False Gospels Exposed: Discerning Deception

Reflections of the Upper Room Discourse in 1 John

By John R. Yarid Jr.

[John R. Yarid Jr. is a Bible teacher in Dallas, Texas.]

Commentators have often mentioned in passing the connection between the Upper Room Discourse in John 13–17 and 1 John, but few writers have developed this apparent relationship.[1] This article seeks to develop some of the prominent themes shared between these two writings of the apostle John.[2] Examining these shared topics demonstrates that the underlying issue of concern to the author of 1 John was his readers’ fellowship with the Lord (rather than their supposed lack of eternal life).[3] Furthermore the intricate way the author wove several of the Savior’s themes in the Upper Room Discourse into 1 John strengthens the argument that the same author, the apostle John, wrote both the Gospel of John and 1 John.

This article discusses eight concepts in John 13–17 that are also mentioned in John’s first epistle. Other topics and terms in 1 John that stem from the Upper Room Discourse but that are not discussed in this article include “anointing,” “ask,” “complete,” “the evil one,” “give,” “hate,” “heart,” “the Holy Spirit,” “keep,” “knowledge,” “proclaim,” and “truth.”

The Theme of Full Joy

The apostle John recorded his first statement of purpose in these words: “These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete [πεπληρωμένη]” (1 John 1:4).[4] Though this is the only use of “joy” [χαρά] in this epistle, the word occurs nine times in the Fourth Gospel, with seven of those occurrences being in the Upper Room Discourse (John 3:29 [twice]; 15:11 [twice], 16:20–22, 24; 17:13).

John’s concept of joy was no doubt influenced by Jesus’ words on that subject. The idea of joy being complete clearly reflects the Lord’s words in the upper room. John’s words in 1 John 1:4 are strikingly similar to Jesus’ words in John 15:11: “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy [χαρὰ] may be in you, and that your joy may be made full [πληρωθῇ].” The Lord told the disciples that their grief over His departure would turn to joy, just as a woman’s pain in childbirth turns to joy when the child is born (16:20–21). He said that when He returns, they “will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you” (v. 22).

Jesus also spoke of joy in relation to answered prayer. He said that when God gives His disciples what they ask for when they pray in His name, then their joy is “made full [πεπληρωμένη]” (v. 24). And when Jesus prayed His great high priestly prayer, He said to the Father, “These things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full [πεπληρωμένην] in themselves” (17:13).

The Theme of the Father in Relation to Believers

The concept of God the Father is important in John’s writings. Almost forty percent of the occurrences of πατήρ in the New Testament are his.[5] The fellowship of believers with the Father and the Son (1 John 2:24) stems from Jesus’ emphasis on that topic in the Upper Room Discourse. Strecker says that “2 John 9, where fellowship with God is identified with ‘abiding in the teaching of Christ’ … means to ‘have God’ (cf. 1 John 2:23; 5:12–13), corresponding to ‘knowing God’ (1 John 2:3–17; 3:6; 4:6–8) or ‘remaining in God’ (1 John 2:6, 24, 27–28; 4:13, 15–16; 3:6, 9, 15, 17, 24).”[6]

In His discourse in the upstairs room Jesus revealed for the first time the truth of believers having fellowship with God the Father. “Up to chapter 13 the possibility of human beings becoming children of God was always described by means of general statements indicating the possibility of and requirements for becoming children of God (see John 1:12–13; 3:3–5, 16–21; 6:43–46; 8:42; 11:51–52), but in John 13:1–17:26 the statements regarding the possible relationship between God and human beings are directed at a specific group of characters, i.e., the disciples.”[7] The benefits of this relationship include space in the Father’s house (14:2), the Father sending the Holy Spirit to them (vv. 14, 26; 15:26), the Father’s love for them (14:21, 23; 16:27), the Father coming and staying with them (14:23), the Father pruning their branches so that they bear more fruit (15:2), the Father granting their requests (v. 16; 16:23), the Father protecting them from the evil one (17:15), and the Father enabling them to be one (17:21–22).[8] In the Upper Room Discourse Jesus developed the theme of knowing God the Father through faith and love, qualities that John later emphasized in his first epistle.[9] In every reference to the Son in 1 John the Father is referred to directly or indirectly.[10]

The false teachers were claiming to have a relationship with God the Father apart from a relationship with His Son, thereby denying that Jesus is the Christ, the incarnate Son of God.[11]

The Theme of Knowing God by Keeping His Commands

In 1 John 2:3 John wrote that believers know God by keeping His commands. (This is the first of twenty-three occurrences of the word γινώσκω [“know”] in 1 John.) In verse 5 he added that the one who keeps (i.e., obeys) God’s word has His love perfected in him. First John 5:3 conveys the same thought: “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” This relationship between knowing and loving God and keeping His commandments reflects Jesus’ similar instruction to His disciples in John 14:15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”[12] This thought is continued a few verses later as Jesus assured the disciples that if they keep His commands, they will be loved by the Father (v. 21), and Jesus and the Father will come to them and abide with them (v. 23).[13] John also wrote that if one does not keep God’s commands, then that person does not know God, even though he may claim that he does (1 John 2:4). This alludes to John 14:24, which records Jesus’ words that the one who does not love Him does not keep His words. Some understand that the concept of not knowing God refers to a non-Christian. However, since John was addressing believers, it seems preferable to view the words “not knowing God” as having reference to a believer who is not walking in fellowship with the Lord. To “know God” refers to a believer’s deep, intimate knowledge of Him.

In John 15:10 Jesus said, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” Just as Jesus kept the Father’s word and knows the Father, so the disciples can know intimately the Father’s love by obeying Jesus’ words. In His prayer to the Father, Jesus reported, “They [the disciples] have kept Your word” (17:6).

Obeying God’s commands also means believers can be confident that He will answer their prayers (1 John 3:22). Obedience to the Lord’s commands also means that the believer abides in Jesus and that Jesus abides in him (v. 24). These concepts in 1 John that are related to keeping His commands—knowing God, experiencing answers to prayer, and abiding in Him—are central themes in the Upper Room Discourse.

The Theme of Mutual Abiding

In the upper room Jesus spoke of “the Father abiding” in Him (John 14:10). And He referred to the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer (v. 17). Believers are encouraged to abide in Jesus (15:4–5, 7) and in His love (vv. 9–10a). Also Jesus said His words are to abide in believers (v. 7). By abiding in Him they can experience His joy (v. 11; 17:13). Also because of this mutual relationship with Jesus they can ask the Father for anything in Jesus’ name (14:13–14; 15:16; 16:24, 26), and the Father will grant those requests. This abiding presence of Jesus in the lives of believers also results in His being glorified in them (17:10).

A progression of love relationships seems to be expressed in this discourse. This progression begins with believers loving each other (13:35), then moves to believers abiding in Jesus’ love (15:9–10), which is patterned after Jesus abiding in the Father’s love (v. 10), and concludes with the Father’s love abiding in believers (17:26). Then 1 John elaborates on the believers’ mutual relationship with the Father (1 John 2:5–6; 3:24; 4:12–13, 15–16; 5:20).

The apostle John used μένω twenty-four times in eighteen verses of the five chapters of 1 John. It is used in fourteen ways: (1) believers abiding in God (2:6; 3:24a; 4:13, 15, 16 [second use]); (2) believers abiding in the light (2:10); (3) the Word of God abiding in believers (2:4); (4) believers doing the will of God and thus abiding forever (2:17); (5) secessionists not remaining in the community of believers (2:19); (6) the teaching of the apostles and eyewitnesses abiding in believers (2:24 [first and second uses]); (7) believers abiding in the Father and the Son (2:24 [third use]); (8) the Holy Spirit abiding in believers (2:27 [first use]; 3:9); (9) believers abiding in Jesus (2:27 [second use], 28; 3:6);[14] (10) the one not abiding in love abides in death (3:14); (11) murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them (3:15); (12) God’s love not abiding in one who refuses to meet the needs of other believers (3:17); (13) the Father abiding in believers (3:24 [second use]; 4:12, 15, 16 [third use]); and (14) believers abiding in love (4:16).

Jesus’ teaching in the Upper Room Discourse on the Spirit abiding in believers—“He abides with you and will be in you” (John 14:17)—is expanded in 1 John: “The anointing … abides in you” (2:27); “you know the Spirit of God” (4:2); and “greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (4:4). Not until the latter half of 1 John is the Spirit mentioned by name (3:24; 4:2, 6, 13; 5:6, 8).[15]

The Theme of Love

The word “love” occurs in every New Testament book in its verbal form (ἀγαπάω), its noun form (ἀγάπη), and its adjectival form (ἀγαπητός). These words refer to either the love of God or the way of life for believers based on His love.[16]

The Father’s Love

In the upper room Jesus referred to the Father’s love for the Son (John 15:9; 17:23–24, 26), the Father’s love for those who love Jesus (14:21; 16:27), the Father’s love for those who keep Jesus’ word (14:23), and the Father’s love for those who believe Jesus came from the Father (16:27; 17:23). The love of the Father for the Son is reciprocated by the Son’s love for the Father (15:19; 17:23).

The Father’s love, as taught in John 14–17, is reflected in 1 John in several ways. First John 2:5 states, “Whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected.” This alludes to John 14:15, 23, in which Jesus said that the love of God is demonstrated in obeying His commands. Thus John was calling believers to be different from the false teachers by leading obedient lives, which in turn confirms the Father’s love.

This love for the Father is not experienced when a believer loves the world or the things belonging to it, for as John wrote, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). John also wrote that the Father’s love for believers is seen in His sending His Son to take away sins (4:7–10, 14–16).[17]

The Son’s Love

Jesus often spoke of His love for His disciples (John 13:1, 23, 34; 15:9, 12), His love for all believers (14:21), and His love for the Father (v. 31). When John wrote of Jesus’ love, he focused on His laying down His life for believers, whereby His love serves as the model for mutual love between believers (1 John 3:16; 4:10). This stems from Jesus’ own emphasis on this theme in John 13:34–35 and 15:12–13.

The Believers’ Love

References to the disciples’ love in the Fourth Gospel emphasize the command to love each other, as modeled by Christ (John 13:34; 15:12–13, 17), and this love reveals to others that His followers belong to Christ (13:35). He exhorted His followers to abide in His love by keeping His commandments (14:15, 21, 23; 15:9–10). Those who love Jesus will be loved by the Father (14:21).

