The Holy Spirit and the Defense of the Faith

By John Warwick Montgomery

[John Warwick Montgomery is Professor Emeritus of Law and Humanities, University of Luton, England, and Professor of Apologetics and Law, Trinity College and Theological Seminary, Newburgh, Indiana.]

Many evangelicals express the view that evidences for the truth of Scripture or for the saving events recorded in it are never adequate in themselves; only through the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the unbeliever will such evidences carry conviction.

Particularly in traditional Calvinist circles (though by no means limited to those in the Reformed camp), this theological judgment is embraced in the concept of the testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti (“the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit”). Calvin expounded this teaching in a chapter of his Institutes titled, “Scripture Must Be Confirmed by the Witness of the Spirit.”

4. The witness of the Holy Spirit: this is stronger than all proof 

…If we desire to provide in the best way for our consciences—that they may not be perpetually beset by the instability of doubt or vacillation, and that they may not also boggle at the smallest quibbles—we ought to seek our conviction in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit…. The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded. 

5. Scripture bears its own authentication 

Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated; hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning. And the certainty it deserves with us, it attains by the testimony of the Spirit. For even if it wins reverence for itself by its own majesty, it seriously affects us only when it is sealed upon our hearts through the Spirit.[1]

The great Rostock theologian Friedrich Adolph Philippi expressed this position in the following terms in his posthumously published Symbolik:

That the Word is self-evidencing is equivalent to saying that the Spirit of God, of Whom the Word is the bearer, shows the truth of the Word to man’s spirit. No one, therefore, is a competent judge of the divine origin, truth, clearness and sufficiency of the Word, unless he have experienced its enlightening and quickening power.[2]

An even stronger statement of the same viewpoint was given by the Dorpat theologian Alexander von Oettingen.

Every theoretical proof which may be attempted, every logical demonstration of truth, yea even the practical appeal to experience is vain, without the presupposition of a receptive organ, of a developed sensorium for the particular sphere of life that is concerned. Who can explain to the blind or even to the aesthetically unreceptive the true beauty of a painting, or bring to scientific understanding the aesthetical principles which here prevail? Who can disclose to the deaf or even to those without musical talent the deep mysteries of the great musical masterpieces? Who is in a condition to convince materialistic stupidity which regards only that which is comprehensible and sensually perceptible as true, of the overwhelming power of the architecture of the world? The worlds of Nature and of Spirit, their reciprocally conditioning and connecting laws remain dead and unintelligible, where our sense is dead.[3]

Problems with the “Testimonium” Teaching

It is clear, particularly in Calvin’s treatment of the subject, that a prime motivation for stressing the testimonium has been the desire to oppose all forms of semi-Pelagian synergism, especially as manifested in Roman Catholic theology. Calvin was not about to concede that Scripture’s veracity depends on the church or on clever ecclesiastical arguments; the Bible’s sole authentication must come directly from God Himself, and thus the acceptance of its truth will ultimately derive from the work of God the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer, and from no other source.

Unfortunately, however, this particular medicine for fighting synergism has serious negative side effects. The testimonium teaching, applied strictly, would eliminate all serious efforts to convince unbelievers of biblical truth by the presentation of factual evidence in its behalf. Why? Because it would follow that any and all such evidence could never succeed; conviction would depend not on it but on the Holy Spirit’s direct action on an unbeliever. True, even Calvin spent a chapter setting forth objective evidences for the divine character of the Bible (1. viii), but there and elsewhere he was at pains to emphasize the inadequacy of all such reasoning.

