Old Amsterdam and Inerrancy?

By Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.

Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

For the 100th anniversary of the birth of J. Gresham Machen on 28 July 1981.

Jack Rogers’ and Donald McKim’s The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible,[1] Eternity magazine’s Book of the Year for 1980, has become something of a focal point for discussion of the doctrine of Scripture, especially among evangelicals in this country. A basic conclusion of the authors is that the prevailing view of Scripture in contemporary evangelicalism, a conception rooted in the views of the old Princeton theologians, especially B. B. Warfield (1851–1921), and marked by a predominating concern with inerrancy, is a regrettable deviation from the classic church doctrine, especially the position of the Reformers, and so an unfortunate and unnecessary barrier to unity and progress among evangelicals.[2]

Understandably this and other, related conclusions of the authors have provoked a wide range of reaction. Perhaps most searching has been the lengthy review of John Woodbridge.[3] This critique ought to be read carefully by all concerned. In my judgment, it has demonstrated notable flaws in the (historical) methodology of the authors, and deserves serious consideration.[4]

Not considered in Woodbridge’s otherwise thorough coverage is the authors’ discussion of the Dutch theologians in the Reformed tradition, Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854–1921). Stated briefly, their view is that Kuyper and Bavinck were in reaction against Reformed scholasticism, culminating in the old Princeton theology, and anticipated recent efforts at recovering the Reformed tradition that include the work of Karl Barth and G. C. Berkouwer as well as the United Presbyterian Confession of 1967. In what follows here I propose to test this viewpoint, primarily by setting out what Kuyper and Bavinck themselves have to say on Scripture.[5] I hope to do this in something of the same spirit of openness to correction and further discussion the authors themselves have expressed in their preface.

I. The Issue(s)

An exhaustive or comprehensive survey of the rather extensive writings of both Kuyper and Bavinck on the doctrine of Scripture, while in itself highly desirable, is not practicable here nor necessary for our purposes. Instead, the authors’ treatment, along with two earlier, underlying articles by Rogers,[6] suggests a number of controlling questions that serve to focus our examination and at the same time to evaluate their treatment.

According to the authors, Kuyper and Bavinck, in reacting against post-Reformation scholasticism,[7] had a view of Scripture that is “functional” rather than “philosophical.”[8] Their concern was with the activity of the Holy Spirit, not evidences and rational demonstration, in convincing people of the inspiration and authority of Scripture.[9] This functional approach further involved an “organic” view of inspiration, in contrast to the mechanical view of scholasticism.[10] The primary concern of this organic conception is with the (saving) content of Scripture rather than its (verbal) form.[11] It distinguishes between center and periphery in Scripture,[12] between the divine message (saving function) and the human forms in which it is accommodated.[13] Because the former is what is at stake in Scripture, Kuyper and Bavinck did not fear criticism of the latter. They were open to critical evaluation of the periphery, the human, culturally conditioned form of the Bible.[14] The authors do not make clear whether they think Kuyper and Bavinck believed there were actual errors in Scripture, but certainly suggest that the intent to deceive was the only conception of error of concern to them.[15]

The following set of questions, then, is prompted by the discussion of Rogers and McKim:

1. How, in general, did Kuyper and Bavinck view themselves in relation to post-Reformation Reformed orthodoxy, and how did they see the latter in relation to the Reformation itself?
2. How did they view the activity of the Holy Spirit (the internal testimony of the Spirit) in relation to the recognition of Scripture and its authority?
3. How did they view the relationship between form and content in Scripture?
4. Closely related to (3), how did they view the analogy between incarnation and inscripturation? What significance did they attach to the fact that divine and human factors conjoin both in the person of Christ and in Scripture?
5. How did they view biblical criticism? What on the whole was their attitude toward the mainstream of biblical scholarship in their day?
6. How did they view the notion of biblical inerrancy? This is not to ask whether they used the terms “inerrancy” or “inerrant” in relation to Scripture (apparently they did not, certainly not with any detectable frequency); nor is it to ask whether they believed the Bible makes pronouncements with modern scientific exactness.[16] Rather, the precise question is whether or not they held to a view of biblical infallibility which at the same time allows for either the actual presence or the possibility of errors in Scripture. Did they believe there were errors in Scripture? Did they think there was any sense in which the category of error could be properly or meaningfully applied to the Bible?

The following discussion will not be structured by attempting, in turn, to give a separate answer to each of these questions for both men. Instead, taken together, especially question (6), which raises the issue of inerrancy, the questions may be seen as constituting a network of interests, an angle of approach from which the Rogers-McKim interpretation can be measured, and Kuyper and Bavinck related to contemporary discussions on Scripture. At the same time, I hope to avoid the inherent danger, on an approach thus qualified, of misrepresenting them or distorting their views as a whole.

II. Kuyper

Kuyper’s views on Scripture are found primarily in three places, in Principles of Sacred Theology,[17] a translation of a part of the first and the entire second volume of his three-volume work on theological encyclopedia; in The Work of the Holy Spirit,[18] reflecting in tone its origin as a series of popularly written articles; and in the Dictaten dogmatiek,[19] student notes of his class lectures published with Kuyper’s permission.

A passage from Principles of Sacred Theology, cited with a slight ellipsis by Rogers and McKim,[20] makes a useful point of departure for examining Kuyper’s views (p. 479):

As the Logos has not appeared in the form of glory but in the form of a servant, joining Himself to the reality of our nature, as this had come to be through the results of sin, so also, for the revelation of His Logos, God the Lord accepts our consciousness, our human life as it is. The drama He enacts is a tragedy, quickening a higher tendency in the midst of our human misery. The forms, or types, are marred by want and sin. The shadows remain humanly imperfect, far beneath their ideal content. The spoken words, however much aglow with the Holy Ghost, remain bound to the limitations of our language, disturbed as it is by anomalies. As a product of writing, the Holy Scripture, too, bears on its forehead the mark of the form of a servant.

Two conceptions obviously control here: (1) the analogy or definite parallel that exists between the incarnation of the Logos and the revelation, including inscripturation, of the Logos, and, consequently, because of this parallel, (2) the servant-form of all revelation, including Scripture.

Similar statements in the preceding context illumine these points. Just prior (p. 478), in protesting “against the effort to interpret Holy Scripture as a transcendent phenomenon standing outside of our human reality,” Kuyper writes:

Here, also, the parallel maintains itself between the incarnate and the written Logos. As in the Mediator the Divine nature weds itself to the human, and appears before us in its form and figure, so also the Divine factor of the Holy Scripture clothes itself in the garment of our form of thought, and holds itself to our human reality.

And a little earlier (pp. 476f):

If man is created after the Image of God, and thus disposed to communion with the Eternal, then this Word of God also must be able to be grasped by man; and even after his fall into sin,[21] this Word of God must go out to him, though now in a way suited to his condition. This takes place now, since man has received being and consciousness, in two ways. In the way of the esse by the incarnation of the Logos, and in the way of consciousness as this selfsame Logos becomes embodied in the Scripture. Both are the “uttered” Word (logos proforikos); but in the one case it is the Word “become flesh,” in the other “written,” and these two cover each other. Christ is the whole Scripture, and Scripture brings the esse of the Christ to our consciousness.[22]

Kuyper’s basic orientation, then, is that because of the results of sin and the need for redemption, there is a necessary, intrinsic parallel between the incarnation and inscripturation of the Logos, which further necessitates for each the form of a servant.[23] The Word of God does not remain aloofly transcendent, apart from our being and consciousness, but enters fully into human life as it is. In the case of Scripture, as well as the entire process of revelatory events and words it inscripturates, this servant-form embraces human realities that “are marred by want and sin,” that “remain humanly imperfect, far beneath their ideal content,” and involves subjection to “the limitation of our language, disturbed as it is by anomalies.”

How are we to evaluate this way of speaking and, in general, Kuyper’s notion of the servant-form of Scripture?[24] Do they not rather clearly express an idea of divine accommodation which, for instance, is far removed from, even at odds with, the orientation of the old Princeton theologians and their apparently scholastic concern with inerrancy?[25]

1. A general guideline for understanding Kuyper, in the light of the way the parallel between incarnation and inscripturation is drawn in the first passage cited above, would appear to be that the servant-form of Scripture corresponds to the servant-form of Christ in “joining Himself to the reality of our nature, as this had come to be through the results of sin,” yet, as he makes unmistakably clear elsewhere (e.g., pp. 537-39 and esp. pp. 454-60), without this joining resulting in sin or error in Christ himself. Apparently for Kuyper, what is true in this respect for Christ is also true for Scripture. The discussion that follows will disclose whether or not this in fact is his view.

2. All of the passages so far considered occur within a section whose theme is the unity and multiplicity of Scripture (pp. 473-81). Significantly, Kuyper begins with a strong emphasis on unity. In the language of older theology, it is nothing less than the essentia of Scripture, that is, what makes it Scripture. Affirming the unity of the Bible is “not only right but of highest right for faith” (p. 473). In fact, were it not for “such terrible abuse,” unity might be the solely sufficient concern for faith. However, since this conception so readily disposes to fragmenting the statements of Scripture into a collection of isolated divine sayings, thus destroying the organic character of revelation, the church has the task of maintaining an appreciation of the multiformity of Scripture. Multiplicity must be emphasized, “not from the desire to exalt the human factor, but to keep the gold vein of the Divine factor pure” (p. 474). Always, however, the unity of Scripture, not its multiformity, must be taken as the starting-point if one is to arrive at its unity. “He who, in the case of the Scripture, thus begins with the multiplicity of the human factor, and tries in this way to reach out after its unity will never find it, simply because he began with its denial in principle” (p. 474).[26]

Kuyper expands on the notion of unity by taking up the old Reformed dogmatic conception of a predestined Bible. This has in view “the preconceived form [forma praeconcepta] of the Holy Scripture” (p. 474, my italics), a form given it already from eternity in the counsel of God. The actual composition of Scripture during the course of history involves the activity of a number of persons, “without the knowledge of a higher purpose” and often without an awareness of the others involved. Without “premeditation” or “agreement,” “without ever having seen the whole,” they nonetheless contributed to a “structure,” according to a plan “hidden, back of human consciousness, in the consciousness of God” (p. 475). “The conception, therefore, has not gone out of men, but out of God” (p. 475). All told, then, this conception, the design of Scripture, is such “that in every document and by every writer in the course of the ages there should be contributed that very thing, of such a content and in such a form, as had been aimed at and willed by God” (p. 475). As a predestined unity, Scripture, considered not only in terms of its content but also its form, is “one mighty ‘it is written,’“ “one coherent utterance” (p. 476).

Plainly, then, Kuyper can hardly be made an advocate for the view that has its focus “on the divine content of Scripture, not on its human form,” that finds authority “in the saving content, not the supernatural form of Scripture.”[27] Such a view involves a disjunction between content and form, a polarity consisting of concern with the former and depreciation of the latter, that is entirely foreign to Kuyper’s notion of a predestined Bible, of the preconceived form of Scripture.

Kuyper’s intention is seen further in his recourse to the old dogmatic distinction between the primary and secondary authors of Scripture. The combination of their authorial activities serves to clarify the relationship between the divine and human factors, paralleled in the incarnation (p. 478). Kuyper even writes (p. 480):

So far, therefore, as the representation of the secondary authors (auctores secundarii) as amanuenses of the Holy Spirit, or also as an instrument played upon by the Holy Ghost, exclusively tended to point to that unity of conception, there is nothing to be said against it. In that sense, one can even say that the Holy Scripture has been given us from heaven.

From the activity of God, the primary author, derives the unity of Scripture, formal as well as material. And, “From this unity of conception flows the Divine authority, to which the child of God gives himself captive” (p. 478).

Ultimately this unity resists rationalization. The relation of divine and human factors in Scripture, the conjoint activity of primary and secondary authors, constituting the unity of Scripture, is an incomprehensible reality. “How this unity hides in that wondrous book remains a mystery which refuses all explanation” (p. 478). But it is important to recognize that Kuyper carefully circumscribes this mystery: it is the mystery of the divine form (and message) given in, with, inseparable from, and as the human form (and content) of Scripture, not the mystery of the (dialectical) presence of divine message in human form. Nothing less than the proper conception of the authority of the Bible is at stake for him here.

3. Kuyper’s discussion of the unity-multiplicity question provides clear indications of the historical perspective he had on his own work, particularly how he saw himself in relation to the Reformation and post-Reformation orthodoxy. As we have already seen, he takes over from seventeenth-century Reformed dogmatics, sympathetically and with a sense of continuity, the notions of a predestined Bible and the preconceived form of Scripture, as well as the distinction between the primary and secondary authors.

Most instructive, however, is what he has to say in the closing paragraph of the section (pp. 480f). He begins with the statement, already noted above, that the representation of the secondary authors as amanuenses or instruments used by the Holy Spirit is valid for pointing up the unity of Scripture. This is counterbalanced with the observation that if for the sake of unity one ignores the multiformity of Scripture and the “organic way” it came into existence, “then nothing remains but a mechanical lifelessness, which destroys the vital, organic unity.” But, Kuyper adds immediately, “This was certainly not intended by our older theologians.” He points out that they were capable of careful, detailed historical work concerning various questions of introduction and the differing tendencies of the parts of Scripture. “But yet it can hardly be denied that they had established themselves too firmly in the idea of a logical theory of inspiration, to allow the organism of the Scripture to fully assert itself.” And then he closes on this note: careful, thorough attention to the diversity and multiformity of Scripture is obligatory to prevent misunderstanding, “just because we join ourselves as closely as possible to the historic Theology of the Reformation” (my italics).

Here, very plainly, post-Reformation orthodoxy is seen as part of the “historic Theology of the Reformation,” a theology with which Kuyper wishes to identify. As he shows here, he recognizes and is capable of criticizing weaknesses in this theology, particularly in certain of its seventeenth-century developments. But it is equally plain that the view, widely advocated today, by Rogers and McKim among others, that post-Reformation Protestant orthodoxy is the beginning of a decisive departure (and decline) from the theology of the Reformers which only in this century, largely through the theological renewal generated by Karl Barth, has begun to have a significant reversal, is a church-historical scenario that Kuyper would find totally foreign. In fact, as we shall see more clearly later, it is close to the position of the so-called Ethical theologians, with whom Kuyper was drawn into ongoing, sometimes sharp conflict over the course of his life.

Nor, as seems rather plainly indicated, does Kuyper view the “mechanical” view of inspiration, at least in its best exponents, and his own “organic” view as polar opposites, representing decisively different, mutually incompatible approaches to Scripture.

Instead, he sees a common (church) tradition, a basic continuity between them, with the latter serving to correct the undeniable weaknesses and errors of the former.

4. The results of this initial probe of Kuyper’s views on Scripture can be further substantiated and tested, first by looking elsewhere throughout his work on theological encyclopedia.

The fundamental parallel between incarnation and inscripturation (inspiration) finds expression repeatedly.[28] Perhaps most arresting is a passage from the (untranslated) third volume where, in discussing “sacred philology,” Kuyper criticizes the seventeenth-century conception of revelation and inspiration as “too mechanical”:[29]

The ray of the divine light, so one imagined, penetrated to our lost race, unbroken and without becoming colored. For that reason every product of revelation had to exhibit for every eye the mark of divine perfection, with reference not only to its content but also to its form. It was not noticed that this entire representation was in conflict with the canon for all revelation, which is given in the incarnation as the center of all revelation. Naturally, if all revelation, including its manifestation [verschijningsform], had come to us in divine perfection, the Christ too ought to have appeared in a state of glory. Now that, on the contrary, he manifested himself in the form of a servant, and appeared in a state of humiliation, it was hereby settled that the ray of the divine light truly broke into the atmosphere of our sinful-creaturely life, and for that reason what is imperfect and inadequate [het onvolkomene en gebrekkige] in our broken existence had to cling to the manifestation [verschijningsform] of revelation.[30]

Here we have a statement of the intrinsic, necessary nature of the tie between incarnation and inscripturation, perhaps, as forceful as any in Kuyper; the incarnation, “as the center of all revelation,” is “the canon for all revelation.” Further, the direction of thought is plain: from the incarnation to inscripturation; because Christ appeared, not in a state of glory, but in a state of humiliation and the form of servant, this must also be true for all revelation,[31] including Scripture. When Kuyper speaks of the ray of revelation being truly refracted by “our sinful-creaturely life” and that “what is imperfect and inadequate” about our existence has to attach to its manifestation, this is so, “truly,” this “has to be,” because of what is antecedently the case for Christ. The human form of Scripture has its specific, “humiliated” character, not because it exemplifies what is generically and inherently human,[32] but because of the specific character of the human nature of Christ, prior to his glorification. Accordingly, the categories of sin and error must apply to Scripture in the same sense in which they are applicable to (the humiliated) Christ. That this captures Kuyper’s intention seems difficult to evade, although his statements in this connection still require further reflection to which we will return below.

5. Highly instructive for Kuyper’s overall outlook on Scripture, especially the relation between its form and content, is the way he handles the perennially debated question of the use of the OT in the NT (Principles, 447-453).

The immediate context is the section on the testimony of the apostles to the inspiration of the OT. His third and last major point is the apostolic conviction that the OT is “the predestined transcript of God’s counsel, of which the instrumental author has, often unconsciously, produced the record, and which, as being of a higher origin, has divine authority” (p. 446). Not only do we find that “there is no hesitancy in announcing God the Holy Spirit as the subject speaking in the Old Testament” (p. 447), but the stringing together of quotations from different books (e.g., Acts 1:20; Rom 15:9–12; 1 Tim 5:18) “shows equally clearly, that in the estimation of the apostles the human authors fall entirely in the background” (pp. 447f).

“Such quoting,” Kuyper continues, “is only conceivable and warranted by the supposition that all these sayings, however truly they have come to us by several writers, are actually from one and the same author.” The illustration he uses is the way we might quote from the different works of the same author. That this in fact is the apostolic supposition is seen from their repeated discovery, in the historical parts as well as in doctrinal and moral statements, that “the words of the Old Testament often contain more than the writers themselves understood” (p. 448). This sensus plenior “could not have been the intention of the instrumental authors”; rather “this intention is thought of as in the mind of the first author” (p. 448). The spiritual and typical significance seen in the crossing of the Red Sea and the wilderness events, in 1 Cor 10:1–18 for instance, “could not have been intended by the writer of the narrative. That meaning was beyond him, and directed itself from the mind of the primary author to us….”

Among the different objections frequently raised against the apostles’ use of the OT, Kuyper finds that one in fact sheds important light on this usage. That is the objection that frequently their quotations are not a literal translation, and they follow the Septuagint even when it is incorrect. If we assume that they wrote on their own initiative, without assistance, then we are bound to conclude that “this mode of procedure was faulty and rested upon mistake, either voluntary or involuntary, but in no case pardonable” (p. 450).

The issue takes on an entirely new light, however, when we acknowledge an inspiration for the NT writers analogous to that of the OT writers they quoted. Then the situation is one where the one and same author is quoting himself and so entitled to a measure of freedom, “bound to the actual content only, and not to the form of what he wrote, except in the face of a third party” (p. 450). Kuyper continues:

If, therefore, it is the same Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets and inspired the apostles, it is the same primary author who, by the apostles, quotes himself, and is therefore entirely justified in repeating his original meaning in application to the case for which the quotation is made, in a somewhat modified form, agreeably to the current translation.

And (pp. 450f),

…in the apostolic circle the primary author quotes from his own words agreeably to the accepted translated text. No one else could do this but the author himself, since he is both authorized and competent to guard against false interpretations of his original meaning.

In discussing the citation of Ps 40:6 in Heb 10:5, he goes to some lengths to show that the faulty Septuagint translation as used in Hebrews nonetheless “can be taken as being equal in sense and thought to the original” Hebrew. Of this way of handling the OT he then observes emphatically: “This would have been indeed unlawful in common quotation by another, but offers not the least difficulty since the primary author of Psalm 40 and Hebrews 10 is one and the same” (p. 452).

In making this sort of emphasis, Kuyper does not intend to eliminate or suppress the full, spontaneous activity of the various NT writers. In contrast to ourselves,[33] the “apostolic circle” knew itself to be involved in the reality of inspiration, which had resumed after Pentecost and which gave it an “organic” rather than “mechanical” contact with existing Scripture. Both the accent and balance Kuyper wishes to maintain come out in his concluding sentence (pp. 452f): “And it is in this way that subjectively, from the side of the apostles, their liberty in the use of Scripture is explained, as we explained it objectively from the identity of the author in the quotation and in what was quoted.”

The issue here is not whether every point of Kuyper’s position on the use of the OT in the NT is right or even defensible. What is plain, however, is that for him this distinctive complex of usage and citation is not simply the peripheral, historically-conditioned, human form which contains a (separable) divine message; rather it is, and in terms of the fundamental issue of authorship we may say primarily, a matter of the divine form (historically mediated, to be sure, through the human authors) integral to the divine meaning and message.

6. A similar emphasis is even stronger in what Kuyper has to say about prophecy as a form of inspiration (pp. 527ff). He distinguishes it from other forms in that “in general it exhibits a conscious dualism of subject, whereby the subject of the prophet has merely an instrumental significance, while the higher subject speaks the word” (p. 527). The “other, higher subject” sometimes breaks through in the Psalms and Wisdom literature, but not in a pronouncedly dualistic, even antithetic way as in prophecy.[34] For prophecy, “duality of subject is the starting-point for the understanding of its working, and is present where it is not expressly announced” (p. 528). The “fundamental type” is given in Deut 18:18: “I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command them.” This is to be understood quite literally of the originating activity of God, the higher subject, upon the prophet, for no matter how it is viewed, “the chief distinction in prophecy is always that the subject of the prophet merely serves as instrument” (p. 529).

All this may seem to have an almost crassly mechanical ring to it. But Kuyper does not mean to overlook or deny the distinctive personal role of each of the prophets, nor to suggest that “the character or disposition of this instrumental subject was a matter of indifference.” The personality of each gives to his prophecy a tone which distinguishes it from the others; these differences must be fully appreciated. Still, while “without reservation we must recognize the personal stamp, including style and word-choice, which a prophet puts upon his prophecy, it may never be inferred that the source of prophecy (fons prophetiae) is to be sought in him, and that the primordial (primoprimi) issues of thought should not come from the consciousness of God.” Prior experience, education, knowledge, and assessment of contemporary events must all be recognized as functioning in prophecy. Yet it “remains fact, that so far as the ego of the prophet was active in this it did not go to work from its own spontaneity, but was passively directed by another subject, in whose service it was employed” (p. 530).