As already noted, God’s love for believers is perfected by their obedience. The themes of love and obedience are combined several times in John’s first epistle (1 John 2:5; 3:23; 5:2–3), clear allusions to Jesus’ words in the Upper Room Discourse.[18] When a believer loves other believers, his love shows that he is abiding “in the light” (2:10).[19] John’s repeated admonition that believers love each other (2:10; 3:11, 14, 16, 23; 4:7, 11–12, 21; 5:1–2) reflects Jesus’ command to love other believers (John 13:34; 15:12).[20]

The Opposite Of Love

Jesus spoke of those who do “not keep My words” and “do not love Me” (John 14:24). He informed His followers that “the world hates you” (15:18–19) because the world first hated Him and the Father (vv. 23–25). In His prayer to the Father He said that “the world has hated them [believers], because they are not of the world” (17:14).

Similarly the apostle wrote that “he who does not love abides in death” (1 John 3:14). And he said, “Do not be surprised … if the world hates you” (v. 13). He also wrote that if a believer “hates his brother,” he is “in the darkness” (2:9, 11) and is at heart a murderer (3:15) like Cain (v. 12). And if someone claims to love God but hates his brother, he is a liar (4:20),[21] that is, he does not really love the Lord.[22] To love God and yet hate another believer is inconsistent, because truly loving the Lord results in loving others. John’s polarizing of love and hate reflects some of Jesus’ teachings in the Upper Room Discourse.[23]

The Theme of Fellowship

John used the word κοινωνία (“fellowship”) in his writings only four times in three verses (1 John 1:3 [twice], 6–7). As Brown notes, κοινωνία has been translated in a variety of ways: as “communion,” “fellowship,” “partnership,” “community.”[24] The word suggests having something in common with another person, a commonality that involves both participation and association.[25] In all four occurrences of κοινωνία in 1 John the word is followed by a μετά prepositional phrase.[26] John wrote in 1:3 that the message he proclaimed to his readers was so that they may have fellowship with the apostles (μεθ ᾿ ἡμῶν, “with us”) and “with [μετὰ] the Father, and with [μετὰ] His Son Jesus Christ.” In verse 6 John wrote about the inconsistency of those who claim fellowship with God while disobeying Him. “If we say that we have fellowship with Him [᾿Εὰν εἴπωμεν ὅτι κοινωνίαν ἔχομεν μετ ᾿ αὐτοῦ] and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”[27] On the other hand when Christians walk in the light, that is, respond to God’s revelation of Himself,[28] then they have fellowship (κοινωνία) with God.[29] “But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (v. 7).

Although κοινωνία is not found in the Fourth Gospel, the concept of fellowship in 1 John echoes Jesus’ words in the Upper Room Discourse on oneness and unity.[30] He prayed about the unity of believers in John 17:11, 21–23.[31] In preparing His disciples for His departure from the world and from them, He prayed, “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are” (v. 11). This idea of the believers’ oneness is closely related to the concept of their having fellowship with each other (1 John 1:3). Jesus also prayed, “That they may all be one, even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:21). This request addressed both aspects of fellowship: the believers’ fellowship with each other (“that they may all be one” and “that they may be in Us”) and the fellowship of the Father and the Son in the Trinity (“You, Father, are in Me and I in You”).[32] Verse 22 addresses the concept of fellowship with other believers, and verse 23 mentions both dimensions of fellowship: “You in Me” and “that they may be perfected in unity.” Thus the basis for the believers’ oneness is Jesus’ oneness with the Father.[33]

Believers loving each other demonstrates their unity (13:34–35).[34] In fact, as Schnackenburg points out, love and unity are “like the two sides of the same coin.”[35] Also as Jesus’ followers abide in Him, they enjoy fellowship with the Father and the Son (1 John 1:3) and thus with each other, another way in which their unity is revealed.[36]

The Theme of Children

Τεκνία (“little children”), the diminutive of τέκνα (“children”), is found in the New Testament only in John’s writings. The diminutive form focuses on intimacy and affection rather than age.[37] Thus when Jesus used τεκνία in the upper room and John used the same word in his first epistle, they were addressing their spiritual children.[38] Just before discussing His loving relationship to the disciples (John 13:34, “I have loved you”), Jesus called them “little children” (v. 33). And just before telling his readers to obey God’s commands (1 John 2:3, 5), John addressed them as “little children” (v. 1).[39] In addition to the seven times John used τεκνία, which showed his affection for his readers (2:1, 12, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21), he also used τέκνα five times (3:1–2, 10 [twice]; 5:2).[40]

The Theme of the World

John’s reference to the world (κόσμος) as the physical earth in 1 John 3:17 and 4:17 may echo Jesus’ use of the word “world” in the same sense in John 16:21, 28 (twice); 17:5, 11 (twice), 13, 15, 24. The κόσμος as the evil system that is opposed to God is found fifteen times in 1 John[41] and fourteen times in the Upper Room Discourse.[42] All the inhabitants of the earth are sometimes referred to by κόσμος, as in John 14:19, 22, 31; 16:8, 11, 20; 17:13, 18 (twice), a meaning that John reflected in 1 John 2:2 (Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world”), in 4:9 (God “sent His only begotten Son into the world”), and in 4:17 (believers are “in this world,” that is, among the earth’s inhabitants).

Jesus often used the word κόσμος to refer to the unsaved inhabitants on the earth. He said that “the world cannot receive” the Spirit of truth (John 14:17), the world hates believers (15:18), believers were chosen “out of the world” (v. 19), and “the world hates” them (v. 19). While the disciples would grieve when Jesus departed, the world would rejoice (16:20). In His prayer in John 17 Jesus said He was not praying for the world, that is, the unsaved (v. 9), but He was praying that the world would believe that the Father sent Him (vv. 21, 23). He said that the world hates believers (v. 14) and does not know the Father (v. 25). John also used κόσμος to speak of the unsaved. He wrote in 1 John 3:1 that “the world does not know us,” that “the world hates you” (v. 13), that “the world listens” to false prophets (4:5), and that “the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world” (v. 14). Clearly John’s frequent use of κόσμος with these various meanings echoes the Lord’s use of the word with the same meanings and in similar contexts.[43]

Conclusion

Tracing the themes of the Upper Room Discourse throughout 1 John is similar to admiring the many facets of a sparkling diamond. Each time one comes back for an additional glance there is more beauty and intricacy to discover. As one considers these two portions of Scripture (the Upper Room Discourse and 1 John) it becomes apparent that Jesus’ words were primarily directed to a believing readership, and that these believers needed His instructions in order to lead a life of faith in a hostile world. As the world today grows increasingly less “believer-friendly,” it is encouraging for believers to go back for another glance at John 13–17 and 1 John to discover again the Lord’s timeless truths in those rich portions of Scripture.