This bare and external proof of the Word of God should have been amply sufficient to engender faith, did not our blindness and perversity prevent it. But our mind has such an inclination to vanity that it can never cleave fast to the truth of God; and it has such a dullness that it is always blind to the light of God’s truth. Accordingly, without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Word can do nothing.[4]

Reconciling testimonium theology with Scripture’s own teaching encounters overwhelming obstacles. If evidence can never convince an unbeliever, what is the point of the Petrine injunction to be “ready to make a defense [ἀπολογία] to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15)? Why did Jesus, at the beginning of His earthly ministry, heal a paralytic so as to demonstrate objectively that He has divine miraculous power, thereby convincing His hearers that He can also forgive sin (Mark 2)? What is the significance of the detailed, physical descriptions of the resurrected Christ, if not to convince doubters (“a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have,” Luke 24:39; cf. the doubting Thomas incident, John 20)? Why would Luke bother to stress that there were “many infallible proofs” of Christ’s resurrection (Acts 1:3, KJV)? And what reason would there be for Paul’s emphasis on the risen Christ having been seen by over five hundred witnesses (1 Cor 15:6)? Indeed, the Apostle’s entire apologetic strategy on the Areopagus at Athens (Acts 17:16–33) would have been meaningless if evidence presented to unbelievers had no power to convince.[5]

Efforts have been made to explain testimonium thinking to reduce the tension with passages like those cited in the paragraph above. Doumergue, following de Witt,[6] argues dualistically:

It would be plainly absurd to say that the Spirit conveys even the smallest bit of information or that His work furnishes a testimony—except indirectly—as to any literary issues raised by the biblical text on the matter of its veracity. The Spirit’s witness concerns the saving truth of the entire text and does not embrace the document which incorporates that truth. The Holy Spirit testifies with power to the truth of the Bible and its authority, not to its inspiration or its canonicity. It is history which attests the canon; it is the Bible which attests its own inspiration. The Holy Spirit attests the Bible’s divine character and the absolute authority of the saving truth contained in the Bible.[7]

For Doumergue, Calvin’s teaching on the testimonium is simply a special case of the Reformer’s general principle that the Holy Spirit is the sole Teacher in matters of faith.[8]

This, however, will not do. One cannot dualistically split the “truth” and “authority” of the Bible from its “inspiration” and “canonicity,” claiming that the witness of the Spirit applies to the former and not to the latter. This is because truth, authority, inspiration, and canonicity are integrally connected (a problem with any one of them will be a problem for all); if the Holy Spirit is the sine qua non for establishing one, He will likewise be essential for validating the rest. The fundamental issue remains: Can evidence per se put the non-Christian in a position where he ought reasonably to accept the saving facts of the gospel and the truth, authority, inspiration, and canonicity of Scripture—or does he need the Spirit’s illumination as a prerequisite for doing so?

Moreover, the question is not whether the Holy Spirit is the sole Master in spiritual things. Of course He is. What has to be determined is whether He works mediately—through the Scriptures (whose veracity can be independently established)—to change people’s hearts, or whether His work in the human heart is a precondition for the recognition of the Bible’s veracity. It is doubtful that Calvin was correct in declaring that “without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Word can do nothing.”

Distinctions

One of the strengths of medieval scholastic learning was the methodology of so-called “distinction.” Seemingly intractable dilemmas could be solved by “distinguishing” the different senses in which words or concepts were used or should be used. The conflict between an evidential apologetic and the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion, as heightened by the testimonium doctrine, can be resolved biblically if four distinctions are made.

First, in salvation it is surely true that God’s Holy Spirit is the sole efficient cause. Salvation is by grace alone, and even saving faith is an unmerited gift of the same Spirit (John 1:12–13; Eph 2:8–9). Because of original sin, human beings are in no position to “cooperate” with God in salvation. Synergistic, semi-Pelagian understandings of the salvatory process are unbiblical.

Second, the Scriptures are authoritative and veracious. The Holy Spirit does not make the Bible more true, more factual, or more objectively persuasive. The Spirit normally works through the Word, not independently as do supposed “spiritual influences” in other religions.

Third, Jesus said the Holy Spirit testifies of Him (John 15:26). The Spirit does not create the Word or the gospel—or the evidence for them—but witnesses to the person and work of the second person of the Trinity and to the Scriptures, which also testify of Him (5:39). The Spirit’s activity is essentially derivative where revelation is concerned (16:13–15)[9] and must not be elevated to a primary role, as is done in some charismatic circles.

