds of years after Ezekiel’s prophecy. What is most significant, though, is that the idols were removed entirely from Memphis but they were not removed from Thebes, just as Ezekiel had predicted. (Bloom, 179-181).

B. The Coming Of Christ

Many of the Bible’s predictions center around the coming of Christ. Consider the following predictions, made centuries in advance, that said the Messiah would:

  • be from the seed of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3; 22:18; cf., Matt.

1:1; Gal. 3:16),

  • be of the tribe of Judah (Gen. 49:10; cf., Luke 3:33; Heb.

7:14),

  • be of the house of David (2 Sam. 7:12f; cf., Matt. 1:1),
  • be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14; cf., Matt. 1:21f),
  • be born in the city of Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2; cf., Matt. 2:1 and Luke 2:4-7),
  • be anointed by the Holy Spirit (Isa. 11:2; cf., Matt. 3:16-17),
  • perform miracles (Isa. 35:5-6; cf., Matt. 9:35),
  • be rejected by the Jews (Ps. 118:22; cf., 1 Peter 2:7),
  • die a humiliating death (Ps. 22; Isa. 53:3; cf., Luke 9:22) at about 33 A.D. (Dan. 9:24f),
  • be rejected by His own people (Isa. 53:3; cf., John 1:10-11;

7:5, 48),

  • be silenced before His accusers (Isa. 53:7; cf., Matt. 27:12-19),
  • be mocked (Ps. 22:7-8; cf., Matt. 27:31),
  • be pierced in His hands and feet (Ps. 22:16; cf., John 20:25),
  • be put to death with thieves (Isa. 53:12; cf., Luke 23:33),
  • pray for His persecutors (Isa. 53:12; cf., Luke 23:34),
  • be pierced in His side (Zech. 12:10; cf., John 19:34),
  • be buried in a rich man’s tomb (Isa.53:9; cf., Matt. 27:5760),
  • have people casting lots for His garments (Ps. 22:18; cf., John 19:23-24)
  • rise from the dead (Ps. 16:10; cf., Acts 2:31; Mark 16:6).

Note several unique features about the biblical prophecies, in contrast to all other examples of attempted predictions today. First, unlike many psychic predictions, many of these prophecies were very specific, giving, for example, the very name of the tribe, city, and time of Christ’s coming.

Second, unlike the forecasting found in the tabloids at the check-out counter, none of these predictions failed.

Third, since these prophecies were written hundreds of years before Christ was born, no one could have been reading the trends of the times or just made intelligent guesses.

Fourth, many of these predictions were beyond human ability to force a fulfillment. For example, as a mere human being, Christ had no control over when, where, or how He would be born, how He would die (considering others were responsible for His death), or rise from the dead.

The best explanation for the fulfillment of such predictions made hundreds of years earlier is the existence of a transcendent God who knows all things, including “the end from the beginning” (Isa. 46:10).

Skeptics sometimes claim equal authority for predictions from psychics. But there is a quantum leap between the fallible human prognosticators and the unerring prophets of Scripture. Indeed, one of the tests of the false prophets was whether their predictions came to pass (Deut. 18:22). Those whose predictions failed were killed by stoning (v. 20)—a practice that no doubt caused serious pause in any who were not absolutely sure their messages were from God! Amid hundreds of prophecies, biblical prophets are not known to have made a single error. By comparison, a study made of top psychics revealed that they were wrong 92% of the time (Kole, 69-70)! Jean Dixon, for example, predicted that Jacqueline Kennedy would not remarry, but she married Aristotle Onassis the next day (Kole, 70).

3. The Uniqueness of the Biblical Message

Romans 6:23 encapsulates the uniqueness of the biblical message: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

A. Spiritual Death

The Christian Gospel begins with the message that the spiritual condition of humanity is hopeless in that humanity is spiritually dead (Eph. 2:1). In this, Christianity is unique.

Other religions acknowledge that there is something spiritually wrong with humanity, but they also hold out the hope that we are somehow fixable through some form of human effort. According to the Bible, however, we are not fixable through our own effort. Just as physically dead people can’t give life to themselves, so there is no way we who are spiritually dead can give life to ourselves (Eph. 2:8-9).

Our being spiritually dead, moreover, is related to God being absolutely holy. God will not allow sin in His presence: “with you the wicked cannot dwell” (Ps. 5:4). The problem is that “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23).

B. Eternal Life

Even though the news about humanity’s spiritual condition is terribly bad, God has given us tremendously good news. That good news is that we can have the assurance of eternal life. Such eternal life is not merely some continued existence after death on a spiritual plane, but it is fellowship with God Himself (John 17:3). No other religion promises to draw us as close to God as does the Gospel of Christ (Heb. 4:16). Such fellowship with God, moreover, can begin now.

Plus, no other religion can confirm the hope of eternal life like Christianity, because Jesus Christ is the only founder of a religion who has bodily risen from the dead.

C. A Gift

The Christian Gospel is also unique because the gift of eternal life is entirely free. A gift is not a gift if it is earned; it can only be received. The means by which to receive God’s gift is, first, to acknowledge our need for life, since our sin has caused our spiritual death; and, second, to trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty of sin—death—on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21).

The offer of the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ is the core message of the Bible, and it sets the Bible apart from all other books in all of history.

4. The Miraculous Confirmation of the Biblical Witnesses

The biblical prophets claimed to receive their message from

God. Of course, as even the Bible admits, there are false prophets (Matt. 7:15). This is why the Bible exhorts us: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). One of the sure ways a true prophet can be distinguished from a false one is by miracles (Acts 2:22; Heb. 2:3-4). A miracle is an act of God, and God would not supernaturally confirm a false prophet to be a true one. When Moses was called of God, for example, he was given miracles to prove that he spoke for God (Ex. 4:1f).

Miracles were an earmark of Jesus’ ministry (Acts 2:22), as they were of other prophets and apostles (Heb. 2:3-4; 2 Cor. 12:12). When asked by John the Baptist if he was the Messiah, Jesus cited his miracles, such as making the blind to see, the lame to walk, the lepers to be healed, the deaf to hear, and the dead raised to life (Luke 7:20-22). Nicodemus, one of the Jewish religious leaders, acknowledged such miracles (John 3:2).

Miracles, then, are a divine confirmation of a prophet’s claim to be speaking for God. But of all the world’s religious leaders, only the Judeo-Christian prophets and apostles were supernaturally confirmed by genuine miracles of nature that could not possibly have been psychosomatic or trickery. For example, they turned water into wine (John 2), instantaneously cured organic sickness in people (John 5), multiplied the number of loaves of bread for a huge crowd (John 6), walked on water (John 6), immediately cured one who had been born blind (John 9), and raised the dead (John 11).

Significantly, even though Muhammad acknowledged how the prophets before him were confirmed by miraculous signs (Surahs 3:184; 17:103; 23:45), he refused to perform similar miracles when challenged by unbelievers (Surahs 2:118; 4:153; 6:8, 9, 37).

Only the Bible has been supernaturally confirmed to be the Word of God by special acts of God (see Geisler, 1994, chs. 8-9).

5. The Testimony of the Transforming Power of the Bible

The writer of the book of Hebrews declared,

“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

There is indeed something “living and active” and “penetrating” about the Bible that is different from any other book. The Bible rings with the chords of truth, and it speaks to the hearts of men and women. It has changed the lives of millions of people. Of course, whether or not the Bible speaks to one’s heart is a personal matter, but that does not make it any less significant.

Our challenge to you is, if you have not read the Bible, try it. A good place to begin is with the book of John, which is in the New Testament portion of the Bible. The book of John was written “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ …and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

Conclusion                                     

We have seen that the Bible has met the criteria that supports its claim for being the Word of God. With respect to the criteria that could also be said about a humanly-authored book, the Bible claims to be the Word of God, it is historically accurate, its authors were trustworthy, it is unified amidst an amazing diversity, and accurate copies of the original manuscripts have been passed down to us. With respect to the criteria that could be said only of God’s Book, the Bible contains scientific statements that predate their discoveries by 2,000-3,000 years, it made predictions that were fulfilled hundreds of years later, its message is unique, its messengers were confirmed by miracles, and the words have a transforming power.

There is no other book like the Bible!

Bibliography and Resources                                  

Archer, Gleason L., Jr. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 1982).

Barfield, Kenny. Why the Bible Is Number 1. (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker, 1988).

Bloom, John. “Truth Via Prophecy.” Evidence for Faith. John W. Montgomery (ed.). (Dallas, Tex: Word, 1991).

Burrows, Millar. What Mean These Stones? (New Haven, Conn.: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1941).

Cairney, William. “Biomedical Prescience 1: Hebrew Dietary Laws.” Evidence for Faith. John W. Montgomery (ed.). (Dallas, Tex: Word, 1991).

Cairney, William. “Biomedical Prescience 2: Pride &

Prejudice in Science.” Evidence for Faith. John W. Montgomery (ed.). (Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1991).

Geisler, Norman L. Answering Islam: The Crescent in the Light of the Cross. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1994).

Geisler, Norman L. and Nix, William E. General Introduction to the Bible: Revised and Expanded. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986).

Geisler, Norman L., ed. Inerrancy. (Grand Rapids, Mich.:

Zondervan, 1980).

Glueck, Nelson. Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev. (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Cudahy, 1959).

Kole, Andre. Miracle and Magic. (Eugene, Ore.: Harvest House, 1984).

McMillen, S.I. None of These Diseases. (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1961).

Ramsay, W.M. St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen.

(3rd ed.)  (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1949).

Sauer, Erich. The Dawn of World Redemption. (G.H. Land, trans.)  (London: Paternoster, 1951).

Sauer, Erich. The Triumph of the Crucified. (G.H. Land, trans.) (London: Paternoster, 1951).

Sherwin-White, A.N. Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963).

Warfield, Benjamin B. Limited Inspiration. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co., 1961; originally published in 1864, Baker reprint, n.d.).

Warfield, Benjamin B. The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1948).

Wilson, Clifford. Rocks, Relics, and Biblical Reliability. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1977).

Scripture references, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the

Holy Bible, New International Version, © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

Written by Dr. Norman L. Geisler, the author/co-author of A General Introduction to the Bible (Moody, 1978, 1986), From God to Us: How we got our Bible (Moody, 1978, 2012), The Big Book of Bible Difficulties (Baker, 2008), Explaining Biblical Inerrancy: The Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy, Hermeneutics, and Application with Official ICBI Commentary (Bastion Books, 2013), Preserving Orthodoxy: Maintaining Continuity with the Historic Christian Faith on Scripture (Bastion Books, 2017) and dozens of other books.  

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (A.D. 1844 – 1900)


This was excerpted from Norman Geisler’s The History of Western Philosophy, Volume II, (Bastion Books, 2017) for normangeisler.com with permission from bastionbooks.com.

Introduction

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the problem of human existence was focused on him being a stranger to himself to the point that he must discover or rediscover who he is and what his meaning in life was going to be. Kierkegaard suggested that he return to Christianity as it was with the first disciples (as compared to the organized Christendom). Nietzsche, however, suggested an even more ancient return—a replication to the archaic past of the Greeks. He will consider the characteristics and livelihood of the god Dionysus in order to bridge his inner warring divide that plagued his being. He thought that if the Dionysus was revived, this savior-god might rescue the whole of mankind which seemed to him to be in fatigue and decline. However, this god was also known as the “the horned one” or “the bull” to the Greeks, and according to mythology, was torn to pieces by the Titans. The fate of Dionysus overwhelmed Nietzsche who himself was also ravaged by the dark forces leaving him at the age of twenty-five in psychosis—perishing with the god, a solutions of his own devices.

It has been said that Kierkegaard painted Christianity is such stringent terms that it drives some people to atheism, and that Nietzsche painted such a sorrowful view of atheism (a person without God) that it drove some people to Christianity.  Yet both came from similar backgrounds, namely, 19th century European Lutheranism. Both experienced an early loss of their father, and both learned to detest the Lutheran Christianity in which they were reared.

The Life and Works of Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was born 1844 in a little town of Rocken, in Prussian Saxony. His father was a Lutheran pastor in Saxony and later died of insanity (softening of the brain) when Friedrich was young. He was his mother, sister, two aunts, and grandmother dominating his life. They had moved to Naumburg where he attended the gymnasium. He was given a strict religious training, and he lost his faith in college. These women hoped the boy would grow up to be a brilliant preacher like his father and grandfather before him. From age fourteen until twenty, he attended the famous school of Pforta which provided a firm foundation in German literature and the Greek and Latin classics. He later studied under the famous liberal thinker, Friederich Ritschl and focused on philology. In Leipzig, he became acquainted with Schopenhauer’s philosophy, enjoyed music, and made inquiries about Erwin Rohde’s conception of the psyche. He observed the naïve faith of his mother and grandmother and, after reading Schopenhauer, he became an atheist. He served in Prussian medical corps where he contracted dysentery. He recovered but always had a headache and indigestion. Though he was a mild, kind, and gentle man, yet nervous and irritable at times. He idealized his friends until he became acquainted with their faults. He kept the course of that which he believed was right—the overthrow of modern Christian culture and democratic morality. In its place, he attempted to bring a revival of the ancient Greek aristocratic ideal of life. He increased loneliness and alienation from friends led to final his madness. Living in isolation, he wrote book after book until his mind was gone.

The Works of Nietzsche

Nietzsche wrote The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872) where he spoke of his humanistic ideal as a combination of Dionysus (the Greek god of music) and Apollo (the Greek god of the plastic arts). His obsession against Christianity shows up in several works: The Wagner Case: The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche contra Wagner, The Ant-Christ, Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”). His ethical position can be identified in Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and Toward a Genealogy of Morals (1887). His Untimely Considerations (1873—1876) was against the materialism of the post 1870 Germany. His works The Dawn and The Gay Science, appearing between 1878 and 1882, discussed the issues regarding Christian morality as life-denying. Ecce Homo, an autobiography written near the end of his life (1900). It was published 1908. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is his greatest work whose message is “the death of God” Vol. I-II (1883); III (1884); IV (1885). Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The Genealogy of Morals (1887), Anti-Christ (1895).

Philosophical Influences on Nietzsche

Like most others in the modern world, Nietzsche was influenced by Immanuel Kant’s agnosticism. He was also affected by Schopenhauer’s atheism, particularly his stress on the will. F. A. Lange’s History of Materialism was also an important factor in forming his thought. From the ancient world, Heraclitus’s philosophy of becoming was important. And from the modern world Voltaire’s anti-Christian, anti-supernatural views contributed to Nietzsche’s thinking.