Notes

1. Stephen S. Smalley, for example, described the links between 1 John and Jesus’ Farewell Discourse in six paragraphs on a page and a half (1, 2, 3, John, Word Biblical Commentary [Waco, TX: Word, 1984], xxix).
2. For a more extensive treatment of this relationship between the Upper Room Discourse and 1 John see John R. Yarid Jr., “John’s Use of the Upper Room Discourse in First John” (Ph.D. diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 2002).
3. John 13–17 focuses on Jesus preparing His disciples for life after His departure (13:1). The symbolic foot washing by Jesus (vv. 5–20) clearly illustrates that the disciples’ salvation was not the issue at this point in the Gospel, but rather their need to stay in fellowship with the Lord. Judas, however, is seen in an antithetical relationship from the rest of the disciples in this foot-washing episode, which points to his lack of salvation (vv. 10–11, 18, 21–30). First John also shows a similar antithetical relationship between the readers of the epistle and false teachers (1 John 1:6–2:2, 22). Like Judas, these false teachers had left the company of John and other believers, thereby demonstrating that they were never saved (2:19). The readers of both the Gospel of John and of 1 John faced a hostile world (John 15:18–19; 1 John 3:13). And the disciples in the Upper Room and the readers of 1 John were addressed in a spiritual father-child relationship, using the affectionate term τεκνία, “children” (John 13:33; 1 John 2:1, 12, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21).
4. Identifying the people who were intended by the word “we” in the prologue is a problem (for a summary see Raymond B. Brown, The Epistles of John, Anchor Bible [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982], 158–61). Should each occurrence of the word “we” in 1 John 1:1–4 be viewed as an editorial “we” (meaning “I”) or as a noneditorial plural pronoun? Since John elsewhere in 1 John used the first-person singular (2:1, 7–8, 12–14, 21, 26; 5:13), it seems preferable to view the “we” in 1:1–4 as designating several people. These people may be John and his original readers, or preferably those who were eyewitnesses of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry. The other “we” verses in the book refer to the author and the recipients of the epistle.
5. John used πατήρ 159 times in his writings, compared to an additional 254 times in the rest of the New Testament. This portion (almost 40 percent) parallels the use of πατήρ in the Upper Room Discourse in comparison to the rest of the Fourth Gospel. First John has 14 occurrences of πατήρ.
6. Georg Strecker, The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John, Hermenia, trans. Linda M. Maloney, ed. Harold Attridge (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989; reprint, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 20 n. 56.
7. D. Francois Tolmie, “The Characterization of God in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 69 (March 1998): 71.
8. Ibid., 72.
9. John L. Boyle, “The Last Discourse (John 13:31–16:33) and Prayer (John 17): Some Observations on Their Unity and Development,” Biblica 56 (April 1975): 219. In 1 John the apostle used “believe,” “believes,” or “believed” eight times (3:23; 4:15; 5:1, 5, 10 [three times], 13). His many references to “love” are discussed later in this article.
10. The direct references to this relationship include the use of πατήρ (1 John 1:3; 2:22, 24; 4:14) and θεός (3:8; 4:9, 15; 5:5, 10, 12–13, 20), and the indirect references to this relationship use the third-person singular pronoun αὐτοῦ (1:3, 7; 3:23; 4:9–10; 5:9, 11, 20).
11. I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 107. For a survey of the various ideas associated with this concept of fellowship with God, see Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Johannine Epistles, trans. Reginald Fuller and Ilse Fuller (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 63–69. On the Christological heresy threatening the church see Daniel Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 61.
12. Brown, The Epistles of John, 757, 759; and James Warren Dunkly, “Linguistic Relationships between the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1982), 77, 118–19.
13. The word for “abode” in John 14:23 is μονή, which is used elsewhere in John only in verse 2, where it refers to the many dwelling places in the Father’s house. The exact idea or meaning behind the word is debated. The NET Bible provides a concise discussion of the historical background behind the various interpretations of μοναί (p. 1985 n. 15 on John 14:2).
14. In the phrase “abide in Him” αὐτῷ in these three verses could refer to God the Father. But more likely it refers to the Son, based on the preceding context which refers to Jesus (1 John 2:22–27). The same could be said of the use of αὐτῷ in 2:28 and 3:6.
15. In 1 John 2:20, 27 John used χρίσμα of the Holy Spirit. Some scholars, however, say χρίσμα refers here to the Word of God (e.g., C. H. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles, Moffat New Testament Commentary [London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1946], 63; Edward Malatesta, Interiority and Covenant [Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1978], 204; and Ignace de la Potterie, La Vérite dans Saint Jean, Analecta Biblica [Rome: Biblical Institute, 1977], 475–90).
16. Colin Brown, “Love,” in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 2:538.
17. Fernando F. Segovia, Love Relationships in the Johannine Tradition, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series (Chico, CA: Scholars, 1982), 184.
18. Brown, The Epistles of John, 757; Dunkly, “Linguistic Relationships between the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John,” 79, 105, 118–19; and Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 48–49, 204–5, 269.
19. Because “God is Light” (1 John 1:5), to abide “in the Light” means to abide in God.
20. Sjef Van Tilborg explains that Jesus’ foot washing and His words “as I do you do” (John 13:15) set the stage for His command that His own should love each other. This model is repeated in 13:34; 15:4, 10, 12; 17:11, 21–22 (Imaginative Love in John, Biblical Interpretation Series [New York: Brill, 1993], 158–61).
21. John used the word “liar” five times in his first epistle (1:10; 2:4, 22; 4:20; 5:10) and “lie” in 1:6.
22. Harold D. Schulz, “The Doctrine of Love according to 1 John” (Th.M. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1971), 53–57; and Segovia, Love Relationships in the Johannine Tradition, 184–85.
23. Brown, The Epistles of John, 445; Schnackenburg, The Johannine Epistles, 180; and Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 187.
24. Brown, The Epistles of John, 170.
25. J. Y. Campbell discusses this idea more fully (“Koinonia and Its Cognates in the New Testament,” Journal of Biblical Literature 51 [December 1932]: 356).
26. Ibid., 372.
27. John Painter suggests that κοινωνία was a term John’s opponents preferred to use and that in 1 John 1:3–7 the apostle was correcting their false teaching about fellowship (“The ‘Opponents’ of 1 John,” New Testament Studies 32 [January 1986]: 54-55).
28. Zane C. Hodges, “1 John,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, New Testament, ed. John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1983), 885.
29. Hodges believes that ἀλλήλων (“one another”) does not suggest fellowship with other Christians, but rather the fellowship of the two parties (God and the believer) who are named in the first part of the verse (ibid.).
30. Brown, Epistles of John, 170. John F. Randall discusses various interpretations of the meaning of unity in John 17 (“The Theme of Unity in John 17:20–23, ” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 41 [July-October 1965]: 373). John K. Adams Jr. traces the fallacy of Protestant, Greek Orthodox, and Roman Catholic ecumenism that some say is taught in John 17 (“Christ’s Concept of Unity in John 17” [Th.M. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1968], 25–39). Don M. Aycock surveys the concept of unity in the early ecumenical councils up to the modern ecumenical movement (“John 17 and Jesus’ Prayer for Unity,” Theological Educator 38 [fall 1988]: 132-44). Mark L. Appold discusses true oneness that begins with Christology, moves to soteriology, and permeates ecclesiology (The Oneness Motif in the Fourth Gospel [Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1976], 285). The basis for the believers’ oneness is Jesus’ oneness with the Father.
31. Brown, The Epistles of John, 170; and Schnackenburg, The Johannine Epistles, 61. John used the neuter singular ἓν in John 17:11, 21, 22 (twice), 23 to develop his concept of oneness or unity, rather than the masculine singular εἰς. As Johan Ferriera points out regarding verse 21, “It is interesting to note the alteration between the masculine πάντες (i.e., all believers) and the neuter ἓν (i.e., a unity). The neuter ἓν does not simply denote all believers, for then it should have been εἰς. Instead, it denotes the community of being a distinct entity” (Johannine Ecclesiology, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998], 127).
32. Smalley discusses the correlation of fellowship between the Father and believers in 1 John 1:3 and John 17:21 (1, 2, 3 John, 12–13).
33. Appold, The Oneness Motif in the Fourth Gospel, 285; and Ferreira, Johannine Ecclesiology, 128.
34. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John, 508; Raymond F. Brown, The Gospel according to John, Anchor Bible, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 776; and John E. Staton, “A Vision of Unity: Christian Unity in the Fourth Gospel,” Evangelical Quarterly 69 (October 1997): 293.
35. Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, trans. David Smith and G. A. Kon (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 3:190–91. See also Ferreira, Johannine Ecclesiology, 130. D. A. Carson, however, sees a subtle difference between the love described in John 13:34–35 and the unity discussed in John 17 (The Gospel according to John [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991], 568).
36. Thomas S. Burain, “The Development of the Johannine Concept of Fellowship” (Th.M. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1980), 50; and Staton, “A Vision of Unity,” 296–97. Joseph C. Dillow presents an excellent exposition of fellowship in John 15 (“Abiding Is Remaining in Fellowship: Another Look at John 15:1–6, ” Bibliotheca Sacra 147 [January-March 1990]: 44-53). Klapstein and Curtis each defend the view that μένω carries the idea of fellowship in 1 John (Walter W. Klapstein, “The Use of Menō in First John” [Th.M. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1952]; and J. Patrick Curtis (“Menō in 1 John” [Th.M. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1980]).
37. M. de Jonge, C. Haas, and J. L. Swellengrebel, “A Translator’s Handbook on the Letters of John,” Bible Translator 22 (January 1971): 17, n. 1; and Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 34.
38. Jonge, Haas, and Swellengrebel, “A Translator’s Handbook on the Letters of John,” 17, n. 1.
39. Alan Culpepper, The Johannine School: An Evaluation of the Johannine-School Hypothesis Based on an Investigation of the Nature of Ancient Schools, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series (Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1975), 302; and idem, 1, 2, 3 John, Knox Preaching Guide (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985), 20.
40. Many commentators see John’s use of the diminutive παιδία in 1 John 2:14, 18 as a stylistic variation of τεκνία. Examples include Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, 104; A. E. Brooke, ACritical and Exegetical Commentary on theJohannine Epistles, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: Clark, 1912), 43; Brown, The Epistles of John, 214; Rudolf Bultmann, Johannine Epistles, Hermenia, trans. R. Philip O’Hara (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), 31; Donald W. Burdick, The Letters of John the Apostle (Chicago: Moody, 1985), 172; Culpepper, 1, 2, 3 John, 34–35; Dodd, The Johannine Epistles, 38; Kenneth Grayston, The Johannine Epistles, New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 70; and D. Edmond Hiebert, The Epistles of John (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1991), 94.
41. First John 2:15 (three times), 16 (twice), 17; 4:1, 3–4, 5 (first two uses); 5:4 (twice), 5, 19.
42. John 14:27, 30; 16:33 (twice); 17:6, 11, 14 (second and third uses), 16 (twice), 18 (twice). This evil system does not mean “that the world has become evil in itself, but rather is evilly oriented and dominated” (Brown, The Gospel according to John, 1:509).
43. Scholars differ on how many meanings κόσμος has. Jonge, Haas, and Swellengrebel list five categories (“Letters of John,” 14); Robert E. Bratcher suggests six meanings (“The Meaning of Κόσμος, ‘World,’ in the New Testament,” Bible Translator 31 [October 1980]: 430-34); and Smalley has two categories: “the created universe or life on earth, and human society, controlled by the power of evil and organized in opposition to God” (1, 2, 3 John, 81).

Philosophical Perspectives On Inerrancy

By C. Fred Smith

[Dr. Smith is Associate Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary Lynchburg, Virginia.]

Introduction

Behind every broad movement within Christianity lies an understanding of what the Bible is and how it functions in the community of faith. Scripture is determinative for where one stands on a host of doctrinal and theological questions. This especially is true for evangelicals who have defended the Trinity, the virgin birth of Christ, the Resurrection and the bodily return of Christ on the basis that they are revealed in the Bible. The commitment to Scripture as God’s revelation has kept evangelicals on solid ground for these and a host of other doctrines. Indeed, as Francis Schaeffer said, “Evangelicalism is not consistently evangelical unless there is a line drawn between those who take a full view of Scripture and those who do not.”[1] Maintaining a commitment to inerrancy must be a priority if evangelicalism is to continue to uphold truth.

In the nineteenth century, the nature of Scripture was examined extensively by John Bascom[2] and William Sanday.[3] After this, little attention was given to Scripture by philosophers of religion until the 1930s, when their focus turned to the examination of language itself. A survey of the literature in the field over the past two or three generations makes this clear. Emil Brunner in his book The Philosophy of Religion from the Standpoint of Protestant Orthodoxy[4] gave revelation a central place, but rejected the idea of seeing revelation in terms a divine book, something fixed, timeless, and enscripturated. For Brunner, revelation had to do with an existential encounter between the believer and God. Edgar Brightman, writing in 1940, briefly treated revelation as a way of knowing God, but did not seriously consider the possibility that God had revealed himself in Scripture.[5] In 1954 Daniel Jay Bronstein and Harold M. Schulweis did not discuss Scripture in their Approaches to Philosophy of Religion: A Book of Readings[6] at all. John Wilson in his Language and Christian Belief[7] discussed religious language but not the Bible. Geddes MacGregor treated the way one makes assertions about religious subjects in his Introduction to Religious Philosophy[8] but did not consider the nature of the Bible. Paul Van Buren, in his 1963 book The Secular Meaning of the Gospel Based on an Analysis of Its Language[9] never mentioned the subject, though he devoted a chapter to religious language. Stuart Brown, a few years later, treated religion as something of an epistemological problem dealing with religious language and its validity from the standpoint of linguistic analysis.[10] James McClendon and James Smith treated religious language without dealing with the nature of Scripture.[11] In 1988, Norman Geisler and Winfred Corduan;[12] and in 1993, Brian Davies,[13] omitted inerrancy from their books; even though each devoted large discussions on religious language and its validity.

These twentieth century writers were responding to A. J. Ayer, whose Language Truth and Logic[14] became the standard work on logical positivism. Ayer asserted that only two classes of statements are meaningful: those that are empirically verifiable and those that are analytically true—true by logical or mathematical necessity. If Ayer is right, any kind of religious truth claim would be, quite simply, meaningless. If that is the case, then contending for biblical inerrancy is meaningless also. Therefore, philosophers of religion confined themselves to defending the right to make truthful—and therefore authoritative—claims about religion. Primarily, inerrancy has been left to evidentialist apologetics and theologians.

Inerrancy is usually defended on the basis of evidence, historical, textual, and archaeological, which has been shown to support the truth claims of the Bible. However, an approach that is more philosophically driven offers possibilities for the apologist and needs to be given serious consideration.

