Introduction

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:1-3)

Alongside thankfulness (1 Thess 5:16-18), the obtaining and meditating on the knowledge of God is one of the core wills of God for your life. He came to dwell among us (John 1:14) to reveal Himself to us (Colossians 1:15-19), but we've not been left with actions without description. God moved men by the Spirit (2 Peter 1:21) for millennia for you to know Him. God has given us tremendous gifts, and sent commentators to explain His events.

Our task is to understand, not merely the message of Christ, but Christ Himself. Geerhardus Vos (d. 1949) reminds us:

Jesus does not represent Himself anywhere as being by his human earthly activity the exhaustive expounder of truth. Much rather He is the great fact to be expounded.¹

C.S. Lewis makes a similar point when he says simply "[Jesus] is the self-expression of the Father–what the Father has to say."². Later, contemporary theologian Richard Gaffin would write that "Jesus’s person and work...is the subject matter for interpretation and elaboration by the apostles and New Testament writers."³ We must orient our thinking around the gift Giver moreso than His gifts.

As we gain the knowledge of God, we typically shape it in the form of systematic theology. This will be fed by a structured, typically historically-driven collation of the exegetical data of God's word. However, more often than not, our understanding of topics stop when new concepts and terms such as those in the previous sentence are introduced.

Listen to seminary professor Scott Oliphint's comments:⁴

Christians sometimes find themselves content with a "thief on the cross" level of knowledge. The idea is that if that thief had his ticket punched, then that's all you need. While there is some truth to this, it's truthfulness is limited to only the inception point of eternal life.

We're given biological growth without our consent, we're to match this gift by a level of theological effort. We don't spend a lot of time as babies, and we shouldn't spend a lot of time as baby Christians. At some point, lack of Christian growth becomes personal neglect, as the author of Hebrews warns us (cf. 1 Cor 3:2):

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Scripture isn't merely the basis for a bare intellectual endeavor; it's also that which guides our own holiness through the God-given means. Because the Christian life is an outgrowth of Christian theology, theological maturity is the basis for ethical maturity. We must learn to live righteously and judge with a righteous judgement (Lev. 19:16, John 7:24, Matt. 7).

Being able to judge between right and wrong is the basis for any meaningful ethical system. "Right" implies the existence of "wrong": if there's no "wrong", then no "right" matters⁵. We must also learn to judge between right and almost right⁶. Right and wrong aren't built bottom-up from societal norms, but, in your own progressive increase in holiness, you must see God Himself as the blueprint for good as expressed in His revelation.

Some Christians speak of being closer to God while simultaneously downplaying the importance of studying God's Word. However, seeking relational fellowship outside of theological fellowship with Christ is fruitless, especially since God has given us dozens of books about Himself. Perhaps, however, the desire is that the person prefers to be led by the Spirit directly in either day-to-day decision making or in becoming closer to God. As we'll see, the good news is that the Spirit still speaks in Scripture.

As we progress, we will see three of the fundamental reasons Christians come to differing conclusions: understanding good and necessary consequence, standing on creedal foundations, and the richness of one's own Biblical-theological framework.

Biblical Theology and Redemptive-Historical Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics, the art and science of Biblical interpretation, is our toolkit for understanding God's revelation. It's an important topic whose significance never diminishes. It's a multi-tiered model, largely split into two aspects: redemptive-historical and grammatical-historical. We use the grammatical-historical in the context of the redemptive-historical to build the structured, historical understanding from which much of our systematic theology will emerge. Both aspects are required to efficiently progress in Reformed Biblical studies.

Hermeneutics is easily approachable from other entry ways than what is traditionally considered the front door. In evangelical hermeneutics, this front door is the grammatical-historical approach. This will not be our entry point.

Our approach will be to start out with the message of Scripture itself, thus the redemptive-historical will lead the way in what's called Biblical Theology⁷. This is the story of God's interaction with us. It's this story put into written form that's the focus and guide for hermeneutics.