Nietzsche’s position on morality and modern culture is a variation Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer, However, Nietzsche deplored the idea of society determining personal conduct, the ‘rule of the flock’ mentality. This went against his idea that man was still and unfixed animal. He leveled severe criticism against Christianity and states that it is an enemy of life and betrays mankind. His viewpoint is quite atheistic and deterministic where the elite, based upon their physical, intellectual, and social prowess, are the only ones who are able to further man’s existence. All men have the power to develop their own norms based on the exclusion of God and any standards associated with good and evil.

Influence of Nietzsche on Others

Like other great thinkers, Nietzsche had a significant influence on many of his successors. Sigmund Freud’s profound introspective psychology is an example. The existentialist Martin Buber acknowledges being impressed by Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a teen ager. Jean Paul Sartre’s atheistic existentialism was also affected by Nietzsche. Wittgenstein linguistical mysticism owes a debt to him as well: “One should speak only where one may not remain silent, and speak only of that which one has overcome – everything else is chatter” (Nietzsche –Human , All Too Human). Jacque Derrida and Post-modernism find roots in Nietzsche as well.

Nietzsche denied God. The fire for this negation was Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Nietzsche resembles Marx by his refusing to put forward arguments for God’s existence based on rational review, and in its stead, basing it on broad cultural judgments undermining any belief in God.

An Overview of Nietzsche‘s Philosophy

Nietzsche’s view involves a critique of 19th century culture. He said Europe is sick and cannot be healed by prosperity or technology. Culture has no unity of outlook, is too eclectic. Man has lost his dignity since he lost faith in God and now has lost faith in himself. Christianity has lost its authority and is merely humanistic. We have lost our stability, and evolution has proven that all is flux. He criticized anti-culturalism of the State which encourages conformism. He opposed democracy and socialism. His view was used by some Nazis to support Nazism, though Nietzsche did not support it. He praised individual heroes. We can improve human nature to become a superman.  He opposed Hegel’s view of history as a necessary unfolding of the Divine. We must get superhistoric view of man by “Know thyself” and organizing the chaos within. The decline of dogmatic faith at the time it was needed most led to paralysis of culture. So, God is dead, and must be replaced by a voluntaristic metaphysics of becoming.

It is Nietzsche’s pathological path that makes his philosophical meaning of atheism understandable as he tried to live it out. Up to this time in history, man was living under the childhood shelter of God (or the gods). Now that the gods were dead, could mankind likewise meet this challenge and too become godless? Nietzsche thought the answer to this timely question was yes; man, as a courageous animal was able to survive even the death of God. Man is to live with no religious or metaphysical safety nets. If mankind was to become godless, Nietzsche was to be its prophet.

Three Central Themes is Nietzsche

The Will to Power

In Zarathustra it is man’s basic nature and is found in all living things (conatus, elan vital).  This is probably not a metaphysical doctrine of unusual significance (as Heidegger interpreted it).  Nor is it protofascist as Heidegger agreed. It was a psychological theory that involves: 1) the power of self-control in art and philosophy not so much subjugation of others; 2) The power of the slave to live free of resentment of his master. It is rooted found in Greek contest (agon), viz., triumph over others, power over audience, language, and self. In the pinnacle of power one is perfectly self-possessed, self-sufficient man, (Socrates in prison is better than Nero on the roof); but Goethe is better than Socrates– self-mastery. It is a man of intelligence and passion who passionately mastered his passions and employed them creatively. It is the illuminator of most (if not all) behavior but is not the only motive for human action.

Superman (Overman, Ubermeunsch).

Lucian (2nd century) used the word, as did Goethe in Faust. Nietzsche never applied to an individual, except in one ironic self-critical passage (“on poets” in Zarathustra). It is always intended as a this-worldly antithesis of God. “A human being (Mensch) who has organized the chaos of his passions, has given style to his character, and became creative.” Mankind involves mixed types. Nietzsche does not claim to be a superman. One who renounces God and supernatural dignity of man and recognized. There is no meaning in life except the meaning man gives his life…. One who rises above flux of creatures and becomes a creator and ceases being human, all too human. A superman is one who can willingly accept suffering and misery and prove their worth by overcoming them. He is not the one who thinks of himself as superior but who demands more of himself.

Eternal Recurrence

Since there is no God or objective meaning in life, man must will his own meaning. This Nietzsche does in willing the eternal recurrence of the same state of affairs. He presupposes absoluteness of time and flux and finite space. Upon destruction, our universe will be reconstructed and repeat previous patterns and events identically (so Nietzsche will be born 1844, etc.). What has been will be innumerable times at immense intervals. This is Greek in origin but struck Nietzsche like a revelation in 1882. He recognized it was a gruesome doctrine unless one can joyfully affirm one’s existence and say: “Abide, moment – but if you cannot abide, at least return eternally!” Eternal Recurrence is set against Christian linear doctrine that history is progressive, ending in an eternal Goal. Nietzsche believed that Eternal Recurrence is the most scientific of all hypotheses because finite power quanta in finite space in infinite time will produce only a finite number of configurations that will repeat over and over. However, George Simmel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (1907, pp. 250) rejected this, claiming that three wheels rotating at different speeds never line up again if one is one-half the speed of the first and another twice the first. Nietzsche did not attempt to prove the doctrine but stressed its ethical and psychological impact, namely a) horror of all-too-human life without it and joy felt by the exceptional person who believes it. Eternal Recurrence is not superior to God, but belief in other world cheapens this world. Eternal Recurrence is the “Religion of religions” (Jaspers, Nietzsche, 363-365).

A Comparison of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard

Both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard had Lutheran backgrounds.  Both were trained in post-Hegelian Germany. Each manifested an introspective psychological methodology with literary genius (poetic philosophy). They both demonstrate the meaninglessness and nothingness of human life apart from God. Both stressed death of God and vital Christianity in Western Society. They also accepted Kantian disjunction of appearance and reality and inability of man to know reality by reason. Further, they acknowledged the need to suffer in the overcoming life. They admitted that all absolute and eternal values must be rooted in a transcendent God.  And both men had an implicit Post-Hegelian dialectic in their thinking. They also stressed individual, passionate, and volitional nature of man. They believed truth to be a matter of life not of philosophical thought. Both men held critical view of Christian evidence. Both believed ultimate responsibility goes beyond good and evil. In addition, both stressed the significance of human solitude.

There were, of course, some other important differences. Nietzsche denied God and Kierkegaard affirmed Him. Nietzsche believed that reason is man’s only hope and Kierkegaard held that revelation is. While Nietzsche held that the overcomer wills eternal recurrence, Kierkegaard affirmed the eternal God. Nietzsche held that Man is self-sufficient and must deny God, but Kierkegaard insisted that Man is insufficient and must submit to God. For the former, the movement of history is circular, but for Kierkegaard the movement of history is circular. Nietzsche believed the Bible is full of myths, lies, and errors, but Kierkegaard held that it is a record of truth and revelation from God. For Nietzsche, self-denial is a sign of weakness, but Kierkegaard believed it was a sign of spiritual strength. Nietzsche believed man is only finite and fallible, but Kierkegaard affirmed that he is finite and sinful. Nietzsche was not to bring peace to the world, but instead, carried and used the sword to divide, shock, and perplex his audience. His fate though is one of the many lessons that can be learned in man’s striving to ‘know thyself.’ Man cannot be understood from the zoological perspective, but it is Nietzsche who illustrates that man does indeed have a problem in determining his nature. Hence the contrast between these two influences—Kierkegaard loving his native Copenhagen while Nietzsche was in a state of utter homelessness cut off from his community thus festering in a land of loneliness.

Nietzsche claims that the existence of God and Christianity either stands or falls on the present social order. Nietzsche rejects Christianity because as a total system it must rest on the standards set by Christianity delegating standards of culture and morality to the public—if the culture does not prove it out, then reject it and the existence of God. However, Kierkegaard saw that the problem lay in the confusion between the eternal God and the traditions of men. He also saw a breakdown in the structures that watered-down Christian requirements. Kierkegaard warned that Christianity could not endure unless it detaches itself from “Christendom.”

Nietzsche and Kierkegaard differed in their notions about being and becoming. Nietzsche believes that it is self-evident that the transcendent and immutable being is incompatible with the world of becoming and that any notions of piety associated with this being must be discarded. Kierkegaard on the other hand suggests that man should forget the idea of themselves as gods. Kierkegaard posits that man does not look for a lasting city here on earth because he is a pilgrim to the Absolute. Neitzsche counters by declaring that the entire world is the lasting city thus denying the existence of the transcendent being.

Nietzsche understood God as well as Kierkegaard. For one who rejects the absolutely binding obligation of God on his life understands God as well as the one who accepts it. Ironically, Kierkegaard drove men to atheism; Nietzsche drove them to theism.

Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Hegel Compared

HEGEL NIETZSCHE KIERKEGAARD
Opaque Clear Paradoxical
Objective Subjective  
Optimistic Pessimistic Optimistic
Only a Philosopher Philosopher and Poet Philosopher and Writer
Said God is Dead Believed God Dead Believed God is Alive
Reinterpreted Christianity Rejected Christianity Reaffirmed Christianity
Eternal found through time Eternal recurrence of time Eternal is in time

An Evaluation of Nietzsche

Nietzsche was misunderstood by many philosophers. Though he was unsystematic in his approach, he did deal with his subject matter, albeit, in a more indirect and dramatic aphoristic prose. He approached his philosophy through the vein of art, never denying the artist within. However, there were those like Heidegger who did think he was a systematic thinker considering him the last metaphysician of the West.

Although he was an atheist, even a theist can agree with some of what he said.  For example, when God dies, all value dies too. He provided a profound analysis of post-Christian European culture. He stressed the meaninglessness of life without God. However, Nietzsche basis for rejecting God was volitional not rational (see Paul Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless). His substitution of the eternal recurrence of the same state of affairs for God demonstrates that even atheists cannot avoid the Transcendence (i.e., God). Of course, he provided no evidence for eternal recurrence. Further, the negation of all value (called Nihilism) is self-defeating. For it implicitly affirms the value of negating all values. Nietzsche showed the need for God in his poem to the “unknown God” in which he bemoaned his need for God.

As noted, Nietzsche accepted Schopenhauer’s pessimistic notion of Christianity—a world denying, asceticism promoting emphasis on a narrow and restricted life. The Christianity that appeals to most twentieth century folks is not this kind. Today, it is seen as manly, self-reliant, and world affirming seeking to have each individual experience a richer and fuller life for himself and others as well. However, the Christian church should take into consideration Nietzsche’s severe criticisms and allow it to foster honest self-examination. Even though most would conclude that the church has been mostly right and Nietzsche mostly wrong, the church can learn something even from its most severe critics.

Twelve Things from Doctor G for His Students


by Doug Potter·Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Originally posted at http://www.facebook.com/notes/doug-potter/twelve-things-from-doctor-g-for-his-students/2301144449921509/

Forgive me, my heart is still heavy, and my eyes still cry. I will tell my Norm stories later, but for now I just lost my teacher, boss, colleague, and friend. All and all, sometimes more and sometimes less, I studied under, worked for and with him for 25 years. I miss him. He meant so much to me, and I know he did to you too. But don’t fret, as you know we will see him again in the flesh, with the Lord, but for now never forget what he left behind, something the world can’t get rid of. I see it in your own words . . .

Ravi is right: “After graduation, he remained a mentor to me and became a very dear friend. I owe more to him than anyone else for teaching me how to do apologetics for the Christian worldview. His death is a loss beyond words.” http://www.facebook.com/ravizacharias/posts/10156123766976813

Joe is right: “Dr. Geisler loved to teach and loved his students! . . . Though his accomplishments are powerfully influential, he is best known for his uncompromising defense of the Christian worldview, love for his family, humility, sacrificial love for all, and tireless work ethic.” http://viu.ves.edu/geisler/

Tom is right: “He is all these things to me; a mentor, an example, an aspiration. But, what is most important to me is, he is my friend. . . . but who could be in such a class, except of course Aquinas and Billy. I do not use the past tense, because he is still all of these things, and much more than we can imagine.” http://www.facebook.com/pat.devrieshowe/posts/10218686786110423

Frank is right: “There is no one from whom I’ve learned more about Christianity and the defense of the faith.” http://www.facebook.com/drfrankturek/posts/1596171613847689

Bill C. is right: “I bear his imprint. He gave me a strong appreciation for the history of philosophy, which has served me well. Most importantly, however, he convinced me of the need for a robust natural theology. This emphasis was and continues to be somewhat out of the “norm” (no pun intended) for Christian philosophers, but those of you who know my work will realize how indelibly Norm Geisler stamped me with his mark.” http://www.facebook.com/drwilliamlanecraig/posts/10219360647837687

Harold is right, “He was much more to me than a teacher. He was more to me than a mentor. He was a friend. . . . He has had more influence on me than anyone else. I will truly miss him.” http://www.facebook.com/gfigurelli/posts/10157240042679780:11

Paul is right “While it is true that we gained a wealth of knowledge sitting inside his classroom, we learned the most by what Dr. Geisler taught us outside the classroom.” http://www.facebook.com/TheistApologist/posts/10214342212568827

Marcie is right: “I can’t think of anyone in academia who matched him in contemporary times for intellect, knowledge, service to the cause of Christ, and dedication to his students.” http://www.facebook.com/dr.normangeisler/posts/2100634760048788

Bill R. is right: “The mark of a great leader is found in their ability to live beyond the grave and pass the baton to the next generation. Dr. Geisler has now joined the great host of witnesses that have gone before us and he has passed the baton onto each of us.

Therefore, it is now our responsibility to say during this time in history: I am put here for the defense of the gospel.” http://williamroach.org/2019/07/01/i-am-put-here-for-the-defense-of-the-gospel-the-legacy-of-dr-norman-l-geisler/

Steve is right: “His teaching, training, and writings have left behind an incredible wake of tens of thousands of Christian leaders across the planet who have taken his beautiful balance of grace and truth and applied it to building up the Kingdom of God. He had an unstoppable drive and passion and work ethic. Retirement was not even in his vocabulary, determined to use his final breath to defend and advance the gospel. Only in eternity will we know the true measure of his influence. To the great man we called “Stormin’ Norman” (behind his back of course!), we will miss you!” http://normangeisler.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Five-Profound-Memories-of-Stormin-Norman-Geisler.pdf

Tim is right, “Now it’s time for you [Norm] to rest. Your students will take it from here.” http://www.facebook.com/tim.barnett.585/posts/10214202491287004

Unlike you, no one will or can personally experience teaching and mentoring from Doctor G. again. So, remember . . .

1) “Put the cookies on the bottom shelf.”

2) “The world view glasses can come off.”

3) “There is no such thing as a relative truth” (No one ever got the $10 in his pocket.)

4) “A bad methodology always makes for bad theology.”

5) “Only one book, the Bible, I read to believe, all other books I only consider.”

6) “Either this book (Bible) will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book (Bible).”

7) “Garbage in Garbage out.”