Prophecy, in a word, is “epical,” by which Kuyper means to signalize “the dualistic character of prophecy, coupled with the repression [terugdringen] of the human subject” (p. 532), “the passivity of the prophet” (p. 533). Evidently, the schema divine message/human form is not only inappropriate to, but flatly contradicts Kuyper’s understanding of prophecy. For him, the form as well as the content of prophecy originates with the higher, divine subject.

7. Two statements, each important in its own right as a substantial expression of Kuyper’s views on Scripture, serve to tie together our discussion to this point, especially of his use of the form-content distinction in relation to its inspiration and authority. The first is his definition of “graphic” inspiration, the inspiration of Scripture, in distinction from the other forms of inspiration in the revelation process lying in back of inscripturation (p. 545):

By graphic inspiration we understand that guidance given by the Spirit of God to the minds of the writers, compilers and editors of the Holy Scriptures, by which these sacred writings have assumed such a form as was, in the counsel of salvation, predestined by God among the means of grace for His Church.

And in the clearest, most unmistakable terms, particularly because he also includes both (1) the distinction between center and periphery in Scripture and (2) a reference to its authority, is what he writes about the effect of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit (pp. 560f):

Gradually, however, an evermore vitally organic relation begins to reveal itself between the centrum of the Scripture and its periphery, between its fundamental and its derivative thoughts, and between its utterances and the facts it communicates. That authority which at first addressed us from that centrum only, now begins to appear to us from what has proceeded from that centrum. We feel ourselves more and more captivated by a power, whose centrum cannot be accepted without demanding and then compelling all unobservedly an ever more general consent for its entire appearance, and all its utterances. Thus it ends by impressing us as Scripture, by exercising moral compulsion and spiritual power over us as Holy Bible. And in the end the connection between its form and content appears so inseparable, that even the exceptional parts of its form appeal to us, and, in form and content both, the Scripture comes to stand before us as an authority.

Kuyper can hardly be made a sympathizer, much less spokesman, for the view that the authority and inspiration of Scripture lie in its content in distinction from its form, and that the internal testimony of the Spirit is to its message, but not its form. In fact, his position is in emphatic opposition to such views.

8. The points so far under discussion, in Kuyper’s work on theological encyclopedia, can now be considered somewhat more briefly in his other writings. The treatment of Scripture in the Dictaten dogmatiek[35] is presented, along the lines of traditional Reformed dogmatics, under the five main headings of the essence and four attributes of Scripture (necessity, authority, perspicuity, sufficiency). By far the lengthiest is the head on authority, under which inspiration is discussed extensively, with substantial overlaps with the discussion in Principles of Sacred Theology.

In this larger context the summary paragraphs given at the beginning of the section under the title, “The speaker in H. Scripture is God himself,” are worth quoting in their entirety because they express so clearly and forcefully the inherent bond, the intrinsic nature of the parallel, between incarnation and inscripturation, and in so doing illumine in a fundamental way much of what we have been considering (1.75):

This authority derives from the fact that the speaker in the Holy Scripture is not a creature but God himself, That speech in Scripture to his church could come to pass by God immediately, i.e., without instruments (sine instruments). This could happen not only because of his omnipotence but also in view of the luchoth.[36] But this has not been the way of the Lord: As in the work of redemption he does not continue to confront us transcendently as God, but immanently in Jesus Christ has united the divine and human natures in such a way that the divine life has appeared in a man, so also the Lord God has given us H. Scripture not transcendently but immanently, because he has so intimately united the divine factor with the human factor that the divine word has come to us, always from a human pen, mostly from a human mind, and not seldom from a human heart. 

In the union of both these factors now lies the mystery of Holy Scripture, Parallel with the mystery of the incarnation runs the mystery of inscripturation. In both cases the Word of God comes to us, in the manger as Emmanuel in the world where we live, in H. Scripture as Emmanuel in the world of our thoughts and ideas. Both revelations of the Word belong together, just as our living and the consciousness of that living belong together. Thus both mysteries must either be rejected together or confessed together and, if confessed, then on the same ground.

Earlier in discussing the necessity of the form in which Scripture comes to us, he writes (1.59, 63):

In Christ and in Holy Scripture we have to do with related mysteries. In the case of Christ there is a union of divine and human factors. The same is true of Scripture; here, too, there is a primary author and a secondary author. To maintain properly the relationship between these two factors is the great work of dogmatics…. Everything depends here on the right insight that the Word has become flesh in Christ and is stereotyped in Scripture.[37] Thus Scripture must be a graphē theanthrōpeia, truly human and truly divine.

The basic thrust of these passages is plain: Scripture, like Christ,[38] is both truly human and truly divine. Yet in the case of Scripture, as for Christ, these two factors are not equally ultimate; the priority and originating initiative belong to the divine, not the human. Specifically, the Word, in his antecedent identity as the Word, became flesh; and God is the primary author of the Bible, in distinction from the secondary human authors. This specifies the “related mysteries” of Christ and the Bible.

As in Principles of Sacred Theology, the intrinsic parallel between incarnation and inscripturation, in fact, this “theanthropic” constitution of Scripture, shapes Kuyper’s view of the relationship between the form and content of Scripture. Because Scripture comes in a human form it comes “with all that pertains to human inadequacy” (1.64). Yet this is not a disadvantage to be lamented but entirely necessary, otherwise Scripture could not be believed. “Where God appears on Sinai, everything shrinks back, but where the Christ child lies in the manger, the human heart becomes happy.”

Again we encounter the notion of a predestined Bible, not in the general sense true of any book, but in the “concrete sense that the plan of Scripture, comprising the whole and the parts, existed with God before Scripture existed, and that it was the Lord God himself who has realized Scripture according to that design and plan” (1.92). The apostles themselves believed in a predestined Bible and saw inspiration as extending to the individual words and letters (2.177). The scriptural attire (het Schriftgewaad) of the Word is woven by God according to the pattern that he has drawn up for it (1.86). Graphic inspiration in the narrower sense is the operation of the Holy Spirit in the various human authors, “whereby they wrote in just the way and at such a time and in such a form as was necessary for the delivery of that part of Scripture for which each was responsible, finished and adapted to the canonical linking together of all the parts, to that one harmonious whole which the Lord God had foreseen and foreordained for Holy Scripture.” This graphic inspiration concerns “the production of the autograph in the form intended by God, at the moment it enters the canon” (2.127).

The form of Scripture, then, is from God, just as much as the content. The “theanthropic mystery” of Scripture is not to be explained by assigning the “truly divine” to the content, the “truly human” to the form. The one distinction cuts across the other: the form of Scripture, as well as its content, is both truly divine and truly human, with God as the primary author. Kuyper’s overall intention is plain when he can even write: “Therefore it is clear that Scripture is a totality coming to us from heaven” (1.93); “If God himself had come and had dictated the Bible to stenographers, it would not look differently than it now does” (1.77); and, “On the other hand, if I say: Holy Scripture is God’s Word, then I mean that God was the stenographer, that God provided the résumé, that God is the historian, the announcer, the informant who is answerable for those documents” (2.133).[39]

On the key question of the relation between the form of Scripture and its authority Kuyper expresses himself emphatically and unmistakably. In its proper and original purport this authority does not concern the form, but the content of Scripture as it commands obedience. “But,” Kuyper immediately adds, “in order to be able to exercise absolute authority in the material sense, H. Scripture must equally well be able to assert its claim to absolute authority in the formal sense. Abandoning this formal authority actually removes the absolute character of the material authority as well” (1.65). Elsewhere he offers the assessment that in fact, “Holy Scripture has retained its divine authority only in those circles where at the same time its formal infallibility is confessed” (2.128). The formal and material authority (infallibility) of Scripture stand or fall together. The testimonium Spiritus Sancti concerns not only the conversion of the life and consciousness of the believer, but also the conversion of his understanding. Only with the latter is that testimony complete (2.201):

Then he starts to read Scripture with hunger, with reverence and receptivity. The conversion of his consciousness bore a synthetic character; now his experiences become analytic. Now he feels how because of one letter, one form victory falls to Satan or eludes him. He discovers that form and content are inseparably connected. Not only is he concerned with firm spiritual content, but the form in which the content is, must be crystallized for him, otherwise he has no stability in his understanding.

9. Discussion of Scripture in The Work of the Holy Spirit occurs primarily in three places in vol. 1 (pp. 56-78, pp. 146-57, and pp. 164-78). Prominent in this discussion, developed in a more popular vein, are the emphases already noted in the other works.

While the analogy between incarnation and inscripturation is apparently not stated explicitly, the overall trend of the discussion is to make clear the correlation between the revelation-historical process out of which Scripture comes and the history of redemption leading up to and consummated in Christ. Also, a glance at the table of contents for vol. 1 will discover how the chapters on Scripture cluster, on either side, around the chapters on the incarnation and mediatorial office of Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit.

The very first words on Scripture, with their figurative stress on God as primary author, set the tone for the entire discussion (p. 56):

Among the mighty, majestic works of art produced by the Holy Spirit the marvellous Sacred Scripture stands first. It may seem incredible that the printed pages of a book should excel the spiritual work in human hearts, yet we assign to the Sacred Scripture the most conspicuous place without hesitation.

And again (p. 60): “That the Bible is the unparalled product of the Chief Artist, the Holy Spirit; that He gave it to the Church and that in the Church He uses it as His instrument, cannot be overemphasized.”

This point of departure in the Holy Spirit as the great artist-author of Scripture involves a unique control of the human authors so comprehensive that it even extends to their word choice. Whether or not Moses and others were aware of being inspired is immaterial; in any case (p. 77):

the Holy Spirit directed them, brought to their knowledge what they were to know, sharpened their judgments in the choice of documents and records, so that they should decide aright, and gave them a superior maturity of mind that enabled them always to choose exactly the right word.[40] …But whether He dictates directly, as in the Revelation of St. John, or governs indirectly, as with historians and evangelists, the result is the same: the product is such in form and content as the Holy Spirit designed, an infallible document for the Church of God.

Ultimately the Holy Spirit is accountable not only for the saving content of Scripture but also for its form; his truthfulness is at stake in the one no less than in the other.

Even though Paul, for instance, had no awareness that his letters would subsequently have a place in Scripture (p. 171),

surely the Holy Spirit did. As by education the Lord frequently prepares a maiden for her still unknown, future husband, so did the Holy Spirit prepare Paul, John, and Peter for their work. He directed their lives, circumstances, and conditions; He caused such thoughts, meditations, and even words to arise in their hearts as the writing of the New Testament Scripture required. And while they were writing these portions of the Holy Scripture, that one day would be the treasure of the universal Church in all ages, a fact not understood by them, but by the Holy Spirit, He so directed their thoughts as to guard them against mistakes and lead them into all truth. He foreknew what the complete New Testament Scripture ought to be, and what parts would belong to it. As an architect, by his workers, prepares the various parts of the building, afterward to fit them in their places, so did the Holy Spirit by different workers prepare the different parts of the New Testament, which afterward He united in a whole.

Clearly, Kuyper is saying that the formal responsibility of the Holy Spirit for Scripture is total, extending from the individual words to the canonical whole.

And the authority of Scripture is inseparable from this formal accountability; the two stand or fall together (p. 172, translator’s italics):

Believing in the authority of the New Testament, we must acknowledge the authority of the four evangelists to be perfectly equal. As to the contents, Matthew’s gospel may surpass that of Luke, and John’s may excel the gospel of Mark; but their authority is equally unquestionable. The Epistle to the Romans has higher value than that to Philemon; but their authority is entirely the same. As to their persons, John stood above Mark, and Paul above Jude; but since we depend not upon the authority of their persons, but only upon that of the Holy Spirit, these personal differences are of no account.

It would be easy enough to read this passage, especially in isolation, as betraying the abiding influence of a mechanical view of inspiration and a lingering tendency toward a “leveling” treatment of Scripture, as if any statement or portion has the same function or value as the rest. But that is plainly not Kuyper’s intention. He recognizes a spectrum of differences in significance and value for the life of the church, so far as the content of Scripture and the personalities of the human authors are concerned. But the authority of Scripture is neither determined nor differentiated by these material differences. Certainly biblical authority is inseparable from these differences, but they do not give rise to different degrees of authority within Scripture. Rather, the authority of Scripture is rooted in the “formal” reality of that originating activity of the Holy Spirit by which he is ultimately responsible for Scripture in all its parts and as a whole; and because of that originating activity the authority of each portion of Scripture in relation to all the others is “perfectly equal,” “equally unquestionable,” and “entirely the same.”

10. We are now in a position to address directly Kuyper’s views on the presence of error in Scripture. An important overall perspective, a perspective revealing the essentially religious nature of this issue for him, as well as his sense of basic continuity with classical Reformed orthodoxy, emerges in the Dictaten at the very beginning of his lengthy treatment of the authority of Scripture (1.66). We do not begin this chapter, Kuyper says, with the question: Is Scripture infallible? For “If Satan has brought us to the point where we are arguing about the infallibility of Scripture, then we are already out from under the authority of Scripture.” Pushing infallibility into the limelight is intellectualism, and that began with the rationalists. The older Reformed theology, in contrast, dealt not with the Bible’s infallibility, but with its authority and necessity (in which infallibility was accepted, without hesitation, as amplied).

Still, in view of rationalistic preoccupations and denials, repeatedly Kuyper asserts the infallibility (onfeilbaarheid, infallibilitas) and errorlessness (feiloosheid) of Scripture, and he does so without qualification. The infallibility of Scripture is absolute, and the entire Scripture is infallible: There cannot be different degrees of inspiration, “because it is infallible. The idea of infallibility, like every negative idea, is absolute. There can be degrees of certainty, but more or less infallible is an absurdity” (Dictaten 2.30). Where historical books have passed through a process of editing before their reception into the canon, the editors, no less than the original author, worked under inspiration so that their redaction, as guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, is “absolutely infallible” (2.77). The authority of Scripture is such “that, without a trace of doubt or hesitation, we should acknowledge the entire Holy Scripture…as infallible in what it communicates to us” (1.66). The revelation that comes through the apostles is “made known not in a fallible human manner, but under the infallible authority of the divine Inspirer, the Holy Spirit” (Heiligen Geist 1.220; cf. Holy Spirit, 166).

The errorlessness of Scripture is a divine, not a human errorlessness (Dictaten 1.86, 91f).[41] Strictly speaking, errorlessness and infallibility are not synonymous. The fact that something is without errors does not settle that it belongs to Scripture and is thus infallible. There are, for instance, sermons without error, “but these are entirely different from inspiration (toto caelo ab Inspiratione distincta). For whether these are without error, we decide; but if Scripture is infallible, then it decides for us that there are no errors in it, even though we might also think that to be the case” (Dictaten 1.89); inspired Scripture expresses its content “in a divinely errorless fashion” (“goddelijk feilloos,” 1.86). Accordingly, one can no more separate Scripture’s material authority from its formal authority than a tree from its bark (1.70), or ink from a blotter (1.73). The form of Scripture is “infallibilis” (1.73). Moreover, to acknowledge this is critically important, for “Scripture retains its divine authority only in those circles where at the same time its formal infallibility is confessed” (2.128).

11. Does Kuyper, like Berkouwer,[42] hold, as Rogers and McKim maintain,[43] that biblical infallibility excludes error only in the sense of deception and the intent to deceive, but not deny the presence of other kinds of mistakes and incorrectness?

One passage in the Dictaten (1.40, 41), where the necessity of Scripture is under discussion, would seem to answer this question decisively. An inscripturated revelation is necessary, for one reason, because oral tradition becomes corrupted. This corruption is inevitable, among other factors, because of falsehood (de Leugen). Falsehood is essentially a malfunction of memory. In all its forms it is a result of sin and includes not only willful suppression but also weakness of memory, forgetfulness as well as falsification. “An uncertain memory is just as much falsehood as intentional falsification.” At the end of the passage, he summarizes: “Thus these three: forgetting, lying and unintentional falsifying corrupt all oral tradition.” Accordingly, Scripture is necessary and as such is free from all error, unintentional mistakes as well as deception.

Subsequently, in discussing the authority of Scripture (2.183), these remarks are recalled and the point is made that regeneration does not eliminate the necessity of Scripture because even after regeneration “the danger of forgetting, error and lying, and the limitation of human nature” remain. Plainly, Scripture is seen to be free from this danger and limitation.

In the summary paragraph at the beginning of the section on the inspiration of Scripture (2.128), we find the flat assertion that, among other purposes, graphic inspiration aims at “the removal and prevention of every error which threatened to creep into any writing through inadvertence and malicious intent.” The scope of the error excluded by this generalization is comprehensive, and certainly broader than the intention to deceive.

Kuyper’s conception of biblical infallibility is given a particularly sharp profile where he distinguishes it from the views of the Ethical theologians.[44] He has a special concern to make this difference plain. According to Kuyper’s representation (Holy Spirit, 153), the latter held that inspiration is an unusually high degree of that spiritual sensitivity and enlightenment given to all believers by regeneration. This extraordinary illumination, however, does not remove the possibility of error, and in fact Scripture, while substantially true and reliable, does contain peripheral errors and mistakes. Kuyper calls this a “seductive representation,” one against which “the conscience of believers will always protest,” because “all such beautifully sounding theories strip the apostolic word of its certainty” (“zekerheid,” which the E.T. renders “infallibility”).

Kuyper’s counterposition (Dictaten 2.109–112) is that revelation is an intellectual conception, while regeneration is moral. Certainly the intellectual and the ethical are related; there is an ethical side to inspiration. But the distinction between inspiration and regeneration (illumination) must not be blurred; the latter is not the sufficient cause of the former. Otherwise moral and intellectual (in)fallibility would be equivalent. The facts of the matter, however, are that “in a spiritual sense the apostles were in all respects fallible men just like us, but in an intellectual sense they claim infallibility.” Similarly, in distinction from the spiritual character of the other forms of inspiration in the actual revelation process, graphic inspiration “is directed, not toward spiritual content, but toward the priority of intellectual action” (2.128). Biblical infallibility (and the kind of error excluded by it) is first of all an intellectual, not an ethical, conception.

Elsewhere (2.32-34), in combatting the Ethical viewpoint, Kuyper distinguishes the ethical and intellectual sides of inspiration and explores the latter by raising the question of the cause of human error. By considering the case of Adam before the fall, he concludes that all error, not just willful lying, is the result of sin. “Our conclusion is therefore: a lack of a sense of truth, forgetfulness and mistakes are consequences of sin. They did not exist in Adam before the fall, and they will not recur in heaven after death.” Accordingly, the infallibility secured by inspiration excludes “the result of sin like forgetting, making mistakes, etc….”

What was promised to the apostles, when they functioned as witnesses of Jesus, was “absolute infallibility,” which excluded “the possibility of their falling into mistakes or untruths” (Holy Spirit, 173).

Against this background it is not surprising to find, among other comments made in passing, that one may not say that something has not happened, when Scripture says it has, because “whoever denies anything in Scripture makes God a liar” (Dictaten 1.78). Graphic inspiration functions, among its other provisions, to keep the writers of the NT epistles from making any mistakes (2.138; Holy Spirit, 177). The kind of truth/error at stake in Scripture is seen in the observation that the creation narrative in Genesis “recorded many centuries ago what so far no man could know of himself, and what at the present time is only partly revealed by the study of geology” (Holy Spirit, 77). Plainly, for Kuyper religious truth (the truthfulness of the Bible) and scientific truth are not discontinuous or unrelated, but of the same order of truth.

We should not be surprised, then, to find Kuyper closing the lengthy chapter on the authority of Scripture by refuting various post-Enlightenment rationalistic claims of contradiction and error in Scripture (Dictaten 2.210ff). Not only does he attend to such “theological” issues like the reconciliation of Paul and James on justification, but he also concerns himself with solutions to alleged discrepancies in numbers and other historical details, like those between Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 and Genesis, or between Kings and Chronicles (pp. 215f). Such efforts at harmonization are certainly not prominent in Kuyper’s view as a whole. But they are not foreign to it either.

In the sense, as we have seen, of the exclusion of all error the closing sentence to the discussion of apostolic inspiration in The Work of the Holy Spirit serves as a fair summary of Kuyper’s views on the presence of error in Scripture (p. 157; italics in the Dutch original, 1.208): “And yet in both prophet and apostle inspiration is the wholly extraordinary operation of the Holy Spirit whereby, in a manner for us incomprehensible and to them not always conscious, they were kept from the possibility of error.”

12. We are now in a position to take up what in more recent discussions appears to be the most frequently quoted passage from Kuyper on Scripture, one sometimes gets the impression, almost the only passage quoted. It reads as follows (Principles, 550):

When in the four Gospels Jesus, on the same occasion, is made to say words that are different in form of expression, it is impossible that He should have used these four forms at once. The Holy Spirit, however, merely intends to make an impression upon the Church which wholly corresponds to what Jesus said.

Rogers and McKim, for one, cite this passage to show Kuyper’s support of their view that the authority of Scripture is located in its divine content in distinction from its human form.[45] Specifically, they believe it evidences Kuyper’s (and Bavinck’s) openness, so very different from the negative, rejecting attitude of the Princeton theology, to the issues raised by biblical criticism. The differences between the four Gospels belong to the human form of Scripture. As such they are subject to critical scrutiny and evaluation, because they are neither constitutive of nor essential to the divine, saving message of Scripture.

In evaluating these statements the context may not be ignored. The larger chapter division deals with the inspiration of Scripture specifically, or, as Kuyper prefers to call it, graphic inspiration. And the paragraph where this passage occurs begins by recalling that our warrant for accepting this graphic inspiration rests on the self-witness of Scripture. Scripture itself does not provide us with a theory of graphic inspiration, but the nature of the authority which Christ and the apostles attribute to Scripture allows no other solution. To say that all Scripture is inspired is not to speak about the personal inspiration of psalmists, prophets, etc., but about what they wrote. Certainly they remained writers in the truest sense, compiling and examining material, arranging and composing, but “in all these functions the Holy Spirit worked so effectively upon the action of their human minds, that thereby their product obtained divine authority.”

This last generalization prompts Kuyper to qualify: the fact that everything the biblical writers wrote has divine authority does not mean everything they wrote has a “divine character.” For instance, when the writer recounts what Shimei said (2 Sam 16:5–8), this does not make his demonic language divine, but certifies that Shimei spoke these evil words.[46]

What graphic inspiration effects, then, is divinely authoritative certification. Concerning this certification Kuyper immediately adds the qualification that it happens “always impressionistically,” in the NT as well as the OT. Then follow the statements about the four Gospels quoted above. The paragraph goes on to close with the observation that the OT, too, because it has been composed “under one continuous authority,” justifies citation with an “it is written,” as was done by Jesus, even where it is modified “in nature and character according to the claims of the content.”