Core to Biblical theology is the fact that the plan of God has always been the eschatological elevation of man. This becomes clearer when we repair a disastrous misconception around the word "eschatology". Lane Tipton helps clarify:

Eschatology is not first and foremost about last things, whether we're talking about last things and the consummation, or last things as a topic in systematic theology. It's not first and foremost about last things, it's first and foremost about ultimate things.⁸

While eschatology can relate to end times events, this is only because end is a type of ultimate. Eschatology isn't merely the final chapter of redemptive history, it's the primary story of all history. Because it relates to the ultimate plan of God, it even precedes soteriology⁹, the doctrine of salvation: God had a plan for humanity starting with Adam in the garden before the fall.

Eschatology, being about the ultimate, but being at the beginning, allows it to act as the bookends and structural guide of history, pervading every area of theology and giving us hermeneutical guideposts. Paul himself does this by comparing and contrasting Adam and Christ (Romans 5:12-21, 1 Cor. 15:34-40).

Hermeneutics seeks to understand Scripture, ourselves, and all of reality in both its local and eschatological contexts, with eschatology always leading the way. This means that eschatology drives our understanding of everything. At the same time, studying any area of theology helps clarify eschatology. Scripture will continually become clearer as our apprehension of the whole expands. Biblical theology is the heart of hermeneutics because Biblical theology is the outworking of that eschatological plan in history.

While it was the 17th century Reformed who were the principal masters of Biblical theology¹⁰ as seen in their lectures and sermons, the theologian most responsible for the extensive reframing of underlying principles and laying out a clearer theological model is the 20th century theologian Geerhardus Vos. He distilled and repackaged the underlying methodology of the whole Reformed tradition in such an impactful way that his work became the basis of contemporary Reformed hermeneutics.

Vos reiterates our working understanding of eschatology:

It is not biblical to hold that eschatology is a sort of appendix to soteriology, a consummation of the saving work of God. . . . There is an absolute end posited for the universe before and apart from sin. The universe, as created, was only a beginning, the meaning of which was not perpetuation, but attainment. The principle of God’s relation to the world from the outset was a principle of action or eventuation. The goal was not comparative (i.e., evolution); it was superlative (i.e., the final goal). This goal was not only previous to sin, but irrespective of sin.¹¹

The glory of eschatological communion is foreshadowed in the garden (Genesis 2:9), and mirrored in John's Patmos vision (Revelation 22:14), in both places by the Tree of Life.

Since the Tree of Life appears in both Genesis and Revelation, it can act as another straight-forward way of seeing God's plan of eschatological elevation. Read how 17th century Reformed theologian Francis Turretin (d. 1687) answers the question: How did the tree of life signify Christ?¹²

Truly [Christ] is the only tree because no one except Christ is the author of eternal life (nor is there salvation in any other, Acts 4:12). No one except Christ is in the midst of paradise (Rev. 2:7) and of the street of the city (Rev. 22:2). Christ is in the midst of the church (as a more honorable and suitable place) to be near all and diffuse his vivifying power among all; to be seen by all, as the center in which all the lines of faith and love ought to meet, that they may acquiesce in him. The fruit-bearing tree (Rev. 2:7), which bears the sweetest and most exquisite fruit for the support of believers (Cant. 2:3)...¹³

Similarly, contemporary author Nancy Guthrie writes:

The scene [Rev 22:1-3] described by John calls to mind essential features of Eden: the tree of life and the river of life, which, according to Genesis 2: 10, flowed out of Eden. In this new Eden, all those whose sin has been dealt with on the tree of Calvary not only drink freely from the river of life; they eat freely from the tree of life. As we look closely, we can’t help but recognize that this life-giving, forever-feeding, healing tree is none other than Christ himself. 12 “In him was life” John wrote (John 1: 4). And in a sense, this is what Jesus meant during his earthly ministry when he said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6: 53– 54).¹⁴

The Tree of Life in the garden, the failure of Adam, the fulfillment of Christ, and the The Tree of Life in Revelation act as guideposts. The fall didn't break God's plan to elevate man, but it caused the path to take on the added dimension of redemption. Redemptive-historical hermeneutics uses this guide when studying local texts, orienting all other considerations around it.

