My Sheep Hear My Voice: An Argument for the Bible as Necessary Basic Belief, Part 5

If the Bible is so clearly the revealed Word of God and necessary to make sense of reality, as argued for in the preceding post, why do the majority of people reject it as the authority over their lives? Here, John Calvin again proves helpful:

Since for unbelieving men religion seems to stand by opinion alone, they, in order not to believe anything foolishly or lightly, both wish and demand rational proof that Moses and the prophets spoke divinely. But I reply: the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.[1]

Our sinful condition, Calvin says, prevents us from willfully recognizing the Bible as God’s Word. In a world free of sin, the Bible would present itself as convincing to everyone.[2] Its self-authenticating nature would be clear to all of its readers. Yet our sinful condition has left us neither willing nor able to receive the Bible as such. We need not only moral deliverance to submit to the authority of Scripture, but we also need epistemic deliverance in order to perceive it as God’s Word.

Scripture tells us that because of our sinful condition our minds are malfunctioning both morally and cognitively. Apart from saving knowledge of Christ human beings are “darkened in their understanding” (Eph 4:18) and “[do] not accept the things of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2:14). The unbelieving mind “does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Rom 8:7). Further, Paul writes, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel” (2 Cor 4:4). Man’s refusal to accept God’s Word is not on account of any deficiency in the Bible itself. Instead, the fault lies in man’s refusal to acknowledge God that leaves him with a “debased mind” (Rom 1:28). Man suppresses the truth in his unrighteousness although God’s revelation of himself is always clear, both in nature and in his Word (Rom 1:18-20).[3]

It is at conversion that man’s cognitive functions are restored.[4] Repentance takes place not only in one’s actions but in one’s thinking as well.[5] No longer does the sinner’s deepest desire lie in seeking personal autonomy but in surrendering his intellectual efforts to the lordship of Christ (2 Cor 10:5). When the Holy Spirit accompanies the preaching of the gospel bringing about conversion, sinful man is able to recognize God’s Word. This transition is spoken of by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, stating that “when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God.”

It is important to note that restoration implies something being replaced that was once present, namely the human ability to hear and respond to God’s Word. In Scripture we read from the beginning that mankind has possessed this innate ability to recognize the voice of their Creator (Gen 1:28-30; 2:16-17). It was through the Fall that this ability became corrupted, which led to the further decline into sin.

However, the ability to discern God’s Word remained functional throughout redemptive history. As Greg L. Bahnsen puts it, “Men have been made to recognize [God’s] voice. . . . God has so created men that, as it were, they are ‘conditioned’ to see and understand His signature throughout the created world.”[6]

By God’s intention, human beings such as Noah and Abram were able to identify the voice of their Creator as that of the one true and living God, even in the midst of a sin-cursed world (Gen 6:13, 22; 12:1, 4). Accordingly, human reason has always been meant to be subject to God’s revelation.

It is on this basis that rather than abolishing reason, faith in God’s Word gives reason an adequate starting point. In other words, it is faith in the all-knowing God who gives meaning to every fact in the universe that allows reason to begin. It is God’s rationality that acts as the rational basis for faith; faith in turn acts as the rational basis for human reasoning.[7] Human reasoning subject to God’s Word is human reasoning as God intended.

The following words from Bahnsen might best illuminate this reality: “It should be obvious that if man, before his disabling fall into sin, needed God’s supernatural revelation to interpret his world properly, how much more do we who live under the effects of sin!”[8]

Our next post will conclude our series, "My Sheep Hear My Voice: An Argument for the Bible as Necessary Basic Belief." In part six, we shall see how man's rejection God's Word inscripturated parallels man's rejection of God's Word incarnated. In the words of Jesus, "You do not believe because you are not part of my flock" (John 10:26).

This article is the fifth in a series of posts modified from a research paper submitted by Joshua M. Hayes to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Spring 2009. Parts one, two, three, and four can be found by clicking the corresponding links.
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Footnotes:

[1]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.7.4, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2006), 79.

[2]Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 79.

[3]Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Reading and Analysis (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1998), 211.

[4]Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2003), 80. He writes, “The Holy Spirit’s regenerating power enables man to place all things in true perspective.”

[5]John Frame, “Presuppositional Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Steven B. Cowan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 214.

[6]Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 200.

[7]Frame, “Presuppositional Apologetics,” 210.

[8]Greg L. Bahnsen, “Revelation, Speculation and Science,” Presbyterian Guardian 40 (1970-71) [on-line], accessed 25 March 2009; available from http://www.cmfnow.com, pa001.htm; Internet.