8) “There is Thomism . . . and false” “Don’t throw out the philosophical baby–Aquinas with the Roman Catholic–bath water.”

a) “God never bypasses the mind on the way to the heart.”

b) “Be aware of philosophy . . . by knowing it”

c) “Immanuel Kant has influenced your life more than Jesus Christ!”

9) “The body is just as important as the soul, balance your scholarship with manual work or exercise.”

10) “Everyone’s cup in eternity will be overflowing, but not everyone’s cup will be the same size”

11) “Don’t be a saved soul with a wasted life. . . .You’re going to be dead a whole lot longer than you will be alive.”

12) “Go and do likewise . . . ”

Watch out wild world, there is an army of Christian soldiers Doctor G. left behind . . . Never to be heard about in the news or the movies, they don’t wear fatigues or berets and the world rejects them and what they say, but demons shudder, here we come . . .

What Norm Looked Forward to Most About Heaven



What did Norm most eagerly look forward to in heaven? You can see it in some of these poignant quotes out of Norm’s Systematic Theology (Volume Four) about Heaven!

THE FINAL STATE OF THE SAVED (HEAVEN)

The biblical words for “heaven” (Heb: shamayim; Gk: ouranos) are used in several different ways. There are three heavens: The first is the sky above us (earth’s atmosphere—Matt. 6:26), the second is the stars (the realm of space—24:29), and the third is the very abode of God, called “the third heaven” or “paradise” (2 Cor. 12:2, 4). It is in this third sense that “heaven” is used in this chapter, namely, as God’s dwelling place, the final destiny of the righteous.

THE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR THE DOCTRINE OF HEAVEN

The Bible is filled with references to heaven. Though many questions are left open, making heaven the subject of a wide range of speculation, there are also many truths we do know about it.

Heaven in the Present: A Place of Bliss for Departed Spirits

Heaven now is a real place of departed spirits, the place of bliss in God’s presence where believers go when they die. Enoch entered heaven when “God took him” to be with Himself (Gen. 5:24). Elijah also “went up to heaven in a whirlwind” (2 Kings 2:11). Jesus went there at death after saying, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”1 A repentant thief did also after Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Paul referred to it as being “absent from the body” and “present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8 NKJV).
Heaven is God’s home; Jesus spoke of “Our Father in heaven” (Matt. 6:9; cf. 5:16) and said it was an actual place, reminding His disciples:

In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:2–3)

Jesus said He came from heaven and would return there: “No one has ever gone into heaven [bodily] except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man” (3:13);2 “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all” (v. 31); “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he wll live forever” (6:51).
Jesus told Mary Magdalene, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ ” (20:17). This He did at His ascension, when the angels said He would return the same way He’d just departed.3
Angels also are said to be “in heaven” (Matt. 18:10), to come “from heaven” (28:2), to dwell “in heaven” (Mark 13:32), and return to heaven (Luke 2:15). In heaven is God’s “throne” (Matt. 5:34), where Christ sits at His “right hand” (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 1:3), where angels surround Him in praise and adoration (Rev. 4–5), and where the seraphim sing the tersanctus: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty” (Isa. 6:3).
That God dwells in heaven does not mean He is localized and not omnipresent.4 Solomon prayed: “The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you” (1 Kings 8:27). God is everywhere, as the psalmist revealed: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (139:7–9). The reality of heaven as God’s dwelling simply means that there is a place (like the old covenant tabernacle and temple) where God is manifested in a special way, a center or “throne” from which He rules the universe. Whether heaven is within the physical universe or in another physical dimension, it is an actual place where the righteous will “see his face” (Rev. 22:4).

Heaven in the Future: The New Heaven and the New Earth

According to Revelation, after the resurrection, after all believing human spirits have been reunited with their bodies, heaven will descend to earth5 in the form of the New Jerusalem:

Then I [John] saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. (21:1–3)

Heaven has foundations, gates, and dimensions:

One of the seven angels … came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.… The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick, by man’s measurement, which the angel was using. (vv. 9–12, 14–17)

The Constituents of Heaven

The innumerable occupants of heaven, in addition to the triune God, include angels and the great multitude of the redeemed from all ages.

The Triune God

At the heart of heaven is the throne of God, which John described:

After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. (4:1–3)

Not only is God the Father in heaven, but so is God the Son: “The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals” (5:5). Paul spoke of “Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—[and] is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34). John added, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One” (1 John 2:1). In heaven Jesus lives forever, with a permanent priesthood: “He is able to save completely those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them” (Heb. 7:25).
The blessed Holy Spirit of God is likewise in heaven. John described Him symbolically as “the seven spirits before his [God’s] throne” (Rev. 1:4). This is the “sevenfold Spirit” of Isaiah 11:2: “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”6
When we get to heaven, we will see Christ in His physical glorified resurrection body with our physical eyes, and we will see the essence of God with our spiritual eyes. This is called the Beatific Vision.7

Good Angels

Further,

Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. (Rev. 4:4–6)

Redeemed Humans

In addition to God and a great multitude of angels, there are incalculable redeemed human beings:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. (7:9)

The writer of Hebrews added,

You [believers] have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect. (12:22–23)

Indeed, John “heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them” (Rev. 5:13) singing in heaven to the Lamb.

The Duration of Heaven

Heaven will endure as long as God does, and God is eternal; heaven is where we will experience eternal life in its fullness.8 Further, heaven is the fulfillment of God’s promised everlasting life to believers, “the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time” (Titus 1:2). Jesus said, “The righteous [will go] to eternal life” (Matt. 25:46), and John declared, “I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’ ” (Rev. 5:13).

The Nature of Heaven

The following is some of what is known about heaven from Scripture’s extensive witness.

Heaven Is a Place Far Better Than Earth

Paul wrote, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Phil. 1:23); “we … would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8).

Heaven Is a Place of No Sorrow

John foretold, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).
Paul added,

[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. (2 Cor. 1:4–5)

Heaven Is a Place of No Curse

In Genesis, God said that by Adam’s sin the world was cursed:

Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat of it”: Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. (3:17–19)

But in the paradise to come, “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him” (Rev. 22:3).

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Rom. 8:18–21)

Heaven Is a Place of No Darkness

People of this sinful world love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil (John 3:19). By contrast, John said of heaven, “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.… On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there” (Rev. 21:23, 25).

Heaven Is a Place of No Sickness

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more … mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (v. 4). “On each side of the river [of the water of life] stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (22:2).

Heaven Is a Place of No Death

“There will be no more death” (Rev. 21:4).

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:53–54).

Heaven Is a Place of Perfect Bodies

Paul declared that by “the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, [God] will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21)—immortal, imperishable, and glorious:

We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. (1 Cor. 15:51–53)

These perfect bodies will never degenerate, decay, or die:

Those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. (Luke 20:35–36)

Heaven Is a Place of Completed Salvation

As we have seen,9 salvation comes in three stages: justification (salvation from the past penalty of sin), sanctification (salvation from the present power of sin), and glorification (salvation from the future presence of sin). This last stage, glorification, is heaven.
John described it this way:

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!… Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:1–2)

Paul said, “Those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30), for “when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4).

Heaven Is a Place of Many Mansions

Listen to these words of Jesus:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:1–3)

Sing the wondrous love of Jesus,
Sing His mercy and His grace;
In the mansions bright and blessed
He’ll prepare for us a place.10

There will be heavenly homes, magnificent mansions, and palatial palaces—all prepared for those who follow the Lord.

Heaven Is a Place of Perpetual Worship

Eternity is described as a heavenly temple (Rev. 21:3) where the angels worship (Isa. 6:3), where “the living … creatures … do not rest day or night, saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” and where the elders “fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever” (Rev. 4:8, 10 NKJV; cf. 5:13–14).

Heaven Is a Place of Everlasting Service

John’s vision declares: “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him” (Rev. 22:3). Believers will not be idle in heaven; like the angels, we will be engaged in ceaseless activity for God.

Heaven Is a Place of Abundant Life

Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10 KJV). Paul told Timothy that “godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” (1 Tim. 4:8 KJV). Indeed, John says that in the paradise to come there is a tree of life and a river of life:

He shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Rev. 22:1–2 KJV)

Heaven Is a Place of Overflowing Joy

Here on earth we are given a foretaste of what is to come because we serve “God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Tim. 6:17; cf. Ps. 16:11). Jesus said that the angels already rejoice in heaven because of what God is doing for us: “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10).

Heaven Is a Place of Grand Reunion

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words. (1 Thess. 4:13–18)

Christians never say a final good-bye; rather, it’s “So long—I’ll see you there.”

Heaven Is the Place of the Great Heavenly Wedding

People love weddings, as well we should—every earthly wedding is a picture, a temporal reflection, of the great heavenly wedding to come. Paul said of marriage, “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32 NKJV). There will be no earthly marriage in heaven (cf. Matt. 22:30), but there will be something far better—the heavenly marriage of the Lamb.

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. (Rev. 21:2–3)

Heaven Is a Celestial City

“None of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone” (Rom. 14:7). We shall all be together as residents in a heavenly city, in “Mount Zion … the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.” We will be with “thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, [in] the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven” (Heb. 12:22–23).

Love divine, so great and wondrous,
Deep and mighty, pure, sublime!
Coming from the heart of Jesus,
Just the same through tests of time.

He the pearly gates will open,
So that I may enter in;
For He purchased my redemption
And forgave me all my sin.11

Heaven Is a Place of Incredible Beauty

In regard to what we have here, Paul said, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). How much greater will heaven be? The Old Testament speaks of “the beauty of holiness” (1 Chron. 16:29 NKJV), of which heaven is the apex. John described heaven as the jewel-studded, golden-paved city of God (Rev. 21:18–21). This veritable cornucopia of aesthetic delight is literally beyond description.

Heaven Is a Place of Moral Perfection

The present world is laden with layers of evil; even the apostle Paul considered himself the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). In heaven, though, every believer will be made absolutely perfect, for “when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears” (1 Cor. 13:10; cf. 1 John 3:2).
“Nothing impure will ever enter it [heaven], nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev. 21:27). Therefore, we are to “make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). Heaven is a place of ultimate and complete sanctification.

Heaven Is a Place of Eternal Rest

Ever since the Fall, life has been filled with toil (Gen. 3:17–19)—even the spiritual life is a struggle (Eph. 6:11–12). Jesus said, “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4). On earth, we are the church militant; in heaven, we will be the church at rest. Hebrews says, “There remains … a Sabbath-rest for the people of God” (4:9), and the Spirit said to John, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.… They will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them” (Rev. 14:13).

Heaven Is a Place of Eternal Reward

We are not saved by works, but we are saved for good works:12

By grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph. 2:8–10)

If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. (1 Cor. 3:12–14)

Jesus promised, “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done” (Rev. 22:12). Those who have followed will hear Him say, “Well done, my good servant!” (Luke 19:17).

Heaven Is a Place of Perfect Knowledge

[Now] we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Cor. 13:9–12)

Heaven Is a Place of Indescribable Glory

Paul said, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). Trying to describe his vision of heaven’s glory, he wrote:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man … was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. (2 Cor. 12:2–4)

In a passage that narrates the Transfiguration,

[Jesus] took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.… While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matt. 17:1–2, 4–5).

Ezekiel described a dazzling display of the divine: “The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it” (Ezek. 1:13).
When Moses experienced only a passing glimpse of God’s glory, the Israelites had to cover his head because of the blinding brightness of its glow (Ex. 34:29–35); to them “the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain” (24:17).

Heaven Is the Place of the Beatific Vision

The Beatific Vision is the blessed vision that Moses sought, God forbade, Jesus promised, and John described—seeing God face-to-face.

Mortal Man Cannot See God

“No one has seen God at any time,” wrote John in his gospel (1:18 NKJV). When Moses pleaded, “Show me your glory,”

The Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.…
Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen” (Ex. 33:18–23).

Immortal Man Will See God

However, immortal human beings will see God face-to-face; John declared that in heaven “they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads” (Rev. 22:4). Again, Paul explained, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). The psalmist added, “In righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness” (17:15). As John said, “When he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
The term Beatific Vision, this face-to-face experience with God, comes from the word for beatitude, meaning “blessed” or “happy.” This vision is the ultimate fulfillment of all divine aspirations—it will be a direct, complete, and final revelation of God in which the believer will see the divine essence. Of the many who have declared this vision of God, Thomas Aquinas spoke repeatedly of the glory of this ultimate experience;13 Benedict XII (r. 1334–1342) said that the divine essence would be seen by direct intuition (face-to-face); and the Council of Vienne (1311–1312) insisted that since it transcended a human’s natural capacity, the Beatific Vision is only possible by a supernatural act of God (see Cross, ODCC, 146).

There are several important characteristics and consequences of the Beatific Vision that we can derive from Scripture and reason.

The Beatific Vision Brings Direct Knowledge of God

Paul said our present knowledge of God is indirect (1 Cor. 13:12); now, God is not known directly but through His creation, “for since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Rom. 1:20). However, in heaven we will see and know fully (1 John 3:2); what is now dim for us will become bright; what we now know indirectly we will know directly.
All we know now about the infinite God is known through finite images, which is why our knowledge is analogous.14 In the Beatific Vision’s unmediated knowledge, the divine essence will inform our finite minds; we will have a full and direct knowledge of God Himself.

The Beatific Vision Brings Perfect Knowledge of God

This ultimate knowledge of God will be perfect (1 Cor. 13:9–10); our partial knowledge will turn into whole knowledge; our incomplete understanding will be transformed into complete understanding. Whatever we can know about God, we will know, and we will know it perfectly.
This does not mean we will know God infinitely. Because we will always be finite, so will our knowledge be finite. Only God has an infinite knowledge of the infinite;15 even in heaven our knowledge will be finite. We will perfectly apprehend God, but will never completely comprehend Him. God will always be ineffable.16

The Beatific Vision Brings Perfect Love of God

Jesus said, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment” (Matt. 22:37–38). This kind of love is never fully attained in this life, but it will be in the next:

We are told that our final destiny consists in beholding God immediately, face to face, and as He really is … even as He knows Himself; that it [the Beatific Vision] consists also in loving Him even as He loves Himself. (Garrigou-LaGrange, P, 379)

“God is love” (1 John 4:16), and to know Him is to know His very essence. To know perfect love is to be able to love perfectly, and “we love Him because He first loved us” (v. 19 NKJV).

The Beatific Vision Makes Sin Impossible

Knowledge of God is knowledge of an infinite good;17 once one directly sees infinite good, it will no longer be possible for him to do evil,18 for to be directly informed in one’s mind by absolute good is to become completely conformed to it. Hence, the Beatific Vision makes sin impossible. Just as seeing absolute beauty will spoil one forever from longing for anything ugly, likewise, beholding the absolutely holy will overpower any attraction to or desire for the unholy.