Fourth, if the Spirit does not create evidence for faith—if the evidence is already present—what does He do in relation to the potential convert? He convicts “the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment” (John 16:8), that is, He lays on the individual the conviction of sin and its consequences. Also He guides “into all the truth” (v. 13), that is, He motivates the potential convert to consider the claims of Christ and the evidence for them—and He implants saving faith in the heart. In a word, the Holy Spirit makes the gospel personally meaningful. This is the true sense of the testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti—that “the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom 8:16). Putting it otherwise, the testimonium has to do with soteriology (how one is saved), not with bibliology (how Scripture is validated). Calvin was right when he declared that “Scripture will ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit”;[10] he was not correct, however, when he suggested that the objective evidence for scriptural truth is inadequate in itself apart from the Spirit’s working. One must be scrupulous in distinguishing the Spirit’s subjective work of applying existing evidence to the heart from the question of the value, persuasiveness, and demonstrability of that evidence as such.

On the basis of the distinctions just formulated, it follows that the Holy Spirit’s work in conversion ought not inhibit the apologist’s activity of offering persuasive evidence for the truth of the gospel and the Scriptures. Why should the unbeliever respond to the evidence? Theologically, of course, because it is true. But—even from his own, unbelieving standpoint—because in ordinary affairs, in order to survive in the real world, he has to accept the same kinds of evidence. For example courts of law must rely on good testimony to the events recounted; scientists cannot ignore the results of sound observation; people who eat fish—as Jesus did after His resurrection—have to be considered alive, not dead.

Ultimately a non-Christian must make a moral choice as to what he will do with the objectively sound case for Christianity. If he exercises his will to accept the Christ of the Scriptures, that act must be attributed to the Spirit alone as a pure gift of grace. But the monergistic event of conversion no more denigrates or renders superfluous the work of the apologist than it does the work of the preacher or evangelist who presented the saving message to the individual in the first place. The Holy Spirit does not create the gospel or the evidence for it; He applies what is preached and defended to produce salvation.

What, then, are the dangers of testimonium theology? Two risks, in particular, are evident, and they both stem from the “inner,” subjective character of the viewpoint. First, if the evidence for scriptural truth is regarded as somehow deficient without the additional work of the Spirit in the individual, this will inevitably give the impression that the Scriptures and their message are “true” only for those who already believe them.[11] This is the very morass into which Barthian neoorthodoxy has fallen in its claim that Christ’s resurrection occurred not in ordinary history (Historie), susceptible to historical investigation, but in “supra-history” or “faith-history” (Geschichte), available only to those who believe.[12]

Ramm, certainly an evangelical and not a Barthian, nonetheless clearly illustrates this danger. Having thoroughly committed himself to testimonium thinking in his book The Witness of the Spirit,[13] he wrote a year later, “Only if there were no presence of the Holy Spirit or of God or of the community of the covenant could we think of historical revelation in terms of documented court evidence.”[14] In effect, Ramm is here arguing a “circularity” principle which has more than a little in common with Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, for he is saying that the Scriptures do not have demonstrable reality as historical revelation apart from the covenantal community and the testimonium of the Spirit. In actuality, however, the reality of historical revelation in Scripture is fully objective—and the Spirit and the community bear witness to this fact; they do not in any sense bring about the Bible’s veracity. For Calvinist Gordon Clark, though an implacable foe of Barth, the only assured proof of Christian revelation is supplied by “the inward work of the Holy Spirit.”[15] Obviously such approaches are the death of any meaningful apologetic to those who are not already Christians—yet the non-Christians are the ones who principally need it.