The point of the passage in question, then, is that the differences between the four Gospels (along with the NT use of the OT) exemplify the “impressionistic” character of the biblical records. How, more exactly, does Kuyper understand this impressionistic quality, particularly with reference to the related issues of error in Scripture and the form of Scripture?

(1) On the page immediately preceding the one where this passage is found (Principles, 549), attention is directed specifically to the historical books of the Bible and the kind of historiography associated with graphic inspiration. Concerning the activity of the human writers the sum of the matter is that “the Holy Spirit worked effectively as a leading, directing and determining power; but their subjectivity was not lost.” The presence of the writers’ subjectivity is seen in the fact that frequently, for instance in the four Gospels, there is more than one account of the same set of events. These are not merely repetitions; they arise because no single writer could take in the full impact of these mighty events and because the perceptions of one writer necessarily differ from those of another. This is how biblical history lives on. “It gives no notarial acts, but reproduces what has been received in the consciousness, and does this not with that precision of outline which belongs to architecture, but with the impressionistic certainty of life.”

This passage makes it reasonably plain that the term “impressionistic” functions as a positive description of biblical narrative in contrast to what it is not. The biblical records are impressionistic; that is, they are not marked by notarial precision or blue-print, architectural exactness. At the same time this impressionistic quality does not detract from their certainty. This certainty, it should be noted, attaches to them fully as historical records, not merely to their saving message in distinction from their narrative form.

This understanding of “impressionistic” is echoed at a number of places elsewhere in Kuyper’s writings. One of the chapters in The Work of the Holy Spirit (pp. 174-78) is given over entirely to stressing the non-notarial character of the NT and biblical infallibility. The same point comes out repeatedly in the Dictaten. At 2.130-31 he observes that in Scripture for the most part we do not have the word of God exactly as it was spoken. “Whoever in reading Scripture thinks that everything was spoken precisely as it stands in the text, is totally mistaken.” Again, he points to the differences between the four Gospels and the NT use of the OT as sufficient to show that as a rule the lalia of God has not come to us “in its original form.”

In typical fashion Kuyper illustrates his point by recalling an aspect of modern European parliamentary practice. Both the French and English parliaments keep two kinds of records; one is a verbatim account of what a speaker says (a “procs-verbal”), the other a brief résumé or summary account (a “procs-analytique”). As a rule, in Scripture the lalia of God is reported “en procs-analytique,” not “en procs-verbal.”

It would be a mistake, Kuyper continues, to suppose that the verbatim report is better or more desirable. In some instances, the reverse may well be the case. The critical and only issue in this respect is whether the speaker makes himself answerable for the record, whether verbatim or summary. Here Kuyper’s commitment to the Holy Spirit as the primary author of Scripture in the formal sense comes through unmistakably: the Spirit, as auctor primarius, ultimately answers for the biblical records. Therefore, when, for instance, the OT is quoted by the NT in variant forms, the same thought is expressed “in an epexegetically more precise fashion,” and we gain more than if the Holy Spirit had simply repeated verbatim. Similarly, in the four Gospels the Spirit, as “a stenographer,” gives us Jesus’ words with a fulness that any one of them could not possibly express. Not only do we not lose by the fourfold form, we gain a “fuller, more mature” perception.

In a similar vein (Dictaten 2.141), we ought not to think that the speeches in Job are given precisely as Bildad spoke them. Rather they provide a “romantic representation” or “free rendering” of what was said. But because this happens “under guarantee of the Holy Spirit,” they express what was said “not only not inaccurately [onjuist], but more accurately [juister] and, besides that, more elegantly.”

Two factors, then, serve to define Kuyper’s biblical impressionism. On the one hand, the biblical narratives do not record the past with stenographic preciseness or photographic exactness.[47] Yet as historical records they are completely accurate and do not at all mislead. The latter point, held without any apparent tension with the former, needs to be appreciated. Nowhere is it more forcefully expressed than in a passage discussing the inspiration of the writing prophets as historians (Dictaten 2.76):

The distinguishing mark of inspiration, however, above everything else is that it guarantees absolute accuracy [absolute juistheid]. The singular character of the writers of the Old and New Testaments lies in the fact that the stamp of truth and certainty is impressed upon their writings. The Holy Spirit so leads their spirit that in them the results of sin are cut off and prevented. This distinguishing mark is not relative, but absolute.

Biblical narrative is absolutely accurate, without being notarially exact. This is the basic thrust of Kuyper’s position.

Accordingly, when Kuyper speaks of the possibility of “innocent inaccuracies” in historical records (Principles, 457), this expression ought not simply to be lifted out of context and enlisted without further qualification against efforts at harmonization, as Berkouwer does.[48] If we are not to distort Kuyper’s meaning, we must not fail to note the specific terms of the contrast that serves to define these “innocent inaccuracies”: they “so far from doing harm, rather bring to light the free expression of life above notarial affectation.”[49]

A passage like this does point up a consideration important for a discriminating, overall understanding of Kuyper’s position, namely his variable usage of terminology for correctness, accuracy, and the like. He uses it either affirmatively, in an impressionistic sense, or pejoratively, in a notarial sense. Only due attention to the context in each instance will be able to decide which sense is intended.

(2) Perhaps the deepest perspective on the sense of the quotation under examination in this section is provided by reflecting further on the distinction, already noted (see above, n. 41), between divine and human errorlessness (feilloosheid). Kuyper develops this distinction in the Dictaten (1.86, 91f), in his initial treatment of the inspiration of Scripture under the head of the authority of Scripture.

What is the difference, Kuyper asks (p. 91), between “divinely errorless” and “humanly errorless”? The latter is bound up with human limitation and so is limited to a particular form, namely meticulous, notarial agreement; it is mechanical, like a photograph. Human errorlessness, however, is always fallible, for no photograph reproduces its subject in truth, even if it reproduces every hair in detail.

Divine errorlessness, in contrast, is like the work of a painter. He is not concerned to number hairs on his subject’s head, but to capture an image from the different positions of the subject and to paint that. This picture is not as notarially exact as a mute photographic portrait, but is really much more accurate (veel juister).

In summary, divine errorlessness, like art, gives the essence without error, but without maintaining precisely the same form. Human errorlessness, like photography, gives the form in notarial fashion, but can provide no guarantee for the essence.

The errorlessness of Scripture, then, is divine, not human. Here, as elsewhere, Kuyper illustrates this by the two specific cases of the NT quotations of the OT and the differences between the four Gospels. Human errorlessness would require a notarial extract, of the OT passage in the one instance, of the words of Jesus in the other. Divine errorlessness is what we in fact find in Scripture: citation of the OT that is free in its form yet faithful to the thought of the passage quoted, reproduction of the essence of Jesus’ words that is completely without error, yet not always in the same form in which they were spoken. The formal variations in these and other instances are not an argument against but for the (formal) inspiration of Scripture. God is an artist, not a photographer.

It bears emphasizing, as Kuyper notes in this context, that the Bible’s divine errorlessness ultimately roots in its divine authorship, formally considered. If I transmit an authoritative message from someone else, then I must do so literally and may not change the wording. But if I convey my own message, then I am free to vary the wording, provided I don’t alter the substance. In the case of Scripture, if it were only a matter of human witness, even divinely authorized witness, to a message from God, then the writers would have been bound to convey that message verbatim. But since ultimately it is the Holy Spirit who everywhere speaks in Scripture, formally and materially, he is free to make the variations we observe, without any detriment to its divine errorlessness.

Elsewhere Kuyper repeatedly draws a direct, material connection between the pervasively non-notarial character of Scripture and its unique divine origin. By means of free quotations, in graphic inspiration the Holy Spirit maintains himself as the author of underlying material inspiration (Dictaten 2.142–1 cf. pp. 173-79). An abstract, rational proof of graphic inspiration is not possible, because such proof works with a conception of precision which does not lend itself to the revelation of a divine dynamic in human language (2.145). In fact, the Holy Spirit, who alone is able to convince us of graphic inspiration, enables us to perceive that the many incongruities in Scripture could not be left standing in a human author but are in fact a mark of its divinity (2.145).

There are two sorts of precision (2.147f): mechanical and organic. A mechanically molded statue or piece of artillery precisely resembles from every angle all others cast from the same mold; among ice floes or winter flowers, however, there are great dissimilarities. The edges of a piece of wood fashioned by an artisan are completely smooth and even; the bark of a tree is quite coarse. “And yet, if someone asks, where is the greatest precision, in the mechanical or the organic, everyone feels that it is not in the mechanical but in the organic that there is the greater precision and most perfect beauty.” In the realm of truth, then, the question of the sort of precision or accuracy has to be raised. If mechanical, then we must have a notarial record. But if organic, then it must be judged by its own standard. The classic, rational apologetic for graphic inspiration is not only inappropriate but counterproductive, because it places the demands of mechanical preciseness on Scripture, which by its nature demands organic precision; Scripture is forced into a mold which is not suited to its organic character.

Later on in the same section (2.154f), Kuyper observes that the full, multifaceted character of Scripture cannot be exhausted by the finite grasp of our logical, mathematical thinking. One result is that according to intellectual demands and on the flat terrain of logic, everything in Scripture is not in harmony. But certainly that harmony is there, and we see it when, in faith, we view it “from the standpoint of the Holy Spirit.”

We can now try to focus our conclusions about the key quotation under examination in this section. Rogers and McKim turn it on its head, giving it a sense almost diametrically opposite to what Kuyper intended. This is not putting it too strongly. For them, the impressionistic, non-notarial quality of biblical narrative is a function of its human form in distinction from its divine message and can be subjected, without concern, to the canons of biblical criticism. For Kuyper, this impressionism is a sure sign of the Bible’s more than purely human origin. It highlights the unique divine inspiration of the form, as well as the message, of Scripture. It, too, gives us “the standpoint of the Holy Spirit.” It hardly needs to be pointed out that to misunderstand Kuyper here decisively skews his doctrine of Scripture as a whole.

One other point not yet touched above should be mentioned here. Rogers and McKim introduce this quotation in a short section with the heading, “Salvation Not Science” (Authority, 390). According to them Kuyper and Bavinck held that Scripture does not intend to give us “technically correct scientific information.” That is right. But at the same time what Kuyper would also want to point out is that in its undeniably impressionistic, not notarially precise, not scientifically exact, fashion, Scripture gives information that is directly relevant to science. For instance, the creation narrative records “what at the present time is only partly revealed by the study of geology” (Holy Spirit, 77). Rogers and McKim seem unaware of this side of the picture. “Salvation not science” is a false dichotomy for Kuyper. Entirely alien to him is the post-Kantian, dimensional understanding of truth with which they are apparently operating.

13. What, at last, is the relationship between Kuyper’s accent on its impressionistic character as a distinguishing mark of the Bible’s unique divine origin and errorlessness, and his stress, taken as our point of departure for examining his views, on the servant-form of Scripture? Are these two emphases compatible? Where else, if not in this scientifically inexact, notarially imprecise impressionism, would we find evidence of that servant-form which involves Scripture fully in the limitations of human language and the brokenness of our existence, marred by want and sin?

In fact, the solution does not lie in isolating the two—impressionism and servant-form—from each other, as if each represents a sector of concern independent of the other. And apparently for Kuyper the harmony between the two lies in the analogy between incarnation and inscripturation.[50] The same phenomenon—nonscientific, inexact narration of events and notarially imprecise recording of speech material—is to be seen both “from above” and “from below.” The same formal phenomenon is at once both truly divine and truly human. This impressionism is evidence of the genuinely human side of the Scriptures, but not only that; even more it shows their unique divine origin. The mystery of inspiration involves the reality of this impressionism as it derives from both God and man, but originally from God. Both the Holy Spirit and the human authors are accountable for it, but the Spirit ultimately. Adapting the language of 1 Thess 2:13, Kuyper’s view is that the word of Scripture we receive, in its evident, genuine humanness and subjection to the limitations of our language, we receive ultimately, not as the word of men, but as it actually is, formally as well as materially, the word of God.

The incarnational analogy is obviously foundational to Kuyper’s views on Scripture. Its legitimacy is for the most part assumed rather than argued by him. Nor does he discuss its limitations. Still it would plainly be wrong to conclude that he saw an exact symmetry extending to every point, so that the relationship between divine and human in the Bible would, say, form a hypostatic union or be properly circumscribed by the formulations of Chalcedon. Yet for him Scripture’s “theanthropic” constitution, formal as well as material, is such that it brings him to hold, in view of his conviction that all error, unintentional as well as intentional, is the result of sin,[51] that the analogue to the sinlessness of Christ is the errorlessness of the Bible.[52]

On Dictaten 1.64 Kuyper uses an illustration that gives the gist of much that we have already seen. In affirming the human form of Scripture and the limitations that consequently cling to it, at the same time he emphatically rejects the further conclusion, drawn by the Ethical theologians, that the Bible contains falsehood. A clerk in an office, he says, is not fired because of the ink spots on his hands but only if he falsifies the books. For Kuyper, the biblical records are kept in ink and by those with ink spots on their hands, but the records themselves are in perfect order.

14. Along the way we have noted something of the way in which Kuyper sees himself in relation to post-Reformation Orthodoxy.[53] We come back to that briefly here as well as the related matter of his attitude toward the biblical criticism of his day.

As we have seen, Kuyper recognizes and criticizes weaknesses in the classical orthodox doctrine of Scripture, particularly its overly logicizing, ahistorical tendencies. To cite a couple of other examples, he notes how late orthodoxy undercut the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit by trying to develop a system of outward proofs for the divine character of Scripture, able to convince reason without the enlightening of the Spirit (Principles, 558). And he sharply criticizes the misuse of Scripture in preaching and the life of the church to which, in the eighteenth century, the loca probantia method of dogmatics eventually led (Encyclopaedie, 3.173f). Still, in all he displays a sense of basic, even cordial continuity with Protestant orthodoxy. For instance, the loca probantia approach still has its inalienable right if only due attention is given to the context and the place of the text in the history of revelation.

Perhaps the most instructive outlook on Kuyper’s stance as a whole is provided by his rectorial address at the founding of the Free University of Amsterdam in 1881, and the controversy this address provoked. The title itself is highly indicative: “Present Day Biblical Criticism in Its Questionable Tendency for the Church of the Living God.”[54]

This address is fairly seen as undertaking to vindicate the founding of the Free University and to chart its direction. Its thrust is that contemporary biblical criticism (1) has destroyed theology, replacing it with the science of religion, (2) has robbed the church of the Bible by denying its inspiration and substituting philosophical hypotheses, and so (3) threatens the church with the loss of its freedom in Christ.

The measure of this address is unmistakable in the sharply negative responses it elicited.[55] For instance, J. J. Van Oosterzee charged it with fueling dissension by attacking the good right of biblical criticism on the basis of a mechanical view of inspiration, and suggested that it would have been better for Kuyper to have given a penitential address on “Present Day Church Conflict in Its Questionable Tendency for the Coming of the Kingdom of God.” Similarly, another respondent entitled his remarks, “Dr. A. Kuyper’s View of Scripture in Its Questionable Tendency for the Church of the Living God.”

In a series of periodical articles Kuyper responded particularly to the criticisms of Van Oosterzee. He forcefully denied not only that he held a mechanical view of inspiration but also, highly enlightening for our purposes, that this was ever the view of the older Reformed dogmaticians. Since the time of Herder, Kuyper observes, the opposition between “puppets” and “genuine human personalities,” along with the charge that confessional orthodoxy reduced the biblical writers to the former, has been a constant thread (“a fixed runner,” “een vaste looper”), picked up by succeeding theological schools. It is not surprising, then, to find Van Oosterzee attempting to make use of “this rusty old runner.”

Kuyper dismisses it once for all by appealing back, not to the Reformation, but to the theology of the seventeenth century, in which, as Van Oosterzee would have it, “the light of the Reformation had again been extinguished by scholasticism.” Specifically, he cites the Leiden Synopsis and notes there (Disputation 3, chap. 7, p. 24, ed. 1632) a clear recognition of the full involvement of the human writers with their various capacities and abilities. “With this clear testimony out of the Egyptian darkness of seventeenth-century scholasticism,” Kuyper adds with an edge of sarcasm, “this idle talk is refuted once for all, and from now on the Scholtens and Van Oosterzees can spare themselves the trouble of pointing out differences in style, patterns of thinking, circumstances, character formation, etc.” (Rullman, p. 57). All these human factors are not the discovery of recent biblical studies but have long since been recognized within the Reformed tradition. Kuyper continues:

No, truly, you esteemed professors of Leiden, Groningen, and Utrecht, you do not really need to imagine that either for the Reformed fathers of an earlier day or for their legitimate offspring [my italics] in our time, the human factor in the origin of Scripture has not existed, because only the divine factor offers them absolute certainty.

The Reformed tradition is not, nor has it ever been, in any doubt about the vox humana of Scripture. “But,” Kuyper concludes with an expression of his ultimate concern (Rullman, p. 58),

since for the church of Christ the issue is not first of all an artistic outlook but is first of all the gravity of life, the propitiation of our sins, the salvation of souls, stability in the midst of doubt, therefore and therefore alone are we put off, grieved and troubled by your endless enthusiasm over all those human particularities, and for us that holy, that divine factor, which governs the entire Scripture as Scripture, has a much greater and much higher fascination.

Plainly Kuyper’s basic affinities are with Reformed orthodoxy; he, along with the emerging Free University, is its “legitimate offspring,” particularly in what pertains to the doctrine of Scripture. At the same time, while entirely congenial with the careful, methodical study of the Bible as a collection of historical documents, his antipathy toward contemporary biblical criticism in its deepest intention is unrelenting.

This profile is borne out elsewhere throughout his writings. To take just a handful of examples, in the course of discussing the testimony of Jesus to the graphic inspiration of the OT, he affirms that the basic thrust of this testimony has been captured by “the so-called ‘mechanical inspiration.’“ In going on to reply to attacks on the latter, he comments parenthetically: “It is called mechanical in order to use a negative [lelijk] word; Satan slanders not only persons but the truth itself” (Dictaten 2.160). Again (Dictaten 2.132), it is hardly a telling argument against the old orthodox view that the entire Bible is God’s word, to appeal to the fact that Scripture contains words of Satan. “As if Voetius, in fact even the simplest farmer from Gelderland, didn’t know that!” Those who argue in this way only show that they are unfamiliar with “our old theological works.”

In the Dictaten the lengthy chapter on the authority of Scripture closes with a section concerning various kinds of opposition to its authority (2.202ff). Such opposition ought not to be dealt with incidentally or from purely apologetic concerns, but in a systematic fashion, showing how reason has been made into a false source (principium) of knowledge. In fact, in its various turns since the Enlightenment historical criticism as a whole has been controlled by worldly reason (logos kosmikos) in rebellion against the holy reason (logos hagios) embodied in Scripture (pp. 210ff). Psychologically the source of “this sinful inclination” is a “false thirst for freedom” which seeks autonomy above Scripture (1.39). To be specific, the school of Wellhausen, Robertson Smith and the Ethical theologians, among others, are not able to affirm in any meaningful sense that the Bible is God’s word (1.71f).

The balance of Kuyper’s position is summed up at the close of a brief discussion on the necessity of Scripture (Holy Spirit 64):

Not as though critical and historical examination were prohibited. Such endeavor for the glory of God is highly commendable. But as the physiologist’s search for the genesis of human life becomes sinful if immodest or dangerous to unborn life, so does every criticism of Holy Scripture become sinful and culpable if irreverent or seeking to destroy the life of God’s Word in the consciousness of the church.

“Sinful and culpable” criticism? There can be little question that Kuyper has in view primarily most of the biblical criticism of his day.

All told, seen in historical perspective, I cannot escape the conclusion that the views on the relation between Reformation and post-Reformation orthodoxy and on contemporary biblical criticism which Rogers and McKim attribute to Kuyper, are almost exactly those of the Ethical theologians, views which in fact he regularly and implacably opposed throughout the course of his life.

15. Summary and Conclusions. At the outset six questions were put to the views of Kuyper and Bavinck. Answers to them for Kuyper can now be briefly summarized.

1. While ahistorical, rationalistic tendencies are present in post-Reformation orthodoxy, there is a deep, inner continuity between it and Kuyper, as well as the Reformation itself. In particular, it fairly represents the same historic church doctrine of Scripture which he is seeking to uphold in his own day.
2. The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is absolutely indispensable to recognizing the divine origin and authority of Scripture. There is no place for a system of external proofs for inspiration, directed to unaided reason.
3. The form and the content of Scripture are both truly divine and truly human and, as such, are indivisible. The form of Scripture is predestined; as its primary author, the Holy Spirit is ultimately accountable for its form as well as its content. It is wrong to assign its form to the human side, its content (central message) to the divine side of Scripture, as if the form/content distinction parallels the human/divine distinction.
4. The incarnation gives rise to inscripturation, and the latter is intrinsic to the former; the one could not exist without the other. The mystery of Scripture is its unique theanthropic character, without, however, involving any sort of hypostatic union between divine and human elements. Scripture has its servant-form only because Christ was incarnated not in a glorified state but in a state of humiliation. The analogue to the sinlessness of Christ is that Scripture is without error.
5. Careful, methodical study is demanded in view of the historical origin and human authorship of the biblical documents. But contemporary biblical criticism is for the most part premised on rational autonomy and, whether or not intentionally, undermines the claims and authority of Scripture.
6. The Bible is without errors, absolutely, not only in its content but also in its form, not only in the sense of deception but also to the exclusion of unintentional mistakes, faulty judgments, lapses of memory and the like.[56] For Scripture to contain errors would mean that God is guilty of error. The truth of Scripture, appropriate to its unique divine authorship, is impressionistic, not notarially precise or scientifically exact. Repeatedly Kuyper speaks of the errorlessness (feilloosheid) of Scripture. While he apparently never uses the closest Dutch equivalent to the term inerrancy (foutloosheid),, there is no reason to suppose that he would object to it or find it inappropriate, provided it is understood in an impressionistic, nontechnical sense.

Originally conceived as a footnote to John Woodbridge’s review of The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible by Jack Rogers and Donald McKim,[57] this article continued to grow. In the meantime Woodbridge’s excellent work has been expanded into a book,[58] but still without reference to the views of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck. Having examined Kuyper’s position in some detail, we now turn to that of his younger colleague.