The Beatific Vision Fulfills Our Freedom

Though heaven makes sin impossible, it does not destroy but instead fulfills our freedom. Heaven completes our freedom to completely love God, just as (analogously) marriage here on earth frees us to love the one to whom we belong. True freedom is not the freedom to do evil, but the freedom to do good. The essence of free will is self-determination, and if one’s self chooses to do only the good, then the fulfillment of it in a place where only good can be done is not the destruction of freedom, but the completion of it.19
God is both free and unable to sin; it will be likewise for us when we become most godlike, for the perfection of our freedom is the freedom from sinning, not the freedom of sinning. The best freedom is the freedom to do the best; beholding and loving the absolute best (which makes sin impossible) is the best thing we can ever do.20

The Beatific Vision Is Given Only to Believers

It is important to note that the Beatific Vision is not forced on anyone against his will: Only those who seek God will see God (Heb. 11:6). It is those who choose to fall in love that are overwhelmed by it; no one can be forced to love another. Love, like God’s saving grace, is irresistible, but only on the willing,21 for irresistible force on the unwilling is not grace but assault. Once again, as C.S. Lewis aptly stated:

The Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His [God’s] scheme forbids Him to use.… Merely to override a human will … would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. (SL, 46)

The Beatific Vision Brings a Permanent State of Perfection

Just as God is changeless perfection,22 even so the perfection of beatified saints will be changeless. Salvation from the presence of sin (glorification) will save us from the damage and distortion that sin wreaks in our lives. Our present growth in perfection (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18) is due to our not yet having reached the ultimate state of perfection. One no longer needs to be changed into what he has ultimately achieved; heaven (and the Beatific Vision it brings) will make permanent (by glorification) what is only in process in this life (through sanctification).23 The more we become like God, the more unchangeably we become like His moral attributes.24

The Beatific Vision Brings a Dynamic State of Perfection

Being in an immutable state of perfection (in heaven) is not to be confused with being in a static state. God is immutable but not immobile;25 likewise, in heaven we will be immutably (though finitely) perfect without being immobile (static). God is the Unmoved Mover,26 but He is not an Unmoving Mover. In fact, as Pure Actuality,27 He is the most active being in the universe (He is Pure Actuality, having no potentiality). God is active in sustaining everything in existence,28 in His sovereignty (governance) over the entire world,29 through His providence in the world,30 and by His miraculous intervention in human affairs.31 God also interacts with the prayers of all the saints and saves all sinners who repent.32 Note, though, that while God is interactive, He is not reactive but proactive; as Isaiah said, before we call, God answers (Isa. 65:24).
Likewise, when we reach the most godlike state of absolute perfection possible (via the Beatific Vision), we do not become less active but more active. We will not be God’s frozen chosen—we will be His mobile millions, actively worshiping and serving Him (cf. Rev. 4–5). Nevertheless, our action will not be that of striving but of enjoying, not of seeking but of treasuring what was found. Our minds will be active, not in searching for truth but in rejoicing over the infinite truth discovered (1 Cor. 13:12). Our intellectual and spiritual action in heaven will not be that of desiring God but of delighting in Him.
The hymnist said it eloquently:

Face to face with Christ, my Savior,
Face to face—what will it be
When with rapture I behold Him,
Jesus Christ who died for me?

Face to face—O blissful moment!
Face to face—to see and know;
Face to face with my Redeemer,
Jesus Christ who loves me so.

Face to face I shall behold Him,
Far beyond the starry sky.
Face to face in all His glory,
I shall see Him by and by.33

One day, while meditating on this topic, these words came to me:

In That Great Day …

The mountains shall be lowered
  And the crooked things made straight
When we see the Lord of glory
  And pass through the open gate.
The Lord Himself will tell us:
  “I have saved you by my grace.”
And all we once-lost sinners
  Will see His wondrous face.
The angels up in glory
  Will shout with ecstasy
For ne’er in all the ages
  Ere this sight did see.
We’ll have the glory of Jesus;
  Our bodies will be the same;
In that great Day
  When the Lord of Hosts shall reign.

ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT HEAVEN

As with other ultimate truths, when it comes to heaven there are more questions than answers. Many queries are not addressed in Scripture and must await the final reality itself; in the meantime, we must be content that “the secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29). Even so, there is nothing to hinder theological speculation, provided it contradicts neither Scripture nor sound reasoning.

Will Those Who Die in Infancy Remain Babies in Heaven?

Probably not. Heaven is a place of maturity and perfection, and babies stunted in their growth, short of maturity, would not reflect a state of perfection.34 It seems to better befit God’s nature and plan for those who were not granted earthly maturity to attain it in heaven.

Will Everyone Be Equally Blessed in Heaven?

The evidence seems to support a negative answer. Everyone in heaven will be fully blessed, but not everyone will be equally blessed. Every believer’s cup will be full and running over, but not everyone’s cup will be the same size. We determine in time what our capacity for appreciating God will be in eternity.35 Different persons can listen to the same musical performance and have varying degrees of appreciation because they have developed different capacities for enjoying it; similarly, different people can be in the same heaven and yet have different degrees of enjoyment due to developing different abilities for enjoying God here on earth.
By our temporal obedience we determine our reward in eternity (cf. 2 Cor. 5:10), as Paul clearly explains:

No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Cor. 3:11–15).36

How Can Heaven Be a Place of Glory to God and Yet of Reward for Us?

The Bible seems to present contradictory motifs: (1) the worship of God, and (2) rewards for us. How can we be working for rewards and yet doing all things for God’s glory (1 Cor. 10:31)?
The answer lies in the nature of the reward: If the reward is the capacity to love and serve God more, then these two elements are not contradictory. This seems to be the case in Jesus’ parable of the stewards (Matt. 25:14–30); those who invested their talents were given more, and their master said, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”
Indeed, the elders mentioned in Revelation do not strut their crowns on the corner of Glory Street and Hallelujah Avenue:

They lay their crowns before the throne and say: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being” (4:10–11).

There is nothing selfish about working for a crown if it is for the privilege of casting it at the feet of Jesus.

Will Believers Have Physical Bodies in Heaven?

Yes.37 Jesus’ resurrection body was the same physical body in which He died, crucifixion scars and all (cf. Luke 24:39–40; John 20:27). The empty tomb, the scars, the physical touching of His body (cf. Matt. 28:9), calling it “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39), and His statement that it was the same body that died (John 2:19–21) all demonstrate that His resurrection body was physical. Our resurrection bodies will be like His (Phil. 3:21), and, like Him, we will leave behind an empty grave (John 5:28–29).

Will We Eat in Heaven?

Yes,38 but for enjoyment, not for sustenance—for pleasure rather than necessity.39 The physical resurrection body is supernaturally rather than naturally sourced (cf. 1 Cor. 10:4; 15:44); God will have incomparably rich enjoyment for us in heaven even as He has given us great pleasure here on earth.40 Jesus said to His disciples, “I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matt. 26:29).

Will We Recognize Loved Ones in Heaven?

Yes. Moses and Elijah were recognized when they appeared from heaven on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3); Peter even acknowledged them by name (v. 4). There seems to be a personal identity by which we will recognize each other in heaven, as is at least implied in Paul’s comfort of the bereaved among the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:13–18) and in Jesus’ response to the Sadducees’ question about the resurrection (Matt. 22:28–30).

Can We Be Married in Heaven?

No, there will be no marriage ceremony or marriage relationship in heaven. This ends at the time of physical death:

By law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. (Rom. 7:2–3)

How Many People Will Be in Heaven?

Everyone whom God can bring there without violating the free will that He gave them.41 God desires all to be saved (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Tim. 2:4), but we cannot know how many will be. Augustine speculated that it would be the same percentage as the angels who fell (one-third; see Rev. 12:9), but the Bible nowhere says this.
Many believe that only a small fraction of all the people who ever lived will be in heaven, based on passages like Matthew 7:13–14:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

However, B. B. Warfield (1851–1921) argued that this is taking such verses out of context (“ATFTBS” in BTS); he maintained that they refer to the immediate and local response to Jesus’ message, not to the ultimate and universal statistics of heaven. Indeed, granting that all who die in infancy go to heaven,42 that life begins at conception,43 and that the mortality rate before the age of accountability44 down through the millennia has been roughly half of those conceived, it would seem to follow that there will be more people saved than lost. This is to say nothing of much of the world’s population since the time of Adam being still alive at this time;45 a great revival before Christ’s return could sweep even more souls into God’s kingdom.
Finally, by analogy with the angels, two-thirds of which did not rebel against God (Rev. 12:4), one could reason that perhaps two-thirds of all humans will be saved. This also is merely speculative, but we do know that “the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9; cf. 1 Tim. 2:4). Once again: There will be as many people in heaven as God can get there without violating the free choice that He freely gave His creatures.46

Is Heaven a Place or a State of Mind?

Liberal theologians have long insisted that heaven is a state of mind, not a place; thus, those in the right state of mind are in heaven now—here on earth.
However, while it’s true that unless one enters the right state of mind and heart—a state of belief in God47—he will not go to heaven, it is untrue that everyone in this state of mind is already there. Heaven is much more than a state of mind: It is a real place. Jesus used the word place three times in regard to heaven in John 14:2–4;48 He also taught us to pray to “our Father in heaven,” and that His will would be accomplished “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:9–10). Heaven is a different place than earth (cf. Rev. 21:9–27).49

Where Is Heaven Located?

Presently, before the final resurrection, heaven is the abode of righteous human souls and angelic spirits in God’s presence (2 Cor. 5:8; Heb. 12:23), where Christ sits on the right hand of God’s throne (1:3). This may be somewhere in a far corner of the space-time world, shrouded from human view behind a cloud of God’s glory, or in an entirely different physical dimension.
In favor of heaven being in the space-time world, some have cited Job’s reference to God coming from the north (Job 37:22; cf. 26:7). Plus, Jesus ascended bodily into the sky and off into space (Acts 1:10–11), and He will return to the same place (the Mount of Olives), in the same physical body, from which He left (Zech. 14:4).
In favor of heaven being in another dimension, others have noted that Jesus seemed to step in and out of this space-time dimension when in His resurrection body (Luke 24:31; John 20:26). Further, contemporary science presents a multidimensional universe that allows for many dimensions beyond the customary three.
Eventually, after the Second Coming,50 heaven (the Holy City) will descend to be part of “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1–2). Peter exhorted believers:

Look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. (2 Peter 3:12–13)

This will be the eventual fulfillment of the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray (Matt. 6:10): In that day there literally will be heaven on earth. For He asks us to pray: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Will We Continue to Learn and Morally Improve in Heaven?

Christian theologians have held both views.
Those who hold to eternal human process cite texts like Ephesians 3:10–11:

His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Also, 1 Peter 1:12 states:

It was revealed to them [the prophets] that they were not serving themselves but you [later believers], when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

From such passages it is inferred that even heaven is a great university wherein we continue to learn about (and grow in) God.
On the other hand, those who deny heavenly spiritual progress point to several factors.
First, heaven is a place of perfection, not progress (cf. 1 Cor. 13:2). Heaven represents rest and attainment, not striving (cf. John 9:4; Rev. 14:13).
Second, heaven is a place of receiving, not working for, rewards (cf. 1 Cor. 3:11ff.; Rev. 22:12).
Third, the sense of urgency and finality about this life (cf. Heb. 9:27) supports the conclusion that heaven completes and finalizes what is done here and now. As Jesus said to Peter, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:19; cf. 18:18).
Fourth, and finally, the very nature of the Beatific Vision as the ultimate and final state of perfection and sinlessness suggests that once we have it, we will no longer be learning;51 instead, we will be engaged in the eternal experience of resting in, delighting in, and reveling in the incredible and unsurpassable knowledge provided by God’s infinite nature.
The one thing heaven will not be is a place of boredom, which results from falling short of perfection rather than from attaining it. The following chart illustrates the difference:

Moral Perfection on Earth Moral Perfection in Heaven
Changing Unchanging
Growing Matured
Striving for Resting in
Seeking Enjoying
Desiring of Delighting in
Our goal Our reward
Our aim Our attainment

Paul wrote,

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.… I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:12–14)

Will We Be Able to Explore the Universe in Heaven?

Yes, but in an infinitely higher way than space travelers could. The nature of the Beatific Vision grants this: We will know everything our finite capacity will allow us to know directly through the infinite mind of God. As He knows the entire universe in and through Himself,52 so will we know the universe by virtue of knowing everything directly in and through His Mind (essence). Hence, with effortless ease, we will be able to explore the entire universe, insofar as it is finitely possible. Such exploration will not be that of ceaseless discovering, but of endless delighting in what we have already discovered in God.

Will We Experience Time in Heaven?

Here again, there are two views held by orthodox Christians.
The first position says yes, we will experience time in heaven, a conclusion based on passages that speak about eternity being described as, for instance, “day and night” forever (e.g., Rev. 4:8; 7:15), though these could be figures of speech for an endless eternity.
The second view emphasizes that heaven is the abode of the eternal (nontemporal) God.53 We, the beatified, will have reached a state of changeless perfection in which the timeless God directly informs our minds. Because time is a measurement of change according to a before and an after, we cannot be temporal in heaven; if we were temporal, then we would still be changing; however, we will be perfect, and what is perfect does not need to change.54 If perfection changed, it would have to be either change for the better (we cannot be better than being absolutely perfect) or change for the worse (we cannot get worse in heaven). Since humans in heaven cannot be in time, nor, as finite,55 can we be absolutely changeless like God, the medieval theologians gave another name to this state: aeviternity. Our state of aeviternity will be one like that of the angels, who are not in time by nature but can be related to it by activity.56

THE THEOLOGICAL BASIS FOR THE DOCTRINE OF HEAVEN

Like every other major biblical doctrine, heaven is rooted in the very nature and will of God. Particularly, heaven is based in God’s omnibenevolence, omniscience, omnisapience, and omnipotence. As the place of ultimate good, heaven was desired by God’s omnibenevolence, was conceived by His omniscience, was planned in accordance with His omnisapience, and will be achieved by His omnipotence.

Heaven Follows From God’s Omnibenevolence

God, by nature, is all-loving.57 He does not want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9) but desires “all men … to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4 NET). “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16 TLB), who is the sufficient sacrifice for the sins of “the whole world” (1 John 2:2).58 The love of Christ is manifest in that “one died for all” (2 Cor. 5:14); that is, “He might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9 NLT). If God loves everyone and wants everyone to be saved, then there must be an eternal place for them. This is why Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). In the Bible, this place is called “heaven” (Matt. 6:9).

Heaven Follows From God’s Omniscience

Of course, it would be useless for God to prepare a heaven unless He knew in advance that someone was going to be there. Only an omniscient being with infallible foreknowledge of human freedom59 could know with certainty that any free creatures would accept His offer of salvation.60 Paul confirms,

Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. (Rom. 8:29–30)

Peter wrote to those “who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood” (1 Peter 1:2). In accordance with God’s foreknowledge of those who would receive Him (cf. John 1:12) and thus be saved, He provided an eternal heaven for their happiness.