Approaches To Defending Scripture

If apologists want to claim that the Bible is inerrant and be justified in doing so, the question necessarily arises as to what method or approach is best for this. The doctrine of Scripture is usually approached inductively or deductively. Using the inductive method, people seek to amass evidence that the Bible is or is not inerrant, or they begin with certain premises that guarantee whichever conclusion they wish to prove. Using the deductive method to defend inerrancy usually begins with the doctrine of God. One might call it (in parallel to a popular Christological model) “the doctrine of Scripture from above.” The inductive method, on the other hand, begins with the phenomena of the text itself and may be called “the doctrine of Scripture from below.”

Inductive Method

Examples of the inductive method abound. In 1888, Basil Manly sought “to build up an argument by successive steps” to prove biblical inerrancy.[15] More recently, Josh McDowell has defended the historicity of biblical events and has demonstrated the accuracy of Bible prophesies.[16] Both authors use the inductive method because, like detectives, they amass specific facts and use them to draw the conclusion that Scripture is inerrant. Stanley Anderson has also defended inerrancy this way. In his article “Verbal Inspiration Inductively Considered”[17] he amassed evidence from history, archaeology, Bible prophecy, science, and human psychology to demonstrate that the Bible is inerrant. Building his doctrine “from below,” he examined some seventy-nine Scripture passages in an eight-page article. Anderson early on turns to deduction in his argument asserting the following syllogism: All Scripture is inspired of God; each word is a part of Scripture; therefore each word is inspired of God (15).

There are weaknesses in formulating one’s doctrine of Scripture from below. The inductive method, at best, can only establish the high probability of the Bible as an inerrant document. It can establish the probability at a very high level, but for some, this is still not enough. In addition, the inductive method often is used by those who hold to a doctrine of authority that falls short of inerrancy.[18] James D. G. Dunn has said that attention to the phenomena of Scripture itself will not get one to a doctrine of inerrancy.[19] Attention to the phenomena will not compel one to disbelieve inerrancy either, but the fact remains that the inductive method leads to an impasse.

One’s conclusions from the phenomena of the text are, in fact, largely determined by what one brings to it. D. A. Carson has shown that it is not the claims of Scripture which count against its truthfulness but rather “a certain interpretation of the phenomena of the text.”[20] The Enlightenment, which exalted both reason and the inductive method, beginning from Descartes and Bacon, has had an impact on the way Scripture is seen.[21] Bacon’s inductive method especially led to the separation between “truth” and “religion,” with religion relegated to the area of private opinion only.[22] Approached inductively, and with the presuppositions of the Enlightenment regarding authority, the supernatural, and the necessity for reason and coherence, it is little wonder that many moderns conclude that the Bible is not inerrant.

Deductive Approach

A deductive approach, building a doctrine of Scripture from above, is much better. Here, one begins with God and works to the phenomena of the text, and so long as the text itself does not directly invalidate one’s basic presuppositions, the argument is on strong ground. Working deductively guarantees the results if the argument is valid, and if the premises are true. What is necessary then is a proper doctrine of God.

Presuppositions Necessary For A Deductive Approach To Scripture

Arguing for Scripture from above requires beginning with a proper understanding of God.

The way we frames our doctrine of God will determine the way we approach revelation.[23] If our doctrine of God is adequate, our view of revelation will be also.

An argument from above must be based on certain assumptions about God, His nature, power, and moral attributes. Even the statement “if Scripture is divinely revealed, then it is inerrant” makes a moral assumption about the nature of God—that He does not lie. When John Warwick Montgomery argues that inerrancy and inspiration are inseparable, he implicitly argues that a certain understanding of who God is and how He acts is necessary for the Bible to be inerrant.[24] God must be truthful, and He must be powerful enough to guarantee the results. Richard Swinburne has said directly, “A good God who knows everything, will not lie to us.”[25]

What, then, is essential in a doctrine of God which is adequate for inerrancy? First is the idea that God is sovereign. God is capable of so moving in history and in people’s lives as to produce and guarantee a written revelation. Sanday recognized this in 1893 when he spoke of the “providential disposition of events” which gave fuller meaning to biblical prophecies.[26] A God who is subject to the whims of human free will is not a God who can guarantee an inerrant revelation of himself. Many who argue against inerrancy do so on the basis of an overdeveloped understanding of human free will and an underdeveloped understanding of divine sovereignty.

Second, one must presuppose that God is interested in revealing Himself. There must be a reason for the revelation. Richard Swinburne has argued that if there is an all-wise, all-powerful God who desires that men be holy, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that He has revealed Himself and His purposes.[27]

Third is the matter of God’s moral nature. God must be moral enough to want to reveal the truth about Himself. In addition, He must care enough about truth itself to want to tell the truth in everything. God’s character is on the line in revelation. The God who reveals himself, if He is a truth-telling God, must tell the truth in everything, including science and history.

This may appear to some as if merely to choose which traits of God to emphasize, in an arbitrary manner, so as to guarantee the right outcome. There are, however, ways to confirm this direction. One way is found in the ontological argument for the existence of God. This argument, dating back to Anselm, has received new life in recent years in the form of Thomas Morris’s perfect being theology.[28] God is the sum total of all of His perfections. He is the personification of perfection in every way, including existence.

Assuming that this argument is sound actually goes a long way toward defending inerrancy. If God is a perfect being and the sum of all His perfections, He must be both powerful and moral. What He reveals then has the guarantee of being perfect, in the sense of being exactly what He wanted and of being true. The God of Anselm and of Morris is powerful enough and good enough to guarantee this.

Alvin Plantinga’s defence of belief in God as “properly basic” helps. He says “a person is entirely within his epistemic rights, entirely rational, in believing in God even if he has no argument for this belief, and does not believe it on the basis of any other beliefs he holds.”[29] Believers in God have an immediate awareness of the truth of His existence apart from any justification for it.[30] Their belief is properly basic to other beliefs. Such faith may arise from a sense of God’s presence, from an awareness of the created universe, or from a liberating sense of being forgiven for one’s sins.[31] Such faith entirely is biblical since the Bible itself never attempts to argue for the existence of God.[32]

The God in whom we may properly believe may be shown to be no different from the God who is revealed in the Bible, that is, the God of classical theism. This is implicit in Plantinga’s argument and is assumed also by his forebears, John Calvin and Abraham Kuyper.

How does this help us get to an inerrant Scripture? Plantinga’s epistemology is congruent with presuppositional apologetics. Properly basic beliefs function as presuppositions, as the foundation for other beliefs. If belief in the God who is described in Scripture is properly basic, then belief that He has revealed Himself in that Scripture may be seen as properly basic as well.

Logically, it works as follows:

1. Belief in the God of classical theism is properly basic.
2. This God is powerful enough to guarantee any outcome He chooses.
3. This God is moral enough to be always truthful.
4. Any revelation that has its source in this God will be exactly what He chooses to reveal (from 2).
5. Any revelation which has its source in this God will be absolutely true (from 3).
6. The Bible gives evidence of having its source in this God, by the way it assumes His existence, and reveals intentions and purposes consistent with such a God (from 4).
7. One may begin from the God of classical theism as a properly basic belief and accept the Bible as His revelation (from 6).
8. The Bible is the inerrant word of God (from 4, 5, and 7).

These propositions show how one may begin with the idea of a God who is a perfect being and who also wishes to reveal himself and who is foundational in Plantinga’s sense of the term. This doctrine of God, coupled with the idea that He has revealed Himself in Scripture, entails inerrancy.

This requires, however, some knowledge of the Bible. The Bible, to be inerrant, must be a book which would reveal that kind of God. It is at this point that one should go to the phenomena of the text, to argue for inerrancy “from below.” One does this not as the first step but as the last, with one’s presuppositions disclosed and defensible. No purely logical argument, however well founded, can stand alone on a matter like this. While its premises may guarantee its conclusions, its premises must be tested by the evidence.

Richard Swinburne developed a two-pronged test of content for Scripture. First it must provide “information necessary for our deepest well-being.”[33] This information consists of moral truths, and truths about God’s nature and actions to help one apply these moral truths, and some details of the afterlife as encouragement. Second, it must be true. Swinburne means it must be true according to the correspondence theory of truth: it must correspond to the real world. He says there must be nothing that is evidently false, nothing that is provable as false,[34] and its claims regarding future events must come true.[35] Swinburne also cites external evidence such as the character of the messenger and his miracle-working powers.[36] Here he has in mind Jesus as one who validates the message.

One question remains: why would God reveal Himself in something as fragile as a book? He could have inscribed the entire message in stone, not just the Law of Moses. If all of the Bible were inscribed on a mountainside, or on one mountain on each continent, or if it were to appear miraculously in golden letters in the sky, one day every twenty years, it would be clear that this was a message from God and would cause people to pay more attention.

However, Swinburne says that it is reasonable that God, wanting to give people free choice, would locate His revelation in such a place that one would need to seek it and yet that it would be “available and discoverable.”[37] This argument is not so compelling, but it is worth considering. A stronger argument lies in the way God works in history. Miraculous events are rare. God usually works through the normal channels of everyday life. This is part of the hiddenness of God. In light of this, is it any wonder that His revelation comes in the form of a book, one that looks like any other, just paper and ink?

A Model For Inspiration

A model for how revelation happens must be consistent with the understanding of God that we delineated here and consistent with inerrancy. Some want to locate revelation only in the historical events. The written text is secondary revelation only, an interpretation of God’s action in history. Others locate revelation both in the historical event and in the encounter between the modern reader and the text. Revelation happens when God speaks to the individual reader. This is the neo-orthodox approach. Those who hold to the “dynamic” view of inspiration want to locate revelation in the period of reflection before the writing begins, when God inspires the “ideas” that make up Scripture. All of these are efforts to come to grips with the phenomena of the text, the critical problems, and even the experience of reading. All of these views express a part of the truth, but they all fall short.

If the Bible is God’s word, and if it is inerrant, then the text itself must be a revelation of God. Any understanding of revelation that does not include the text is a deficient understanding of revelation. The text and the process behind its coming into existence are part of the sovereignty of God in guaranteeing the truth of His revelation. Thus revelation is both process and result, both the historical event and the text that describes it.

Here is a model consistent with this claim. The production of the Bible followed a process that was something like this: First, there was an event. Something happened in history, or perhaps it was revealed directly to the author. The events may have happened before the author’s own time, or he may have been an eyewitness. In the case of Luke’s Gospel, the events were some years earlier. Luke knew of them through personal investigation and interviews. In the case of Galatians, the letter was Paul’s initial response, perhaps written within a day or so of having received a disturbing report of heresy in that church. In some cases, authors may have pored over numerous documents and spent time in reflection on their meaning. This period of reflection and study led to the author penning the result of his reflections.