III. Bavinck

Rogers and McKim present the views of Kuyper and Bavinck as a single, homogenous position.[59] This is basically true of Berkouwer, too, with whom they see themselves as standing, in the line of Kuyper and Bavinck.[60] Certainly along broad historical lines we may anticipate at least basic agreement between them on the doctrine of Scripture. At the same time, however, the one ought not simply to be left in the shadow of the other. Particularly, in what follows here we will have to guard against merely documenting in Bavinck conclusions already reached about Kuyper or otherwise obscuring Bavinck’s position in its own right. What are his integral concerns and distinctive emphases?

The relationship in general between Kuyper and Bavinck is a question worth touching on here, if only in passing, At the close of a lengthy assessment R. H. Bremmer writes:

Our conclusion at the end of this entire chapter can be that Bavinck did not allow his personal controversies with Kuyper to prevail over his public position with respect to Kuyper’s writings. In his Dogmatics he aspired to a conscious synthesis with respect to Kuyper’s works; this, however, did not exclude corrections on specific points here and there.[61]

In the course of an overall appraisal Jan Veenhof observes:

There is no reason to deny that on the cardinal points an important material agreement exists, although the elaboration Kuyper gives of some themes is more romantic and speculative than that of Bavinck. On the other hand the presence of nuances and differences may not be denied. In my opinion one will have to be on guard against both overestimating as well as underestimating mutual differences.[62]

One of Bavinck’s students, T. Hoekstra, offered this comparison:

It seems to me that an important point of difference between these men is that Bavinck was an Aristotelian, Kuyper a Platonic spirit. Bavinck was the man of clear concepts, Kuyper the man of sparkling ideas; Bavinck built on and from historical givens, Kuyper speculated with intuitively grasped thoughts; Bavinck was mainly inductive, Kuyper mainly deductive.[63]

This characterization, incidentally, raises questions about the schema: (good) Augustinian-(neo)Platonic and (bad) scholastic-Aristotelian, in terms of which Rogers and McKim apparently view almost the entire debate on Scripture throughout church history.[64] When E. P. Heideman, in reacting against the tendency to see Bavinck as little more than “a reflection of Kuyper,” speaks globally of “the superficial similarity of their thought,” that is surely misleading and fails to heed his own warning, at the end of a lengthy footnote listing specific differences between their views, that these ought not to be exaggerated.[65] Much sounder would seem to be the view expressed, for example, in the unpublished dissertation of B. Kruithof: “In their maturity, the fundamental convictions of the two men were the same.”[66] Still, Berkouwer, whom we have already observed (note 60) treats the views of Kuyper and Bavinck on Scripture as one, sets the tone at the opening of his reflections on theological developments in this century, by suggesting that Kuyper is essentially a figure from a past that is over, while Bavinck had his finger on the pulse of the future and raised those questions which subsequently have come to occupy the theological mainstream.[67] Discussion of these matters will no doubt continue.

Bavinck’s views on Scripture are presented in a matured and extensively developed fashion in the first volume of his “Reformed Dogmatics.”[68] For our purposes, then, we may properly concentrate our attention almost exclusively on this discussion.[69]

Regrettably, this work, Bavinck’s opus magnum, has not been translated into English. This lack suggests a different approach than we followed in discussing Kuyper, whose work is substantially available in English.

Within the second main part of volume one, on the external principle (principium externum) of dogmatics, are three chapters, on revelation and Holy Scripture (pp. 348-57), on the inspiration of Scripture (pp. 357-420), and on the attributes of Scripture (pp. 420-65).[70] With a view to readers without access to the Dutch original, in order that something of the basic flow of Bavinck’s argumentation might emerge, the discussion that follows here will take the shape of a section-by-section survey of the first two of these chapters. This approach should also help to minimize the tendency to read Bavinck in the light of Kuyper, rather than on his own terms. This survey, however, is not intended to be exhaustive or to give the same, equally thorough attention to each section. The agenda of six questions raised at the outset of this article[71] and more detailed consideration of statements appealed to by Rogers and McKim constitute my primary interest.

1. Revelation and Holy Scripture

Section 103. Bavinck takes up the question of revelation and Scripture against the background of an extensive discussion largely structured around the classical distinction between general and special revelation (pp. 255-348). Noteworthy for our purposes in this prior discussion, first of all, is his stress on the historical and soteriological character of the content of special revelation, a characteristic he believes has been better recognized more recently than earlier in the history of theology. He makes three closely related points (pp. 315-18): (1) Special revelation bears an historical character. This is especially seen in considering that the central fact in special revelation is the incarnation of God. “In a certain sense” this incarnation begins immediately after the fall and continues in various ways down through the OT period, but it reaches its conclusion in the person of Christ. He is the central content of special revelation in its entirety. The end of Israel’s history and the mid-point of all history is the incarnation; history moves toward it and from it. (2) Special revelation does not consist exclusively of words and teaching. Revelation comes not only as prophecy, but also as theophany and miracle. Christ, the center of revelation, is not only prophet, but also priest and king. In Christ God himself comes to us and imparts himself to us; he gives us not only truth, but also righteousness and life. Events like the exodus, the conception and birth of Christ, his resurrection and ascension, are essential components in revelation; they have independent, constitutive significance and do not serve solely as evidences in the communication of doctrine. One-sidedness in either direction is to be avoided: truth and life, word and event are most closely connected; they are not the same, but they always go together. (3) Special revelation has a soteriological character; it is saving revelation. An intellectualistic view of faith, then, surely has no place in the life of the church. Still, this soteriological character must be understood in a scriptural sense, that is, in the sense that man in his entirety is corrupted by sin and must therefore be saved entirely by the grace of Christ. In a comment whose implications we have yet to consider below, he adds: “To sin belong error, falsehood and the darkness of the mind, and therefore saving revelation has also to consist not only in the impartation of life but also in the communication of truth” (p. 318).

This stress on what today might be called the progressive, redemptive-historical character of special revelation occurs within a broader, repeated emphasis on the organic character of all revelation, as well as the organic relationship between revelation and nature. In the words of a summarizing passage (p. 323):

Revelation, which thus comes to us objectively from God, is to be distinguished as general and special. General revelation is that conscious and free act of God, whereby by means of nature and history (in the broadest sense, thus even including our personal life experience), he makes himself known to fallen men, specifically in his virtues of power and wisdom, of wrath and kindness, so that they may repent and keep his law, or, failing that, be without excuse. Special revelation, in distinction, is that conscious and free act of God, whereby in the way of an historical whole of special means (theophany, prophecy, and miracle), centered in the person of Christ, he makes himself known, specifically in his virtues of righteousness and grace, in the proclamation of law and gospel, to those men who live under the light of this special revelation, so that they may receive God’s grace by faith in Christ, or, if unrepentant, a more severe judgment. This general and special revelation are in the first place both objective, and included in objective special revelation, then, is that revelation which takes place by direct address and inner promptings [toespraak en inspraak], by inspiration and God-breathing activity [theopneustie] (in the sense of 2 Tim. 3:16) in the consciousness of prophets and apostles.

To this objective revelation corresponds “a subjective revelation.” This can be called revelation in a broader sense, but “for the sake of clarity” is better described as illumination. This is an illumining activity of God’s Spirit in man which brings about understanding of revelation. “Objective revelation, general and special, is continually accompanied by this subjective illumination through the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ.” Does this mean that special revelation belongs to the past? That is true “in a certain sense,” but we must not forget that it “is and remains present for us all in Scripture” (pp. 323f).

The total picture, in its organic wholeness, is captured in the closing words of this passage (p. 324):

Thus revelation, objective and subjective, in the general and special sense, is being carried along down through the centuries by the witness of the Spirit, until it will have reached its end in the final revelation of Christ. In the first coming of Christ the objective special revelation of God was completed; at his second coming its outworking in the history of mankind is finished. The seed-time, then, ends in the harvest.

And at the close of an extensive discussion on revelation and nature, just prior to section 103 (pp. 347f):

The revelation of Scripture makes us recognize another world of holiness and glory, which comes down into this fallen world, not as doctrine only but also as divine dynamis, as history, as reality, as an harmonious system of words and events together, as a, as the work of God, through which he lifts up this world out of its fall and leads it away, out of the status peccati through the status gratiae into the status gloriae. Revelation is the coming of God to mankind, in order to dwell with them for ever.[72]

Section 103, then, builds on this background and begins to make explicit the place of Scripture within the organism of special revelation. From a comparative religions viewpoint the connection between revelation and divinely authoritative writings is widespread, present in many different cultures. In all Bavinck counts seven major “book religions,” including Christianity with its Bible. This connection between revelation and holy writings is anything but accidental or arbitrary. The teaching and doctrines which religion attributes to revelation, are expressed in words, handed down by tradition from generation to generation and finally preserved in writing. An inner tie connects thought, speech, and writing. Thinking is richer than speaking, and speaking richer than writing. “However, what is written is of great worth and significance. Writing is the preserved, generalized and eternalized word…. Writing is the ensarkōsis of the word” (p. 349).

Those generally valid linguistic considerations apply to the Christian religion in particular. For Christianity, revelation is a history; it consists in occurrences which belong to the past. Revelation is an actus transiens, it has a momentary, transitory character in common with all earthly things. And yet it contains eternal ideas; revelation has meaning not only for the moment in which it took place but is of value for all times and for all men.

Revelation, then, is a past, historical event which nonetheless claims perennial, enduring validity. “How is this apparent contradiction to be reconciled?” (p. 350). It is fair to say that this question raises the issue that controls much of Bavinck’s development of the doctrine of Scripture. This issue—globally put, the relationship between revelation and history—is at least always on the horizon. Here he addresses it by distancing himself from deistic and Enlightenment developments that culminated in Lessing’s “ditch” between the accidental truths of history and the necessary truths of reason. History is not an aggregate of isolated and unordered incidents. Rather, history is “the realization of God’s thoughts,” the result of his counsel; as such it is marked by unity and order. Such a conception of history was not found among the Greeks and Romans, but first came with Christianity and biblical teaching concerning the unity of the human race and a genuine world history. According to Scripture, the truths of history are not accidental, least of all the history of revelation. This history is so necessary that without it history as a whole and mankind as a whole would disintegrate. It is “the bearer of God’s thoughts,” in the words of the apostle Paul, “the revelation of the mystery,” without which man gropes about in the dark. Precisely the reverse of Lessing’s dictum is true: history has eternal significance; reason has proven to be fickle and unstable.

Because revelation “consists in history,” because “it is and must be history” (p. 351), the only way it can come to us is by way of tradition. This can be seen in the person of Christ, the center of revelation. Christ is an historical person, his birth, sufferings, death, resurrection and ascension are unrepeatable historical events. All revelation, related to this center, is a species of incarnation, tied to a particular time and place. As such, then, mankind as a whole can benefit from it only by means of tradition. This belongs to the idea of incarnation. “It is itself an event which took place once in time but by tradition continues to become the property and blessing of all men” (pp. 351f). The historical incarnate character of revelation and its tradition-mediated character go together. Where the former is eclipsed or denied and replaced by the presupposition that revelation consists exclusively of ideas and doctrines, then the view will take hold that the only valid revelation is that which comes to the individual directly and without mediation.

Section 104. “The bearer of the ideal goods of mankind is language, and the sarx of language is writing” (p. 352). In revealing himself God adapts himself to this linguistic state of affairs. In order that it might fully become the property of mankind, “revelation takes on the morphē, the schēma of Scripture.” Echoes of the Christology of Phil 2:6, 7 are unmistakable here. “In fact, the central fact of revelation, namely the incarnation, gives rise to Scripture.” Accordingly, revelation does not disdain to use as a means the lowliest forms of human life. “The Logos not only became anthrōpos, but doulos, sarx. And, similarly, the word of revelation assumes the imperfect, inadequate form of Scripture.” Like all revelation, Scripture, too, is an actus transiens: Christ is the center of revelation but he is not its goal. That goal is the great future when God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:28). The situation with Scripture is analogous:

And in order to reach that goal the word of revelation passes over into Scripture.Thus, Scripture, too, is means and instrument, not a goal. It flows out of the incarnation of God in Christ, it is in a certain sense the continuation of the incarnation, the way along which Christ dwells in his church.

In a word, “Scripture is the servant-form of revelation.”

This passage is noteworthy because it proves to be the base for much of Bavinck’s subsequent development of the doctrine of Scripture. Striking also, with all the differences in style and format, is the unmistakable identity with what we found to be basic viewpoints for Kuyper.[73] Here as there, controlling conceptions are (1) the analogy and inner connection between incarnation and inscripturation, and, consequently, because of this parallel, (2) the servant-form of Scripture. Only further examination will be able to tell whether Bavinck works these conceptions out in agreement with Kuyper. For the present, however, we should not fail to note that, in the terms of this passage itself, “the imperfect, inadequate form” ascribed to Scripture is plainly a function of its uniquely incarnate character, not a generically human form in distinction from its divine content.

When Scripture is perceived as an instrumental continuation of the incarnation in the sense indicated, so Bavinck continues, then the relationship of Scripture to revelation becomes clear. Two opposite extremes have to be avoided. In the period of classical orthodoxy revelation was almost entirely absorbed into inspiration. There was virtually no recognition of revelation as historical nor of the long history of revelation lying in back of the inspiration of Scripture. Since no distinction was made between revelation and Scripture, the latter became an isolated phenomenon, leaving the impression that it had suddenly fallen to earth from heaven. More recent theology, on the other hand, fell into a no less wrong and even more dangerous extreme. Dismissing the Reformer’s view as making the Bible into a paper pope, it completely detached Scripture from revelation. Scripture became an accidental addendum to revelation, a perhaps useful, but not really necessary human document of revelation. Among its defects, this view fails to recognize that in many cases revelation and inspiration completely coincide. This error is not to be dismissed lightly: “Disdain or rejection of Scripture is not an innocent action with respect to human witnesses concerning revelation, but denial of a special revelatory act of God” (p. 354).

The one extreme neglects history and falls into intellectualism, the other disregards the word and tends toward spiritualism. The one has “Scripture without writings,” the other, “writings without Scripture.” In contrast to these one-sided distortions,

The right view is this, that Scripture is neither identified with revelation nor is it detached from and put outside revelation. Inspiration is an element in revelation, a last act in which God’s revelation in Christ for this dispensation is concluded. Inspiration…is an attribute of Scripture, a peculiar and special activity of God in the production of Scripture and thus insofar to be acknowledged and honored itself as an act of revelation.

Section 105. Revelation will not reach its conclusion and goal until the return of Christ. This means that, comprehensively considered, it divides into two great periods or dispensations. The first is objective in character, culminating in the revelation of God in Christ; it can be viewed as the coming of God, over the long history of Israel, to tabernacle among his people in Christ. In this period inscripturation keeps pace with revelation; as revelation progresses, Scripture increases in size. When at last the high point of revelation is reached in Christ, then Scripture is complete. Once again, the correlation between incarnation and inscripturation is decisive (p. 355):

In his person and work Christ has fully revealed the Father to us, therefore in Scripture that revelation is fully described to us…. In Christ God has fully revealed and fully given himself. Therefore Scripture is also finished, it is the complete word of God.

The dispensation of the Son gives way to the dispensation of the Spirit. The period of objective revelation passes over into the time of subjective appropriation. In this latter period the concern of the Spirit is to apply Christ; he adds nothing new to revelation. As this ongoing appropriation of the Spirit adds nothing new to the objective facts of revelation, so his work of illumination is not revelation of new mysteries, “but application of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which are contained in Christ and displayed in his word” (p. 356). This illumination, however, is inseparable from regeneration; together they not only enlighten the understanding but renew the whole person. Because of this unbreakable unity, the one-sided extremes of intellectualism and mysticism are both avoided.

In view of this broad historical periodization of revelation, Scripture does not stand by itself, as an isolated historical phenomenon. At the same time it is not simply a book relegated to the past, an historical curiosity. This latter point is the note on which the chapter on the relationship between revelation and Scripture closes. Anticipating discussion in the next chapter, the accent falls on the Holy Spirit and his unique activity. “Scripture is written by the Holy Spirit” (p. 357). Therefore, it is an “always living, ever youthful word,” “the always ongoing speech of God to us” (p. 356); it is “the abiding report between heaven and earth,” “the living voice of God, the letter of the omnipotent God to his creatures” (p. 357). Inspiration is “an abiding quality of Holy Scripture.” Not only was Scripture God-breathed at the moment it was written down; “it is God-breathed.” By inspiration Scripture is “kept alive and made effective.”[74]

Within this context Bavinck makes the passing comment that Scripture is “a tendency-book” and that “it is not even its purpose to provide us with an historical account according to the standard of reliability which is demanded in other areas of knowledge” (p. 356). Similar statements will concern us in greater detail below. But for the present we should note that there is not the slightest suggestion here that this tendentiousness and less stringent reliability of Scripture are somehow attributable to its human form or to the limitations of the human authors. Rather, plainly in view is the accountability of the Spirit and what is ultimately due to his inspiration.

2. The Inspiration of Scripture

The term used in the title to this chapter in the Dutch original is “theopneustie.” In the material we are considering Bavinck uses it with much greater frequency than the more conventional “inspiratie.” Because they are used interchangeably,[75] both words are best translated with “inspiration.” But why his decided preference for “theopneustie”? Since, as far as I can discover, he never addresses this question, we are left to conjecture. The word by itself is nearly an exact transliteration of the passive verbal adjective in 2 Tim 3:16, suggesting as a literal translation, “God-breathedness” or “God-breathed character.” I suspect that Bavinck’s preference lies in his desire to use a term which does not simply subsume Scripture under a broader reality of inspiration, including, say, the revelations spoken to the prophets, but which points up that Scripture is sui generis, unique in its concrete origin and content. Two widely separated statements bear out this surmise. In distinction from revelation, “inspiration [de theopneustie] was always an activity of God’s Spirit in the consciousness and had for its goal to guarantee the content of Scripture” (p. 353). And in a passage stressing the inseparability of form and content in Scripture (p. 414),

Inspiration [inspiratie] in and of itself would not yet make a writing God’s word in the biblical sense. Even if a book about geography, for instance, were entirely inspired and dictated word for word in the most literal sense, it would not yet be inspired [theopneust] in the sense of 2 Tim. 3:16.

Sections 106–8. These three sections cover the self-witness of Scripture. They treat, respectively, the OT givens for its inspiration, the testimony of Jesus and the apostle to the divine origin and authority of the OT and the witness of the NT to its own inspiration. We will pass over this material more quickly, pausing here and there for passages that bear directly on our interests.

A difference exists between the word spoken to the OT prophets and the word spoken or written by them (pp. 359f):

It would not have been degrading for the prophets if they had recorded the word they received as literally as possible. But revelation also continued on in the moment of inspiration and modified and completed earlier revelation, and thus this earlier revelation was reproduced freely.

This “free production” (exactly what this involves will occupy us below), however, has no less authority than the word spoken originally. In fact, “no separation is possible” between the word of God and the word of the prophet; “they have the same authority.”

Noteworthy also is Bavinck’s overall characterization of the historical books (pp. 361f): These are all written by prophets and “in a prophetic spirit.” The prophets do not simply make repeated references to Israel’s history; it was their task to edit and transmit this history. In carrying out this task, “in no sense do they intend to provide us with an exact and concatenated record of the fortunes of Israel, as other historians aim to do.” In the historical books, no less than elsewhere, the prophets take their stand on the tôrah and on that basis they are always proclaimers of the word of God. Accordingly,

The historical books are the commentary in facts of God’s covenant with Israel. They are not history in our sense but prophecy, and they mean to be judged according to a different standard than the historical records of other nations. Their concern is not that we obtain precise information about Israel’s history but that in the history of Israel we understand God’s revelation, his mind and his counsel.

For Jesus and the apostles the OT has a divine origin and authority. In presenting this, what he finds to be pervasive teaching of the NT Bavinck makes use of the classical orthodox distinction between the primary and secondary authors of Scripture. The NT writers view the OT as an organic whole, “which has God himself for its author” (p. 363). Among other things, this means that Jesus and the apostles never adopt a critical stance toward the OT. This holds true specifically for its historical parts, which “are acknowledged by them unconditionally as true and divine” (p. 364). Historical narratives like the creation of man, the flood and the destruction of Sodom, are “unconditionally believed.” The NT use of the OT reflects the presupposition that a word or sentence can have a much deeper meaning than the writer intended. This is frequently the case in world literature for great writers, but is true to a much greater degree for Scripture, because Jesus and the apostles are convinced that “it has the Holy Spirit as its primary author and bears a teleological character” (p. 366).

So far as the inspiration of the NT itself is concerned, the main thread of Bavinck’s argument is this: Throughout the entire NT Jesus’ testimony holds as “divine, truthful, infallible” (p. 367). Jesus, however, leaves nothing in writing from his earthly ministry. So, in order that “his true testimony” be preserved “in a pure and unadulterated fashion,” he chooses the apostles to be his witnesses. Strictly speaking, they are not witnesses; the exalted Jesus makes use of them “only as instruments” (p. 368). “The real witness, who is faithful and true as he himself, is the Holy Spirit.” The authority of the apostolate, then, is the authority of the exalted Christ himself. This authority extends not only to their spoken witness but also to what they write. Written apostolic witness is the matrix from which the NT canon emerges and, along with the OT, is eventually recognized and accepted by the church. The canon is not created by the church. Rather, its origin and authority are divine; in this sense it is self-imposing. “The canonicity of the books of the Bible is rooted in their existence. They have authority of themselves, juro suo, because they exist” (p. 371).

In the course of this argumentation Bavinck makes the point that Jesus is not only holy and without sin in an ethical sense, “but he is also without error, falsehood or deception intellectually” (p. 367). True, he continues more specifically, Jesus was not involved in the area of science in the narrower sense; but the inspiration of Scripture, with which he was concerned, “is not a scientific problem, but a religious truth.” He continues, “If he erred here, he made a mistake on a point which is closely bound up with religious life, and even in religion and theology he can no longer be acknowledged as our highest prophet.”

These remarks bear directly, as we have noted, on the infallibility of Jesus’ witness, mediated through inscripturated apostolic witness. Here at least, then, Bavinck, like Kuyper, and unlike Rogers and McKim (and Berkouwer),[76] appears to hold that the error at issue in biblical infallibility is not limited to deception and the intent to deceive. Biblical infallibility, and the kind of error excluded by it, is not only ethical but also intellectual in nature.