Gaffin explains:

...we make a distinction as is sometimes done between the literary, the grammatical, and the historical. ...the historical is more fundamental and controlling. Any sort of grammatical, literary approaches, any sorts of genre concerns, have their validity only as they subserve, redemptive historical substance.¹⁵

He continues:

For interpreting a particular biblical text of whatever genre or length (from a single sentence to a larger discourse unit), essential is understanding its place in the history of revelation, its place within covenant history. In terms of the subject matter of the text— what the text is talking about— an all-controlling context is the redemptive- and revelational-historical context.¹⁶

Luke 24 is the perfect hermeneutics-orienting text: Christ opened the eyes of his companions to see the root of redemptive-historical hermeneutics: ...beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Indeed, the 40 days between resurrection and ascension was Christ's hermeneutics crash course to the Apostles on how to read the Old Testament, showing that "his earthly ministry, culminating in his death and resurrection, is the focus of Scripture, the sum and substance of the Old Testament"¹⁷. Simply put, history is His story.

Our Biblical interpretation must begin with this message of the Bible itself. This vital point is often missing because of how hermeneutics is approached at first. It's entirely true that you're supposed to read the Bible as a piece of literature exactly as you would read a newspaper: you're meant to read each text according to its own genre: you read the comics as comics, the sports as sports, and the news as news. However, the unique nature of Scripture demands that the message of the text guide how we read the text.

Mark Thompson helps us:

While the Bible remains a written text, a book of words open to investigation as a piece of literature or as a testimony to history, it will not fit into such categories neatly or without remainder. This text is sui generis; the attempt to read it ‘like any other book’ is, in the final analysis, to overlook its critical otherness.¹⁸

It's just as important to realize that we read every text according to the theology derived from the whole. Without any prior Scriptural understanding, your culture will initially fill the void. As your secular theology is subsequently and progressively replaced with Christian theology, you will be able to understand more.

Professor Vern Poythress helps to clarify this:

There is no way to form sound hermeneutical principles in a vacuum, apart from religious commitments. You are either for God or against him. And even if you are for him, you need growth and sanctification. You are not perfectly pure, your mind is not perfectly pure, and your hermeneutical preferences are not perfectly sound. That is the nature of life in a fallen world.¹⁹

Elsewhere he writes:

We use the Bible as our source for systematic theology, which is supposed to be a summary of what the Bible teaches. Then we use systematic theology as a presupposition for hermeneutics. And then hermeneutics guides how we interpret the Bible.²⁰

Professor Gregory Beale similarly writes:

...a good biblical-theological assumption is that all interpreters have presuppositions and that some presuppositions distort the originally intended meanings of ancient texts, while other presuppositions actually guide one into the truth of texts.²¹

Starting with God's end (eschatology) in mind helps us avoid a secular reading of Scripture. When reading without God's end in mind, we're reading differently than what God Himself intends. There is no neutral middle ground. We may not, for example, read the book of Genesis outside of the perspective provided by the New Testament; but it's equally true that the New Testament isn't providing anything different than what's in the Old; in addition to the Gospel and Acts narrative events, it provides an overlay that brings certain details into sharper focus.

The inappropriate disjunction between the Old and New Testaments is based on a flawed notion that the New Testament was the ultimate goal of the Old Testament. While the New testament brings things into greater focus, in reality, the Old and New share a common goal: Christ. The purpose of the whole of history, therefore, the whole of Scripture is eschatology. Due to the events of Genesis 3, this eschatology can only have its source in Christ whoaccomplished redemption.

Because the whole of the law and prophets pointed to Christ and because Christ is the focus of redemption, Christ is the first, both in priority and order, Biblical-theological focal point in hermeneutics. Put differently, we must avoid engaging in idolatry by reading any portion of Scripture as outside of God's single redemptive and eschatological plan in Christ. More specifically, the books of Genesis to Malachi are just as Christian as Matthew to Revelation and are portraying the same content.

Augustine's famous statement that "the new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed" should be understood as speaking specifically about the completed work of Christ. Augustine himself understood that our doctrine of God, including, for example, His immutability, was expressed bountifully in the Old.

You need the whole range of God's revelation to obtain a detailed Trinitarian picture of God. In addition to always being on guard against denials of the Deity of Christ or the Trinity, we should be equally on guard against denials of the Deity of the Triune God Himself. Our theology comes from the whole of Scripture. Books like Exodus, Isaiah, and Ezekiel give us a picture of God that may be hard to see if you're only ever reading the Gospels.