Second, in the secular, pluralistic environment at the close of the twentieth century, any unnecessary theological emphasis on the subjective is a distinct liability. The Eastern religions, the cults, and liberal Christianity have little to offer but “experience,” which is continually touted as self-validating. The testimonium approach falls unwittingly into this same abyss of unverifiability, dragging the gospel down to the level of its nonrevelatory competitors for people’s hearts and minds. Kuyper attempted to blunt the charge of subjectivism by noting that the testimonium is not really an “internal argument” (since the Spirit does not arise from within individuals) but an argumentum externum (because the Spirit comes from above, from God).[16] This, however, is of little consequence when presenting and defending the gospel in a secular world, for there is no objective way of testing the Spirit’s inner presence. The “inward witness” remains as subjectively unverifiable as the Mormon claim to a “burning in the bosom.” Granted, the testimonium advocate maintains the ontological objectivity of Christian revelation; but what good is this in witnessing to outsiders if there is no corresponding epistemological objectivity by which ontological reality can be distinguished from pure religious wish-fullfillment?

An Analogy: The House of Salvation

The preceding analysis may be illustrated by a model called “the house of salvation.” Viewed from outside the house, a path leads to it and the entire fallen race travels that road. Sadly, many people stop their spiritual journey without ever arriving at true salvation. Not a few are put off by the condition of the road (potholes and obstructions), representing the real (and specious) objections to the faith they encounter. The apologist’s prime task is to clear away the intellectual blockage and also give the best reasons for continuing to move forward toward the house of salvation.[17] He functions as a kind of road mender, like a John the Baptist, making paths straight and rough places plain (Isa 40:3–4; Luke 3:3–5).

If an unbeliever arrives at the house of salvation, he sees a sign on the door with two references, John 3:16 and Acts 16:30–31, informing him or her in no uncertain terms that one must believe in the Lord Christ to enter. An act of the will is demanded, and if it occurs, a person finds himself inside the house; he is saved.

Then viewing the door from inside the house, the new believer learns from the Scriptures (if he or she is not already aware of it experientially) that what has occurred is not due to personal effort in any sense. The sign inside the house has John 1:12–13 on it (salvation is “not by the will of man, but of God”) as well as Ephesians 2:8–9 (even the faith the believer now exercises is solely the product of divine grace).

Clearly this is a mystery. On the one hand one must “do something” to be saved (Acts 16:30–31); on the other hand the act of faith turns out to be exclusively the work of God the Holy Spirit. This “mystery of faith” (to use the felicitous expression of Lutheran theologian Gustaf Aulén) must not be blunted in an effort to resolve the humanly unresolvable. Hyper-Calvinists, by way of the doctrine of double predestination, have tried to resolve it by putting, as it were, John 1:12–13 and Ephesians 2:8–9 on the outside of the house of salvation; people are thus led to believe that nothing they do can influence their eternal destiny. Hyper-Arminians have done the opposite, placing John 3:16 and Acts 16:30–31 inside, so as to justify a semi-Pelagian view of salvation. But the signs must not be reversed. Otherwise either the unbeliever will not be confronted with the proper biblical “hour of decision,” or the believer will be led to false reliance on his own act of will, faith-exercise, or spiritual condition.

Why retain this mystery? Simply because the Scriptures require it. To subordinate “outside” passages to “inside” passages or to do the opposite is to eliminate crucial biblical teaching. If this is disturbing (since people legitimately try to reduce paradox and mystery as much as possible), a consolation is to recognize that the nature of this mystery focuses on the interrelationship of God’s will and man’s will—and humans do not even understand the depths of human volition, much less God’s (Rom 11:33–34).

The application of the house of salvation analysis to the preceding testimonium discussion should be obvious. The “internal witness of the Spirit” has been used by many as a device for the laudable end of eliminating synergism from the evangelistic-apologetic task, but this has been done at the price of emasculating the case for biblical reliability. Not only is this price far too much to pay in a secular world desperately needing a solid, objective apologetic for scriptural truth, but the device is unnecessary, since it fundamentally misconstrues the problem.