Heaven Flows From God’s Omnisapience

God is not only all-knowing, He is also all-wise;61 He not only knows who will be saved, but He also knows how to get them there. This requires omnisapience: Wisdom chooses the best way to obtain the best end.62 Since humans were created free, the infinitely wise God ordained the best means to keep them on the track to heaven. Needless to say, this was no small task, since He willed not to violate our choice and yet also assure our ultimate destiny.63

Heaven Flows From God’s Omnipotence

A plan that transforms sinners and makes them saints cannot be accomplished by natural powers—only the efficacious grace of God can do this.64 As such, it is God’s omnipotence that can guarantee the end from the beginning: “What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do” (Isa. 46:11). It is with this assurance that we can know heaven will have occupants, the exact ones whom God has foreordained will be there.65 Because of God’s omnipotence, Peter was compelled to speak of those “who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5). The surety of heaven is a confident expectation, not only because God is all-loving and wants to achieve it, but also because He is all-powerful and can do it.66

Geisler, N. L. (2005). Systematic theology, volume four: church, last things (pp. 294–318). Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers.

The Untold Truth about Paige Patterson


 Click here to open this article as a PDF.

 

The Untold Truth:

Facts Surrounding Paige Patterson and his Removal from SWBTS

By Sharayah Colter

May 2018

“The first to plead his case seems right, until another comes and examines him.”

Proverbs 18:17 (NASB)

 

When I received news that Paige Patterson had been fired from his role as president emeritus, I was standing under a sunny sky listening to my toddler son squealing with pure delight as he chased his dog around my legs. It struck me how oblivious he was to the sobering news, and I felt the weight of the realization that the history we write today is the future he lives tomorrow. In the spirit of writing a truthful history, I’d like to offer a more complete picture of what has transpired over the past month in regard to Patterson and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I believe we are all better served operating with the truth, and since I am aware of these truths, I feel I need to share them.

The first fact I’d like to offer in full disclosure is that I have had a front row seat to observing Paige Patterson during my time at Southwestern as a student and most recently as wife to his chief of staff, Scott Colter. I have been in his home, ridden in his car, passed him on the sidewalk, been a student in his class, sat through his chapel sermons, emailed with him and shared meals with him. I’ve observed him in large groups and small family gatherings.

Second, I want to be clear that I have compiled this account of the truth completely of my own volition. Paige and Dorothy Patterson have not asked me to write on behalf of or in defense of them, and my words are my own.

Third, the fact is, Southern Baptists deserve to know the whole story. Thus far you’ve heard one side of it, and that is because Patterson holds the conviction not to defend himself personally, following the example of Christ. However, this story has spiraled out of control to a point that demands a balanced and truthful response. The facts below will characterize a man who — while a sinner with feet of clay like each us — is not guilty of all of which he has been accused in recent days.

Please allow me to address the accusations against him here.

 


Accusation # 1: Patterson encouraged a female Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary student not to report an alleged rape to police.

This accusation was outlined in a Washington Post article published May 22 while the trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) were meeting. In the article, a student who in a Tweet later identified herself as Megan Lively (Megan Nichols during her time at Southeastern), alleges that Patterson met with her along with four male seminarians and encouraged her not to report the alleged rape to police. The article states that she was placed on probation but that she did not know why.

Truth: Patterson says he does not recall meeting with Lively, which appears in keeping with a letter Lively sent to Patterson dated April 15, 2003 (see attached letter and response in the PDF version).

“Finally, thank you for the accountability and for putting me on probation. Even though Dr. Moseley has handled this, I think it is great that the school enforces discipline,” Lively wrote in the letter. “At first, I was humiliated and embarrassed. But I know now this is from my own actions and the consequences of those.”

In the letter, Lively apologized and admitted what she recalled then as sin.

“I just wanted to write you and first of all apologize,” Lively wrote in the April 15 letter. “I know that you have been made aware of the sin that was in my life. While I have confessed this to the Lord, repented and sought accountability in my own life, I feel that I have disgraced the school.”

In July 2003, Lively sent a handwritten notecard to Patterson again offering her gratitude and appreciation to him (see attached notecard and response).

“I just wanted to take the time to thank you for the difference you have made in the life of our seminary and in my personal life,” Lively wrote in the notecard. “We will be praying for you and support you 100 percent. The faculty and students at Southwestern have no idea how blessed they are to have you as their new president.”

If a rape had indeed been alleged in 2003, and Patterson had known about it, he would have reported it to authorities, as he demonstrated in a different scenario involving a Southwestern Seminary student when he called police even when the student asked him not to do so.

This brings me to the second accusation against Patterson.


Accusation # 2: Patterson did not handle appropriately an alleged case of sexual assault against a SWBTS student.

Truth: Patterson immediately called police in response to a female student claiming she had been raped. The accused man admitted to having sexual relations with the woman, but said it was consensual. The man also produced evidence to the police to that effect.

Southwestern’s chief of police can confirm that the Fort Worth Police Department was called and responded. Patterson expelled the male student accused of rape. However, because the female student refused to press charges, Patterson had done all he could by calling the police, expelling the student and encouraging the woman multiple times to press charges.

Assistant Professor of Theology in Women’s Studies Candi Finch, who also served as assistant to Dorothy Patterson during her time as first lady at Southwestern, was in one of the meetings where Patterson met with the female student and her family members.

“I personally sat in a meeting with Dr. Patterson and this female student and two of her family members,” Finch recalled. “Dr. Patterson opened and closed the meeting with prayer for this young lady. He encouraged her in my presence to press criminal charges against the young man, but she said she wanted to think and pray about it more.”

Finch said to her knowledge the woman has not pressed charges to date.


Accusation # 3: Patterson says an abused wife should return to an abusive husband.

Truth: Fifty-four years ago, a woman in Patterson’s church told him she was feeling spiritually abused because her husband would not let her go to church or tithe. After the woman emphatically assured Patterson her husband had never hurt her physically and would never hurt her, Patterson advised her to go home and pray for her husband. Surprisingly to the woman, the husband did hurt her. They both came to church, and the man was saved, about which Patterson said he was happy. Contrary to the narrative spun through social media, Patterson was not happy the woman was hurt. Patterson has apologized for not expressing himself clearly in the retelling of this story giving the impression he condones abuse. As one who has risked his life to remove wives from domestic violence, nothing could be further from the truth.

Many Southern Baptist leaders have condemned Patterson by explaining their stance on abuse and setting it up in juxtaposition to Patterson’s portrayed beliefs. Patterson has offered multiple statements clarifying his stance on abuse. “I utterly reject any form of abuse in demeaning or threatening talk, in physical blows, or in forced sexual acts,” Patterson stated in “An Apology to God’s People,” posted on Southwestern’s website on May 10, 2018. “There is no excuse for anyone to use intemperate language or to attempt to injure another person.” For Patterson, those are not just hollow words; they are strong beliefs which he has demonstrated by physically removing women from abusive husbands on more than one occasion.

“I was the one being hit and Dr. Patterson never suggested to ‘stick around and get smacked.’” tweeted Angie Brock on May 4. “What he did was bring the authorities, remove my violent husband and encourage me in the Word. Not recommending divorce does not mean approval of abuse.”


Accusation # 4: Patterson objectified a 16-year-old girl in conversation with a woman and her son.

Truth: Patterson, upon hearing a teenage boy say to his friend that a girl passing by was “built,” commented to the boy’s mother that the boy was just being biblical, meaning that he was using the same language the Bible uses to describe Eve in the creation account. In the retelling of this story during a sermon illustration while preaching on Genesis 2, Patterson said that the “young co-ed” who had passed by the boys, was “nice.”

Patterson has issued a statement saying he regrets any hurt his words have caused.

“[A] sermon illustration used to try to explain a Hebrew word (Heb. banah “build or construct,” Gen. 2:22) [has] obviously been hurtful to women in several possible ways,” Patterson said in his May 10 statement “An Apology to God’s People.” “I wish to apologize to every woman who has been wounded by anything I have said that was inappropriate or that lacked clarity. We live in a world of hurt and sorrow, and the last thing that I need to do is add to anyone’s heartache. Please forgive the failure to be as thoughtful and careful in my extemporaneous expression as I should have been.”


Accusation # 5: Patterson fired student employee Nathan Montgomery in retaliation for Tweeting an article calling for his retirement.

Truth: When Montgomery’s Tweet was shown to Patterson, he instructed that the employee not be fired. Vice President of Communications Charles Patrick, however, had already fired Montgomery. The matter was taken out of Patterson’s hands when Montgomery appealed directly to the board of trustees instead of appealing to Patterson. 


Remaining truths

The last few remaining truths that Southern Baptists should know is the way in which the Southwestern board of trustees has handled the social media crisis and ensuing termination of Patterson. While many godly men and women comprise the board of trustees, the manner in which the matter was handled was disappointing at best, especially in light of the many bylaw infractions and violations of trustee confidentiality.

 

Trustee violations

 

The executive committee of the board of trustees worked outside the bounds of its bylaws by not giving the required 10-day notice before holding meetings.

 

Trustee confidentiality was violated by the release of information from the executive session of the board’s May 22 meeting to people outside the room and not on the board during the 13-hour meeting. Confidential seminary information which was only shared with the trustees appeared both on Twitter (@eyesonSBC) and in a blog.

 

May 22, 2018 meeting of the board of trustees

 

Despite the fact that Patterson requested the meeting to have a hearing from the full board, only a fraction of the time was allotted by the trustees for him to address the group. His time was limited and he was only allowed to answer specific questions posed by the board. On the second brief occasion when he was summoned to speak to the board, he was not allowed to bring his cabinet with him, as he desired.

 

Then, after waiting into the wee hours of the morning while the board met in executive session and upon offering Patterson the position of president emeritus, Patterson returned to a side room down the hall from the trustees’ meeting room to discuss the board’s solution with his cabinet. After about 20 minutes, when Patterson was nearly ready to return to the board’s meeting room in reply, a Southwestern employee noticed the trustees were returning to open session and rushed down the hall to let Patterson and his cabinet know so that they could return to the meeting.

 

I personally walked down the hall to hear what the board would announce in open session, since they had not waited for Patterson to return. When I arrived at the room, trustees and media were pouring out, having already ended the meeting after only a couple of minutes, if that, in open session. I had to ask a reporter what the board had announced and then returned immediately to deliver the news to Patterson that they had removed him as president and named him president emeritus.

 

May 30, 2018 action of the executive committee of the board of trustees

 

After midnight in Germany, while Patterson was sleeping, the chairman of the board of trustees, Kevin Ueckert, ordered Scott Colter to wake Patterson for a phone call. On the call, Ueckert told Patterson he was fired effective immediately, with no salary, no health insurance and no home. He then relayed that Patterson would receive instructions for vacating Pecan Manor upon returning to Fort Worth.

 

Before the phone call, both Pattersons’ and Colter’s email accounts, including personal contacts and calendar, were shut down without notice and while the three were traveling in Germany on behalf of Southwestern, leaving them without access to itineraries, train tickets, local contact information, hotel confirmation and flight boarding passes.

 

Also at some point before the phone call, the locks were changed without notice to the room on Southwestern’s campus housing Patterson’s private and personal archives containing ministry materials and documents from Criswell College and the Conservative Resurgence. No notice was given, and the Pattersons had no knowledge that this was being done and had not given permission for such. Despite accusations that the archives were mishandled, the attached correspondence from 2004 from Patterson to Southeastern’s librarian and president indicate he believes all was handled properly.

 

It is regrettable that the trustees did not contact Patterson during their May 30 executive committee meeting to hear any explanation of these accusations before his immediate termination. I wish to reiterate that the purpose of sharing the details of what has transpired over the past month is the hope that Southern Baptists, who own Southwestern Seminary and control its work, have a fuller picture of what actually occurred.

 

So why was Paige Patterson actually terminated? Was it for …

 

–        encouraging a female student not to report to police an alleged rape at Southeastern?

 

We now know that he does not recall meeting with her and that she thanked him and sang his praises.

 

–        not handling appropriately an alleged case of sexual assault against a SWBTS student?

 

We now know that he called the police, urged the woman to press charges and expelled the male student.

 

–        telling an abused wife to return to an abusive husband?

 

We now know the wife assured him that her husband had not and would never physically harm her.

 

–        objectified a 16-year-old girl in conversation with a woman and her son?

 

We now know Patterson has apologized for using a sermon illustration that misconstrued his heart and beliefs.

 

–        fired student employee Nathan Montgomery?

 

We now know Patterson did not fire Montgomery and instructed that he not be fired.

 

We serve a God of truth. I have written in the spirit of that truth, and I pray you will receive it in that spirit as well.

 

Carroll instructed Scarborough,

“Lee, keep the Seminary lashed to the cross. If heresy ever comes in the teaching, take it to the faculty. If they will not hear you and take prompt action, take it to the trustees of the Seminary. If they will not hear you, take it to the Convention that appoints the Board of Trustees, and if they will not hear you, take it to the great common people of our churches. You will not fail to get a hearing then.”

–        B.H. Carroll – Founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

An Evaluation of Marxist Humanism (Part 1 of 2)


An Evaluation of Marxist Humanism

Part 1 of 2

by Norman L. Geisler


Judged by the standard of political influence, Marxism is the most widespread form of humanism in the world. Its founder, Karl Marx, was born in 1818 to a German Jewish family which was converted to Lutheranism when he was six. As a university student he was influenced heavily by Georg Hegel’s idealism and he adopted Ludwig Feuerbach’s atheism. After some radical political activity, which resulted in expulsion from France in 1845, he teamed up with Friedrich Engels to produce the Communist Manifesto (1848). With the economic support of Engels’s prosperous textile business Marx spent years of research in the British Museum and produced his famous Das Kapital (1867). These and succeeding Marxist writings have bequeathed a form of humanistic thought that is politically dominant in much of the world.

The Marxist View of God and Religion

Even as a college student Marx was a militant atheist who believed that the “criticism of religion is the foundation of all criticism.” For this criticism Marx drew heavily on the radical young Hegelian, Ludwig Feuerbach. Engels admitted that Feuerbach influenced them more than did any other post-Hegelian philosopher. [1] He triumphantly spoke of Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity which “with one blow . . . pulverized [religion] . . . in that without circumlocution it placed materialism on the throne again.”[2]

There were three basic premises Marx learned from Feuerbach. First, “the teaching that man is the highest essence for man”[3] was accepted. This means that there is a categorical imperative to over-throw anything—especially religion—which debases man. Secondly, Marx accepted the premise of Feuerbach that “man makes religion, religion does not make man.”[4] In other words, religion is the self-consciousness of man who has lost himself and then found himself again as “God.” Thirdly, Marx also accepted the Feuerbachian belief that “all religion … is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces.”[5] In brief, God is nothing but a projection of human imagination. God did not make man in His image; man has made “God” in his image.