Whatever the case for each human author, God is sovereign at all stages of revelation. God acts in history. God guides the process of reflection that precedes the written work. God has been active also in the life of the writer, bringing him to the point where his theology and linguistic style are such that he is ready to write what God wants written. The result is that the writer produces God’s truth, without violating his own style. This understanding allows the text itself to be revelation.

The kind of revelation proposed here is the kind which the God in whom we may properly believe would give—the kind of revelation that is found in the Bible. This model accounts for the nature of the Bible, for the sovereignty of God and for the obvious human side of the process that occurred in the production of the Scriptures. Thus it accounts for the differences in tone and style among the authors while maintaining the essential source of Scripture in God. Because it begins with the doctrine of God, this approach allows for the defence of the doctrine of inerrancy of the text itself, and unites the best features of a presuppositional apologetic (“from above”) and an evidential approach (“from below”), giving to each its own place.

Conclusion

The inerrancy of Scripture is a logical consequent of believing in the God of classical theism. Alvin Plantinga has demonstrated that such belief in this God is properly basic. Thus, it would seem that belief in inerrancy would be, within the circumstances of Christian faith, a properly basic belief also. In addition, beginning with the doctrine of God before examining the phenomena of the text is all together proper and sound. Evangelicals may proceed with confidence in the century ahead, not moving the ancient boundaries, nor redefining them but standing firmly on the “faith once for all delivered to the saints.”

Notes

1. Francis Schaeffer, “Form and Freedom in the Church” in J. D. Douglas, Let the Earth Hear His Voice (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide, 1974), 364-65; cited in Richard Lovelace, “Inerrancy: Some Historical Perspectives” in Inerrancy and Common Sense, ed. Roger Nicole and J. Ramsey Michaels, 15-47 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 18.
2. John Bascom, A Philosophy of Religion or the Rational Grounds of Religious Belief (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1876), 203-312.
3. William Sanday, Inspiration: Eight Lectures on the Early History and Origin of the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration, Bampton Lectures (New York: Longmans, Green, 1893).
4. Emil Brunner, The Philosophy of Religion from the Standpoint of Protestant Orthodoxy, trans. A. J. D. Farrer and Bertram Lee Woolf (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 151.
5. Edgar Sheffield Brightman, A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940), 172-78.
6. Daniel Jay Bronstein and Harold M. Schulweis, Approaches to Philosophy of Religion: A Book of Readings (New York: Prentice Hall, 1954).
7. John Wilson, Language and Christian Belief (New York: St. Martin’s, 1958).
8. Geddes MacGregor, Introduction to Religious Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959).
9. Paul Van Buren, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel Based on an Analysis of Its Language (New York: Macmillan, 1963).
10. Stuart C. Brown, Do Religious Claims Make Sense? (London: SCM, 1969).
11. James William McClendon, Jr. and James M. Smith, Understanding Religious Convictions (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975).
12. Norman Geisler and Winfred Corduan, Philosophy of Religion, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 211-91.
13. Brian Davies, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 20-31.
14. A. J. Ayer, Language Truth and Logic (New York: Oxford University Press), 1936.
15. Basil Manly, Jr., The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration Explained and Vindicated (New York: Armstrong and Son, 1888), 108, cf. 130-175.
16. C. Fred Smith Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands A Verdict (San Bernadino, CA: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1972).
17. Stanley E. Anderson, “Verbal Inspiration Inductively Considered,” in Evangelicals and Inerrancy, ed. Ronald Youngblood (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 13-21. This paper originally was read before the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in 1955.
18. D. A. Carson, “Recent Developments in the Doctrine of Scripture,” in Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Academie, 1986), 23.
19. Roger Nicole, “The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture: J. D. G. Dunn versus B. B. Warfield (continued),” in Churchman vol. 98, no. 3 (1984): 210-11; quoted in Carson, 20.
20. Carson, 23.
21. John D. Woodbridge, “Some Misconceptions of the Impact of the Enlightenment on the Doctrine of Scripture,” in Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Academie, 1986), 241-70.
22. C. Fred Smith Norman Geisler, “Inductivism, Materialism and Rationalism: Bacon, Hobbes, and Spinoza,” in Norman Geisler, ed., Biblical Errancy: An Analysis of its Philosophical Roots (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 11-22.
23. Bascom, 204.
24. Montgomery, 61.
25. Swinburne, 85.
26. Sanday, 404.
27. Swinburne, 69-72.
28. Thomas V. Morris, Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).
29. Alvin C. Plantinga, “The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology,” in Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger, eds., Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 313.
30. Alvin C. Plantinga, “On Reformed Epistemology,” in Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger, eds., Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 332.
31. Plantinga, “Belief in God,” 99-100.
32. Plantinga, “Reformed Objection,” 311.
33. Swinburne, 85.
34. Ibid., 86.
35. Ibid., 87.
36. Ibid., 93-94.
37. Ibid., 74.

Does Classical Theism Deny God’s Immanence?

By C. Fred Smith

[C. Fred Smith is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Forth Worth, Texas, and Criswell College, Dallas, Texas.]

The concept of the openness of God has recently gained a foothold among some evangelical thinkers. Others who have sought to refute this view have done so by emphasizing God’s transcendent qualities. This article examines the criticism of classical theism by advocates of open theism and seeks to demonstrate that they portray classical theism inaccurately and that they have accepted a false understanding of God.

Overview of Open Theism

The movement’s foundational text is The Openness of God, published in 1994.[1] Most of what open theists have said since then amounts to a reiteration of arguments made in that book. Basic to open theism is the idea that God’s being is analogous to that of humans, and so God experiences reality in ways similar to the experiences of human beings. As evidence of this point Rice cites the fact that humankind is created in the image of God.[2] In addition Rice asserts that the incarnation of Jesus Christ shows that “God’s experience has something in common with certain aspects of human experience.”[3] This commonality is continuous in God’s experience both before and after the Incarnation.

A number of implications follow from this. God has intentions; He makes plans and sets goals for Himself and for His creation. These goals He “pursues over time and in different ways.”[4] For example He has often revealed in the Bible the plans and intentions He has for Israel.

In carrying out His plans and intentions, God reacts to His creation. In Genesis 6:6 God wished He had not made humankind, and Scripture elsewhere speaks of God repenting of certain of His actions or intentions.[5] This understanding, Rice asserts, makes prayer intelligible, for “intercession can influence God’s actions.”[6]

Rice contends, again based on the analogy of human experience, that if God acts, as Scripture so often asserts, then God must change, for “act involves change.”[7] Since any act human beings perform requires motion, and motion requires change, if only of position in space and time, then any analogous act that God might perform also requires change.

Also God is similar to humans in that He has feelings. He approves of things (Gen. 1), He becomes angry, jealous, joyful, and is filled with despair or hope. More importantly, according to Rice, God loves.[8] God is “deeply sensitive to the ones He loves.”[9] Love involves having feelings. People’s feelings are transient; their emotions come and go; they change. So, open theists reason, God’s experience must be the same.

In addition, according to the openness view, God lacks full knowledge. Open theists are fond of citing Genesis 22:12 in this regard, which records that God said to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God.” Again in Deuteronomy 13:3 God said He would test Israel to know whether they actually loved Him.[10] In Jeremiah 32:35 God said, “Nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination.” The implication here, according to open theism, is that God had no knowledge of what the people would do until they in fact did it. According to Jeremiah 26:3 and Ezekiel 12:3, open theists say God is ignorant of what people will do and He speculates on it.[11]

Sanders, an open theist, charges that classical theists have adopted a “philosophical vocabulary” to conceptualize God, rather than allowing the Bible to determine their understanding.[12] Open theists claim, on the other hand, that they are responsive to the God of the Bible.[13] They seem to suggest they have discovered something new, that the perspective they bring to theology is one that has been there all along, but that classical theism has been too myopic to see it.

They imply that classical theists have not treated the matter of God’s relationship with His creation honestly. Classical theists, Rice says, have truncated the understanding of God’s love and have given the world a concept of God that makes prayer incoherent and that stifles the possibility of a rich and dynamic relationship with God. Classical theists, according to Rice, want to “safeguard God’s transcendence by denying divine sensitivity.”[14]

Classical Theism

However, the credibility of open theists’ criticisms of classical theism does not hold up when one examines a representative sample of traditional theologians. Classical orthodox theology has always recognized that transcendence and immanence are both aspects of God’s being and of His relationship to creation. In doing so, Carl Henry directly replies to the idea that the God of traditional orthodoxy is captive to ideas that come from Greek philosophy. He states that God, as transcendent, is above and beyond His creation,[15] and “both transcends the created universe and is pervasively immanent in it.”[16] He notes that “biblical characterizations of divine transcendence are in no sense vague or conjectural, but clearly and concretely depict God’s activity and relationships as creator, preserver and governor of the cosmos and man…. No exposition of divine transcendence and immanence is therefore to proceed on the basis of data sealed within nature and man, for its decisive content must issue from what God discloses about himself, about his own character and deeds.”[17]

Neoorthodox theologian Karl Barth refers to God as transcendent over creation, while also recognizing the fact of divine immanence. With a little more subtlety than Henry, Barth asserts that “God’s works are bound to Him but He is not bound to them.”[18] Donald Bloesch, like Henry, refuted the idea that classical theism’s concept of God is derived from Greek thought. He denies that God is the unmoved and “unmovable” God of Greek philosophy, but in the same context he rejects the idea of “a God who is ever changing.”[19] Bloesch asserts that God is not the unmoved Mover of Greek thinking, and that God is not some “ideal of pure reason.”[20] Instead God is actively involved in creating and ordering His universe, while at the same time He is immutable.[21]

Classical theism sees God as both transcendent and immanent. In no way can it be upheld that traditional theology has removed God from involvement with His creation. At the same time classical theism strongly affirms divine transcendence, including omniscience, in the traditional sense. Some theologians treat these matters as pure mystery, while others attempt to reconcile transcendence and immanence.

Theologians in different time periods and in different theological traditions have long accepted both the transcendent and immanent aspects of God’s being. Augustine recognized the tensions between the two aspects, but he suggested that God’s emotions are a matter of anthropomorphism.[22] In a similar vein John Wesley recognized that biblical references to God’s actions in the world, such as “repenting” and “intending,” are “expressions after the manner of men, and must be understood so as not to reflect upon God’s immutability or felicity…. The change was in men, not in God.”[23]

In the nineteenth century a number of theologians from different perspectives addressed these concerns. Charles G. Finney, for example, strongly affirmed the foreknowledge of God. “He must foreknow all events by a law of necessity.”[24] God knows these things “necessarily and eternally”[25] because the concept of omniscience, Finney said, entails foreknowledge. Hasker, however, challenges this point by arguing that God’s omniscience does not include His knowledge of the future,[26] for it would disallow human freedom. But Finney recognized that people have significant freedom, and that because of His immanence a dynamic relationship between humans and God is possible.

