7 December
1964 A.D. Dr. J. Barton Payne—Reformed Presbyterian
Church, Evangelical Synod; Lecture at
Wheaton College, IL
December 7: Dr. J. Barton Payne
Dr. J. Barton Payne joined the
faculty of Covenant Theological Seminary in 1972, having taught previously at
Bob Jones University, the Wheaton Graduate School of Theology, and Trinity
Evangelical Divinity School. He was an active member of the Evangelical Theological
Society, and an ardent student of Reformed Presbyterian history. A member of
Illiana Presbytery (RPCES) at the time of his death in 1979, he died in Japan
while on sabbatical, in a climbing accident on Mount Fuji.
The following sermon is drawn from
among Dr. Payne’s papers preserved at the PCA Historical Center.
“THE BIBLE SAYS . . .”
A Chapel Message at Wheaton
College, December 7, 1964
By Dr. J. Barton Payne
Standing in first place in
Wheaton’s statement of faith is the affirmation, “We believe in the Scriptures.
. . as verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writings.” The
importance of this commitment is clear: it places Wheaton squarely in the
position of historic evangelicalism, or, to put it negatively, in opposition to
the majority of organized Protestantism. Further, it gives to Wheaton a voice
of authority in today’s relativistic world, an assured knowledge of specific
truths that constitute distinctive criteria in the various academic
disciplines, for example, in anthropology, of man’s special creation; in
literature, of the prohibition of blasphemy; or in ethics, of absolute moral
purity. The question, then, to be considered is the desirability of such a
distinctive position. Why should we hold to the Bible, when the belief means
accepting a minority status in Christendom and the stigma of “fundamentalist
mentality” in the world as a whole. Put bluntly, Why do we do this? Is it worth
it?
Essentially, I feel there are
two different ways of approaching Scripture, or for that matter of approaching
life in general: either trust in oneself, the internal approach, or trust in
someone else, the external. Both are matters of trust, but it is a question as
to which approach provides the more plausible basis. Frankly, I believe the second
to be correct: the first can be dismissed as patently inadequate. For if a man
has no higher standard than himself, this results in the hopelessness that
characterizes so much of modern western thought. Life is beyond us; we are here
just a short time and tomorrow we die and are gone. Further, from what we can
deduce from our own natural observation, there is no hope beyond the grave.
Corliss Lamont’s realistic study, “The Illusion of Immortality,” has been
sobering to me, as it demonstrates that there can be no permanence, no
transcendent meaningfulness to my life that is, if all we have is our own,
internal judgment. Correspondingly, subjective criticisms, based on internal
judgments, of the Bible do not really bother me, even though this is the basis
on which most thinkers, and even Protestant thinkers, have rejected Biblical
infallibility. For example, Millar Burrows, in his Outline of Biblical Theology (pp. 44, 47),
begins by saying,
Much ink has been wasted . . .
in the effort to prove the detailed accuracy of the biblical narratives.
Actually they abound in errors . . . In the field of the physical sciences we
find at once that many mistaken and outmoded conceptions appear in the Bible .
. .
Archaeological research has
not, as is often boldly asserted, resolved difficulties or confirmed the narrative
step by step . . . Even in matters of religious concern the Bible is by no
means of uniform value.
But the whole approach of this
“I must pick and choose” position has been well answered by Louis Berkhof in
his Introductory Volume to
Systematic Theology (p.158)
The reasoning of those who
take this position often sounds very plausible. They do not want a theory of
inspiration that is imposed on Scripture from without, but one that is based on
an inductive study of the facts. But . . . it does not fit the case. According
to it man faces the phenomena of Scripture just as he faces the phenomena of
nature . . . which he must interpret and set forth in their true significance .
. . He places himself above Scripture as judge, and opposes to . . .
testimony . . . his own insight.