Marx’s atheism, however, went well beyond Feuerbach. Marx agreed with the materialists that “matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is merely the highest product of matter.”[6] That is, he agreed with Feuerbach that man in seeking his origin must look backward to pure matter. Marx, however, objected that Feuerbach did not go forward in the social domain. For Feuerbach by no means wished to abolish religion; he wanted to perfect it.[7] Feuerbach, reasoned Marx, did not see that the “religious sentiment” is itself a social product.[8] Hence “he [did] not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’ of ‘practical-critical,’ activity.”[9] Feuerbach did not realize, in the words of Marxism’s famous slogan, that “religion is the opium of the people.”[10] Man needs to take the drug of religion because this world is not adequate to assure him of his complete and integrated development. So he compensates himself with the image of another, more perfect world.[11]

In going beyond Feuerbach, Marx argued that “nowadays, in our evolutionary conception of the universe, there is absolutely no room for either a Creator or a Ruler; and to talk of a Supreme Being shut out from the whole existing world [as deism does] implies a contra-diction in terms.”[12] Hence, concluded Marx, “the only service that can be rendered to God today is to declare atheism a compulsory article of faith and … [to prohibit] religion generally.”[13]

Marx had no illusions that religion would immediately cease to exist when socialism was adopted. Since religion is but a reflex of the real world, religion will not vanish until the practical relations of everyday life offer to man perfect relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature[14]—that is, until the communist utopia is realized.

 The Marxist View of Man

Basically Marxism holds a materialistic view of man’s origin and nature. This, of course, entails an evolutionary concept of man’s origin.

The Origin of Man

Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859. Marx’s Das Kapital came out only eight years later (in 1867). Evolution for Marx was a helpful addition to his materialistic understanding of the origin of man.[15] “Mind is the product of matter,” he wrote; that is, mind has evolved from material stuff. The nonliving matter has always been; it has produced the living, and finally, the nonintelligent has produced the intelligent (man).

Marx had written his doctoral thesis (at the University of Jena, 1841) on the materialistic philosophies of two early Greek philosophers, Epicurus and Democritus. Then with the subsequent support of Darwinian evolution he could explain the origin of human life as the product of evolutionary processes in a material world—there was no longer any need to speak of God.

The Nature of Man

Marx was not interested in pure philosophy, which he dismissed as mere speculation and quite useless when compared to the vital task of changing the world.[16] Hence he was not particularly interested in philosophical materialism. His being designated a materialist, however, does not mean that he denied mind altogether (as he denied life after death). Rather he believed that everything about man, including his mind, is determined by his material conditions. “For us,” said Marx, “mind is a mode of energy, a function of brain; all we know is that the material world is governed by immutable laws, and so forth.”[17] This view would fit with what philosophers call epiphenomenalism, according to which consciousness is nonmaterial but dependent on material things for its existence.

Karl Marx was more interested in man in the concrete, in man as a social being. He believed that “the real nature of man is the total of social nature.”[18] Apart from the obvious biological facts such as man’s need for food, Marx tended to downplay individual human existence. He believed that what is true of one man at one time in one society is also true of all men at all times in all places.[19] Thus it is not [that] the consciousness of men . . . determines their being, but . . . their social being determines their consciousness.”[20] In short, psychology is reducible to sociology, but sociology is not reducible to psychology.

One important generalization Marx makes about human nature is that man is a socially active being who distinguishes himself from other animals in that he produces his means of subsistence.[21] That is, it is natural for men to work for their living. Thus, Marx concludes, it is right for men to have a life of productive activity, to be workers.

The Alienation of Man

Men who do not find fulfillment in industrial labor will experience alienation. This alienation will be eliminated when private property is done away with.[22] Private property, however, is not the cause but a consequence of alienation.[23] The alienation itself consists in the fact that the work is not part of the worker’s nature. He is not fulfilled in work because it is forced on him so that someone else may be fulfilled Even the objects he produces are alien to him because they are owned by another. The cure for this ill will be the future communist society in which everyone can cultivate his talent by working for the good of the whole commune of mankind.[24] It is in this sense that Marxism is appropriately called a humanism.

The Marxist View of the World and History

 The Dialectic of History

 As has been noted already, Marx’s overall view of the world is materialistic. He uses the term historical materialism to designate that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society.[25] Further, Marx can be classified as a dialectical materialist, following in the tradition of the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.[26] History is unfolding according to a universal dialectical law the outworking of which can be predicted the way an astronomer predicts an eclipse. In the preface to Das Kapital Marx compares his method to that of a physicist: “The ultimate aim of this work is to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society” He also speaks of the natural laws of capitalistic production as “working with iron necessity toward inevitable results.”[27]

The dialectic of modern history is that the thesis of capitalism is opposed by the antithesis of socialism, which will unavoidably give way to the ultimate synthesis of communism. History is predetermined like the course of the stars, except that the laws governing history are not mechanical but economic in nature. Man is economically determined. That is, “the mode of production of material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life.”[28] This, of course, does not mean that man is determined solely by economic factors. Marx means only that the economic is the primary or dominant influence on man’s social character. Engels emphatically proclaimed, “More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase.”[29]

The Future of Capitalism

 On the basis of his assumption that the dialectic of history is carried out by means of economic determinism, Marx confidently predicted that capitalism would become increasingly unstable and that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and the proletariat (working class) would intensify. The poor would become larger and poorer until, by a major social revolution, they would seize power and institute the new communist phase of history.[30]

The fact that these predictions did not come to pass remains an embarrassment to Marxist theory. It casts doubt on the scientific and predictive value of orthodox Marxism.

The Future Communistic Utopia

According to Marx, capitalism has internal problems which will eventually lead to a communistic economic system. For as the masses become more numerous and the capitalists fewer, the latter will control great concentrations of productive equipment which they will throttle for their own gain. But the masses will then sweep aside the capitalists as a hindrance to production and seize an industrial economy which has been carried to the edge of perfection by self-liquidating capitalism Thus there will emerge a progressive society with no wages, no money, no social classes, and eventually no state. This communist utopia will simply be a free association of producers under their own conscious control. Society will ultimately realize the communist ideal: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”[31] There will, however, be the need for an intermediate period of “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”[32] But in the higher stage the state will vanish and true freedom will begin.

The Marxist Ethic

There are several characteristic dimensions of the ethics of Marxism. Three of these are relativism, utilitarianism, and collectivism.

Relativism

 Since Marxism is atheistic, and since, as Nietzsche rioted, when God dies all absolute value dies with Him, it is understandable that Marxist ethics is relativistic. That is, there are no moral absolutes. There are two reasons for this.

First, there is no external, eternal realm. The only absolute is the inexorable progress of the unfolding dialectic of history. Engels wrote, “We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatever as an eternal, ultimate and forever immutable law on the pretext that the moral world has its permanent principles which transcend history.”[33]

Secondly, there is no such thing as a nature or essence of man which could serve as a foundation for general principles of human conduct. Man’s ideas of good and evil are determined by man’s concrete place in the socioeconomic structure. In brief, class struggle generates its own ethic.

Utilitarianism

On what basis are one’s actions regarded as moral? The answer is, they are regarded as moral if they serve to create a new communist society. Actions can be justified by their end. Lenin once defined morality as that which serves to destroy the exploiting capitalistic society and to unite workers in creating a new communist society,[34] in effect saying that the end justifies the means.[35] This is the communist’s equivalent of utilitarianism’s “greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.” Whatever promotes the ultimate cause of communism is good, and what hinders it is evil.

Collectivism

Another feature of Marxist ethics is that the universal transcends the individual. This is a heritage from Hegel, who believed that the perfect life is possible only when the individual is organically integrated into the ethical totality. For Marx, however, the highest ethical totality is not the state (as it was for Hegel) but “universal freedom of will.” Note that this “freedom” is not individual but corporate and universal. The difference from Hegel is that the emphasis is shifted from the state to society, from the body politic to the body public.

According to Marx, in the perfect society private morals are eliminated and the ethical ideals of the community are achieved. This will be accomplished, of course, by material production. For material production determines religion, metaphysics, and morality.[36]

An Evaluation of Marxist Humanism

 Several aspects of Marxism call for comment here. Some comments will be of a positive nature; a large number, however, will point out weaknesses in Marx’s philosophy.

Positive Contributions of Marxism

Marx’s concern for the condition of workers is to be commended. Working conditions in Europe and North America are vastly improved today from those of over a century ago when Marx wrote and this is at least partially due to the pressure applied by Marxists. Likewise, Marx is certainly right in attacking the view that workers are merely a means to the end of capitalistic gain. Thus there has been a significant humanistic contribution in that Marxist philosophy places man over money.

Another positive contribution of Marxism has been its corrective on unlimited and uncontrolled capitalism. Any system which permits the rich to get richer and makes the poor poorer without limits is bound to produce ethical abuses. In the ancient Jewish economy this possibility was checked by the Year of Jubilee (every fiftieth year), when acquisitions were returned to their original owners.[37]

Finally, the millennial aspirations of Marxism are noble. Indeed, the Marxist philosophy of history encourages men to work toward the goal of overcoming the perceived evils of the present world. It is this humanistic vision which has captured the imagination and dedication of many young thinkers.

Negative Features of Marxism

Marxism is subject to numerous critiques. We will briefly indicate some of the more significant ones.

First, the dogmatic atheism of Marxism is unfounded. It is self-defeating to insist that God is nothing but a projection of human imagination. “Nothing but” statements presume “more than” knowledge. One cannot know that God is confined to imagination unless one’s knowledge goes beyond mere imagination.

Second, Marx’s deterministic view of history is ill founded. Not only is it contrary to fact—since things have not worked out as Marx predicted—but it is a category mistake to assume that economic influence works like physical laws.

Third, a materialistic view of man ignores the rich spiritual and religious aspects of human nature, to say nothing of the evidence for man’s immateriality and immortality.

Fourth, in its strongest form ethical relativism is self-destructive. The absolute denial of absolutes cuts its own throat. And to replace one absolute with another (the communist end) does not avoid absolutism. Also, the fallacies of the “end justifies the means” ethic are infamous.

Fifth, Marxism holds out an admirably idealistic goal (a human utopia) but has a miserable record of achievement. Life in Marxist countries has been more like hell than heaven. While the goal of a perfect community is desirable, the revolutionary means of achieving it is highly dubious. Every country that experienced a communist revolution ended up seeing a system that is even more repressive and oppressive than the flawed system it displaced. Where the standard of living improved for some in the short term it was at the expense of the many whose property and wealth was seized while they were murdered, sent to labor camps for reeducation, or sent to collective farms to serve as slave labor. And ultimately the promise of equality for all proved to be equal poverty and oppression for the people while the few at the top enjoyed what little wealth was left over. Also the means for maintaining the system—brainwashing campaigns, fear of the secret police force, networks of secret informers, etc.—after failing to deliver on its promises is dystopian. From a Christian perspective the means of transforming mankind is not revolution and reprogramming but regeneration. It begins not with the birth of a new government but with the birth of new men and new women—that is, the new birth (John 3:5).

Sixth, Marx’s view of capitalistic systems was short-sighted, shallow, and based on a stereotype. While his critique of the unbridled, compassionless capitalism at work England in the nineteenth century was warranted and insightful, it wrongly assumed that capitalist systems were impossible to gently reform in a politically and the only possible option was a violent and bloody overthrow. Marx was wrong. Several capitalistic countries were able to implement several types of reforms and implement controls without violence.[38]

Seventh, Marx’s view of religion is superficial. He should have heeded his father’s exhortation to him at age seventeen: “Faith [in God] is a real [requirement] of man sooner or later, and there are moments in life when even the atheist is [involuntarily] drawn to worship the Almighty.”[39] Or better yet, in view of his later tumultuous life and the revolutions his thought has precipitated in the world, Marx should have applied his own earlier thoughts:

Union with Christ bestows inner exaltation, consolation in suffering, calm assurance, and a heart which is open to love of mankind, to all that is noble, to all that is great, not out of ambition, not through the desire of fame, but only because of Christ.[40]

Karl Marx’s own father feared it was the desire for fame which transformed Karl’s Christian conscience into a demonic passion. In March 1837 he admonished his ambitious son:

From time to time, my heart revels in the thoughts of you and your future. And yet, from time to time, I cannot escape the sad, suspicious, fearful thoughts that strike like lightning: Does your heart match your head and your talents? Does it have room for the earthly but gentler feelings that are such an essential consolation to the sensitive human being in this vale of sorrows? Is the demon, which is clearly not given to or dominated by everybody, of a celestial or a Faustian nature?[41]

 

 

[1] See Marx and Engels on Religion, ed. Reinhold Niebuhr (New York: Schocken, 1964), 214.

[2] Ibid, 224.

[3] Ibid, 50.

[4] Ibid, 41.

[5] Ibid, 147.

[6] Ibid, 231.

[7] Ibid, 237.

[8] Ibid, 71.

[9] Ibid, 69.

[10] Ibid, 35.

[11] Ibid, 36.

[12] Ibid, 295. Even agnosticism was rejected by Marx: “What, indeed, is agnosticism but, to use an expressive Lancashire term, ‘shamefaced’ materialism? The agnostic conception of nature is materialistic throughout.”

[13] Ibid, 143.

[14] Ibid, 136.

[15] At Marx’s burial, Engels eulogized him saying, “just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution human history.” Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of Great Economic Thinkers. (Simon and Shuster: New York: 1986) 170

[16] See Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, trans. T. B. Bottomore (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 82.

[17] Marx and Engels on Religion, 298.

[18] Marx, Selected Writings, 83.

[19] Ibid, 91-92.

[20] Ibid, 67.

[21] Ibid, 69.

[22] Ibid, 250.

[23] Ibid, 176.

[24] Ibid, 177, 253.

[25] Marx and Engels on Religion, 298.

[26] Hegel himself rejected this dialectic, though it is commonly attributed to him. See Gustav E. Mueller, “The Hegel Legend of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis,” Journal of the History of Ideas 19, no. 3 (1958): 411-414.

[27] Das Kapital, ed. Friedrich Engels, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, in Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 19521, vol.50, 6.

[28] Marx, Selected Writings, 67; cf. 70, 90, 111ff.

[29] Marx and Engels on Religion, 274.

[30] See Marx, Selected Writings, 79-80, 147ff., 236.

[31] Ibid, 263.

[32] Ibid, 261.

[33] Quoted in R. N. Carew Hunt, The Theory and Practice of Communism. New York: Macmillan, 1962), 87-88.

[34] Ibid, 89.