When you read Scripture properly, you'll see that we can say more than than that the intention of all events eventually point toward Christ (christotelic). In fact, because of the ultimate divine author, all events are initially about Christ in the first place (christocentric).

Tipton summarizes these important terms:

...it is best to understand Christocentrism as the tenet that Christ is the central redemptive subject matter of the Old Testament, understood on its own terms, quite apart from the New Testament Scriptures. Christotelism is best understood to entail that Christ is the consummate telos of what the Old Testament Scriptures promise, namely, a crucified and resurrected Messiah. The christocentric and the christotelic require one another and mutually contextualize one another; the one does not exist apart from the other.²²

There's simply no positive value in reading the exodus narrative outside of Christ, especially since it was the Son of God who gave Moses the orders in the first place (Exodus 3:14, cf. John 8:58). One particular non-Reformed view of the situation is that one should treat the Bible as generally reliable, then proceed toward deeper trust, but this is just a way to emulate how Eve dealt with the serpent: doubt God.

Gaffin writes:

[The New Testament books] document and reinforce in different ways what has taken place in Christ, particularly his death and resurrection, as the fulfillment of Old Testament history. In doing that, it should not be missed, they also understand themselves to be showing the true meaning of Israel’s Scriptures— not a new meaning they give to those Scriptures but their inherent and only meaning.²³

This story of redemption is received from Scripture, and we read Scripture with this reality in mind. Furthermore, we can and must read Scripture with all established truths in mind. This is why we start out, not with analysis of grammar or historical context, but with the fact of God's overall plan of redemption. You need the overall map, so you don't get lost in the woods.

The Creeds

To grasp confessional hermeneutics, we do need to understand what is means to be confessional. It's also important at the outset to simply be honest with ourselves about theological method: Christians everywhere place the Scriptures in high regard. Though accusations are constant, there's usually no reason to accuse someone of downplaying the word of God. Everyone is simply reading the Bible according to a belief system we call a creed.

There's absolutely no such thing as reading Scripture without a creed. Denying that you have one simply enslaves you to it. This is the a major factor that explains theological differences between Christians. Church Historian Carl Trueman gets to the point:

We are naïve as Christians if we think that our thinking is not shaped by the cultural currents that surround us. Of course, we cannot abstract ourselves from our context; we cannot cease to be embodied individuals, each with our own personal biographies, who live within a complex network of social relations that influence the way we live and think and speak. Yet to know something of our context is to make ourselves aware of some of the invisible forces that have such an unconscious influence on us. Once we know they are there, we at least have the possibility of engaging in critical reflection, which will allow us to some extent to liberate ourselves from them—or, if not to liberate ourselves, at least to make us more aware of why we think the way we do.²⁴

By claiming "all I need is my Bible", you're explicitly preventing unity with the church, opting for an organically developed belief system that nobody is able to test. By ignoring, modifying, or culturally reframing the creeds, you're needlessly separating yourself.

One of the primary reasons so many people come to different conclusions on the Biblical text is that they start at a different point: a different creed. Trueman continues:

I do want to make the point here that Christians are not divided between those who have creeds and confessions and those who do not; rather, they are divided between those who have public creeds and confessions that are written down and exist as public documents, subject to public scrutiny, evaluation, and critique, and those who have private creeds and confessions that are often improvised, unwritten, and thus not open to public scrutiny, not susceptible to evaluation and, crucially and ironically, not, therefore, subject to testing by Scripture to see whether they are true.²⁵

Theologian J.V. Fesko echos this:

...evangelicals are committed to the authority of Scripture, but celebrity culture filters the Bible's voice through a cacophony of different individuals rather than the unified voice of the church.²⁶

We may be tempted to think of the problem of celebrity culture as a seduction merely for the secular world, but Christians also get pulled into this trap under the guise of what Fesko calls the "genius theologian": an individual we admire and to whom we point to more than the creeds. Fesko writes:

...the genius theologian looms large as the one who molds a theological movement. Reformed churches, on the other hand, have a commitment to a scripturally subordinated confessional authority, or confessionalism, that shapes the church. Herein lies a significant difference between evangelicalism and the Reformed faith.²⁷

Furthermore, while many think they received their theology from the Bible, they likely got it from the ethics of previous generations. We are called to raised our kids in the Lord, but latent cultural filters are seductive. If we ourselves have been raised with these filters, we may deceive ourselves into believing they're Biblical. The values of our nations directly influence how we develop our theology. Many Christians grow up in America entirely confusing what's Biblical with what's simply a traditional trait of American conservatism. Your overall theological stance may be more secular than you think.