Taken as a whole, the self-witness of Scripture can be summarized by saying that “it maintains itself and represents itself to be the word of God” (p. 371). The expression “word of God” has various senses in Scripture: the power of God, the content of special revelation, the gospel, Christ. Only once does it refer to a portion of Scripture (Ps 119:105), and never to Scripture as a whole. And yet, in fact, the NT sees the OT as “nothing other than God’s word” (p. 372). God or the Holy Spirit is its “primary author.” Thus, Scripture is properly called God’s word, “both because of its origin and because of its content.” This anticipates a point subsequently taken up more fully: “In Scripture the formal and material significance of the expression are closely connected.”

This survey of the Bible’s self-witness ends with the reminder that ultimately the name “word of God” is applied to Christ himself. The passage is worth quoting in its entirety for the overall perspective it gives on Bavinck’s views.

He is the Logos in an entirely unique sense, revealer and revelation alike. In him, all revelations of God, all words of God, in nature and history, in creation and re-creation, under the Old and New Testaments, have their ground, their unity and center. He is the sun, the particular words of God are its rays. The word of God in nature, under Israel, in the New Testament, in Scripture may not for a moment be detached or thought about apart from Him. He is the principium cognoscendi, in the general sense of all knowledge, in the special sense, as logos ensarkos, of all knowledge of God, of religion and theology, Matt. 11:27.

Sections 109–11. These three sections survey the doctrine of Scripture throughout church history, looking at the period until the Reformation (109), Roman Catholicism since the Council of Trent (110), and Protestantism down to the present (111).

“There is no doctrine about which more unity exists than that of Holy Scripture” (p. 372). This sweeping church-historical assertion sets the tone for the overview that follows. It is no longer possible to trace the origins of this consensus; it already exists as far back in church history as we are able to go. From the beginning the divine origin and authority of Scripture are unquestioned. So much is this the case that sometimes the impression is left not only that God is the author of Scripture, but that he is the only author; the human writers are but copyists, and inspiration is represented as a dictation of the Holy Spirit. However, key figures like Irenaeus, Origen, Jerome, and Augustine, assign a much more active role to the human writers as genuine authors by recognizing differences like those in background, personal development, language and style. Yet this recognition in no way diminished their conviction concerning Scripture’s divine origin and authority.

Accordingly, it was also the conviction of Augustine and others that “Therefore Holy Scripture was without any defect, without any error, even in chronological, historical matters” (p. 374). Admittedly, references to Augustine’s views here are brief and in passing. But they give no indication that Bavinck would share the construction of Rogers and McKim that Augustine is among the first in shaping a central church tradition that the issue of error in the doctrine of Scripture is restricted to “deliberate and deceitful telling of that which the author knew to be untrue.”[77] In fact, if anything, the drift of Bavinck’s discussion is against any such “ethical” restriction.

During the Middle Ages and the period of scholasticism, the doctrine of inspiration was not developed further. Little need was felt to give particular attention to the doctrine of Scripture because almost no one questioned its unique divine origin and authority. Aquinas recognized the limitations of the human authors but maintained that “an error or falsehood cannot occur in Scripture” (p. 376). Similarly, Abelard said that the prophets and apostles occasionally erred as persons, but not when they wrote, because then they were given the Spirit of God, “‘who does not know how to deceive or be mistaken’“ (p. 377). According to Bonaventura, while Scripture uses diverse ways of speaking, “it is always authentic and contains nothing untrue. For the Holy Spirit, its most perfect author, is unable to say anything false” (p. 376).

All told, “The so-called formal principle of the Reformation was not first expressed by Luther and Zwingli, but already existed long before them, in theory as well as practice” (p. 377). And one thread running through this assessment of the medieval period is that Scripture is held to be without error in any sense.

The Council of Trent, session 4, clearly affirms the inspiration of Scripture. Before long, however, Roman Catholic theologians began to differ over the extent of inspiration and how God was the author of Scripture. These differences were considerable. Throughout the sixteenth century most theologians taught that inspiration was a positive activity extending to the individual words of Scripture. But soon laxer views emerged. These limited inspiration to the subsequent approval of writings with a purely human origin or to a negative assistance which kept the writers from making errors. Eventually inspiration was limited to the religious and ethical parts of Scripture; infallibility was confined to these parts and the existence of smaller or greater errors elsewhere in Scripture was conceded.

Since the time of the Reformation most Roman Catholic theologians have adopted a mediating position, rejecting looser views of inspiration as well as a strict, verbal inspiration. This “real inspiration” sometimes consists strictly in revelation; at other times it is merely an assistance. This appears to be the view taken by the Vatican Council, when it affirmed both that inspiration is a positive activity of God and that the infallibility of Scripture is a result of inspiration.

Bavinck’s perspective on the contemporary situation is instructive: The pronouncements of popes and church councils have still not produced unity in the conception of inspiration. But they have had an indirect influence, particularly on those who take a more liberal viewpoint. Previously they were inclined to limit inspiration to religious-ethical content and grant the fallibility of Scripture in other matters. But now they take a different tack: The inspiration and infallibility of the entire Scripture is no longer in question; rather the issue is its interpretation. It is just as one-sided to say that Scripture is absolutely infallible in all matters as to assume that it contains mistakes and errors. Scripture is true, but only in the sense it intends, not in a sense or by standards foreign to it. Exegesis has to distinguish between absolute and relative truth, formal and material errors, what the biblical writers say and what they mean. When this distinction is maintained, then much of what was previously thought to be history proves not to be, nor was it intended by the Holy Spirit to be such. Rather it is legendary or allegorical material adopted to illustrate some religious or moral truth. Included among such material are the creation account and most of the other narratives in Genesis 1–11. Further, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the Davidic authorship of many of the Psalms attributed to him, and the unity of Isaiah are denied, without all this being seen as disparaging the divine origin and authority of Scripture.

Bavinck’s overall characterization of the trend is that “As a divine book, the Bible stands above all criticism, but as a human book, just like all literature it is subject to historical-critical investigation” (p. 382). Whether this in general represents Bavinck’s own position, as Rogers and McKim seem to suggest,[78] remains to be settled. For the present we note that he concludes here that this “Concessionism” has produced “a serious crisis” in the Roman Catholic doctrine of Scripture, a crisis whose outcome deserves to be followed “with interest” (p. 383).

The Reformers take over the traditional church doctrine of Scripture. Luther does make an unfavorable judgment about some books and admits the presence of “minor errors” [kleinere onjuistheden]; on the other hand he holds to verbal inspiration “in the strictest sense” (p. 383). The Lutheran confessions do not have a separate article on Scripture, but at every point they presuppose its divine origin and authority. As early as Gerhard the writers are called amanuenses of God and stenographers of the Holy Spirit.

The Reformed tradition has the same doctrine of Scripture. While Zwingli does neglect the external for the internal word and admits historical and chronological inaccuracies, Calvin, on the other hand, considers Scripture God’s word “in the full and literal sense,” and that the autographs are without error (p. 384). Most of the Reformed confessions have an article on Scripture and clearly assert its divine authority. All Reformed theologians take this same standpoint.

There are a few weak attempts at “a more organic view” of inspiration (p. 384), but increasingly through the course of the seventeenth century the prevailing trend is in the direction of maintaining the divinity and infallibility of Scripture in ways such that the role of the human writers as genuine authors is reduced or eclipsed. A certain end to these developments is seen in Nitzsche, who in 1714 devoted a dissertation to the question whether the Bible itself is God.

Inspiration theory taken to such extremes inevitably led to widespread opposition, particularly from the side of a mounting biblical criticism. Such criticism began much earlier (Bavinck traces it back at least as far as the scroll-burning activities of Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 36!) and has continued episodically throughout church history. But it has massively reasserted itself in eighteenth-century rationalism with its attacks on the content of Scripture and in nineteenth-century historicism, which questioned the authenticity of the biblical documents.

Various attempts have been made to modify the doctrine of inspiration to conform to the results of biblical criticism. The “dualistic view” maintains inspiration as a supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit at the time of writing but limited to religious-ethical content. For the historical parts inspiration is weakened or denied so that errors can occur. This leads to a distinction between the word of God and the Bible. Adopted already by the Socinians and then the Remonstrants, among others, this theory is burdened with basic difficulties. The most substantial is that “the separation between what is necessary for salvation and what is incidentally historical is impossible, because in Scripture doctrine and history are completely interwoven” (p. 387).

Accordingly, the dualistic view gave way to the “dynamic” view, associated especially with Schleiermacher. In this theory inspiration “is transferred from the intellectual to the ethical sphere” and is not primarily a quality of Scripture but of the writers, which differs “not essentially, but only in degree” from the leading of the Spirit experienced by all believers. On this view (pp. 387f):

Scripture, then, is at once a divine and a human book, on the one hand containing the highest truth and yet at the same time weak, fallible, imperfect; not revelation itself but a record of revelation; not God’s word itself but description of that word; defective in many respects but still an adequate instrument for us to attain to an infallible knowledge of revelation.

This dynamic view has eventually won the day in scientific theology and appears in a great variety of modifications. The connection between inspiration and revelation can be more or less close, the presence of error more or less a possibility.

But the basic ideas remain the same. Inspiration in the first place is a quality of the writers and after that of their writings. It is not a momentary act or a special gift of the Holy Spirit, but an habitual quality. It works dynamically in such a way that the possibility of error in all its parts is not excluded.

The contemporary situation in the doctrine of Scripture is one of great turmoil, and a satisfactory solution does not yet exist. Unresolved is the conflict between the self-witness of Scripture and those results of modern biblical scholarship difficult to reconcile with this self-witness. One does not do justice to this conflict either by weakening Scripture’s testimony to its inspiration and absolute authority or by evading the difficulties raised by recent biblical studies. This conflict is all the more serious because it touches the church’s historic, unconditional acceptance of the authority of Scripture; furthermore the objections raised are not directed at subordinate, peripheral points but at the main truths of Scripture, at the center of revelation and the person of Christ. At the one extreme the consequence of this conflict has been the flat rejection of the Bible and the repudiation of Christianity (Voltaire, Strauss). For most modern theologians, however, this goes too far, and there have been a number of efforts to maintain, along with the results of criticism, the religious value of the Bible. Among those holding more liberal views of inspiration and yet seeking to preserve for the church its age-old confidence in the complete reliability of God’s word are Ritschl and his school (Julius Kaftan is discussed in some detail). But these and similar efforts have failed, among other reasons because of their “aprioristic, neo-Kantian, voluntaristic” (p. 391) presuppositions, which control their approach to Scripture and Christianity.

Two further considerations in Bavinck’s survey of the doctrine of Scripture in church history need to be highlighted. First, a basic profile on the entire history is “the old doctrine of inspiration”—”the central church tradition,” or “the central Christian tradition,” in the terms of Rogers and McKim[79]—set in opposition, not as they do to Reformed scholasticism culminating in the views of the Old Princeton theologians, but to “the critical school,” marked by those who “have abandoned the infallibility of Scripture” (p. 388). Second, among those mentioned in a lengthy footnote listing proponents of the critical position is Charles Augustus Briggs (p. 389 n. 1),[80] while Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, along with Kuyper, are cited among recent theologians who defend the inspiration and authority of Scripture (pp. 391f n. 5).[81] In other words, in Bavinck’s view “the central church tradition,” for which he contends, is represented by Kuyper, Hodge, and Warfield, among others, in opposition to Briggs, not, as Rogers and McKim would have it,[82] by Briggs, Kuyper, and Bavinck against Hodge and Warfield. As was done to Kuyper,[83]so now in the case of Bavinck, Rogers and McKim have inverted his perception of the history of doctrine and have sought to assign him a key role in a church-historical scenario, in which, to put it mildly, he would have great difficulty recognizing himself.

Section 112. This section begins Bavinck’s own exposition of the doctrine of inspiration. This doctrine like others (the trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, etc.) is not clearly formulated in Scripture. What Scripture does provide us with is testimony to its own inspiration and “all the moments which are necessary for the construction of the doctrine” (p. 392). This self-witness is clear and by now generally acknowledged as such, even where it is not believed. The slogan “back to Christ” is just as “deceptive and false” (p. 393) in connection with this doctrine as every other, if it implies an opposition between the teaching of Jesus and the witness of the apostles. Our only access to the former is through the latter, that trustworthy witness appointed by the exalted Christ himself.

Similarly misguided is the effort to subordinate or oppose Scripture’s self-witness to the phenomena of Scripture. The Bible’s teaching concerning its own inspiration is itself an indisputable fact that has to be taken into consideration. “The so-called phenomena of Scripture cannot overturn this self-witness of Scripture and may not be summoned as a witness against it” (pp. 393f). Further, this self-witness is plain and perspicuous, either accepted in faith or rejected, while “speculation about the phenomena of Scripture is the result of lengthy historical-critical investigation and changes into a variety of forms according to the differing standpoint of the critics” (p. 394). Scholarly investigation can help to explain the origin and structure of Scripture, but it can never produce a doctrine of Scripture. At the most it provides “what someone thinks the Bible is.” In the final analysis, the method of building the doctrine of inspiration on scholarly investigation of its phenomena amounts “to correcting the teaching of the Bible by our own scientific inquiry, to making the witness of Scripture dependent upon human judgment.” Certainly these phenomena have to be taken into consideration, but that is only done properly on “the principle that the phenomena of Scripture, not as the critic sees them but as they are in themselves, are consistent with its self-witness.”

Scripture’s teaching concerning itself is customarily summarized by the word inspiration (“theopneustie of inspiratie,” p. 394), derived from the word theopneustos in 2 Tim 3:16. Despite Cremer’s efforts to establish an active force for this verbal adjective, a passive force (breathed by God) is undoubtedly correct.[84] In a broader sense inspiration has reference to the productive influence experienced by persons and is illustrated both in the creativity of poets, artists, etc., as well as by the impact of their work on others.

The inspiration taught in Scripture has its basis in God’s immanence. The specific production of Scripture by God’s Spirit does not stand by itself but “in connection with the whole of his immanent activity in the world and the church” (p. 396). It is set in the context of the Spirit’s overall activity in creation and re-creation. But while the inspiration of Scripture takes place within this broader orbit of the Spirit’s activities and builds on them, it is not simply to be identified with one or another of these activities; rather, “it is the crown and pinnacle of everything.” From another angle, the Spirit’s work in the inspiration of Scripture, strictly considered, presupposes the activity of the Father in preparing the organs of revelation for their task, by virtue of their background, upbringing, personal development, etc., and the work of the Son as Logos and Revealer. “Revelation and inspiration must be distinguished.”

But this distinction must not be misused so that inspiration is detached from revelation and so, in fact, denied. The relationship between revelation and inspiration was already discussed, as we have seen, in section 104. Here Bavinck goes on to make several points against any divorce between them: (1) Frequently revelation precedes inspiration, but not always; when, for instance, still future things are prophesied in the course of writing, then revelation and inspiration coincide. (2) Even in the case of matters which the writers already knew or could know by their own investigation, a special activity of Spirit was necessary, an activity described by Jesus in John 14:26 as teaching and reminding. (3) For those who live beyond the times of the prophets and apostles revelation in its entirety is known by their written witness. Accordingly, “Scripture is thus the revelation for the church of all ages, that is, the only instrument by which God’s revelation in Christ can be known. Thus in inspiration revelation concludes, is settled and reaches its end point” (p. 397). Latin formulations, taken over from the contemporary Roman Catholic scholar Pesch, capture the requisite balance: on the one hand, inspiration is not revelation; on the other hand, everything inspired is revealed.

Finally, in a remark aimed explicitly at the Ethical theologians (see above, WTJ 44.274 n. 44), inspiration and regeneration are not identical. Inspiration usually presupposes regeneration, faith and repentance, but not always; inspiration is possible without regeneration. Regeneration renews the whole person, while inspiration is a particular activity focused in the consciousness. “Regeneration is a permanent quality, inspiration is a transient act” (pp. 397f).

All told, inspiration stands in the closest connection with other activities of God; it may not be isolated from them. At the same time inspiration is not simply a higher activity of the Spirit arrived at, in evolutionary fashion, by a process of immanent development from a lower form of his activity. The closing words of this section give us a fundamental, overall, controlling perspective on Bavinck’s doctrine of inspiration: “The activity of God’s Spirit in nature, in mankind, in the church, in the prophets, in the biblical writers is related and analogous, but not identical. There is harmony, not isolation [eenzelvigheid]” (p. 398).

Section 113. Within this broader framework of the Spirit’s activity, what, more precisely, is inspiration? Particularly enlightening is the phrase, frequently recurring in Scripture, “what was spoken by (hupo) the Lord through (dia) the prophet.” The preposition hupo is applied to God; he is the real speaking subject. In distinction, the prophets, when they speak or write, are his “organs”; of them dia with the genitive is always used, never hupo. “God, or the Holy Spirit, is the real speaker, the informant, the auctor primarius, and the writers are the organs through which God speaks, the auctores secundarii, the scriptores or scribae” (p. 398). 2 Pet 1:21 sheds further light in attributing the origin of prophecy not to the will of man but to the bearing or impelling activity of the Spirit. This “being borne” is “essentially different” from the “being led” of Rom 8:14, experienced by all believers; the former activity in the prophets is such that “it is God who speaks in and through them.”

In explicating the doctrine of inspiration, then, Bavinck, like Kuyper,[85] takes his point of departure in the traditional dogmatic distinction between the primary and secondary authors of Scripture. Inspiration, in the case of Scripture, is essentially and strictly an authorial activity of God; that is, inspiration is not a matter of a divine message in distinction from its human form, but both, form and content, together and indivisible. As we go on we will want to see how Bavinck qualifies this point of departure and whether perhaps he makes statements that are in conflict with it. But whatever may turn out to be the case, this distinction plainly provides him with a final point of reference.

Just how much this distinction in fact controls his discussion is seen in Bavinck’s observation, which he proceeds to develop at some length, that the correct conception of inspiration depends on identifying the right relationship between the primary and secondary authors. The correct view, “the theism of Scripture,” lies between two basic extremes and keeps us from falling into one or the other. On the one side is the deistic error; it fails to do justice to the primary author and his activity. Included here, among positions already noted in his historical survey, is the view that God’s activity is limited to approving post facto the work of the human authors (subsequens approbatio) and merely to keeping them from error (mera praeservatio ab errore), as well as the so-called dynamic view, which confuses inspiration with regeneration. The fundamental error of this extreme, particularly the dynamic view, is that “it denies in principle that God has revealed himself to man by speaking, through thoughts and words” (p. 399). It holds that God speaks to man “only metaphorically.” It fails to see

that again and again he has come down to man’s level and has communicated his thoughts in human language and words. Particularly inspiration is God’s speaking to us through the mouth of prophets and apostles so that their word is God’s word.

The reader is left in no uncertainty how Bavinck understands this equation. He quotes with approval the view of Warfield[86] that the logia tou theou “are always ‘oracular utterances, divinely authoritative communications’“ (p. 400). And,

In 2 Timothy 3:16 Scripture is not called theopneustos first of all because of its content, but because of its origin; it is not “inspired, because and insofar as it inspires,” but conversely, “it breathes out God and inspires, because it is inspired by God.”

Scripture is literally, not metaphorically, God’s inspired word, not primarily because of its message but because of the origin it has as written texts. The reality of inspiration, we surely do not misrepresent Bavinck here, first of all concerns the form in which the content of Scripture comes to us.

The opposite error is the pantheistic tendency which fails to do justice to the activity of the secondary authors. In this context so-called mechanical inspiration comes up for discussion. To begin with, this designation means different things to different people. Some use it to reject the Spirit’s special leading in the biblical writers. This rejection follows from a denial of “every supernatural activity of God in the world and in man” (p. 400), and is in the interest of reducing the inspiration of the biblical writers to “that heroic, poetic, or religious inspiration” experienced by other men. But, “after everything that has previously been said about revelation no further proof is necessary to show that this view is in flat contradiction with Scripture.” It errs in not recognizing that “God reveals himself not only in, but also through particular words and deeds to man.”

From a biblical, theistic standpoint it is difficult to see why this special, verbal revelation has to be dubbed mechanical and seen in conflict with the nature and dignity of man. That such is not the case can be seen by analogies from our common experiences, like the teaching a father gives his children or the relationship between teacher and student. For genuine instruction to take place, in such situations, two elements are necessary: communication of new information and pedagogical order. Similarly, God, over the course of the history of revelation, communicates what lies outside man and is not accessible to his capacities, and God communicates in “a regulated, pedagogical order” (p. 401). Those who reject the former—revelation as the communication of knowledge to man from outside himself—gradually deny all revelation and end up in a “mechanical view of nature.” Those who neglect the latter—the pedagogical order followed by God in revelation—risk falling into “a mechanical view of revelation, …which is contradicted by Scripture itself.” This is also true of inspiration (p. 401):

Mechanical is that view of inspiration which, placing one-sided emphasis on the new, supernatural element present in inspiration, overlooks its adaptation to the old, natural element, detaches the biblical writers from their personalities and lifts them out of the history of their time as it were, in order to make them function only as unconscious, will-less instruments in the hand of the Holy Spirit.

Given this rather lengthy definition, Bavinck immediately issues a caution: To what extent earlier theologians held such a mechanical view cannot be covered in a single generalization; each deserves separate investigation. The church fathers, for instance, certainly began the practice of comparing the writers to various musical instruments or a pen in the hand of the Holy Spirit. But from these comparisons “not too much may be deduced” (p. 402); for they intend only to communicate “that the biblical writers were the secondary authors and that God was the primary author.” That this was their intention can be seen in their resolute rejection of the Montanist error that prophecy and inspiration rendered their recipients unconscious. Furthermore they often show a clear awareness of the self-involvement of the biblical writers. Still, undeniable is the presence “now and then” of “expressions and ideas which betray a mechanical viewpoint,” and “without fear of contradiction,” the generalization is permitted that

insight into the historical and psychological mediation of revelation, now taken in a good sense, has first come to full clarity more recently, and the mechanical conception of inspiration, insofar as it existed earlier, has more and more given way to the organic.

Three observations may be made here about Bavinck’s view on mechanical and organic inspiration. (1) He denies that to view revelation as direct verbal communication from God in the strictest sense—his own position—is mechanical, as many label this view in dismissing it. (2) Much like Kuyper,[87] he does not consider tendencies toward a mechanical view, where they have in fact existed, and the organic view to be fundamentally conflicting conceptions of inspiration; rather they are on the continuum of a common (church) tradition which has gradually come to greater clarity. (3) The organic view is distinguished by “insight into the historical and psychological mediation of revelation,” but then with the immediate qualification that this insight be “taken in a good sense.” In view of emphases that he has already made, it seems clear that Bavinck’s concern is for the divine authorship of Scripture; the point of this qualification is to exclude “organic” viewpoints which diminish or deny that God is auctor primarius.