[35] Some neo-Marxists have rejected this, insisting that means are subject to the same moral principles as the end. But they have thereby departed from orthodox Marxism. See George H. Hampsch, The Theory of Communism (Secaucus, N. J.: Citadel, 1965), 127.

[36] See Marx, The Communist Manifesto, ed. Samuel H. Beer (New York: Appleton Century-Crofts, 1955), 177.

[37] Leviticus 25.

[38] Robert L. Heilbroner. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of Great Economic Thinkers. (Touchstone: 1986). 166-169.

[39] Letter from Trier, November 18, 1835.

[40] Written by Marx between August 10 and 16, 1835.

[41] Saul K. Padover, Karl Marx: An Intimate Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), 97.

Copyright 1983, 2016 – Norman L. Geisler –  All rights reserved


This essay is adapted from Chapter Five of Norman Geisler’s Is Man the Measure? An Evaluation of Contemporary Humanism (Wipf & Stock: 1983). It will also be reproduced in Norm’s forthcoming book Is Man the Measure: An Evaluation of Contemporary Humanism and Transhumanism (Bastion Books: 2017).


Read Part 2 of 2 here.

The Concept of Truth in the Inerrancy Debate


The Concept of Truth in the Inerrancy Debate

by Norman L. Geisler

(from Biblioteca Sacra, October-December, 1980)


How is it that evangelicals on both sides of the inerrancy debate can claim the Bible is wholly true and yet one side believes that there can be minor mistakes of history or science affirmed by the biblical authors1 while the other side denies that there are any mistakes whatsoever? Some even claim to believe in inerrancy to the point that every word of the Bible is true,2 and yet they hold that Jesus’ statement that the mustard seed is the “smallest of all seeds” is scientifically incorrect.3 Some claim that the Bible is “the only infallible rule of faith and practice”4 but hold that Paul was wrong when he affirmed that the husband is the “head” of the wife.5 One errantist put it bluntly when he wrote. “We can speak of the Bible as being inspired from cover to cover, human mistakes and all.”6

Is this duplicity? Are those who believe the Bible contains errors intentionally deceiving their constituency? Do they hold a double standard of truth? As a matter of fact, it is not necessary to come to any of these conclusions. Errantists do not hold a double standard  but rather a different theory  of truth.

Could it be, then, that the real problem is that a fundamental issue that occasions the difference between the two major camps of evangelicals on biblical inerrancy is that they are presupposing different theories of truth? This writer proposes that this is indeed the case. One thing is certain: Different theories of truth will make a significant difference in what one considers to be an “error,” or deviation from the truth. In fact, what counts as an error on one definition of truth is not an error on another definition of truth.7

Two Theories of Truth

A NONCORRESPONDENCE THEORY OF TRUTH

For the sake of simplicity of discussion, only one of several noncorrespondence views of truth will be discussed. One that is used by errantists may be called an intentionality view of truth.8 According to this view a statement is true if “it accomplishes what the author intended it to accomplish,”9 and conversely, a statement is false if it does not. Several corollaries of this view of truth may be stated.

  1. The first corollary is that a statement is true, even if some of its factual assertions do not correspond with reality, so long as the statement accomplishes its intended purpose.10 This means that factually incorrect statements can be true, provided they accomplish their intended results. For instance, the parental exhortation to a young child, “If you are good, Santa Claus will bring you presents,” is factually incorrect but, according to this view of truth, it could actually be true if it helps produce the intended good behavior in children before Christmas.
  2. A second implication of this point is that factually correct statements can be false if they do not accomplish their intended goals. Some parents are driven to negative psychology in saying, “That is bad; do not do that,” because their factual correct statement “That is good” was not accomplishing its intended result.11
  3. A third corollary of the noncorrespondence view of truth is that persons, not merely propositions, can be properly characterized as true.12 A person is true if he accomplishes or lives up to someone’s intentions for him, and persons are not true if they fail to measure up to someone’s expectations (whether the intentions are their own or another’s).

A CORRESPONDENCE VIEW OF TRUTH

According to this view, truth is “that which corresponds to the actual state of affairs,” to the way things really are. If this theory of truth is correct, then an “error” is that which does not correspond with the facts, with what is really the case.13 Several corollaries of this view may be observed.

  1.  The first corollary of a correspondence view of truth is that a statement is true even if the speaker (or writer) intended not to say it, provided that the statement itself correctly describes a state of affairs.
  2. The second corollary is that one can make a true statement that is actually more  than he intends to say. Everyone has had the experience of accidentally revealing more by his words, to his own embarrassment, than he intended to say. This writer once heard an unfair umpire say, “I umpired against that team once.” He obviously meant, “I umpired a game for that team.” Judging by his highly questionable calls, what he actually said was true, even though he did not mean to reveal as much.
  3. The third corollary of a correspondence view of truth is that, properly speaking, truth is a characteristic of propositions (or other expressions) about reality, but truth is not a characteristic of the reality itself.
  4. The fourth corollary is that reality, or that which is, is neither true nor false as such; it simply is. For instance, a lie can be real but the lie is not true. That is, someone’s lying can be the actual state of affairs. One would not say that the lie is therefore true. It is simply true that he is actually  lying.

Therefore, strictly speaking, it is propositions about states of affairs which are true or false. Truth is found in the affirmation (or denial) about reality, not in the reality itself.

Of course “reality” or states of affairs referred to by propositions can be mental states of affairs (thoughts, ideas, etc.) or even other propositions. But strictly speaking, on a correspondence theory of truth, only affirmations (or denials) are true or false, not the reality about which the affirmations are made. Persons can be called true in the secondary sense that what they say can be trusted to come to pass or to correspond to reality. So they can be called true or trustworthy persons because their statements can be trusted to come to pass, or to correspond with reality.14

Some Implications for Inerrancy

It seems apparent that if one adopts the noncorrespondence (intentionality) view of truth he could easily (and consistently) hold that the Bible is wholly true (as God intends it) and yet the Bible could have many errors in it. For if truth means only that the Bible will always accomplish its intended purpose (regardless of factual incorrectness), say, “to make men wise unto salvation,”15 then it can do that with or without minor errors. Even incorrect maps can get one to the intended destination. In this view, there can be unintentional biblical errors in minor matters, without affecting the author’s main intention to save sinners. These minor errors do not reflect badly on the author’s (God’s) character, since they are not pernicious. In an intentionality view of truth one does not need an inerrant Bible; all one needs is a “reliable” and “trustworthy” Bible.

It becomes obvious that serious implications for the doctrine of inerrancy follow from each of these theories of truth.

IMPLICATIONS FOR INERRANCY IN THE NONCORRESPONDENCE (INTENTIONALITY) VIEW

With this view several implications follow for inerrancy, two of which will be discussed.

First, factual incorrectness in affirmations is not necessarily an error unless the author intended to affirm it.16 Accordingly neither the so-called “three-storied universe,” the “mustard seed,” nor affirmation about creation (versus evolution) are really errors, even if they are factually incorrect statements. For example, as long as Genesis 1-2 fulfills its intention, say, to evoke worship of God, then — any incorrect scientific affirmations notwithstanding — it could still be wholly true and without error. The same could be true of the Flood, of Jonah and the great fish, of Paul’s view of male “headship,” and of other biblical affirmations of this kind. On an intentionality view of truth these could all be factually wrong and yet the Bible would still be trustworthy.17 As long as the intention of God is being fulfilled through these passages, that is, His redemptive function, then it does not matter whether some aspects affirmed in them correspond with reality.

Second, on an intentionalist’s view, truth, properly speaking, can be personal and not merely propositional. Persons who fulfill someone’s intentions are true or genuine. In this sense Jesus’ claim, “I am the . .. truth” (John 14:6), could mean that He is the one who perfectly fulfills the Father’s intentions for Him.

It should be noted in passing that proponents of this view cannot claim that something is not true simply because it was intended by someone. If this were so, then almost everything ever written would be true, since surely almost every author intended to tell the truth, even though most of them make many mistakes.

In any event, the intentionalist view of truth discussed here holds that true statements are those which faithfully fulfill their author’s intentions. That is, it is not simply a matter of intention but of accomplished intention which makes something true.18 In the case of God’s truth one could say it always accomplishes what God intends (Isa. 55:11). The Bible, then, would be inerrant so long as it always accomplishes its purpose to “make us wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15).

IMPLICATIONS FOR INERRANCY IN THE CORRESPONDENCE VIEW

Inerrancy means “without error” or “wholly true.” On the correspondence view of truth, several implications are involved. First, it would mean that whatever the writer of a scriptural book actually affirmed is to be taken as true, even if he personally did not intend to affirm it. That is to say, the Bible could say more than its human authors intended it to, since God could have intended more by it than the authors did.19 Psalm 22 may be an example of this. David may have intended merely to describe his own persecution, whereas God intended to affirm the Cross in this passage. This is what many think happened to the prophets (1 Pet. 1:10-11) when they wrote of things that seemed to go beyond them (cf. Dan. 12:4).

Of course the fact that the authors could say more than they intended does not mean they did. One might hold that God supernaturally restrained the biblical writers from doing so in order that there would always be an identity between God’s intentions and the author’s intentions.20 In any case, an implication of the correspondence theory of truth is that one knows an author’s intentions by his affirmations and not his affirmations by his intentions. This is so because there is no way for one to get at the biblical author’s intentions apart from his expressions of them. A person cannot read a biblical author’s mind apart from reading that author’s writings.21

Second, on the correspondence view of truth an error can occur even when an author intended otherwise, because error has to do with his affirmations and not simply with his intentions apart from his affirmations. In short, mistakes are possible even if they are unintentional. Therefore to prove the Bible in error, one need not prove wrong intentions of the author (which is virtually impossible to do) but simply show that he made an incorrect affirmation.22 Hence any proposition affirmed as true by any writer of Scripture which does not (or did not) correspond with the reality to which it referred would be false and in error even if the author did not intend to so affirm.

For instance, if the Bible actually affirms that hell is geographically down and heaven is up, and if this is contrary to fact, then the Bible would be wrong regardless of what the author may have intended by the passage. Further, if the Bible affirms that God directly created all basic forms of life and if this is contrary to scientific fact,23 then the Bible would be in error. Likewise, if Paul affirmed that a husband is the “head” of his wife and if in fact God does not intend this to be so, then the Bible would be in error here.24

It should be noted in passing that the correspondence view of truth does not have any direct implications as to the beliefs of the biblical authors. They may have believed many false things just so long as they did not affirm any of these false beliefs in Scripture.25 For on this view of truth “whatever the Bible affirms, God affirms,” and God cannot affirm as true what is false.

What Is Truth?

At first one might think that the resolution of the problem as to which view of truth is correct could be achieved by a simple appeal to biblical usage of the terms for “truth,” namely, aletheia and emet.26 However, these and kindred terms are used both ways in Scripture. “Truth” is used of correspondence to reality in Proverbs 14:25; John 8:44-45; Acts 24:8, 11; Ephesians 4:25; and in many other places. On the other hand, God is said to be truthful) (Rom. 3:4) and Jesus said, “I am … the truth” (John 14:6), thus showing that “truth” is used of persons.

How, then, can the problem of the two views of truth be resolved? Is this an irresolvable impasse? This writer thinks not. For one view of truth is broad enough to include the other, but not the reverse. For example, a true statement will always accomplish its intention, but what accomplishes its intention is not always true. Lies and falsehood sometimes accomplish their intentions too. Hence only the correspondence view is adequate as a comprehensive  view of truth. Further, if truth is only personal but not propositional, there is no adequate way of explaining the numerous biblical passages where truth means propositional correspondence?27 In fact, of the some one hundred New Testament occurrences of the word “truth” (ἀλήθεια) only one passage indisputably uses truth of a person as opposed to propositions or expressions about reality (viz., John 14:6). Some other passages speak of truth as being (or not being) in a person (e.g., John 1:14, 17; 8:44; 1 John 2:4), but the latter passage makes it clear that a person is not considered true because he “is a liar,” which involves false propositions (or expressions). In his second epistle John speaks of “walking in the truth” (v. 4) or of continuing “in the teaching” (v. 9) as though truth were personal, but then he explains that this means to “walk in obedience to his commands” (v. 6), which are propositional. Most of the other passages using truth in a personal sense employ words for truth in the adverbial sense of “truly,” not in the substantival sense of “truth.” At least one can safely say that the normal and consistent New Testament usage of “truth” is of truth in the cognitive, propositional sense. Truth is what can be known (Rom. 2:20), what can be thought (1 Tim. 6:5), what can be heard (Eph. 1:13; 2 Tim. 4:4), what can be believed (2 Thess. 2:12) — in short, it is used of propositions. And any passage where truth is used in reference to a person can be understood as meaning a person who speaks the truth or one whose word can be trusted (cf. Rev. 3:14; 21:5).

Even if some passages are best understood as meaning truth in a personal or practical sense, they still entail a correspondence view of truth. For the person or action must correspond to God’s expectations in order to be true. Furthermore the passages where truth is used propositionally cannot all be explained as truth in a strictly intentional or personal sense, that is, a sense that is not necessarily factually correct. Hence truth — biblical truth understood as primarily (or exclusively) personal or intentional does not accurately represent the teaching of Scripture about the nature of truth.

In Defense of a Correspondence Theory of Truth

There are two lines of argument for a correspondence view of truth — the biblical28 and the philosophical.

BIBLICAL ARGUMENTS

The ninth commandment is predicated on a correspondence view of truth. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor” (Exod. 20:16) depends for its very meaning and effectiveness on the correspondence view of truth. This command implies that a statement is false if it does not correspond to reality. Indeed this is precisely how the term lie is used in Scripture. Satan is called a liar (John 8:44) because his statement to Eve, “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4), did not correspond to what God really said, namely, “You will surely die” (Gen. 2:17).

Ananias and Sapphira “lied” to the Apostles by misrepresenting the factual state of affairs about their finances (Acts 5:1-4).

The Bible gives numerous examples of the correspondence view of truth. Joseph said to his brothers, “Send one of your number to get your brother; the rest of you will be kept in prison, so that your words may be tested to see if you are telling the truth”(Gen. 42:16).

Moses commanded that false prophets be tested on the grounds that “if what a prophet proclaims … does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken” (Deut. 18:22).

Solomon prayed at the dedication of the Temple, “And now, O God of Israel, let your word that you promised your servant David my father (that there would be a Temple) come true” (1 Kings 8:26).

The prophecies of Micaiah were considered “true” and the false prophets’ words “lies” because the former corresponded with the facts of reality (1 Kings 22:16-22).

Something was considered a “falsehood” if it did not correspond to God’s law (truth) (Ps. 119:163).

Proverbs states, “A truthful witness saves lives, but a false witness is deceitful” (14:25), which implies that truth is factually correct. In court, intentions alone will not save innocent but accused lives. Only “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” will do it.