Synergism does not come about when unbelievers are expected to accept persuasive, objective evidence for the truth of the Bible or its gospel message, any more than it is synergistic for evangelists to call for decisions for Christ. Apologists (and evangelists) operate outside the house of salvation; they are not pastors or systematic theologians interpreting the conversion experience after it has come about. “Synergism exists only when, following conversion, the justified man is led to believe that in any way whatever (rational, moral, volitional) he contributed to his own salvation.”[18]

Believers therefore need to be especially careful not to water down the effectiveness of their apologetic in a misguided effort at conquering semi-Pelagianism. Sola gratia and powerful apologetic evangelism are entirely compatible. Christians should place before unbelievers the “many infallible proofs” of God’s revelation of Himself in Christ and in the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit, working through the objective gospel and the inherently persuasive evidence for it, will assuredly apply it; for God’s Word never returns void.

Notes

1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.7.4–5. For the French text of this key passage, with the variants in the several editions of the Institutes during Calvin’s lifetime, see E. Doumergue, Jean Calvin (Lausanne: Bridel, 1910), 4:59.
2. Friedrich Adolph Philippi, Symbolik, akademische Vorlesungen, ed. Ferdinand Philippi (Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, 1883).
3. Alexander von Oettingen, Lutherische Dogmatik (Munich: Beck, 1897), 1:8.
4. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.33.
5. Even Westminster Seminary New Testament scholar Ned R. Stonehouse recognized that Paul’s address to the philosophers at Athens was by no means a failure or misconceived, versus the often-heard claim that Paul later repented of it in 1 Corinthians 1 (Paul before the Areopagus [London: Tyndale, 1957]).
6. John de Witt, “The Testimony of the Holy Spirit to the Bible,” Presbyterian and Reformed Review 6 (1895): 80-82.
7. Doumergue, Jean Calvin, 4:67.
8. Ibid., 68.
9. On the procession of the Spirit from both Father and Son (as declared in the Western form of the Nicene Creed), see John Warwick Montgomery, “Evangelical Unity and Contemporary Ecumenicity,” in Ecumenicity, Evangelicals and Rome (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969), 13–44. For a complete picture of the Holy Spirit’s relationship to revelation, one also needs to recognize the truth emphasized by the major Reformers that the Spirit is in fact the ultimate Author of the Scriptures (see John Warwick Montgomery, “The Fourth Gospel Yesterday and Today,” in The Suicide of Christian Theology [Minneapolis: Bethany, 1970], 428–65, esp. 454). On the person and work of the Holy Spirit in general, see Montgomery, “Choice Books on the Holy Spirit,” in ibid., 480–87.
10. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.8.13.
11. Doumergue simply concedes that this was Calvin’s position (Jean Calvin, 4:66).
12. See John Warwick Montgomery, Where Is History Going? (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1969), 100–117. That Barthian neoorthodoxy has its ideological roots firmly planted in Reformation Calvinism has been thoroughly demonstrated by Herman Sasse, Here We Stand, trans. T. G. Tappert (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1938).
13. Bernard Ramm, The Witness of the Spirit: An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of the Internal Witness of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959).
14. Bernard Ramm, Special Revelation and the Word of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 99.
15. Gordon Clark, “Holy Scripture,” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 6 (Winter 1963): 4. Cf. Montgomery, Where Is History Going? 141-81, esp. 178.
16. Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der heilige Godgeleerdheit (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1894), 2:505.
17. To be sure, there are many more kinds of obstruction than intellectual objections to the faith; some are psychological and sociological reasons for unbelief. Apologists, however, specialize in dealing with the intellectual (and pseudointellectual) roadblocks that keep non-Christians from accepting the truth of the gospel and the Scriptures.
18. John Warwick Montgomery, “The Apologetic Thrust of Lutheran Theology,” in Lutheranism and the Defense of the Christian Faith, a special number of the Lutheran Synod Quarterly 11 (Fall 1970): 34.