This isn't something isolated to discussions directly on theology. Most theological issues arise with friends and family in contexts relating to medical, political, environmental, or relational issues. You're shaped by your culture when you read Scripture, then Scripture is applied back to social issues, all the while claiming to be Biblical²⁸.

This is a pattern which is repeated with Christian books on marriage, parenting, and finance which push American values back onto the Biblical text. This highlights the need to focus on the timeless, cross-cultural creeds, read according to the theological intent of their original authors. The creeds, such as the Apostle's, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds as well as the Chalcedonian Definition, not flags, are the symbols of the faith.

Evangelicals often have a healthy suspicion of the words "God told me", but what's lacking is a healthy suspicion of raw proof-texting and of "No Creed But the Bible" teachers. The strive to remove all explicit creeds in order to rely on the Bible alone leads to a creedal vacuum that the world, flesh, and the devil seek to fill. If the goal is to build unity, you must not allow a vacuum to be filled organically by the news and social media.

For your creed to be at all positively unifying, it needs to be explicitly shared between the uniting parties. The implicit creeds created by society are natural, and must be avoided. Yes, being explicit creates walls, but they're honest and those walls will eventually create rooms for deeper theological fellowship. Your private, unsharable, implicit creeds can only divide.

Even if you claim to care only about the "essentials" of the faith, you'll eventually be faced with issues with a strong theological backbone: Something as simple as a cultural misunderstanding of gender will force you to seek answers regarding the image of God. Serious discussions of marriage must lead you to the 7th commandment, thus leading you to the inevitable issue of the unity and viability of the Decalogue (ten commandments). Society will force you to take a position on these issues: you can avoid the temptation of stating a position on the spot by planning ahead.

The brief creeds unite you to the church throughout history while a more developed creed definitionally aligns you in your specific theological trajectory. This latter creed is called a confession. The word creed comes from the Latin "credo" meaning "I believe" while a confession is something you confess saying "I confess". It's not qualitatively different, and the term "creed" is often used to cover confessions and catechisms as well.

What we call Reformed theology relates to the theology of the Reformed faith. It's not identifiable with any single doctrine, rather it's the expression of the unified, cross-cultural Reformed tradition whose theology is defined by the Reformed confessions. These confessions with their closely associated catechisms are the dividing line between orthodoxy (right teaching) and heterodoxy (deviation from right teaching); indeed, "Reformed" is simply short for "Reformed Orthodoxy". The word "orthodoxy" only has meaning when a written, explicit, measurable, agreed-upon foundation is present.

Reformed theology isn't a collection of doctrines; it's an internally coherent system with deeply interpenetrating areas of truth that is expressed in Reformed piety and practice. What may seem like a single doctrine is actually part of a larger inseparable whole, which is expressed in increasing levels of detail by confessions and catechisms like Belgic Confession and, later, the Westminster Confession of Faith and it's accompanying catechism.

The timelessness and cross-cultural aspect of the creeds and confessions have an entirely muted effect when read with cultural lenses. They're part a cross-cultural community of Christians, not part of your local culture. The theological culture of a Reformed confession is Reformed, not American, French, or Japanese. By reading a confession using American evangelical lenses, one is invalidating its truth and invalidating all prior peer-review.

When the cultural lenses are removed, what is to fill the void? A confession, like any judicial court decision, is meant to be understood only in the spirit of its original intent. This intent is expressed when the confession and associated catechisms are viewed together. A catechism is a teaching device used to explain and uphold confessional truth. The confessions with associated catechisms express the unity of the Reformed faith and lay out its theological framework.