But to whose testimony then
can we go? Who is the “someone else” to trust? The response for the Christian
is clear, namely Peter’s in John 6:68
, “Lord; to whom shall we go: Thou hast the words of
eternal life.” Christ, who has been declared to be the Son of God with power by
His resurrection from the dead, is my answer to this world’s relativism. But it
is here, from the viewpoint of the external authority of Jesus Christ, that
Wheaton’s statement of faith in Scripture has, in recent days, received its
more serious challenge, from neo-orthodoxy; and I am here using the term
broadly for those who claim to be followers of Christ as king but who repudiate
the Bible as a divine, binding document. One of my former seminary professors
has called “the idea of inerrancy a ‘sub-Christian doctrine’ ” (Aaron Ungersma,
Handbook for Christian
Believers, p. 8l); and James D. Smart, in his recent volume, The Interpretation of Scripture,
has well expressed both neo-orthodoxy’s belief and its disbelief: (pp. l6l,
199; 205):
When Jesus Christ preaches and
teaches, His words are the very words of God, and in his actions God acts
. . . The word of Scripture had authority for him, but not in any slavish way …
He refused to be bound to every word . . . Once he is bound to an infallible
Scripture, his freedom is gone and with it his authority. Roman Catholicism
imprisons Jesus Christ within an infallible church; literal infallibilism
imprisons him within an infallible Scripture.
This is not to deny, nor does
Smart deny, that the Bible contains teachings on its own inerrancy. But this
alternative is proposed: forget these teachings; believe in the revelation of
God through Jesus Christ, but dispense with the objective inspiration of the
Bible.
Let us not, moreover,
underestimate the reality of this appeal: why not escape the restraints of
traditional orthodoxy, and yet retain the peace and integration of one who,
say, has come forward at a Billy Graham meeting and found eternal
meaningfulness in that “someone else” who is Christ? In particular I faced this
appeal this last spring while in archaeological work with Dr. Free in
Palestine. In my classes, students were enrolled from a number of different
colleges and seminaries; and hardly a session would pass without somebody’s
saying, “Why do I as a Christian have to believe XXXX, just because the Bible
says it?” These questions, moreover, were not without basis: much of the Old
Testament data is never mentioned by Christ. So finally, when time was available,
I got away under a tree on the mound of Dothan, and prayed, “Alright, Lord, I
am putting this matter up to Thee. I am willing to forget that I was ever a
biblical evangelical, but show me what Christ would have me do.” Then I went
through the complete records and words of Jesus asking myself, Does this really
require me to hold to the Bible? Let me share with you four conclusions that I
formulated.
1.
In Christ’s teachings it appears that the Bible
is accepted as a guide and determiner of belief and conduct. For example, in Matthew
12:7
, Christ’s statement, “If ye had known what this meaneth, I
will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless,”
assumes the authority of Hosea 6:6
on mercy and sacrifice; or, in Luke
16:29
, He says, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear
them.” This acceptance of Scripture particularly concerns its statements
concerning Himself, as He says in Mark l4:21, “The Son of man indeed goeth, as
it is written of Him.” But none of these situations require an inspired Old
Testament, simply that what men wrote down did, in these cases, correspond to
God’s will and to true revelation (not inspiration).
His often-quoted general statements about the
Bible can, if one tries, be limited to these same restricted evaluations, that
the Bible possesses authority in certain areas but not necessarily inerrancy.
For example, Matthew 5:18
, “One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the
law, till all be fulfilled” may mean merely that one ought to obey the law. Or John
10:35
, “And the Scripture cannot be broken,’’ may mean that the
Bible’s statements, in this instance on possible usage of the word “gods,” are
examples of good doctrine. Or Luke 24:25
, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the
prophets have spoken,” may mean, all that is about Himself, as verse 44, “All
things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the
prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me.”