Nebuchadnezzar demanded of his wise men to know the facts and he considered anything else “misleading” (Dan. 2:9).

Jesus’ statement in John 5:33 entails a correspondence view of truth: “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth.”

In Acts 24 there is an unmistakable usage of the correspondence view. The Jews said to the governor about Paul, “By examining him yourself you will be able to learn the truth about all these charges we are bringing against him” (v. 8). They continued, “You can easily verify (the facts)” (v. 11).

Paul clearly implied a correspondence view of truth when he wrote, “Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor” (Eph. 4:25).

The biblical use of the word err does not support the intentional theory of truth, since it is used of unintentional “errors” (cf. Lev. 4:2, 27; etc.). Certain acts were wrong, whether the trespassers intended to commit them or not, and hence a guilt offering was called for to atone for their “error.’9

To summarize, the Bible consistently employs a correspondence view of truth. A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts and false if it does not. Rarely are there even apparent exceptions to this usage.3°

If the biblical arguments are this strong for a correspondence view of truth, why is it that many Christians — even some who believe in inerrancy— claim to hold a noncorrespondence (intentionality) view of truth? Actually the reason is often quite simple: There is a confusion between theory of truth and test for truth. That is, often both parties hold the correspondence theory of truth but differ in their claims that truth is tested by correspondence, by results, or by some other method. In short, truth should be defined as correspondence but defended in some other way.

In summation, there are good reasons for insisting that a correspondence theory (definition) of truth should be accepted, regardless of the apologetic debate about how Christian truth is to be tested.

PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS

Several arguments outside biblical usage can be given in support of a correspondence view of truth.

Lies are impossible without a correspondence view of truth. If one’s statements need not correspond to the facts in order to be true, then any factually incorrect statement could be true. And if this is the case, then lies become impossible because any statement is compatible with any given state of affairs.3′

Without correspondence there could be no such thing as truth or falsity. In order to know something is true as opposed to something that is false, there must be a real difference between things and the statements about the things. But this real difference between thought and things is precisely what is entailed in a correspondence view of truth.

Factual communication would break down without a correspondence view of truth. Factual communication depends on informative statements. But informative statements must be factually true (that is, they must correspond to the facts) in order to inform one correctly. Further, since all communication seems to depend ultimately on something being literally or factually true, then it would follow that all communication depends in the final analysis on a correspondence view of truth.

Even the intentionalist theory depends on the correspondence theory of truth. The intentionalist theory claims something is true if it is accomplishing what it intends. But this means that it is true only if the accomplishments correspond to the intentions. So without correspondence of intentions and accomplished facts there is no truth.

Conclusion

A certain irony is involved in the present debate about inerrancy which illustrates this point. Hubbard, who is apparently an intentionalist and errantist, recently criticized Lindsell, who is an inerrantist and correspondentist, for misrepresenting thefacts about the situation at Fuller Theological Seminary. He provided Lindsell with “a handful of errors”32 in Lindsell’s treatment of the Fuller situation. But why should these be called “errors” on an intentionalist’s view of truth? Surely Lindsell intended well and even accomplished his intentions in arousing awareness of the drift from inerrancy at Fuller. But this is all that one can expect on an intentionalist’s view of truth. In short, why should Hubbard complain about factual misrepresentation unless he really holds a correspondence view of truth? And if he holds a correspondence view of truth, then why should he reject the factual inerrancy of the Bible? The least to be expected is that he be consistent with his own view of truth.

There is more, however, that biblical Christians must expect and even demand. It is this: Every Christian should get his view of truth about the Bible from the Bible. And if this is the correspondence view of truth, as the foregoing discussion indicates, then it follows that the factual inerrantists are right. That is to say, the Bible is inerrant in whatever it affirms.

Notes

1 LaSor admits that “those portions where one passage is clearly in disagreement with another (such as the thousands in Kings compared to the ten thousands in Chronicles) cannot be explained as ‘textual corruptions– because otherwise “we could never again use the canons of criticism to support any text against the conjectural reading of liberal critics” (William S. LaSor, “Life under Tension,” Theological News and Notes ‘Pasadena, CA: Fuller Theological Seminary, 1976], p. 7). This means, according to LaSor, that clear contradictions (such as four thousand stalls in 2 Chron. 9:25 and forty thousand stalls in 1 Kings 4:26) should be accepted as part of the autographs.

2 In a letter to a radio listener Daniel E. Fuller wrote. “I believe that every statement in the Bible is totally without error and every word is equally inspired” (April 28, 1978, italics added).

3 Fuller claims that “although the mustard seed (see Matt. 13:32] is not the smallest of all seeds, yet Jesus referred to it as such” because “to have gone contrary to their mind on what was the smallest seed would have so diverted their attention from the knowledge that would bring salvation to their souls that they might well have failed to hear these all-important revelational truths” (Daniel E. Fuller, “Benjamin B. Warfield’s View of Faith and History,” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 11 (Spring 19681:81-82).

4 From Fuller Theological Seminary’s “Statement of Faith,” Article III.

5 See Paul K. Jewett, Man as Male and Female (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), p. 139.

6 Dewey Beegle, The Inspiration of Scripture (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963), p. 138.

7 It is clear from the writings of the errantists that this is their belief. Hubbard wrote, “The nub of Lindsell’s quarrel with many of us who have been his colleagues is the interpretation of the word ‘error’ . . Many of us signed, and still could sign, Fuller’s earlier Statement without buying Lindsell’s definition of error” (David A. Hubbard, “A Conflict in Interpretation,” Theological News and Notes, p. 8). Rogers approvingly quotes Bavinck that “the purpose, goal. or ‘designation’ of Scripture was ‘none other than that it should make us wise to salvation.’ According to Bavinck, Scripture was not meant to give us technically correct scientific information” (Jack Rogers. “The Church Doctrine of Biblical Authority,” in Biblical Authority, ed. Jack Rogers [Waco, TX: Word Books, 1977], p. 43). In other words, since the Bible accomplishes this soteriological intention, then it is true.

8 This view could also be called a “functional” view of truth since it centers in the saving function of the Bible. Rogers and McKim write, “The authority of Scripture in these [Reformed] confessions resided in its saving function, not in the form of words used” (The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible (New York: Harper & Row, 1979], p. 125). Again they state, “It is significant to note . .. that for the Reformation concept of the ‘reliability’ of Scripture in achieving its function of salvation, Terretin substituted a discussion of the formal ‘necessity’ of Scripture” (ibid., p. 175).

9 Fuller (Fuller to Geisler, March 29, 1978) and Hubbard hold this same functional view of truth, namely, that the Bible is true in that it is “able to make us wise unto salvation.” Hubbard contends that “error” in the Bible means “that which leads astray from the truth God is teaching” (“A Conflict in Interpretation,” p. 8).

10 Berkouwer makes it clear he holds this same intentionalist or functional view of truth. He wrote approvingly of Kuyper that “he was not at all troubled by the absence of accuracy and exactness precisely because of the God-breathed character of Scripture: the reliability of the Gospels was guaranteed by thispurpose of the Spirit” (G. C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, Studies in Dogmatics, comp. and ed. Jack B. Rogers [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975] p. 250, italics added). Berkouwer also stated, “The authority of Scripture is in no way diminished because an ancient world view occurs in it; for it was not the purpose of Scripture to offer revealing information on that level” (ibid., p. 181, italics added).

11 Rogers claims that the redemptive function of the Bible is the locus of truth rather than the verbal form (The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, p. 125). Broadly speaking, the intentional (functional) view is a species of the “pragmatic” theory of truth, along with its sister “personalistic” and “existential” theories of truth.

12 Of course neoorthodox theologians such as Emil Brunner contend that revelation is personal, not propositional (see, e.g., Brunner’s Revelation and Reason [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 19461, pp. 369-70). This neoorthodox view bears a strong kinship with the neoevangelical views of Berkouwer, Rogers, and others.

13 On a correspondence view of truth see Aristotle Categories 1. a.10-4.b.19 and On Interpretation 19.a.10-19.

14 Thiselton gives an excellent discussion of the various theories of truth and of the biblical usage of truth (The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, s.v. “Truth.- by A. C. Thiselton, 3:874-902).

15 Fuller has stated this point very clearly. “I believe it is a necessary implication of II Tim. 3:15 that the Bible’s truth depends on how well it lives up to this intention, stated explicitly here. I know of no other verse which states the Bible’s purpose so succinctly as 11 Tim. 3:15” (Fuller to Geisler, March 29, 1978).

16 A thoroughly consistent intentionalist’s view of truth, in contrast to a correspondence view. is factually unfalsiflable. For no matter what facts are presented contrary to the affirmation, it is always possible that the author’s intentions were true.

17 Davis is more forthright than most errantists in admitting errors in the Bible (see Stephen T. Davis, The Debate about the Bible ‘Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977]). He tries to preserve the “infallibility” of the Bible in moral matters while denying its inerrancy in historical and scientific matters. But even here he runs into difficulty since some of his illustrations are “errors” and have decidedly moral aspects, for instance, the slaughter of the Canaanites (ibid., p. 97).

18 In this sense the intentional or functional view of truth is akin to or a kind of subspecies of a pragmatic view of truth. As James remarked, “Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. … ‘The true,’ to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our believing” (William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking [New York: Longman, Green, & Co, 19131. pp. 201, 222, italics his).

19 Even Hirsch, who places strong emphasis on the intention of the author in interpretation, admitted that “the human author’s willed meaning can always go beyond what he consciously intended so long as it remains within the willed type, and if the meaning is conceived of as going beyond even that, then we must have recourse to a divine author speaking through the human one. In that case it is His willed type we are trying to interpret, and the human author is irrelevant” (E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967]. p. 126, n. 37).

20 Kaiser places great weight on this point. See his recent essay, “Legitimate Hermeneutics,” in Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. Geisler (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1980), pp. 117-47.

21 Phillip H. Payne makes an interesting point of this in “The Fallacy of Equating Meaning with the Author’s Intention,” Thrifty Journal 6 (Spring 19771:23-33.

22 Hirsch contends that there is no meaning apart from the author’s intention of that meaning (Validity in Interpretation, p. 58). But if this claim is not false it is at least in need of serious qualifications. First. It would seem to make all unintentional falsehoods meaningless statements, whereas it seems evident that unintentionally false directions can be clearly understood, even though they are wrong. Second, why cannot a statement be meaningful even if no human has affirmed it? As long as someone could affirm it, even as he reads it. it would seem to be a meaningful statement. In other words, is not its affirmability (not whether it has been affirmed) a sufficient condition for its meaning?

23 This writer believes the Bible does affirm creation and opposes evolution. See the excellent book by A. E. Wilder Smith, Man’s Origin, Man’s Destiny (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publications, 1968).

24 In this sense inerrancy as held by a proponent of the correspondence view of truth is a truly falsifiable position. All one needs to do to falsify the biblical affirmation “Christ rose from the dead” is to produce the body of Christ or good evidence of witnesses who saw it in decay sometime after the first Easter morning (see 1 Cor. 15:12-13).

25 It may even be possible for an author to reveal some of his beliefs through his affirmations without necessarily affirming those beliefs. First Thessalonians 4:15 may be an example (“we who are still alive …”). Paul did not affirm that he would be alive when Christ returned, but he seemed to believe (or hope?) that he would be alive at the Lord’s return.

26 The Hebrew word for truth (r1,415) is used in roughly the same way as the New Testament word. It occurs some 127 times. Often it is used of propositional truth. The Old Testament speaks of true /ces (Neh. 9:13), words of men (1 Kings 17:24), words of God (2 Sam. 7:28; Ps. 119:160), commandments (Ps. 119:151), Scripture (Dan. 10:21), and of the factually correct (Dent. 17:4; 22:20; 1 Kings 22:16; 2 Chron. 18:15). Also “truth” is used of God (2 Chron. 15:3: Jer. 10:10). of value judgments (Ezek. 18:8), and of actions (Gen. 47:29; Judg. 9:16). But even these can be understood in the sense of correspondence to what is or what ought to be. In short, truth is what can be spoken (Jer. 9:5), known (lsa. 10:19), declared (Ps. 30:9), factually investigated (Deut. 13:14), written (Neh. 9:13), or expressed in some way (2 Sam. 2:6), and is what would correctly represent that to which it refers. In view of this it is strange to read that “truth is not measured in the Old Testament by correspondence to a theoretical norm but by its ability to achieve its goal” (Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 19791. p. 535).

27 See note 26 for Old Testament examples and the following discussion for New Testament examples.

28 These arguments are basically an elaboration and expansion on some of the same points made by Robert Preus (The Inspiration of Scripture [London: Oliver & Boyd, 19551. p. 24).

29 Of the five times 1111/ (“to err-) is used in the Old Testament (Gen. 6:3; Lev. 5:18; Num. 15:28: Job 12:16; Ps. 119:67). The Leviticus and Numbers references clearly refer to erring unintentionally. Further, the noun riRri, Is used nineteen times and all but two are of unintentional errors (Lev. 4:2. 22.27; 5:15. 18; 22:14; Num_ 15:29. 25 [twice], 26, 27. 28, 29: 35:11 [twice]; Josh. 20:3, 9). Only Ecclesiastes 5:6 and 10:5 could be understood as using rt.nli to refer to intentional errors.

30 John 5:31 (RSV) appears to be an exception. Jesus said, “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid” (dkriel)c). This would seem to imply that Jesus’ factually correct statements about Himself were not “true.” This, however, would be nonsense on even an intentionalist’s definitions of truth, for surely Jesus intended truth about Himself. What is meant here is that a self-testimony was not established as true. Or. as the NW puts it, such “testimony is not valid,” despite the fact that it is true, since it is only by the testimony of two or three !other] witnesses” that every word is established (Matt. 18:16: cf. John 8:17) and not by one’s own word. Elsewhere Jesus clearly said, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid” (John 8:14). meaning that it is factually correct, even if they did not accept it.

31 Part of the confusion rests in the fact that errantists sometimes confuse “lying” which is always an intentional falsehood and “error” which is just a plain falsehood. Rogers and McKim seem to make this mistake when they said that “error, for Augustine. had to do with deliberate and deceitful telling of that which the author knew to be untrue” (The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, p. 30. italics added). Besides the fact that Augustine is not speaking of a mere error but a lie in this context — a crucial fact which Rogers and McKim mistakenly overlook — their use of the word untrue in the last part of the sentence belies a correspondence view of truth which Is at odds with the intentional view they are proposing in the first part of the quotation.

32 See David A. Hubbard, Theology, News and Notes (Pasadena, CA: Fuller Theological Seminary. 1976), p. 26. Hubbard’s comment is especially strange in view of the fact that he explicitly rejected Lindsell’s view of an “error” or untruth (ibid.. p. 81.)