Charles Hodge wrote that God is “infinite in his being and perfections” in the same context in which he asserted that God is “capable of fellowship with man.”[27] Holding these two concepts in tension was no problem for Hodge, nor did he ignore the fact that God interacts with His creation.

At the end of the nineteenth century A. H. Strong was quite explicit in delineating the twin aspects of transcendence and immanence. God’s absolute attributes, he said, pertain to “the inner being of God,” and His transitive or relative attributes “are involved in God’s relations to the creation.”[28] God, he affirmed, is immutable; the “nature, attributes and will of God are exempt from all change.”[29] For Strong, as for many others, this is true because of God’s perfection.

Strong dealt directly with a matter that is often implicit in open theism, though it is sometimes expressed directly, namely, the relationship of God to time.[30] Strong affirmed that God’s attribute of eternity means that He is “free from all succession of time,” and that God’s eternity “contains in itself the cause of time.”[31] God, Strong asserted, is not in time, but time is in God. Regarding God’s having plans and intentions, Strong anticipated this argument by stating that “while there is logical succession in God’s thoughts there is no chronological succession.”[32] God “sees past and future as vividly as he sees the present.”[33]

For Strong, God’s apprehension of the future is a part of His knowledge. Like His other attributes, God’s knowledge is “free from all imperfections.” Since this is true, “God’s knowledge is immediate … simultaneous … distinct … true … [and] eternal.”[34]

Strong dealt realistically with the scriptural teachings that ascribe change to God. He explained them in three ways. Some, he said, are “illustrations of the varied methods in which God manifests his immutable truth and wisdom in creation.” Others are “anthropomorphic representations of the revelation of God’s unchanging attributes,” and still others are “executions in time of purposes eternally existing in the mind of God.” [35]

While affirming God’s transcendence, Strong also taught that God is involved with creation, interacts with it, and has with it an ongoing relationship that is every bit as strong as that delineated by open-theism proponents. Strong saw transcendence and immanence as two aspects of God’s nature that are in tension. God “is in no way limited to the universe or confined to the universe; he is transcendent as well as immanent.”[36]

Another theologian who bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is E. Y. Mullins. He emphasized the role of religious experience as a basis for authenticating the truth of Christianity. Thus he believed that God interacts with His creation. However, Mullins pointed out that God is immutable and yet not “immobile.”[37]

Mullins spoke of God’s natural attributes—immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and eternity—as those that relate to His unchanging character. God’s moral attributes—love, holiness, truth, and righteousness—are the ones by which He relates to His creation.[38]

In the doctrine of election God’s natural attribute of omniscience and His moral attribute of love come together. In His omniscience He foresees the future in exact detail,[39] and His election is based on His foreknowledge.[40] God’s motivation in election is love. He wants everyone to repent, but He knows who will and who will not. Thus God’s moral and natural attributes are seen together.[41]

In the twentieth century, theologians have treated the matter of God’s relationship to creation similarly. Louis Berkhof recognized that “there are many passages of Scripture which seem to ascribe change to God.”[42] When Scripture speaks of God “repenting, changing His intention and altering His relation to sinners when they repent,” Berkhof wrote, “we should remember that this is only an anthropopathic way of speaking.”[43] Berkhof insisted that while there is change around God, and changes in the relationships other beings might have with God, “there is no change in His Being, His attributes, His purpose, His motives of action or His promises.”[44] Berkhof did not ignore the Scriptures that are so important to open theists. He willingly and seriously considered them, without abandoning classical theism. One difference may be that, unlike Mullins and Strong, Berkhof did seek to resolve the problem.

Lewis Sperry Chafer dealt with similar matters as well. He asserted the traditional understanding of God as “immutable” in that He can neither increase nor decrease in any capacity. Growth, change, or improvement of any kind are foreign to the nature of God.[45] His knowledge of the future is not simply knowledge of contingencies or possibilities, for to God “things of the future are as real as though past.”[46]

Chafer recognized the tension inherent in divine foreknowledge and human free will, a subject of great importance to open theists. He asserted, however, that God’s knowledge “implies no element of necessity or determinism, though it does imply certainty.”[47] Human actions are still free and uncoerced.[48] Such an understanding of the problem, he pointed out, is both rational and biblical.

Chafer dealt with those Scriptures that say that God repented or changed His mind about things. Chafer believed these statements must be interpreted in light of others that say that God does not change His mind (Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29). Chafer stated that “God, though immutable, is not immobile.”[49] God deals differently with the righteous than with the wicked, and yet He is unchanging. “The sun is not fickle or partial because it melts the wax but hardens the clay—the change is not in the sun but in the objects it shines upon.”[50]

Here transcendence and immanence are brought together. God “repents” only in that the harm He would have done to the wicked is stayed because they repented. In this regard Chafer cited the case of Jonah and the Ninevites, a favorite of open theists.[51] Chafer saw this as evidence not that God changes, but that God knew what would happen. God’s foreknowledge is the basis of His actions. Transcendent, God knows future events. Immanent, He used this knowledge in His call to Jonah, in moving the fish to swallow him, and in moving the hearts of the Ninevites to lead them to repentance. For Chafer, as for other evangelical theologians, God’s immanence and transcendence are parallel and neither one threatens the other. Also God’s gift of human free will is not abrogated by the seeming tensions between these aspects of God’s nature.

Neoorthodox theologians have discussed this problem too. Emil Brunner recognized that God is transcendent in that He “is infinitely high, above all the limitations of space,” and yet He may be “near” or “far.” Such language of nearness and distance, Brunner asserts, describes God’s “real presence” even though God is not limited by space.[52] God, according to Brunner, “involves himself in the temporal,” and yet He is unchangeable.[53]

In discussing God’s relationship to time, Brunner wrote that “God’s nature is not eternity, but God’s nature is sovereignty, which as such is not related to time. The eternity of God—this simply means His lordship over the time which He has created.”[54] This prevents any notion that God is changeable. “The idea of a ‘God who becomes’ is a mythological and unreal idea … everything would founder in the morass of relativism. We can measure nothing by changing standards; changeable norms are no norms at all…. The God of the Bible is eternally unchangeable.”[55]

In discussing God’s “repenting” Brunner acknowledged, as do open theists, that this reveals that God interacts with the world, but Brunner asserted that this does not mean His basic essence changes.[56]

Brunner was willing to live with mystery. “The biblical revelation confronts us with this tension, namely: that we may say of God that He is the Sovereign Lord, from whose will all proceeds, and also, that He is the merciful God who hears prayer.”[57] As noted earlier, this is a long way from the static unmoved Mover of Greek philosophy, which the open theists accuse many evangelicals of believing. Such a picture is a caricature of what classical theism has always taught.

Evangelical theologians of the late twentieth century have also been explicit in maintaining the tension between divine transcendence and immanence. Henry attacks the idea that if God were transcendent He would be “incomprehensible or unknowable.”[58]

Bloesch has also made clear that there is nothing unbiblical about saying God knows the future and also relates to His creation. “God knows the future,” he says, “before it happens.”[59] For Bloesch God’s knowledge is a matter of His omnipotence. He cites Psalm 147:5, “His understanding is infinite.”[60] Bloesch maintains that “the idea of a God of sovereign power” is an essential part of biblical Christianity.[61]

More recently James Leo Garrett Jr. has affirmed that both transcendence and immanence are essential aspects of God’s relationship to creation. “God’s constancy, or changelessness, is consistent,” he maintains, “with biblical anthropomorphisms.”62 Garrett does not shrink from recognizing the tension inherent in the biblical revelation. “God transcends and is not limited by time, but God relates to the temporal order.”63 In addition, seeking to reconcile the tension, Garrett offers the interesting proposition that God’s “nearness and distance can have non-spatial meanings. God’s distance and presence can be in hiddenness and in revelation, in wrath or in grace.”[64]

This too demonstrates that evangelical theologians have not replaced the God of the Bible with a static God who cannot relate to His creation. One need not choose, as open theists suggest, between a God with whom believers can relate dynamically and a God who is over all aspects of His creation.[65]

Conclusion

The current discussion on open theism parallels, in one way, the Christological discussions in the early church. The early church knew that the Scriptures teach that Christ was both fully human and fully God. But some believers, emphasizing His deity, said He only appeared to be human (Docetism). Others emphasized His humanity and deemphasized His deity. In answer to these and other heresies the church adopted the formula of the two natures of Christ, holding them in tension.

The church faces a similar situation today in this matter of open theism versus classical theism. Traditionally, as has been shown here, theologians have held to both the transcendence of God and His immanence. Some have tried to explain the two while others have been willing to live with the mystery. Open theism has emphasized God’s immanence, to the neglect of His transcendence. As Henry points out, “one exaggeration, whether of transcendence or of immanence encourages another by way of reaction and counter-reaction.”[66] Theologians who defend classical theism must be careful not to fall into this trap. As Henry adds, a “distorted emphasis on transcendence that erases all significance for God in the natural world is just as faulty as a radical divine immanence that erodes the distinction between the infinite and the finite.”[67]

Just as the early church avoided the trap of asserting the deity of Christ at the expense of His humanity or vice versa, theologians today must avoid the trap of asserting transcendence at the expense of immanence. Openness theism is a morass of myopic thinking, exaggeration, false claims, and incoherence. But orthodox theologians should continue holding transcendence and immanence in tension, accepting the fact that there is an element of mystery in the Godhead, knowing that believers can and do have a living, vital dynamic relationship with the transcendent God who knows the future perfectly and yet who responds to His people in a variety of ways including answering prayer.