Regarding a theological framework, McGraw writes:

...the principle of good and necessary consequence is not a license to allegorize our interpretations of Scripture or to impose the ideas of men upon the Word of God. Rather, its purpose is to recognize unavoidable implications from the text of Scripture. These inferences ordinarily reflect the theological framework that the texts of the Bible assume and merely reveal these underlying assumptions by making them explicit.²⁹

When the theological framework of the creeds or confessions is replaced with American evangelical culture, the whole of the theology is reinterpreted and one's theology is no longer part of the larger community of faith (e.g. Reformed). Depending on how deep the infection is, one's own theology may be so out of line with the historic Christian faith that even the creeds are misread and one is left on a theological island. The local church then becomes like social media where everyone puts up a theological facade. Christians then find themselves drinking theological milk, while believing that they're eating meat; imputation, impassibility, and covenant become topics for debate instead of foundational starting points (cf. Heb. 6:1-2, 1 Cor 3:2).

One's own personal confession of a Reformed confession also ceases to be Reformed. It has become an American evangelical confession reliant on 19th to 21st century values, defined more by decades of a shifting Overton window than anything one could truly call Biblical or at all tied to the historic Reformed faith. This type of infusing of new meaning into old terms is not qualitatively different than Mormonism's redefinition of words such as Gospel and salvation. The confession remains merely verbal, entirely disconnected from its original meaning. This crass violation of the 9th commandment is not something one would expect from a Christian church which explicitly states adherence to specific creeds on their website.

Many today watch aghast at how Biblical truth is reworked into something more palatable to a post-modern, younger millennial, or woke culture, while entirely missing the fact that this type of shift was already done generations ago by those who desired to make the Reformed confession more relevant and acceptable to the American evangelical culture. Today, even some Reformed pastors dangerously confuse the Reformed faith with evangelicalism.

This downplaying of the creedal or the confessional distillation of Biblical truth, under the guise of "merely being Biblical" or following a "genius theologian", has caused codified truth to be reframed to be more appealing to the culture, and, indeed, our own sin. Unity becomes a priority over purity, and peace over repentance. This causes, and, indeed, has already caused, ecclesiastical quiet schism, because, as Fesko writes, "apart from a confessional anchor, the individual theologian or pastor be comes the bar of doctrinal orthodoxy."³⁰. This defeats the entire point of the unity provided by the creeds and confessions and creates an explicit disunity with those who faithfully stand on the creeds.

Outside of this are the perils of creating extra-confessional boundaries (e.g. "women must cover their heads") and the inappropriate elevation of our favorite authors or teachers³². While we must look to others, especially those in the past, for assistance, only the creeds and confessions act as unifying boundaries.

Furthermore, historic church creeds, confessions, and catechisms have an internal complexity that is destroyed via private updates or cultural reframing. Trueman helps again:

history teaches that many Christian doctrines can only exist in a stable form within a relatively complex network of related doctrines. Christian theology, in other words, always has a certain ineradicable complexity, which has serious implications for the modern evangelical predilection for simple and very brief statements of faith.³⁴

The historic creeds and confessions account for this complexity. McGraw gives a classic example in Reformed theology when he says that "the Sabbath often proves to be a litmus test of how a group understood the Decalogue, covenant theology, the relationship between the OT and NT, and a number of other key areas of doctrine and practice."³⁵.

While there is no deductive first principle by which one may deduce the whole of systematic theology³⁶, the internal coherence of theology allows us to see how all theology fits together. A another example comes from the Reformed Covenant of Works. On this, Joel Beeke and Mark Jones write:

[The Covenant of Works] highlights a number of important aspects of Reformed theology: the relational aspect of theology and the use of the covenant concept to articulate God’s relations with His creatures; the idea that biblically authoritative doctrines can be deduced by good and necessary consequence from Scripture; the implications of man’s creation in the image of God; the grace and goodness of God in covenanting with Adam and offering him “life,” whatever “life” may mean; the federal relationship between Adam and his offspring; and the need for another Adam to “make right” what the first Adam “made wrong.”³⁷

Rebuilding a creed or confession from scratch or making personal updates via disagreements results in a destructive originality that needlessly risks introducing theological error. Trueman continues:

...any confessional document that talks about the incarnation must also talk about the Trinity. This is why a study of the development of doctrinal statements in church history is important: it gives a first-rate insight into how doctrines interconnect and how formulations that solve one set of questions then create the ground for a new set³⁸.