But in statements of Christ involving specific
aspects of the Old Testament, I found situations in which I could not “weasel
out.” Let us note two areas: first, literary criticism. Christ’s phrase the
“Law of Moses,” as just cited, might signify, not Mosiac authorship, but simply
a book about Moses, like the Books of Samuel. But this is not true in other
cases. Psalm 110, for example, is consistently written off by modern criticism
as one of the later compositions in the Psalter. But in Mark 12:35-36
, “Jesus answered and said . . . How say the scribes that
Christ is the son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, Jehovah
said to my Lord, sit Thou on My right hand . . .” He believed, not simply that Psalm
110:1
was inspired, composed under guidance by the Holy Spirit,
but also that David himself wrote it. Even granting, for the argument, a
certain inaccuracy in Mark’s records, the Lord’s whole argument still depends
on the Davidic composition of this psalm. Again, in Matthew 24:15
He stated, “When ye . . . shall see the abomination of
desolation, spoken by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place . . .” But I
do not know of a single neo-orthodox critic who believes that the man Daniel
really said these words, or that they referred to matters that were still
future when Christ spoke, in about A.D. 30. Second, historical criticism. In Luke
4:24-27
Jesus said:
No prophet is accepted in his
own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the
days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when
great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elijah
sent, save unto Zarephath, a city of Sidon, into a woman that was a widow. And
many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them
was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian.
Is He just quoting the well
known Old Testament “stories”? On the contrary, He confirms the historical
validity of even details in the record of Matthew 11:41
and Luke 11:50-51
. Similarly, Christ accepted as fact so-called mythical or
legendary events that Scripture associated with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel,
Noah’s flood, the destruction of Sodom, Jonah in the fish and Nineveh’s
repenting, as well as others.
We must face it: no negative
critic can maintain today’s usually accepted conclusions and still find
correspondence with the mind of Christ on these points.
The affirmations of Christ, as noted above,
then develop necessarily into conclusions of total Biblical inerrancy. That is,
if the Bible be accepted to contain valid doctrine, then one very clear
doctrine is its teaching about its own full inspiration. Or, let us note the
implications of one of the above cited specific teachings, on Adam and Eve. In Matthew 19:4-5
, He stated:
Have ye not read, that He with
made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, For this cause
shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife…
quoting Genesis
2:24
. But while in Genesis this verse is simply part of the
Mosaic narrative, Christ introduces it as a statement by the Creator:
that is, for Him, the words of Genesis are equivalent to the very words
of God. The only alternative to such a conclusion is to assume that the Gospel
writers have misrepresented Him and do not depict the actual mind of Christ.
The previously quoted neo-orthodox writer, James Smart, for example, is forced
to a number of such reservations, and says,
Already in the Gospels there
are perceptible indications of the tendency to attribute to Jesus in his
earthly life both omniscience and omnipotence (e.g., his power over waves and
storms and his ability to tell the Samaritan woman the story of her marriages.
(Interpretation of Scripture,
p. l62)
In other words, when
neo-orthodoxy claims that “in Christ’s actions God acts,” it may do so while
avoiding the evidence, shifting on internal, subjective grounds, away from the
supernaturalistic beliefs of those who were closest to the events. Smart would
then cover his procedure by introducing an over-emphasis in the other direction
which his evangelical opponents do not claim, namely the idea of omniscience
for the incarnate Jesus. There is the one known case, Mark
13:32
, in which our Lord disclaimed omniscience, about the time
of His second coming. But His own words made this limitation clear; and when He
does commit Himself in speaking He possesses truthfulness (John
3:34
). To take issue with Christ involves more than His lack of
omniscience; it involves His falsehood. Hence Sigmund Mowinckel, a leading
advocate of modern Scandinavian Biblical criticism, in his study The Old Testament as Word of God
(p.74), seems to have faced the implications of Christ’s Biblical views more
squarely, when he concludes,
If it is true that .Jesus as a
man was one of us except that he had no sin (Heb.
4:15
), then he also shared our imperfect insight into all
matters pertaining to the world of sense . . . He knew neither more nor less
than most people of his class in Galilee or Jerusalem concerning history . . .
geography, or the history of biblical literature.
Here the issue is clear cut.
Biblical criticism inevitably entails criticism of Christ. When I got up from
under that tree at Dothan, it was with renewed conviction that the consistent
follower of Jesus must be a humble follower of the inscripturated word, just as
his Master was. Billy Graham’s message of peace, assurance, and power is
inseparably associated with his confidence in what “the Bible says.” And if
Wheaton ever exchanges its Biblical commitment for status in Protestantism or
for a mentality acceptable in the world as a whole, it will have done so in
opposition to Christ and His kingdom.
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