Notes

1. Clark Pinnock et al., The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994). Other writings include Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000); John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998); and Clark Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001). Books written in response to open theism include Norman L. Geisler et al., The Battle for God: Responding to the Challenge of Neotheism (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2001); Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001); Douglas Wilson, ed., Bound Only Once: The Failure of Open Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001); and John M. France, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2001).
2. Richard Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” in The Openness of God, 39.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 37.
5. Clark Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” in The Openness of God, 117.
6. Rice, 29.
7. Ibid., 36.
8. Ibid., 18.
9. Ibid., 22. Rice overstates the case, however, when he says, “Love is what it means to be God” (ibid., 19). He makes this attribute foundational to his understanding of God. However, there is no reason for exalting love to this level of preeminence. One might as easily say that another of God’s attributes, such as holiness or justice, is what it means to be God. It is preferable, however, to recognize that no one attribute fully represents God’s character.
10. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” 121–22.
11. Ibid., 122-23.
12. John Sanders, “Historical Considerations,” in The Openness of God, 72.
13. Ibid., 59, 100.
14. Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” 42–43.
15. Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority (Waco, TX: Word, 1984), 6:35.
16. Ibid., 36-37.
17. Ibid.
18. Karl Barth, The Doctrine of God, vol. 2 of Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: Clark, 1957), 26.
19. Donald Bloesch, God, Authority, and Salvation, vol. 1 of Essentials of Evangelical Theology (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), 28. Bloesch is responding to Hartshorne here, but it is interesting how his words anticipate the charge of open theists a few years later.
20. Ibid., 25.
21. Ibid., 27.
22. Augustine, Enchiridion, in Books for the Ages Software Library, Discovery Edition, version 2.0 (Albany, OR: Ages Digital Library, 1996), 10.33.
23. John Wesley, Notes on the Whole Bible, in Books for the Ages Software Library, Discovery Edition, version 2.0 (Albany, OR: Ages Digital Library, 1996), 55.
24. Charles G. Finney, Lectures in Systematic Theology, ed. J. H. Fairchild (1878; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 526.
25. Ibid., 542.
26. William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in The Openness of God, 151.
27. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1811; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 1:380.
28. Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publishing Society, 1907), 247.
29. Ibid., 257.
30. Pinnock explicitly says that God experiences time in the same way humans do (“Systematic Theology,” 120). Many open theists leave this as something of an unexpressed outcome or implication of their thinking.
31. Strong, Systematic Theology, 275.
32. Ibid., 276.
33. Ibid., 277.
34. Ibid., 283.
35. Ibid., 258.
36. Ibid., 254.
37. E. Y. Mullins, The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression (Philadelphia: Roger Williams, 1917), 223.
38. Ibid., 222-43.
39. Ibid., 225.
40. Ibid., 343. Mullins also emphasizes human free will in salvation, and he recognizes the role of human witness in evangelism. He does not try to reconcile this with God’s foreknowledge, being content to hold these in tension.
41. Ibid., 265-76.
42. L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1939), 59. He cites Exodus 32:10–14; Psalm 18:25–26; Proverbs 11:20; 12:22; and Jonah 3:10.
43. Ibid., 59.
44. Ibid.
45. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary, 1948; reprint, 8 vols. in 4, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1993), 1:217.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., 1:194.
48. Ibid., 1:196.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 1:218.
51. Ibid., 1:219.
52. Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, vol. 1 of Dogmatics, trans. Olive Wyon (London: Lutterworth, 1949), 258.
53. Ibid., 268.
54. Ibid., 270.
55. Ibid., 269.
56. Ibid., 268-69.
57. Ibid., 269. “A God who is constantly changing is not a God whom we can worship. He is a mythological Being for whom we can only feel sorry” (ibid.).
58. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 39.
59. Ibid., 29.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid., 24.
62. James Leo Garrett Jr., Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, 2d ed. (North Richland Hills, TX: Bibal, 2000), 1:250.
63. Ibid., 248.
64. Ibid., 231.
65. On the question of whether God “changes His mind” see Robert B. Chisholm Jr., “Does God ‘Change His Mind’?” Bibliotheca Sacra 152 (October-December 1995): 38-99. See also Robert A. Pyne and Stephen R Spencer, “A Critique of Free-Will Theism,” Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (July-October 2001), 275–77.
66. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 36.
67. Ibid.

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Training You Can Trust

By Mark L. Bailey

[Mark L. Bailey is President and Professor of Bible Exposition, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

This is an edited version of the address Dr. Bailey gave at his inauguration as fifth president of Dallas Theological Seminary on October 19, 2001.]

The coat of arms of the Fitzgerald family of Ireland shows the figure of a baboon carrying a baby, and underneath is the Latin motto, Non Immemer Beneficii. The story connected with this strange device says that long ago the father of the family was away at war and had left his household in the charge of one or two old retainers and some women servants. Suddenly the enemy came to the house, and all fled, forgetful of the little baby, the future heir of the family. A pet baboon noticed the baby, ran to the cradle, caught up the child, and ran with him to the top of the abbey steeple, holding him out for the people to see. The servants were all in terror, but the baboon carried the baby down safely to the ground. When the child’s father returned, he felt that he owed a debt of gratitude to the beast that had saved the heir of his house. So he set the monkey in the center of his knightly shield and placed beneath the motto, “Not unmindful of his kindness.”[1]

While I do not have such a family crest, I am not unmindful of God’s kindness in my life in bringing me to this moment. As I step into the role of president of Dallas Theological Seminary, I do so with a sense of honor and humility. I am honored that the board, in consultation with the administration, faculty, staff, and alumni, would believe that it is the will of God that I should serve the Lord in this way. I am also humbled by the outstanding legacy of leadership that threads its way through the years of our Seminary’s history.

Our heritage is observable in our presidents, faculty, and faithful alumni who serve the cause of Christ all around the globe. God has used the support and endorsement of our previous three living presidents to confirm my understanding that He has been behind this appointment. I express my heartfelt thanks for the encouragement and support of my esteemed colleagues on the faculty and staff.

In October 1900 John Knox McLean, president of Pacific Theological Seminary, Oakland, California, spoke at the Conference on Congregational Seminaries. He entitled his address, “The Presidency of Theological Seminaries.” In that address he noted the difficulty of a faculty member moving into the role of president. If that happens, “What will most probably result? Resentment on the part of fellow professors, corporate friction, personal irritation, all-around discord, and general chaos. He is more than likely to find himself a Joseph among his brethren, his best intentions misconceived and thwarted, left alone, stripped of his garment of distinction, in a pit, and with reason to count himself fortunate if he be not given over to the Ishmaelites or other Philistines.”[2]

Thankfully I have never felt beaten, abandoned, or sold into the hands of a Midianite band. For the encouragement I have received from the previous presidents, faculty, staff, and alumni, I am deeply appreciative.

To the members of Faith Bible Church of DeSoto, Texas, and especially to the staff, elders, and deacons and their spouses, I am indebted for their love and support over these last six years—truly our most enjoyable pastoral ministry. A final word of thanks is due to the most important counselors I have had—my family. Without them I would never have made the journey of Christian service this far nor enjoyed it as much. To them I owe the most.

The two eternal verities other than God Himself are the Word of God and the people of God. Dallas Seminary focuses on these core values of truth and relationships. Tonight and tomorrow night I want to address the proposition, training you can trust equips leaders you can follow. This evening I will direct my remarks to “training you can trust” and tomorrow evening I will speak on “leaders you can follow.”[3]

We are living in an age of shifting hermeneutical theories, intruding cultural philosophies, evaporating social ethics, competing worldviews, and ongoing threats of global instability. How can we best serve our generation in the task of theological training?

John Hannah, distinguished professor of historical theology at Dallas Seminary, identifies the challenge of theological understanding in our modern culture.

We live in a world where personality has more street value than character, where psychological wholeness is more valued than spiritual authenticity. We find ourselves in a world where pleasures are embraced without moral norms or a sense of social responsibility. Christian truth is attacked not so much for its particular assertions as for its fundamental claim that there is such a thing as binding, objective truth. The quest for truth has been replaced by the preoccupation with pleasure and entertainment. Thus we live in a world of the therapeutic and the psychological, where people are engaged in an endless pursuit of self-fulfillment and entitlement.[4]

In Pisidian Antioch, Paul stated that David “served the purpose of God in his own generation” (Acts 13:36). My prayer for the students, staff, and faculty of Dallas Seminary is that our school will always be characterized by the words, “they served the purpose of God in their generation.”

I would like to suggest six critical components that make up a trustworthy equipping environment. “Training you can trust” must be biblical in its authority, theological in its focus, spiritual in its nature, ethical in its effect, relational in its context, and missional in its purpose.

Biblical in Its Authority

To ascribe authority to Scripture is to acknowledge that it is the Word of God. What has been called the “formal principle of the Reformation,” summarized in the phrase sola Scriptura, affirms that only those beliefs and practices that rest firmly on scriptural foundations can be regarded as binding on Christians.

The commitment to the priority and authority of Scripture is an integral element of the evangelical tradition at Dallas Seminary. Scripture remains authoritative for the evangelical, whether a person accepts it as such or not. For example the truthfulness of the historical and objective sacrifice of Christ is not rendered untrue simply because some do not believe that God sent His Son as the provision for our salvation.

Our commitment to the Word of God seems foolish to many in our increasingly secular culture and even among many professing believers who are enamored with that culture. R. Albert Mohler Jr. speaks to this point when he says, “To surrender this ground is to surrender the faith itself.”[5]

Alister McGrath aptly echoes this sentiment. “The only way Christianity can free itself from the subservience to cultural fashion is to ensure that it is firmly grounded in a resource that is independent of that culture. The traditional evangelical approach is to acknowledge the supreme authority of Scripture as a theological and spiritual resource, and the contemporary task as interpreting and applying this resource to the situation of today. Evangelicalism thus addresses today’s culture without needing to become trapped within that culture.”[6]

The two most significant roles of Scripture are to reveal truth and refute error. The first speaks of the ability of Scripture to convey with divine objectivity the truth God has communicated. The second provides the answer to the ever-present tendencies of subjectivity on the part of its interpreters.

We must not confuse meaning with interpretation. The Bible is true whether we interpret it correctly or not. Postmoderns argue that the reader determines the meaning of a book. But that cannot be the case with the Bible. The meaning of the text of Scripture cannot remain endlessly open to the mental wordplays of its readers. The exclusivity of Jesus is offensive to postmoderns, but it is not negotiable for the faithful followers of Jesus Christ.

Everything around us is changing, and Dallas Seminary must change in some ways in order to stay effective—not change for the sake of changing, but for the very sake of fulfilling our mission. However, what must never change is our commitment to the truth of the inerrant Scriptures. One of our supreme commitments is to hold firm to the Word of God in a world of social change.

Theological in Its Focus

By theological focus I mean that the focus of our lives, our studies, our service, and our love should be directed toward God. In Psalm 96 the psalmist exhorted everyone to sing a new song of praise to God, to proclaim the message of salvation, to declare the glory of God to the nations, to fear God who is superior to all, to ascribe to God what is due to Him, to worship Him in recognition of His greatness and holiness, to tremble before Him in humility, to say to all the nations that God reigns, and to rejoice and be glad since God will one day execute justice in all the earth.