Section 114. The organic view, far from weakening the Bible’s teaching on inspiration, in fact gives a more adequate accounting of it, because Scripture itself requires us to think of inspiration, “not mechanically but organically” (p. 402). This is seen in general in what we are taught there about the Creator-creature relationship. In their dependence on him God does not handle men “as stocks and blocks but as rational and moral beings.” “In a word, the relationship between God and his creatures is, according to Scripture, neither deistic or pantheistic but theistic.” This provides the presumption, then, that the special leading of God’s Spirit in inspiration will not destroy but confirm the personal activity and involvement (“zelfwerkzaamheid”) of men.

This presumption is confirmed by the express teaching of Scripture. The leading of the Spirit in the biblical writers is such that “they themselves investigated and thought, spoke and wrote.” On balance, “it is God who speaks through them, but at the same time it is they themselves who speak and write.” This can be seen in the fact that in the NT, OT passages cited are attributed interchangeably, sometimes to God, the primary author, sometimes to the secondary author. In general, it can be said of the various factors involved in inspiration, “that the Spirit of the Lord does not suppress but, on the contrary, brings to heightened activity the personalities of the prophets and apostles” (p. 403).

This full involvement of the human authors can be seen in at least three specific respects: (1) Their backgrounds and training, their dispositions, abilities and personal development all function in the specific calling they have received. All that the Spirit has previously formed them to be as whole persons is now utilized by the same Spirit. (2) The stimulus to write (impulsus ad scribendum) is only seldom a direct command from God but almost always arises from their overall experience and involvement within the covenant community with its needs and concerns. (3) In the actual activity of writing they “completely remain themselves” (p. 404); they investigate, utilize sources, evaluate, reflect. In short, “all the usual aids an author uses in writing a book are not scorned or excluded by inspiration, but on the contrary are taken up and made subservient to the purpose that God has in view.” Accordingly, there is room in Scripture for a variety of literary genre, each of which “must be judged according to its own law,” as well as differences in style and language. These differences have always been recognized but not always satisfactorily explained. They are not to be explained by “the sheer arbitrariness” of the Holy Spirit, but because “entering into the writers, he has also entered into their style and language, into their character and peculiarities, which he himself had already prepared and formed” (p. 405).

Further attention may be given to two matters in this section. (1) In the course of expounding the organic nature of inspiration, Bavinck points out that because the biblical documents do not originate outside of but within history, theology properly investigates the conditions and circumstances of their origin. “But,” he immediately adds, “while the psychical man stops at those second causes, the pneumatic man penetrates to the first cause and discovers in everything, by the light of Scripture, a special leading of the Holy Spirit.”

Two observations are in order here: (a) Scientific study of the origin of the biblical writings is not a neutral undertaking; only the investigator who is indwelt and guided by the Holy Spirit is adequate to the task. (b) Organic inspiration does not mean that it has been left to the human writers in their freedom to express the divine message they have received, as Rogers and McKim suggest.[88] To be sure, organic inspiration does not violate their freedom, but only as their activity remains at the level of “second causes,” subservient to the leading activity of the Spirit as “the first cause.” Whether this notion of cause was the best choice on Bavinck’s part to express his intention can be left an open question here. Nevertheless within the larger context of his views it plainly serves to underline the divine authorship of Scripture in the strictest sense. Organic inspiration is not a matter of the central message of Scripture for which its literary origin is a nonessential, peripheral concern. Rather, in the origin of the biblical documents God is “the first cause”; the Spirit’s “special leading activity” in inspiration is “causal,” that is, authorial in the most proper sense.

(2) The close of this section provides the following characterization of organic inspiration (p. 405):

It is the result and application in the doctrine of Scripture of the central fact of revelation, the incarnation of the word. The Logos became sarx, and the word became Scripture; these are two facts which not only run parallel to each other but are most closely connected. Christ became flesh, a servant, without form or glory, the most despised among men; he descended into the lowest parts of the earth, he became obedient to the death of the cross. And so also the word, the revelation of God has entered into what is creaturely, with the life and the history of men and nations, into all human forms of dreams and visions, of investigation and reflection, even into what is humanly weak and despised and ignoble; the word became writing, and has, as writing, subjected itself to the fate of all writing. All this has happened so that the excellence of the power, including the power of Scripture, might be God’s and not from us. As every human thought and act is entirely the fruit of the action of God, in whom we live and exist, and at the same time is entirely the fruit of man’s activity, so also Scripture is altogether the product of God’s Spirit, who speaks through the prophets and apostles, and at the same time entirely the product of the writers’ activity. Theia panta kai anthrōpina panta.

I have quoted this lengthy passage not only because it brings together in summary fashion important elements in Bavinck’s position but also because it contains the first of a number of statements from this chapter of the Dogmatiek cited by Rogers and McKim in their presentation of the views of Kuyper and Bavinck. Here they appeal to what is said in approximately the middle of the passage about revelation entering fully into creaturely life and about the word subjecting itself to the fate of all writing (Authority, p. 392). This, they maintain, shows that Bavinck was committed to “every kind of scholarly study of Scripture.” In particular, they hold that, in distinction from the central saving message of Scripture received directly by faith, he was free for the necessary task of investigating the peripheral human form of Scripture, and was open to the possibility of such scholarship discovering mistakes and errors in this periphery (p. 393).

Bavinck is certainly committed to the scholarly study of Scripture. But this interpretation surely skews what he intends to say.

Rogers and McKim recognize that Bavinck makes the statement they cite, because Scripture, in the respects indicated, is “like the incarnate Christ” (p. 392). But this parallel seems almost immediately to drop from their sight. Because of the parallel, in fact in Bavinck’s view, the intrinsic, intimate tie,[89] between incarnation and revelation (inscripturation), he, unlike Rogers and McKim, does not distinguish between its divine message as the center of Scripture and its human form as the periphery. Rather, he wishes to stress, the work of the human writers in its entirety is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit. Rogers and McKim completely miss the theanthropic composition which Bavinck accents by means of the Greek epigram at the very end of the passage: Scripture in its entirety—message and medium together and at the same time—is both divine and human.

Section 115. “This organic view however is frequently used to detract from the former [the theia panta, “everything divine,” mentioned in the last line of section 114], from the authorship of the Holy Spirit” (p. 405). This opening sentence reveals once again how one overriding concern for Bavinck throughout the doctrine of inspiration is the divine authorship of Scripture. Before going on to deal with various rejections of this divine origin, he writes as follows (pp. 405f):

The incarnation of Christ demands that we investigate it into the depths of its humiliation, in all its weakness and indignity. The inscripturation [beschrijving] of the word requires us to recognize in Scripture, too, what is weak and lowly, that servant-form. But as the human in Christ, however weak and lowly, nevertheless remained free from sin, so also Scripture was conceived without defect [sine labe concepta]. Entirely and in all its parts human, but also likewise theia panta.

Here we find emphases already encountered earlier: the close, inner bond between Christ and Scripture, giving rise to the servant-form of the latter, and the indivisibility of divine and human elements in Scripture. But now there is also present the additional thought that as Christ incarnate remains free from sin, so Scripture is “without defect.”

As far as I can discover, nowhere else than here does Bavinck address more directly the issue of error in Scripture. Two observations may be made: (1) That Scripture is “without blemish” is bound up with the intrinsic connection between incarnation and inscripturation (inspiration) and proceeds specifically from the sinlessness of Christ.

(2) The further question concerns the intended range of the Latin word labe (“defect,” “blemish”). Does Bavinck mean to limit it to error in the sense of deception and the intent to deceive, leaving the door open to other kinds of mistakes and error, as Rogers and McKim suggest without dealing directly with this statement (Authority, 393)? The parallel with the sinlessness of Christ may seem to support, even demand such an “ethical” restriction. But while the immediate context does not provide a decisive answer to this question, what Bavinck has said earlier clearly weighs against any limitation on the range of error in view.

In emphasizing the soteriological character of special revelation and the need to stress it over against a bare historical faith and false intellectualism, at the same time he warns against overreaction and the opposite error of forgetting that special revelation addresses the whole man, including his intellect. He goes on to say (p. 318): “To sin belong error, falsehood and darkness of the mind [verstand], and therefore saving revelation has also to consist not only in the impartation of life but also in the communication of truth.” Later, in discussing the infallibility of Jesus, he comments (p. 367; see the analysis of this statement already given above): “Not only is Jesus holy and without sin in an ethical sense, John 8:46, but he is also without error, falsehood, or deception intellectually.” Apparently, then, Bavinck’s view, similar to that of Kuyper,[90] is that all error, not just deception, is the result of sin: To affirm the sinlessness of Christ is to affirm his absolute infallibility. Consequently, to affirm, as an essential correlate of Christ’s sinlessness, that Scripture is “without blemish,” is to affirm, correspondingly, that it is without error, in any sense.

Admittedly Bavinck has little to say about the issue of error in relation to Scripture or its infallibility, at least in his development of the doctrine of inspiration. This is all the more remarkable in view of the times in which he was writing.[91] This sparsity, however, should not be read as disinterest or uncertainty on the issue of biblical infallibility. What he does say, coupled with the pervasive cogeniality in general of his views with Kuyper’s, inevitably point to the conclusion that he agrees in the main with the latter’s position on the errorlessness of Scripture. Certainly his comments on the full humanity of Scripture and its servant-form cannot be urged to offset this conclusion, as the passage under examination, for one, makes clear. We shall have to see how his subsequent discussion affects this conclusion.

The divine character of Scripture has been devalued in a great variety of ways. From the time in the seventeenth century where inspiration had been extended to include even the Hebrew vowel points and punctuation (inspiratio punctualis) a process of retrenchment set in which eventually ended, through a sequence of increasingly extensive limitations, in the denial of all inspiration “as a supernatural gift” (p. 406). The discussion at this point overlaps to a certain extent with what has already been said in previous sections. This devaluing trend with its various theories of inspiration has failed to satisfy the church as a whole. This is so because “the doctrine of Holy Scripture is not an opinion of this and that school, not a dogma of a particular church or sect, but an articulus fundamentalis, an article of faith of the one, holy, universal Christian church.” Scripture prevails over every effort to divest it of “the mysterious character of its origin, content and power” (p. 407).[92] The doctrine of inspiration is “not an interpretation of Scripture and also not really a theory; but it is and belongs to a believing confession of what Scripture witnesses to concerning itself, despite the appearance which is against it…. It is not a scientific theory but a confession of faith.”

Both dynamic and dualistic inspiration (inspiratio personalis and fundamentalis) are in conflict with “this dogmatic and religious character of the doctrine of inspiration” (p. 407). These theories do contain valid insights. Inspiration utilizes a variety of personalities, each with its individual gifts and capacities. In this respect (personal inspiration), inspiration varies “in its extent and degree.”[93] As a rule, the Spirit’s activity is “transcendent” in the OT prophets, but “immanent” in the apostles (p. 408). When all instances are considered there is “great difference” in the inspiration of persons. Accordingly, there are differences among the various parts of Scripture, and “not all books of the Bible have equal worth.”

But these differences “may not be misused to weaken or limit graphic inspiration,” as the dynamic and dualistic theories do. Both these positions are in conflict with the Bible’s self-witness, in particular the pasa graphē of 2 Tim 3:16. In addition, personal (dynamic) inspiration obliterates the distinction between inspiration and illumination (regeneration), thus reducing Scripture to the level of devotional reading. With Rome it reverses the relationship between Scripture and the church, it deprives the church of certainty, and assigns scholarship the task of determining what in Scripture is God’s word. The effort to save this theory by appealing directly to Christ as the source and authority for theology fails. Our only access to Christ is through apostolic witness and according to this witness, inspiratio personalis is in conflict with the authority of Christ himself. Fundamental inspiration differs from personal inspiration by assuming a special activity of the Spirit on the writers, but only for certain parts of Scripture. If for no other reason this view is unacceptable because it is “so deistic and dualistic.” Besides, in a statement that sheds important light on Bavinck’s position, “in Scripture word and fact, what is religious and what is historical, what is spoken by God and what is spoken by men are so woven together and intertwined that separation is impossible” (pp. 408f). Finally, neither of these theories meets the often fundamental objections of modern scholarship to Scripture and its inspiration. “The inspiratio personalis and fundamentalis are by no means more scientific and more rational than the strictest inspiratio verbalis.”

Other theories of inspiration have in common “a more or less mechanical conception.” In this respect they differ only slightly from each other, concerning the extent of inspiration. “Because a clear insight into the inner connection between thoughts (things), words, and letters was lacking” (p. 409), disputes easily arose over just how far inspiration extended (only to the subject matter, all the way to vowel points of the Hebrew text or to some point in between?). “But,” Bavinck continues, “when inspiration is understood more organically, that is, more historically and psychologically, the importance of these questions vanishes.”

How, more exactly, does Bavinck see the organic view he favors, particularly the historical and psychological mediation of inspiration, in relation to the viewpoint of earlier Protestant orthodoxy? This question takes on added importance for us because Rogers and McKim quote several times from the remainder of this section, in giving a brief sketch of his view of organic inspiration, to show that “Bavinck denied the post-Reformation emphasis on each word and letter of Scripture” (Authority, 392). This, along with the basic drift of their discussion—the interest of Bavinck’s organic view is the divine, saving message, not the human form of Scripture—gives the impression that he did not hold to or at least was not much concerned about verbal inspiration.

Two sets of statements are cited by Rogers and McKim. The first (in Bavinck’s sequence) is that the vowel points in the Hebrew manuscripts do not originate with the biblical writers; nor is it the case in Scripture that “everything is full of divine wisdom” or that “each jot and tittle has an infinite content.” Such a view leads to the “absurd” hermeneutics of the Jewish Scribes, “and does not honor but dishonors Holy Scripture.”

What Rogers and McKim apparently do not consider sufficiently is the statement with which they themselves choose to begin this quotation: “In the thoughts are included the words, and in the words, the vowels.” The sense of this statement is to be seen from the lengthy sentence which immediately precedes and which stipulates what inspiration, as organic and non-mechanical, involves (p. 409):

The activity of the Holy Spirit in the act of writing consists in this, that, having prepared the human consciousness of the writers in all sorts of ways, by birth, upbringing, natural gifts, study, recollection, reflection, experience, revelation, etc. he now, in, under, and with the act of writing itself, causes to arise in that consciousness those thoughts and words, that language and style, which could render in the best way the divine thought for people of every rank and class, of every nation and age.

For Bavinck the contrast in view is not between organic and verbal inspiration, as Rogers and McKim suggest, but between organic verbal inspiration and a mechanical, “atomistic” (the word used several sentences later) view. The reason that earlier discussions about the extent of inspiration are largely irrelevant is not because a concern with verbal inspiration is wrong or unimportant. Rather, on an organic view the question of extent is settled in advance; to raise that question itself betrays a mechanical outlook. Because of the organic, indivisible bond between thoughts, words, and letters, there can be no doubting that inspiration extends to words or for that matter to everything about the texts of Scripture in their origin and character as written texts.

For Bavinck organic inspiration is not a matter of a divine, redemptive subject matter which is then left to the biblical writers in their freedom to be given its specific human, verbal form (this seems to be the assessment of Rogers and McKim). Rather, organic inspiration means that, without violating the personalities of the writers, in the act of writing the Spirit produces (“causes to arise”)[94] the particular mode of expression suitable to his thought. The thoughts of the human writers, their style and word choice—in short, the (human) form (“the best way”), no less than and inseparable from the (divine) message, is primarily and directly attributable to the Spirit’s inspiring activity.

Rogers and McKim also appeal to statements toward the close of this section which liken Scripture to the human body as an organism, where each part has its place, but some parts have a much more important and central role than others. This comparison, they believe, shows that Bavinck distinguished in Scripture between the center of its divine message and the periphery of its human accommodation.

But this is not the point of Bavinck’s comparison nor of his distinction between center and periphery in Scripture. That is rather clear from the two sentences omitted by Rogers and McKim from about the middle of the portion quoted by them (p. 410):

In Scripture, too, not everything is gathered equally close about the center; there is also a periphery which ranges widely away from the center, but it also belongs to the circle of God’s thoughts. Thus there are not different kinds and degrees in graphic inspiration.[95]

The “periphery…also belongs to the circle of God’s thoughts.” This hardly expresses a distinction between divine center and human periphery. Rather, the periphery is made up of divine thoughts (indivisible from and expressed as human thoughts, words, and letters) in relation to the center of divine thoughts (likewise inseparable from and given as human thoughts, words, and letters). In this sense (not because some parts of Scripture have a less divine origin and character), not all parts of Scripture are equally central or important. The periphery of Scripture, no less than its center, is divine as well as human, in both form and content. In these terms, rather than to the effect they are quoted by Rogers and McKim, are to be understood the closing words of this section:

It is one Spirit, out of whom the whole of Scripture has come forth through the consciousness of the writers. But there is a difference in the way in which the same life is immanent and active in the various parts of the body. There are varieties of gifts, also in Scripture, but it is the same Spirit.

Bavinck is opposed to an isolated, atomistic approach to the words of Scripture which would find in each a divine message detached from the context and the focus of Scripture in all its parts on Christ. He does not, however, reject plenary, verbal inspiration as such. In fact, he intends to say that the Spirit’s inscripturating activity, with the strictest authorial effect, extends to the last detail of the text. The verbal form of Scripture is not merely its human side and so, as such, subject to criticism and devaluation.

Section 116. Biblical criticism is the focus of this next section. Objections to the inspiration of Scripture are “many and very serious” (p. 410). Bavinck lists seven different sorts: the attack of historical criticism on the authenticity and reliability of many of the biblical documents, internal discrepancies, the way the NT uses the OT, disagreements between profane history and the biblical narratives, contradictions in nature to biblical teaching on creation and miracles, contemporary religious and moral objections to the faith and life of persons in Scripture, the present form of Scripture (lost originals, errors in the copies, defective translations).

It is futile to ignore these difficulties or act as if they didn’t exist. But what this section is primarily concerned to stress is “the ethical significance” of the perennial conflict over Scripture. Because Scripture is God’s word this conflict is anything but accidental or surprising. Again, the Christological analogy is controlling (pp. 410f):

Because it (Scripture] is the inscripturation of God’s revelation in Christ, it must evoke the same opposition as Christ himself…. Christ bore a cross, and a servant is not greater than his master. Scripture is the handmaid of Christ. It shares in his humiliation. It evokes the enmity of sinful man.

Opposition to Scripture is opposition to Christ. Difficulties in Scripture arise not because it has a human form, generally considered and in common with every other written document, but because of its Christologically determined servant-form. Similarly, Scripture is the sword of the Spirit. “It not only was inspired, it is still God-breathed [theopneust]” (p. 410). The Spirit does not withdraw from Scripture after the act of inspiration, “but he bears and animates it” (p. 411). Through Scripture the Spirit wages “an ongoing war” against the natural man (anthrōpos psuchikos).

Not every opposition to Scripture is to be explained by this struggle. But attacks on Scripture in the modern era do not stand by themselves. They are bound up with the attitude of our times. It would be naive to think that the struggle against Scripture in this century is somehow different or controlled by much purer motives than was the case in previous centuries, or to suppose that now biblical criticism is entirely a matter of the head and the heart is no longer involved. Rather, now as always the issue is faith or unbelief. Every believer experiences that “his trust in Scripture increases with his faith in Christ, and conversely, ignoratio Scripturarum is of itself and in the same degree also an ignoratio Christi (Jerome).” By the same token, “the connection between sin and error” is frequently deep, below the level of consciousness. “The struggle against Scripture is in the first place a revelation of the enmity of the human heart.” This opposition can take various forms; unbelief was just as real and powerful in the period of dead orthodoxy as it is in our historical-critical era. “The forms vary, but the essence remains the same.”

Every man is obligated to put off this enmity and “lead every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” This is the unremitting demand of Scripture itself (p. 412):

Scripture occupies such a high place over against every man that, instead of subjecting itself to his criticism, it rather judges him in all his thoughts and desires. And this has been the standpoint of the Christian church towards Scripture at all times.

The doctrine of Scripture does not depend on the results of historical-critical investigation, but only “on God’s witness, on the self-witness of Scripture.” And the requisite response to this witness is faith.

Every believer experiences something of the difficulties in Scripture. Critical scholarship is mistaken when it supposes that the people in the pew know nothing of these problems. While simple believers may not be aware of the particular objections raised by scholars, “they still recognize to a greater or lesser degree the battle against Scripture which is fought in head and heart alike.”

There is no believer who has not learned in his own way of the opposition between the wisdom of the world and the foolishness of God. Every Christian must struggle continually to hold his thoughts captive in obedience to Christ. No one on earth rises above this struggle. The nature of faith is to be tested and to have difficulties to be overcome. “There is no faith without conflict. To believe is to struggle, to struggle against the appearance of things. As long as someone believes something, his faith is contested from all sides.” Scripture contains difficulties which cannot be swept aside and “which also will probably never be solved” (p. 413). These difficulties, “which Holy Scripture itself offers to its inspiration,” are for the most part not the discovery of our age. They have been noted by believers, great and small, in all times; yet down through the centuries all Christians have accepted Scripture as the word of God. “Whoever waits to believe in Scripture until all difficulties are cleaned away and all discrepancies are reconciled will never believe.” Every area of knowledge (philosophy, the special sciences) has its difficulties and riddles; each begins and ends in mystery. In this respect faith is no different. The answer is not unbelieving pessimism or despair. With unbelief the mysteries do not decrease but increase.

Section 117. The organic view provides a variety of resources for meeting objections to the inspiration of Scripture. With the development of this consideration Bavinck closes his exposition of the doctrine of inspiration. The essence of organic inspiration is this: “The human has become the organ of the divine, the natural the revelation of the supernatural, the visible the sign and seal of the invisible” (p. 414). Inscripturation “disdained nothing human” (p. 413), but “made use of all the gifts and capacities resident in human nature” (p. 414). Revelation is “not abstract-supranatural”; rather, again the Christological analogy is controlling, “it has become flesh and blood and like us in everything, sin excepted.”[96] This organic reality offers possibilities for explaining difficulties in Scripture along four lines:

1. The individuality of the books of the Bible has an unforced, “completely natural” explanation. Differences in language, style and composition, even the linguistic barbarisms and solecisms of the NT or the superior literary and aesthetic qualities of Isaiah in relation to Amos, do not have to be attributed in a mechanical fashion to a purely arbitrary action of the Holy Spirit, as has sometimes happened (cf. pp. 404f). Rather, the Spirit’s activity is such that the personalities of the writers, each with his own disposition, background and capacity for expression, are “not obliterated but maintained and sanctified.”

