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Geerhardus Vos – How Can the Bible be Infallible?

27 Mar

It is urged that the discovery of so considerable an amount of variableness and differentiation in the Bible must be fatal to the belief in its absoluteness and infallibility. If Paul has one point of view and Peter another, then each can be at best only approximately correct. This would actually follow, if the truth did not carry in itself a multiformity of aspects. But infallibility is not inseparable from dull uniformity. The truth is inherently rich and complex, because God is so Himself. The whole contention ultimately rests on a wrong view of God’s nature and His relation to the world, a view at bottom Deistical. It conceives of God as standing outside of His own creation and therefore having to put up for the instrumentation of His revealing speech with such imperfect forms and organs as it offers Him. The didactic, dialectic mentality of Paul would thus become a hindrance for the ideal communication of the message, no less than the simple, practical, untutored mind of Peter. From the standpoint of Theism the matter shapes itself quite differently. The truth having inherently many sides, and God having access to and control of all intended organs of revelation, shaped each one of these for the precise purpose to be served. The Gospel having a precise, doctrinal structure, the doctrinally-gifted Paul was the fit organ for expressing this, because his gifts had been conferred and cultivated in advance with a view to it.

~Geerhardus Vos~

Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Edinburgh, Scotland; The Banner of Truth Trust; 1975), p. 8.

Books by Geerhardus Vos

Herman Bavinck – Without It There is No Comfort in Life or Death

16 Feb

A historical, i.e., a human and fallible authority is not sufficient. Because religion pertains to our salvation and is related to our eternal interests, we can be satisfied with nothing less than divine authority. We must not only know that Scripture is the historical record of our knowledge of Christianity and that it most accurately contains and reproduces the original Christian ideas, but in religion we must know that Scripture is the word and truth of God. Without this certainty there is [for us] no comfort either in life or death. And not only does every Christian need this assurance, but the church itself as institution cannot dispense with this certainty either. For if a minister is not convinced of the divine truth of the word he preaches, his preaching loses all authority, influence, and power. If he is not able to bring a message from God, who then gives him the right to act on behalf of people of like nature with himself? Who gives him the freedom to put himself on a pulpit [a few feet] above them, to speak to them about the highest interests of their soul and life and even to procalim to them their eternal weal or woe? Who would dare, who would be able to do this, unless he has a word of God to proclaim? Both the Christian faith and Christian preaching require divine authority as their foundation. “Faith will totter if the authority of the divine Scriptures begins to waver.”

~Herman Bavinck~


Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 461.

Find more Bavinck resources here.

Biography of Herman Bavinck

Other Bavinck Quotes