Ronald B. Allen, professor of Bible exposition here at Dallas Seminary, writes, “For more than seventy-five years Dallas Seminary has had a constant, overarching emphasis in its theology on the glory of God. God’s glorious work in the redemption of fallen humanity is not an end in itself; it is part of the larger picture of God’s work in eternity, which centers in the display of His transcendent glory.”[7]

This is obvious in the doxology in Ephesians 1:3–14, in which each stanza climaxes with the phrase “to the praise of the glory of His grace” or “to the praise of His glory.” Thus the celebration of our salvation results in the expression of worship.

John Frame relates these two themes of redemption and glory in this way: “Redemption is the means; worship is the goal. In one sense worship is the whole point of everything. It is the purpose of history, the goal of the Christian story. Worship is not one segment of the Christian life among others. Worship is the entire Christian life, seen as a priestly offering to God.”[8]

As Gordon Borror wrote, “The lesson which seems to require constant rediscovery is the fact that worship is not primarily a state of art but rather a state of the heart. By state of the heart we mean the driving desire behind the worship life of the believer.”[9]

Theological focus must be both doxological and Christological. “Doxological” means that the focus of our lives should be to know God better than we know anyone else and to love God more than we love anything or anyone else. This is fitting in light of God’s goal for human history, according to 1 Corinthians 15:28. When Jesus has established His millennial kingdom, “then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.”

“Christological” means that we honor and glorify the Son in all we do. “The Father … has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father” (John 5:22–23). Thus the theological focus is the glory of God and the glory of His Son. In Jesus’ high priestly prayer He defined eternal life in doxological and Christological terms. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).

Spiritual in Its Nature

McGrath warns, “If there is any long-term threat to the future of evangelicalism, it may well be the lack of attention to spirituality.”[10] By speaking of spirituality in our training I mean the total integration of faith into everyday life. As Luther advocated long ago, spirituality is life in the world oriented toward God rather than life undertaken in withdrawal from the world. Jesus taught that we are to be in the world but not of it (John 17:15–16). Today the church too often withdraws itself from the world and yet it has become more and more like the world. Worldliness undermines our public witness for Christ. As developed especially in the Pauline Epistles, the biblical answer to the world, the flesh, and the devil is a dependent life lived by the power of the Spirit. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). The ministry of the Holy Spirit is essential for living, service, and worship.

The Spirit is also essential if our witness for Christ is to be effective. As Paul wrote, “My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:4–5).

McGrath challenges believers to rediscover true spirituality in light of the great truths of Scripture. “The time has come to throw off the cult of dependency and move toward the development and rediscovery of spiritualities that will complement the great evangelical emphases on the sufficiency of the Scriptures, the centrality of the death of Christ, the need for personal conversion, and the evangelistic imperative.”[11]

Too many students today begin their studies as evangelicals and then, because of what they perceive as a lack of help in deepening their understanding of God through prayer and meditation, they turn to ritual and tradition in nonevangelical circles. 

John Waterhouse, founder and publishing director of Albatross Books, decries “the loss of spiritual energy, originality and creativity.”[12] As a result we turn to alternative spiritualities from sources less than orthodox and powerlessly disconnected from the Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God was sent by Christ to indwell and empower each believer with that same power that raised Jesus from the dead.

It is time to rediscover the true source of our power, to recognize that it is not rationalism, mysticism, emotionalism, traditionalism, or asceticism. As Paul wrote in Colossians 2:23, these have no power against the flesh. As people of faith we need to experience life in the Spirit that is rooted in a personal identification with the cross of Christ and the Christ of the cross.

Spirituality must be related to our worship of God. A theological vacuity exists in much of evangelical worship today. The culture of style and entertainment has supplanted biblical concepts of worship and God’s call to the church to be holy.[13] Worship has become far too user-friendly and far too little fear-inducing. Styles of worship must minister across the generations and encourage the new in Christ as well as the mature in Christ—from the wee ones to the wise ones.

“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). God the Father is actively seeking such worshipers (v. 23).

Ethical in Its Effect

A few years ago Billy Graham was asked to reflect on evangelicalism’s past and future. Among the factors he advanced as keys to evangelical success in the coming years is obedience. “Few things discredit the gospel in the eyes of the world more quickly than moral and ethical failure by those claiming to follow Christ.”[14] Those who serve the Lord in leadership, and especially those who handle God’s Word, are held to a higher level of accountability than others who do not share that responsibility.

In the twelfth century Hugo of St. Victor linked disciplined thinking with moral self-scrutiny as two essentials in the preparation and contemplation of serving God. Such ethics are both personal and corporate.[15]

A sterling example of this was William Wilberforce, who served as a member of the English Parliament in the late eighteenth century. He had become a Christian through the influence of some of John Wesley’s early followers. Wilberforce’s Christian beliefs infused him with a strong sense of purpose. He found his mission in life sparked by his outrage over slave trade. His efforts to end slave trading began in 1787. Year after year his attempts in Parliament were defeated. Yet decades later, when Wilberforce was on his deathbed, slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. His personal ethical response was used by God to alter a nation’s ethical direction.[16]

If we are to be salt in a decaying world and light in a dark world, we must respond correctly to the revelation of God. Moody has been quoted as saying, “The Bible was not written for our information, but for our transformation.”

Such an ethical obligation rests on Dallas Seminary, especially in light of our biblical eschatology. The apostles Peter and John both exhorted believers to lead lives of holiness in light of the Lord’s return. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:10–11). “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. But we know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:2–3).

Relational in Its Context

In a recent Christianity Today special edition on the role of seminaries one academician offered the following apologetic for the value of the seminary. “Seminaries undergird the mission of the church by the interrelated specifics of guarding the purity of the church’s mission, maintaining doctrinal purity (i.e. protecting against heresy), providing the church with sound leadership, shielding the church from negative cultural influences, renewing the church’s life and mission, and providing spiritual formation for church leaders.”[17]

We at Dallas Seminary must hold the following in proper tension for maximum effectiveness. (1) We must pursue the investigation of truth and the integrity of relationships. (2) We must balance our theology and our practice. (3) We must focus on the maturation of character and the acquisition of ministry skills. (4) We must expand partnerships between the Seminary and churches and parachurch ministries. (5) We must enhance the fellowship and mentoring of faculty and students. (6) We must improve the appreciation and coordination of the faculty and staff. (7) We need to take advantage of the unique opportunities that arise at the intersection of Christianity with culture. (8) We need to improve the dialogues within dispensationalism and in the broader evangelical world. (9) We should seek to penetrate the arenas of broader academia with the evangelical faith.

To be both biblical and relevant means that we must build bridges of relationships over which the truth can travel. We should hold our convictions with grace. But God has called us to be salt and light in the world in order to influence others both with the truth we believe and the manner in which we live. In so doing God will be glorified by our lives.

Missional in Its Purpose

Bennis and Warren write, “To choose a direction, a leader must first have developed a mental image of a possible and desirable future state of the organization. This image, which we call vision, may be as vague as a dream or as precise as a goal or mission statement. The critical point is that a vision articulates a view of a realistic, credible, attractive future for the organization, a condition that is better in some important ways than now exists.”[18]

Jesus said, “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). By imitating Christ one’s life is changed. By following Christ one learns His methods and motives for ministry. By identifying with Christ the believer is called to the centrality of the Cross. And training by Christ results in obeying truths that will impact our lives.

The mission of Dallas Seminary is to prepare men and women for ministry as godly servant-leaders in the body of Christ worldwide. By blending instruction in the Scriptures from our doctrinal perspective with practical training in ministry skills, we seek to produce graduates to do the work of evangelism, to edify believers, and to equip others by proclaiming and applying God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

A good seminary education can provide an environment for biblical, theological, and ministry training, while allowing for personal reflection under the direction and encouragement of highly skilled and caring mentors that few people can find outside the seminary experience.

We at Dallas Seminary are committed to academic excellence with reliance on the inerrant Bible and within a context of spiritual nurture and modeling to assure preparation for effective ministry to a lost and hurting world. Our goal is for our graduates to reach people with the gospel of grace and help them mature spiritually, while cultivating their God-given gifts so that the church of Jesus Christ will be healthy and reproductive around the globe.

The unfortunate emergence of a purely cerebral education must be countered by a continued commitment to evangelism, an insistence that theology be related to pastoral practice, and an appreciation of the personal aspects of faith. We face the twin extremes of evangelical rationalism and unthinking emotionalism. My desire is that our Dallas Seminary theologians be evangelists and our evangelists be theologians, and that our scholars be pastors and our pastors be scholars.

May God help us to serve His purposes well in our generation. And as disciples instructed by Jesus, when we have done all we were commanded to do we should say, in the humility of heart enjoined by our Lord, “we are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done” (Luke 17:10). Non Immemer Beneficii! May we never be unmindful of His kindness and the grace that enables us to serve our sovereign Lord.

Notes

1. Aquilla Webb, “Gratitude a Debt,” in 1001 Illustrations for Pulpit and Platform (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1926), 97.
2. John Knox McLean, “The Presidency of Theological Seminaries. Should the Theological Seminary Have a Permanent President; And If So, What Should Be the Power and Duties of the Office?” quoted in Neely Dixon McCarter, The President as Educator: A Study of the Seminary Presidency (Atlanta: Scholars, 1996), 16.
3. The installation service on October 19, 2001, was followed by a celebration banquet the following evening, October 20.
4. John Hannah, Our Legacy: The History of Christian Doctrine (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001), 18.
5. R. Albert Mohler Jr., “Evangelical: What’s in a Name?” in The Coming Evangelical Crisis, ed. R. Kent Hughes et al. (Chicago: Moody, 1996), 39.
6. Alister McGrath, Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995), 63.
7. Ronald B. Allen, The Wonder of Worship, Swindoll Leadership Library (Nashville: Word, 2001), 21.
8. John M. Frame, Worship in Spirit and Truth (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1996), 11.
9. Ronald Allen and Gordon Borror, Worship: Rediscovering the Missing Jewel (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1982), 23.
10. McGrath, Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity, 137.
11. Ibid., 121-22.
12. John Waterhouse, “The Crisis of Evangelicalism,” On Being 18 (September 1992): 4-8.
13. Mohler, “Evangelical: What’s in a Name?” 40.
14. Billy Graham, “Standing Firm, Moving Forward,” Christianity Today, September 16, 1996, 15.
15. “Hugonis de Sancto Victore Didascalicon de Studio Legendi: A Critical Text,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance X (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1939).
16. For more information see David J. Vaughn, Statesman and Saint: The Principled Politics of William Wilberforce (Nashville: Cumberland, 2001).
17. Randy Frame, “Is Seminary Education Always Necessary for Pastoral Ministry?” Christianity Today, October 1, 2001, 84, 86.
18. Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, The Strategies for Taking Charge, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1996), 89.