2. Closely related to the preceding point, which has in view primarily the form given to Scripture by inspiration, the organic view of revelation and inspiration involves, so far as content is concerned, “that ordinary human and natural life is not excluded but subserves the thoughts of God.” Redemption in Christ, the subject matter of Scripture, is “not antithetical to what is human,” but “is its restoration and renewal” (p. 415). Therefore, in order to picture Christ for us Scripture concerns itself fully with man’s life in the world, including the dark side of his sin and error as well as satanic lies. The Christological parallel functions here too: “Christ did not consider anything human strange, and Scripture, too, does not forget the smallest concerns of daily life, 2 Tim 4:13.”

In this sense—the full utilization of “ordinary human and natural life” for communicating “God’s thoughts”—Scripture not only contains but is the word of God. “But,” Bavinck continues, “the formal and material elements in this expression may not be separated” (p. 414). In and of itself inspiration (“inspiratie”) would not make something God’s word in the biblical sense. A geography book, for instance, even if it were dictated word for word, would still not be God-breathed (“theopneust”) in the sense of 2 Tim 3:16. “Scripture is the word of God because the Holy Spirit witnesses of Christ in it, because it has the Word incarnate [Logos ensarkos] as its subject matter and content.”

Rogers and McKim quote this last statement to show that Bavinck, along with Kuyper and the Reformers, held that conviction concerning the authority of Scripture is not produced by arguments for its divine character but by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit to its message of salvation (Authority, 389). What they go on to say makes clear their judgment that for Bavinck the Spirit’s witness is only to the saving message but not also to the form of Scripture.

This decidedly skews what Bavinck intends to say in this passage. For one thing, the internal testimony of the Spirit is not in view here. Further, Rogers and McKim read a concern with content that does not include a corresponding interest in form. But Bavinck’s thought is moving in a quite different direction: First he asserts the (organically) Spirit-produced form of Scripture, the Bible as the word of God in a formal sense (point 1, above), and then, assuming that, argues, to achieve balance, for the Spirit-breathed content of Scripture, the Bible as the word of God in a material sense (“the formal and material elements…may not be separated”). The Rogers-McKim analysis is: content, not form; Bavinck’s position is: form and content together. In fact, the very next sentence after the one quoted by Rogers and McKim reads: “Form and content permeate each other and are not to be separated” (p. 414; cf. further the emphasis on the inseparability of the word of God in the formal and material senses, in discussing the distinction between the normative and historical authority of Scripture, pp. 427-29).

In direct connection with the quotation just considered Rogers and McKim also quote from what Bavinck writes later (pp. 564f), in discussing the internal testimony of the Spirit, to the effect that this witness is to “nothing other than the divinity [divinitas] of the truth, poured out on us in Christ” and that “historical, chronological, geographical data are never in themselves” the object of this witness.

A brief examination of this passage in its immediate and larger context is instructive. Plainly Bavinck’s view is that the historical and geographical data of Scripture should not be looked at atomistically, as bare facts. But he does not hold that these data are not part of the divinity of Scripture. Several sentences later he writes (p. 565):

The only thing to which the witness of the Holy Spirit has reference is the divinity [divinitas]. But then the divinity of all the truths which are revealed in Scripture and are poured out on us by God in Christ. It is wrong to let the testimony of the Holy Spirit refer only to what is religious and ethical in the narrower sense only. Certainly the divinity is the only direct object of that witness, but this divinity is not only a property of a few religious and moral pronouncements but equally of facts and deeds.

The discussion that follows places the cross and resurrection of Christ at the center of these events, but nothing suggests that some facts reported in Scripture, in distinction from others, do not share in its divinitas.

The wider context shows that Bavinck disagrees with Rogers and McKim in their assessment of the Reformers’ view, as well as his own, on the internal testimony of the Spirit at the points under discussion. Calvin and the Reformed theologians, in fact, related the internal testimony to the authority of Scripture “all too onesidedly,” so that it appeared to have no other function than to produce subjective assurance that Scripture is God’s word in the formal sense (p. 563). Nevertheless, Calvin did well in his extensive development of this doctrine to connect the internal witness “not only with the content but also with the form and authority of Scripture” (p. 552; cf. p. 566). The internal testimony “has a material object [objectum materiale] in the content, but also a formal object [objectum formale] in the witness of Scripture, the one not detached from the other, but the one in an inseparable connection with the other” (p. 566; cf. p. 568). Included within the scope of the internal testimony in the first place is the witness of the Spirit in Scripture to Scripture itself. This witness “comes to us indirectly in all the divine characteristics (criteria, notae) which are impressed on Scripture in content and form, and it comes to us directly in all those certain pronouncements which Scripture contains concerning its divine origin” (p. 567, my italics). The internal testimony is not the final ground of faith. That “is and can only be Scripture, or better still, the authority of God, which comes to the believer materially in the content as well as formally in the witness of Scripture” (p. 568, my italics).

Rogers and McKim, it appears, have a radically different view of the form of Scripture than Bavinck. For them the form of Scripture is its “human form” (Authority, 391; cf. p. 393), and no more. To be sure, it is utilized by the Spirit’s inspiring activity to convey the divine message. But it is not the concern of the internal testimony of the Spirit and is subject to criticism. For Bavinck the form of Scripture, while human, shares, no less than its content, in the divinitas of Scripture. It falls within the scope of the internal testimony. It results from the Spirit’s inspiring work specifically in the sense that it represents the authorial design and effect of the Spirit. Bavinck would probably say that the position of Rogers and McKim tends toward the dynamic and dualistic viewpoints that he opposed in his day.

3. The organic view of inspiration helps to clarify not only the form and content of Scripture but also its goal or purpose (“bestemming”). That purpose is “thoroughly religious and ethical” (p. 415). Scripture requires “that we shall read and investigate it theologically.” It provides us with “the saving knowledge of God” and in that sense is “completely sufficient and perfect.” It is not intended to furnish a concatenated history of Israel, a biography of Jesus or the like. Historical criticism has forgotten this purpose and “comes to Scripture a priori with demands it cannot satisfy.” The result has been unresolvable contradictions and a hopeless confusion of sources.

In this connection Bavinck observes: “Apparently inspiration was not notarial recording.” He then quotes, without further comment, Kuyper’s well-known statement about the different forms of Jesus’ words in the four Gospels.[97] Scripture does not supply us with the “exact knowledge” demanded by the special sciences; “such a standard may not be applied to it” (p. 416). In keeping with this situation, the autographs are lost, the extant text contains corruptions, albeit slight, and the church as a whole possesses Scripture “only in a defective and fallible translation.” These facts are undeniable and point up that Scripture sets its own standard and has its own purpose.

That purpose is none other than that it should make us wise to salvation…. Scripture is the book for the Christian religion and for Christian theology. For that end it is given. For that end it is suited. And therefore it is the word of God, poured out on us by the Holy Spirit.

Rogers and McKim quote these statements toward the beginning of a section headed “Salvation Not Science” (Authority, 390; cf. 393). Whether they have understood them as Bavinck intended them will be seen from what he goes on to say.

4. The organic view enables us, finally, to clarify the relationship between Scripture and science. The epigram of Cardinal Baronius serves as a point of departure: Scripture does not tell us how things go in heaven but how to go to heaven.

This statement, Bavinck observes, has been frequently misused, and he first of all sets himself to countering this abuse. “Just as the book of the knowledge of God,” Scripture in fact has much to say to the special sciences. Like Christ, it claims authority over every area of life. It provides principles for the whole of life. Just as inspiration is not limited to the religious ethical part of Scripture, so religion and the rest of life are not to be separated. “Inspiration extends to all parts of Scripture, and religion is a concern of the whole man.” While Scripture is the principium only of theology (cf. p. 415), the biblical record furnishes highly important principia for the other sciences. Among these are the creation and fall of man, the unity of the human race, the flood, the origin of nations and languages, etc.

But the statement of Baronius does contain “a great truth.” The facts found in Scripture are not there for their own sake but serve “a theological goal” that pertains to our salvation. Scripture never concerns itself intentionally with science as such (pp. 416f). Once more the parallel between Christ and Scripture proves to be a decisive structure in the discussion. Christ, “although free from all error and sin” (p. 417),[98] did not involve himself directly in art or science. “His was another greatness, the glory of the Firstborn of the Father, full of grace and truth.” But, as such, he is a blessing for every area of life (art and science, state and society). “Jesus is Savior, only that, but also entirely that.” He did not come only to restore man’s religious and ethical life, as if the rest were not also corrupted by sin and in need of restoration. The grace of Christ extends as far as does sin and its consequences.

“And it is the same with Scripture.” It, too, is “thoroughly religious, God’s word for salvation”; but, as such, a word for every area and endeavor of life. The Bible is a book for all men in all times and in all places. For that reason it is “not a scientific book in the narrower sense.” It is marked by “wisdom, not erudition.” Its language is “not the exact language of science…but that of observation and of everyday life.” It does not judge and describe phenomena on the basis of scientific study “but by intuition, by the initial, living impression.” Hence it talks about the sun rising and setting, the blood as the life of an animal, the heart as the source of thoughts, etc. “It speaks about the earth as the center of God’s creation and does not side with either the Ptolemaic or Copernican worldview.” If it spoke in exact, scientific terms, “it would have stood in the way of its own authority.” If it had decided for the Ptolemaic worldview it could no longer be credible in a time where the Copernican system holds sway. Instead, it speaks “the language of everyday experience, which is always true and remains so.” It uses language comprehensible to all, “the language of observation, which will always remain alongside that of science and the school” (pp. 417f).

Two reflections may be made here on the discussion so far under Bavinck’s fourth point: (1) Rogers and McKim quote what Bavinck has just said about Scripture using the idiom of everyday experience rather than the exacting language of science, and about the biblical writers probably not knowing more than their contemporaries in the special sciences, like geology, zoology, and medicine. These statements are included with those on the saving purpose of Scripture at the end of his third point which, as we have already noted, are under the heading, “Salvation Not Science” (Authority, 390). Together they are quoted to show that Bavinck (along with Kuyper) “responded very differently to science than did the Princeton theology,” and, unlike Hodge and Warfield, were open to biblical criticism.

Certainly Bavinck holds, as Rogers and McKim say, that Scripture does not provide “technically correct scientific information.” But their representation oversimplifies and so distorts his position. They bring out only one side of his remarks, only one half of his commentary on the adage of Baronius. Plainly Bavinck is wanting to negotiate a path that, on the one hand, does justice to the specifically soteriological and theological purpose of Scripture and does not make it into a source book for all sorts of scientific truths, and yet, at the same time, a path that avoids a dimensionalism which limits biblical truth to religious-ethical matters or the concerns of faith. In failing to bring out the latter side, Rogers and McKim give the opposite impression, that Bavinck held to the sort of dimensionalism he had in fact to oppose, particularly in the Ethical theologians of his day. The scientist is bound to consider and to consider as relevant to his scientific enterprise, he says, what the Bible teaches about creation, the fall, the unity of the race, the origin of the diversity of languages, etc. Further, while the biblical writers are not advanced beyond their contemporaries in scientific knowledge, Bavinck is careful to avoid saying that Scripture teaches scientific error (it chooses for neither the Ptolemaic nor the Copernican world-view). Salvation and science are not separate or, at the best, dialectically related areas of concern. Rogers and McKim say: salvation, not science. Bavinck says: salvation and (indirectly and incidentally, to be sure, but by divine design) science. In this sense he in fact “located Scripture’s authority in scientifically inerrant words” (the view rejected by Rogers and McKim, Authority, 457). How much this differs from the position of the Princeton theologians is another question. But what differences there may be do not amount to the fundamental disparity Rogers and McKim maintain.[99]

(2) The stress Bavinck places on the inexact character of biblical description (the language of everyday observation and experience), coupled with his quoting Kuyper on the way the statements of Jesus are recorded in the Gospels, show him to be sympathetic with the latter’s emphasis on the “impressionistic” nature of biblical narrative (see WTJ 44.277-80). Further, when these considerations are in turn joined with Bavinck’s consistent stress on the divine authorship of Scripture in a formal as well as material sense, then he is close to Kuyper’s view that the errorlessness of Scripture is divine rather than human (see WTJ 44.280-82). The inexact, non-notarial character of biblical narrative is not merely a mark of its human form or packaging and therefore subject to criticism, in distinction from the divine message contained therein, as Rogers and McKim suggest. On the contrary, this non-notarial quality, formally considered, ultimately reflects the pointedly authorial design and genius of the Holy Spirit. Far from this quality being a (merely human) barrier that has to be broken through to arrive at its divine authority, if the description of Scripture were other than nonscientific and inexact, “it would have stood in the way of its own authority.”

Returning to Bavinck’s discussion of his fourth point, he continues by picking up on recent Roman Catholic efforts, mentioned already in section 110, to use ideas similar to his own in this section in order to reconcile biblical narrative with the results of modern criticism. The gist of this approach is to distinguish between absolute and relative truth, in the use of sources between the accuracy of what is reported and the accurate citation of a report, between objective reality and subjective appearance. There is no problem, Bavinck maintains, with the view that natural phenomena are described according to appearance (e.g., the rising and setting of the sun); this is the same way we speak today and does not give us a wrong impression. But the secundum apparentiam idea may not be applied similarly to the historical narratives of Scripture.[100] That would mean that biblical narrative is written, “not according to what happened objectively but according to what was believed subjectively in their time by many” (p. 418). In that case the biblical writers “give us a false representation and are thus impaired in their authority and reliability.” If this approach is applied consistently, then not only the opening chapters of Genesis will be dissolved into legend, as many Catholic theologians presently do, but the history of Israel and NT history as well. When Scripture intends a narrative as history, the exegete has no right to satisfy historical criticism by making a myth of it.

The historiography of Scripture, however, does have “a character of its own.” It is redemptive history, historia religiosa. From the standpoint of secular history and the rules of present day historical criticism, it is imprecise, frequently incomplete and full of gaps. But that does not at all mean that biblical historiography is “untrue or unreliable” (pp. 418f). Without being a trained historian someone can still give “a correct [juist] account of what has happened” (p. 419). When historical criticism forgets this, “it degenerates into hypercriticism” and destroys the object of its concern. Because Scripture “follows its own direction and aims at its own goal,” it does not provide us with “that precision” we desire. The Gospel records, for example, are “far from uniform [eensluidend].” Further, it is often difficult to distinguish between the historical and normative authority of Scripture (cf. p. 428). Nor is it any easier on occasion to determine whether we are dealing with quoted material, or, if so, whether only the accuracy, of the quotation is intended or the authority of the content as well. “On these points the doctrine of Scripture is not nearly finished and there is still room for many specialized studies.”

Throughout these closing remarks, while not wishing to evade or minimize the many genuine difficulties that exist for biblical interpretation, Bavinck is careful to avoid even suggesting that the biblical writers (when they were writing Scripture) made mistakes, in any sense. Therefore when he writes, “Then finally it further appears that Scripture is certainly true in everything, but this truth is absolutely not of the same nature in all its component parts,” the accent is not where Rogers and McKim put it, in quoting this statement (Authority, 390f). They see a reference to accommodation on God’s part to human limitation such that truth in Scripture is a variable on the order of its divine message in distinction from its limiting human forms. But, as the following sentences make plain, the variability in view is rather that virtually every literary genre has been used in inspiration; the truth of prose is different than that of poetry, and the truth of history differs from both, or again the truth of parables varies from all three, etc.

A little further on he says, “Even in historical reports, there is sometimes distinction between the fact that has taken place and the form in which it is set forth” (p. 420). This is not intended, as Rogers and McKim read it (Authority, 390), to distinguish the truth from its accommodated human forms, subject as they are to error other than in the sense of deception (p. 393). Rather involved here for Bavinck is a consideration that is true of Scripture in its entirety and lies at the heart of his entire doctrine of Scripture: “It always speaks of the highest and holiest, of the eternal and invisible things in a human fashion.” This “accommodation,” exemplified by Scripture as a whole, is on the order of and analogous to the incarnation (here Bavinck’s discussion on inspiration comes full circle): “Like Christ, it does not consider anything human strange.”

But therefore it is also a book for mankind and it endures to the end of the ages. It is old without ever becoming antiquated. It remains always young and fresh, it is the language of life. Verbum Dei manet in aeternum.

With this Bavinck ends his treatment of the doctrine of inspiration. He follows it with a discussion of the attributes of Scripture (pp. 420-65), and then an extensive handling of the internal principle (principium internum) of theology (the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit and faith, pp. 466-591).

3. Summary and Conclusions

The six questions posed at the beginning of this article (see WTJ 44.252f) and answered for Kuyper (pp. 288f) may now be answered for Bavinck.

1. A deep continuity and harmony exists between the Reformation and post-Reformation orthodoxy.[101] Especially in its later development, this orthodoxy does display a too mechanical, atomistic approach towards Scripture which needs to be corrected by a more organic outlook. But this deviation, by no means negligible, does not put post-Reformation orthodoxy outside the central church tradition on Scripture.
2. The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit produces recognition of the inspiration and authority of Scripture. The focus of this testimony is Scripture as such, the form as well as and inseparable from the content. This witness is absolutely indispensable. No amount of proofs appealing to unaided reason, can ever replace or supplement it.[102]
3. The form and the content of Scripture are both fully divine and fully human and, as such, in their organic coherence, indivisible. As the primary author of Scripture, God is ultimately accountable for its form as well as the content; the form, in its genuinely human character, expresses the specifically authorial intention of the Spirit. The form/content distinction does not parallel the human/divine distinction; the form is not the merely human side of Scripture, in distinction from the content (central message) as the exclusively divine side.
4. Inscripturation arises necessarily from the incarnation and would not exist apart from it. This reality determines the origin and composition of Scripture from beginning to end. It specifies more concretely the organic nature of inspiration as a whole. It gives Scripture a unique theanthropic character (“everything divine and everything human”), without, however, involving some sort of hypostatic union between divine and human elements. Scripture has its distinctive servant-form, not because of its “humanity,” generally considered, but because Christ was incarnated, not in a state of glory but of humiliation. The correlate to the sinlessness of Christ is that Scripture is without error.
5. Disciplined, scholarly study of Scripture is necessary, especially in order to reach a better understanding of its organic, incarnate origin and composition. But the issue raised by contemporary biblical criticism is primarily ethical. Much of this criticism is heart-directed rebellion against the authority of Scripture as God’s word.
6. The Bible is without error. Since all error, unintentional mistakes as well as deception, results from sin, it would be misleading at best to speak of errors in Scripture, either in form or content, in any sense. To find error in Scripture would be to fault its primary author and undermine his authority. The truth of Scripture is not notarially precise or scientifically exact. Ultimately this nontechnical, intuitive quality is appropriate to and explained by its unique divine authorship and specific, incarnate character, not the involvement and limitations of the human authors. Unlike Kuyper, Bavinck does not speak of the errorlessness of Scripture; in the material we have examined he does not even use the word infallibility.[103] But every consideration leads us to suppose that he would not object nor find it inappropriate to speak of the inerrancy of Scripture, provided that, like Kuyper, we understand that in an impressionistic, nontechnical sense.

* * * * *

When we compare the positions of Kuyper and Bavinck over the range of our examination certain differences appear. Leaving to the side interesting variations in style, disposition of material and the development of basic concepts, most striking perhaps is the fact, already noted, that, in contrast to Bavinck, Kuyper stresses the infallibility and errorlessness of Scripture. Bavinck’s reserve in this regard, however, is not a sign of uncertainty or indifference. As we have seen, the concern to maintain that Scripture is without error is present with him too.

Also, there is truth in the observation of Berkouwer mentioned above (note 67): Bavinck, unlike Kuyper, seems to sense the storms of the future over the doctrine of Scripture. With reference to the attacks of biblical criticism, Bavinck is not any less confident than Kuyper, but, we may say, Kuyper is more triumphant. Bavinck’s comments about the (probably) unsolvable difficulties which Scripture itself presents to its inspiration, and his eloquent statements concerning the nature of faith (including faith in Scripture) as a constant struggle against the appearance of things (pp. 412f) sound a note which is not present in Kuyper.

But certainly far more important (and obvious) than the differences is the deep, pervasive, and cordial agreement between them on Scripture. Together they maintain and defend what they are convinced is the central church doctrine, in continuity especially with the Reformers and post-Reformation orthodoxy.

Their perception of this central church tradition, however, differs from that of Rogers and McKim. It is so different, in fact, that Kuyper and Bavinck can be fitted into the latter only by turning their position on its head and making them into representatives of viewpoints they consistently opposed, as, we have seen, Rogers and McKim do. This cannot help but prompt us to ask where, if not in Kuyper and Bavinck, do we find the central church doctrine of Scripture as Rogers and McKim construe it? Have they perhaps not also misunderstood and misrepresented the views of Warfield and the Old Princeton theologians at decisive points? Can all modern and contemporary concern for biblical inerrancy be fairly dismissed as a late innovation of those dominated, wittingly or not, by an Aristotelian mindset or Common Sense Realism? But these (and others) are questions for another time.[104]

* * * * *

One feature of Bavinck’s Dogmatiek is a lengthy survey of the history and literature of dogmatics (1.90-179). Interestingly, the entire survey closes with an overview of Reformed and Presbyterian theology in America to the present (pp. 175-79). Particularly instructive and significant for our concerns are his very last words (p. 179):

Thus the Reformed church and theology in America are in a serious crisis. The doctrines of the infallibility of Holy Scripture, of the trinity, of the fall and inability of man, of particular atonement, of election and reprobation, of eternal punishment are secretly denied or even openly rejected. The future for Calvinism there is not rosy.[105]

This pessimism is expressed largely with reference to recent developments in Presbyterianism, and Briggs and his “heterodoxy” are mentioned particularly (p. 178). Bavinck knows of only one exception to this otherwise bleak picture, “a glorious exception” (p. 179) in fact, and that is Princeton Seminary with its “eminent set of professors” (Warfield, for one, is mentioned by name) and the Princeton Theological Review which maintains “the Reformed position with honor.”

I value the concern of Rogers and McKim to maintain an evangelical doctrine of Scripture. And I recognize their desire to lead the church in that direction by clarifying its past. But perhaps by now they can recognize, even though I have focused on only a small segment of their work, why I cannot consider them reliable guides. Perhaps, too, as this article is in memory of the 100th anniversary of the birth of J. Gresham Machen, they can understand why I cannot view what transpired around him as “the scholastic separation from Princeton Seminary” or “scholastic protest and withdrawal” (Authority, 362, 367).

I recognize how useless, even counterproductive, it can be to keep on fighting battles that are already over. But in this case the issues are still too critical, too relevant to be set aside, as the work of Rogers and McKim in its own way evidences. The spirit that forced the reorganization of Princeton Seminary and the departure of Machen was not the spirit of the central church tradition on Scripture, in opposition to recent scholastic innovations and deviations. It was a decidedly different, alien spirit. It was, as Bavinck says, “the modern spirit” (p. 179). It was a spirit (exemplified, for instance, in Briggs) itself in opposition to the spirit of the central church doctrine, the spirit of Augustine, Luther and Calvin, of the Westminster Divines, of Hodge and Warfield, of Kuyper and Bavinck. Or that, at least, is how Bavinck (along with Kuyper, Hodge, and Warfield) would have understood it.

* * * * *

By now the reader knows my deep sympathy for the views of Kuyper and Bavinck and my conviction that they offer much on Scripture that we need to hear today. But that is really beside the main point of this article. Nor am I wanting to suggest that they have spoken the last word on the doctrine of Scripture or that their position is without its difficulties and unresolved questions. My primary concern, rather, has been historical, for accurate representation of their views. Rogers and McKim themselves tell us: “Significant questions remain to be discussed regarding the role of the Bible in churches today. But we must first set the historical record straight” (Authority, xxiii). This is undoubtedly right and so all the more regrettable and itself a source of no little confusion is the failure of their own work to measure up to its subtitle, “A Historical Approach,” at crucial points.

Presently differences over Scripture, its authority and interpretation, continue to polarize within the evangelical community. On many issues there are no quick and easy answers. But one thing is certain: we will only be able to move together out of this present impasse (and grow together) in the doctrine of Scripture when we share at least a common mind-set concerning the past and what in fact the central church doctrine is. To the extent that the historical record is not set straight but remains uncertain or misrepresented, evangelical and Reformed theology today, not only in this country but elsewhere, lacks direction, and its future, to use Bavinck’s words, is “not rosy.”

Notes

1. Subtitled A Historical Approach (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979) hereafter, Authority.
2. See, e.g., the tone set in the preface and introduction.
3. Trinity Journal NS 1 (1980) 165–236. An extensive and useful summary of this review has been provided by M. L. Branson in TSF Bulletin 4/4 (March 1981) 6–12. See also, among other reviews, W. S. Barker, Presbyterion 6 (1980) 96–107; W. R. Godfrey, Christianity Today 25/9 (May 8, 1981) 59ff, and D. F. Wells, WTJ 43 (1980–81) 152–55.
4. McKim has responded to Woodbridge in TSF Bulletin 4/5 (April 1981) 6–9. In my opinion, he parries but does not really answer Woodbridge’s probing criticisms.
5. A brief, yet helpful overview of essential aspects is provided by A. A. Hoekema, “Kuyper, Bavinck, and Infallibility,” Reformed Journal 11/5 (May 1961) 20–22.
6. “The Church Doctrine of Biblical Authority,” in Biblical Authority (ed. J. Rogers; Waco: Word Books, 1977) 15–46, esp. pp. 41-46; “A Third Alternative,” in Scripture, Tradition, and Interpretation (ed. W. W. Gasque and W. S. LaSor; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 70–91.
7. Authority, 389.
8. Authority, 389, 391; “Third Alternative,” 74, 83f.
9. Authority, 389f, 399; “Church Doctrine,” 43; “Third Alternative,” 74f, 77f.
10. Authority, 391f, 399; “Third Alternative,” 78.
11. E.g., “…the saving content, not the supernatural form of Scripture” (Authority, 399).
12. Authority, 391; “Third Alternative,” 78f, 83.
13. Authority, 390f, 393 (“Scripture has a central message and a lot of surrounding material…. The central saving message of Scripture…. The supporting material of Scripture….”); “Third Alternative,” 78, 83.
14. Authority, 392f; “Church Doctrine,” 42; “Third Alternative,” 76, 78.
15. Authority, 393: “Scripture fulfilled God’s intention to reveal saving truth. No human mistakes could frustrate that divine motivation. It was not meaningful, therefore, to equate human inaccuracy with error in the biblical sense of intent to deceive”; “Third Alternative,” 83; cf. “Church Doctrine,” 46.
16. No end of confusion in current discussions has been created, especially by the opponents of biblical inerrancy, by equating it with notions of scientific precision and technical accuracy. Rogers and McKim, for instance, are guilty of this (e.g., Authority, xx, xxi, 457, 459; “Church Doctrine,” 44–46; “Third Alternative,” 75f, 80f). However, in a constructive paper given at a conference on biblical interpretation held at the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto in June 1981, Rogers acknowledged that he had previously misunderstood the position of many contemporary biblical inerrancists in this respect (see the editorials of K. Kantzer, Christianity Today 25/15 [Sept 4, 1981] 16–19 and G. Marsden, Reformed Journal 31/9 [September 1981] 2f). But the issue that still remains unresolved is the inerrancy position of the old Princeton theologians. As I try to make clear below, scientific, technical precision has not been the notion of biblical inerrancy advocated by at least the best of the Reformed tradition, including Warfield.
17. Trans. J. DeVries; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954, reprint of 1898 ed. (the Dutch original appeared in 1894); hereafter, Principles. For this and the other translations cited I have occasionally taken the liberty, usually without noting it, of making slight changes when this seemed warranted by the original. Unless otherwise indicated, the italics are Kuyper’s.
18. Trans. H. DeVries; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979, reprint of 1900 ed. (Dutch original in three volumes, 1888, 1889); hereafter, Holy Spirit.
19. Vol. 2: Locus de Sacra Scriptura, creatione, creaturis (Grand Rapids: J. B. Hulst, n.d.); hereafter, Dictaten with the part (1 or 2) and page of the locus on Scripture.
20. Authority, 391.
21. This reference to sin and the fall clearly indicates that Kuyper has redemptive or “special” revelation in view in these passages.
22. Kuyper goes on here to caution against restricting the Logos, now embodied for us in Scripture, to words. The impact of the Logos on man’s consciousness also takes place both by (common and extraordinary) events and by types and shadows. Only when these three—words, signs, and shadows—are seen in their organic relation is the Word of God viewed in its unity and richness. This threefold distinction, by the way, clarifies the paralleling in the first passage cited above, of “drama,” “types” (“shadows”), and “spoken words.”
23. That this necessity is not absolute or abstractly considered, demanded, say, by the distance between God’s eternity and man’s finitude, is clear from the statement that immediately precedes the first of the passages quoted above (p. 479): “If, now, in order to be the bearer of the Divine factor, that human form or that human reality were carried up to its telos, no contradiction would be born from this in the appearance; but this is not so.” The necessity in view stems from the free, condescending love of God, intent on restoring the entirely “natural,” created fellowship subsequently ruptured and rendered “unnatural” by man’s sin.
24. Cf. the discussion of G. C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture (tr. and ed. J. Rogers; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975) 195–212; esp. on Kuyper and Ravinck, pp. 199ff.
25. So, Rogers and McKim, Authority, 390f, cf. p. 399.
26. Toward the close of the section Kuyper writes (p. 480): “And however much it is your duty to study that multiplicity and particularity in the Scripture (both materially and formally), yet from that multiplicity you must ever come back to the view of the unity of the conception, if there is, indeed, to be such a thing for you as a Holy Scripture.” Is it wrong to suggest at least an element of tension between this balanced, yet forthright point of departure in the (as we shall presently see, formal as well as material) unity of Scripture on Kuyper’s part and the summarizing remark made by Berkouwer at the close of his study on Scripture, that “the true and only way to obedience” is the “roundabout way” from the message of Scripture, in its mode of multiple human witness, to its unique divine authority (Holy Scripture, 366)?
27. Rogers and McKim, Authority, 391, 399; cf. Rogers, “Third Alternative,” 78, 83.
28. E.g., “It is the one Logos which in Christ by incarnation, and in the Scripture by inscripturation goes out to humanity at large” (Principles, 401); “From this special principium in God the saving power is extended centrally to our race, both by the ways of being and of thought, by incarnation and inspiration” (p. 425); cf. p. 460.
29. Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid (3rd ed.; 3 vols.; Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1908–9) 3.78f.
30. Berkouwer, in discussing this passage, paraphrases “het onvolkomene en gebrekkige” with “het zondige en gebrekkige” (De heilige Schrift [2 vols.; Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1966–67] 2.153). The English translation only widens this distance from Kuyper’s original with “that which is sinful and fallible” (Holy Scripture, 220).
31. Plainly Kuyper has in view here all revelation since the fall; see above, n. 21.
32. See the qualification already considered above in n. 23.
33. Instructive for Kuyper’s views on inspiration and Scripture as a whole is the observation he makes here (p. 452); “It presented itself differently to them than to us. For us this inspiration belongs to the past; it is an ended matter; we ourselves stand outside of it.”
34. Employing a German distinction, Kuyper even says of the Psalms and Wisdom literature, in distinction from prophecy, that “there is ‘Konsonanz’ of subjects, never ‘Dissonanz’“ (p. 528).
35. See above, n. 19.
36. The allusion here is apparently to the stone tablets on which God wrote the Ten Commandments, without human mediation of any sort.
37. “The Logos is incarnated in Christ, but is likewise engraved in Scripture” (Dictaten 1.72; see also p. 71).
38. It hardly needs to be stated that this strongly accented parallelism and stress on the “theanthropic” character of Scripture do not involve Kuyper even remotely in some form of bibliolatry nor in obscuring or denying the personal nature of the union between divine and human in the incarnation, in distinction from Scripture. Noteworthy in this connection is the fact that Berkouwer, in marked distinction from Kuyper (and Bavinck), depreciates and largely questions the validity and usefulness of the analogy between incarnation and inscripturation, primarily because the “personal union” essential to the former is not present in the latter (Holy Scripture, 198-205).
39. These statements have nothing at all to do, at least in Kuyper’s mind, with a mechanical or dictation view of inspiration; see, e.g., his rejection of such a viewpoint, in discussing the necessity of the form in which Scripture comes to us, under the subheading: “Why has the Bible not simply descended from heaven?” (1.63f; cf, 2.160f).
40. “het volkomen juiste woord” (Het Werk van het Heiligen Geest [3 vols.; Amsterdam: J. A. Wormser, 1888–89] 1.101). The translation omits “exactly.”
41. The significance of this distinction will occupy us below.
42. Holy Scripture, 181-83.
43. Authority, 393; cf. p. 431; see also “Church Doctrine,” 44; “Third Alternative,” 80f, 83.
44. Principally D. Chantepie de la Saussaye (1818–1874) and J. H. Gunning, Jr. (1829–1905), leading representatives of one of the most influential theological trends in the Netherlands Reformed Church throughout this period.
45. Authority, 390; see also “Church Doctrine,” 42; “Third Alternative,” 76. A similar view is taken by Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, 250f.
46. Cf. Dictaten 2.130ff where, in defending the view that the entire Bible is God’s word, Kuyper distinguishes between the lalia and graphe of God; the former, part of which is recorded in Scripture, consists only of revelations (words) from God, while the latter consists in the lalia (words) of men and of Satan, as well as of God.
47. Note also Encyclopaedie 3.68, 73, where he observes that “mechanical, notarial preciseness [precisiteit]” is foreign to the whole of revelation.
48. Holy Scripture, 245.
49. “…de vrije levensuiting boven de gemaniereerdheid van het notarieele” (Encyclopaedie 2.411).
50. See above, sections 4 and 8.
51. See above, section 11.
52. On this point Kuyper, among others, would appear to be guilty of what Berkouwer considers an unwarranted extension of the analogy (Holy Scripture, 202), although he regularly appeals to Kuyper in support of his own views.
53. See above, section 3.
54. De hedendaagsche Schriftcritiek in hare bedenkelijke strekking voor de Gemeente des levenden Gods (Amsterdam: J. H. Kruyt, 1881).
55. This reaction, some of it strident, is sampled by J. C. Rullmann, Kuyper-Bibliografie (3 vols.; Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1923–40) 2.55-61. Rullmann also sketches the background of the address and briefly summarizes it (pp. 47-54).
56. Kuyper, for one, then, is chargeable with the “serious formalization of the concept of erring” opposed by Berkouwer (Holy Scripture, 181f).
57. For bibliographic details, see the first installment of this article, WTJ 44.250 nn. 1, 3.
58. Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).
59. Authority, 388ff; cf. Rogers, “Church Doctrine,” 41ff; “Third Alternative,” 74ff.
60. Repeatedly, in Holy Scripture, Berkouwer cites Bavinck and Kuyper, together, almost always in support of his own position (pp. 45, 55 n. 52, 131 n. 76, 143 n. 12, 155, 172, 199–201, passim).
61. Herman Bavinck als dogmaticus (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1961) 64. The chapter begins on p. 13.
62. Revelatie en inspiratie (Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1968) 132; cf. pp. 130-33, 111–15 (where note is taken of “the profit in matters theological” drawn by Kuyper and Bavinck from the example of the Old Princeton theology, p. 113; both Kuyper and Bavinck had a high estimate of the significance of Hodge’s Systematic Theology and held in great esteem the later prominent representatives of the old Princeton school, A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield,” 114), 434–36, 580–84, 643–48.
63. Gereformeerd theologisch tijdschrift, 22 (1921) 101; cited by Bremmer (Bavinck, 13) and in the remarks begun by John Bolt, “Kuyper and Herman Bavinck (1),” The Kuyper Newsletter 212 (Winter 1981–82) 1. In a more personal vein, Veenhof contrasts Kuyper’s “intrepidity and resoluteness” with “the diffidence and caution” of Bavinck (Revelatie, 131).
64. Authority, 35-37, 43–53, 148ff, 185–88, 202–3, passim; cf. Woodbridge, Biblical Authority, 79.
65. The Relation of Revelation and Reason in E. Brunner and H. Bavinck (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., 1959) 6, 210 n. 6; cf. Bolt, “Kuyper,” 2.
66. “The Relation of Christianity and Culture in the Teaching of Herman Bavinck,” 12; cited by Heideman (Relation, 6) and Bolt (“Kuyper,” 1).
67. A Half Century of Theology (trans. and ed. Lewis B. Smedes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977) 11–16; similarly, Veenhof, Revelatie, 133 and the opinions of K. J. Popma and others cited in n. 120.
68. Gereformeerde dogmatiek (4 vols.; Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1895–1901; 2nd revised and enlarged ed., 1906–1911). The second edition (volume 1, 1906) has been reprinted, unaltered, several times. All references here are to the sixth edition of 1976. The sections dealing directly with Scripture are on pp. 348-465.
69. Other, much shorter discussions of Scripture, in effect abridgements of the treatment in volume one of the Dogmatiek, are found in Magnolia Dei (2nd ed.; Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1931; 1st ed. 1909) 83–102 and Handleiding bij het onderwijs in den christelijken godsdienst (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1913) 28–41. The former of these two works has been translated into English by Henry Zylstra, Our Reasonable Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956) see pp. 95-115 for the chapter on Scripture.
70. Because of a printing error, maintained in subsequent editions apparently to avoid confusion among them, the first two of these chapters are both numbered 13. In the overall scheme of the Dogmatiek the material in view is sections 103–29.
71. WTJ 44.251-53.
72. For an overview and analysis of the sections on general and special revelation, see Bremmer, Bavinck, 163-68, esp. the summaries on pp. 165f, 168; cf. the extensive, deeply probing analysis of Veenhof, beginning with Bavinck’s idea of organicity, Revelatie, 250-416.
73. WTJ 44.254.
74. Cf. with these various modes of expressions, p. 410 and 4.439; also the Westminster Confession of Faith 1.10: “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.” This is not to be confused, either for Bavinck or the Confession, with the internal testimony of the Spirit; cf. the commentary on the Confession of Warfield (The Westminster Assembly and Its Work [New York: Oxford University Press, 1931] 254f).
75. See esp. pp. 394f: “Usually what Scripture teaches about itself is summarized in the word ‘theopneustie’ or ‘inspiratie.’“
76. WTJ 44.273-75.
77. Authority, 31.
78. See WTJ 44.252 n. 14 for bibliographic details.
79. Authority, xi, xvii, passim.
80. In view specifically is his inaugural address, “The Authority of Holy Scripture,” in Inspiration and Inerrancy (London, 1891).
81. Cited are Hodge’s Systematic Theology 1.151 and three articles of Warfield now reprinted in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948).
82. See especially the flow of the argument in Authority, chaps. 6 and 7.
83. See WTJ 44.258-60, 284–87.
84. In a footnote (p. 395) Bavinck cites Warfield’s well-known article, “God-Inspired Scripture,” which first appeared in January 1900 (Presbyterian and Reformed Review 11.89–130), and refers to it as “the exhaustive demonstration of Prof. Warfield.”
85. WTJ 44.258.
86. “The Oracles of God,” Presbyterian and Reformed Review 11 (1900) 217–60.
87. WTJ 44.259f.
88. Authority, 391f.
89. Cf. Veenhof, Revelatie, 420: “…not only a phenomenological parallel but an intrinsic connection.”
90. WTJ 44.273ff.
91. Cf. Veenhof, Revelatie, 435.
92. Bavinck’s comment in this connection concerning the religious value that even the negative, critical trend in modern theology assigns to Scripture reveals something of how he views the history of post-Reformation theology: “The dualism of believing and knowing in which, according to the representation of many, orthodoxy became involved, does not compare with the ambiguous position of the Vermittelungstheologie, which denies inspiration from the lectern and virtually confesses it in the pulpit” (pp. 406f).
93. A footnote at this point refers to Kuyper, Encyclopaedie 2.465. (Apparently, p. 466 [Principles, 511f] was intended.)
94. Veenhof (Revelatie, 442, cf, 453) considers this description (“doen opkomen,” in the original) “a typically mechanical moment” and “more or less a ‘foreign body’ in the whole of Bavinck’s organic view.” However, it is difficult to see here a lapse on Bavinck’s part into what he elsewhere rejects, when his specific concern, as we have seen, is just to distinguish his organic conception from mechanical viewpoints. Why, as Veenhof maintains (p. 453), does this idea of causing the style to arise have to be in tension with the notion of the Spirit’s use of “an already existing style” (Veenhof’s italics)? Is it not the genius of Bavinck’s theistic, organic view to maintain both?
95. Bremmer (Bavinck, 173f, cf. p. 321) believes that this last sentence is directed against Kuyper, for one, who distinguishes various “forms of inspiration” (Principles, 520ff). But there Kuyper is not distinguishing various forms within graphic inspiration, but differences in the inspiring activity of the Spirit in prophets and apostles prior to inscripturation, much as we have seen Bavinck also does, and with an explicit appeal to Kuyper (pp. 407f). Does Kuyper in fact distinguish different degrees of graphic inspiration? (See Principles, 544-552.) He does write (p. 546): “This graphic inspiration is least of all of a uniform character, but it differs according to the nature of the several parts of the Holy Scripture.” But what he goes on to say is not really at odds with Bavinck. Kuyper is concerned that due recognition be given to the different genres embodied in the biblical documents, an “organic” concern shared by Bavinck. The sense of Bavinck’s statement is surely to deny that some parts (the periphery) are somehow less inspired than others.
96. Because, as we have already noted, Bavinck associates all error with sin, this is another indication that for him (inscripturated) revelation is without error.
97. See the extensive analysis of this statement already given above, WTJ 44.276-82. Rogers and McKim observe (Authority, 402 n. 59) that this is the only statement of Kuyper’s quoted by Bavinck in the Dogmatiek (presumably they mean in his discussion of the doctrine of Scripture).
98. Again note the connection between sin and error, from the immediate context paralleled in Scripture and not limited to error in the sense of deception.
99. Cf. on this point my remarks about Kuyper’s views, WTJ 44.282, last paragraph.
100. Cf. Veenhof (Revelatie, 470f), who underscores that in this passage Bavinck sees an important difference between the relationship of Scripture to historiography and to the other sciences. (He also muses that Bavinck mentions the Roman Catholic viewpoint because he finds in it “something attractive.” That may be, but is it not more likely that he refers to it primarily in order to distance his own view from it?)
101. In the opinion of the neo-orthodox theologian Th. L. Haitjema, “Nevertheless Bavinck endeavored to give an optimistic assessment of the theological outlook of the seventeenth century as a further development of the Reformation era” (quoted by Veenhof, Revelatie, 502); cf. Bremmer (Bavinck, 314): Bavinck’s Dogmatiek “was a self-conscious attempt to arrive at a renewal of historic Reformed theology and dogmatics, which in the course of the eighteenth century ended in Reformed scholasticism, and for which figures like Heidegger and Francis Turretin may be called the last representatives.”
102. The question needs to be asked here how much this view of Bavinck (and Kuyper) really differs from that of Warfield and the other Princeton theologians. There may be differences, particularly concerning the way reason functions in relation to the internal testimony. It seems to me, however, that much of the discussion on this point does not take into consideration (certainly the treatment of Rogers and McKim [Authority, 333f] cannot be considered adequate), for example, Warfield’s sustained positive, even enthusiastic exposition of Calvin’s development of the doctrine of the internal testimony (“Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God,” Calvin and Calvinism [New York: Oxford University Press, 1931] 70–130, esp. pp. 701-16). At any rate, among his contemporaries Warfield sees William Cunningham, Charles Hodge, Kuyper, and Bavinck (and himself tacitly) as “true successors of Calvin” in this doctrine (p. 125). Cf. Woodbridge, Biblical Authority, 137f.
103. But note elsewhere, for example, “The Future of Calvinism,” Presbyterian and Reformed Review 5 (1894) 17, where he rejects the view that “the Holy Scriptures are not the infallible Word of God, but contain the Word of God; and side by side with its divine elements, the Bible has also its human and fallible elements.”
104. See esp. Woodbridge’s critique (Biblical Authority).
105. See the sobering and thought-provoking comments on this passage by C. Trimp, “De tragedie van de brede weg” [“The Tragedy of the Broad Way”], Betwist Schriftgezag (Groningen: De Vuurbaak, 1970) 179–91.