For our purposes, what he's describing is exactly what evangelicalism denies. While "evangelical" can mean "one who holds to the Gospel (the Evangel)", the current usage of the term retains this meaning only when used as a modifier (e.g. he is evangelical). When used substantively (e.g. he is an Evangelical), the practical usage relates to working with ad hoc doctrines, not a "relatively complex network" in theology. By contrast, this complex network is what the Reformed confessions state. This is how the terms "evangelical" and "Reformed" will be used in what follows (e.g. ad hoc vs. internally coherent). By extension, evangelicalism is built by myriad local social contracts, not a shared confession. This difference will be highlighted repeatedly as we progress.

In our discussion of hermeneutics, we will stay closely connected to the historic Church. We will do this by seeking to be as timeless without our local cultural lenses as much as possible by doing the following:

First, we will remain united with the whole of the Church across the centuries by relying on the intensively peer-reviewed Apostle's (~4th century), Nicene (325), and Athanasian (~6th century) creeds, as well as the Chalcedonian Definition (451).

Second, we will stand on the internally coherent theological distillation of Biblical truth as expressed by the Westminster Confession of Faith ("WCF") while referencing its catechisms: Larger Catechism ("WLC") and Shorter Catechism ("WSC").

Furthermore, as previously mentioned, sometimes people call something Biblical when its merely a cultural norm. So, we must ensure that we use the Westminster standards that has gone through what we may call "cultural stress testing": when a theological confession goes to a different culture, it's shaken so latent cultural aspects fall out. WCF was originally cross-cultural with the Scottish and English working together; but, the Americans, as their own culture changed from being British, did their own cultural stress testing in two phases (1788, 1877)³⁹. Liberalism had their chance at it (1903), but it now remains stable (1936). This is in accordance with what Professor Scott Clark writes:

What makes us Reformed is how we understand Scripture, and this understanding is summarized in our confession. If we thought that our confession was not biblical, we would not use it, and if anyone can show that our confession is unbiblical, the church ought to revise it to bring it into conformity with Scripture.⁴⁰

Third, we will also stand on the Belgic Confession ("BC") of 1561, which went through its own cultural stress testing in 1618-1619 by the Dutch and English (with heavy French input and with Americans adding mere footnotes later). To this we may also add the Heidelberg Catechism ("HC") and Canons of Dort ("CD"). These three together are known as the Three-Forms of Unity ("TFU").

We will not treat these as supplemental to Westminster, but as equal. Indeed, Westminster should not be read outside of the theological context provided by the Three-Forms of Unity. We no longer live in a world where a state church forbids the adoption of a foreign confession⁴¹. All who hold to Westminster may and should affirm TFU to enable further unity⁴². Given the lack of a definition of marriage in TFU, the reverse should also be true.

Together these represent the consistent baseline of the Reformed faith across Geneva, France, the Netherlands, Scotland, and America in what we may call the Six Forms of Unity. This represents the internal coherence of the Reformed theology and it, not American evangelicalism or our favorite teachers or "genius theologians", is what we may call the theological culture of the Reformed. Reformed debates are done within this context and Reformed diversity⁴³ exists within its bounds.

The creeds, confessions, and catechisms aren't goals in an intellectual endeavor; rather they're heartfelt, honest statements of personal and corporate Biblical belief, unifying Christians across centuries and millenia. They're personal declarations of Biblical truth as well as a corporate binding transcending time. The creeds, catechisms, and confessions, when read in their entirety according to their original intent, act as maps of sanctification. Therefore, we should read them daily, and encourage others to do so as well. Because creedalism and confessionalism are binary, the ability to confess a creed and confession from the heart (ex animo) may take years.

In 2 Timothy 1:13, Paul charged Timothy with following "the pattern of sound words" that he heard from him. Timothy has been given a stated theology which he is to teach, not merely in terms of the conceptual content, but in terms of the words. Trueman explains:

What is interesting is that Paul does not simply say, “Make sure you stay true to the conceptual content of what you have been taught.” Paul also highlights the form of the words used here... One of the things that teachers in any discipline do is to teach a special vocabulary to their students and instruct them on how to use that vocabulary correctly...each profession has its own special language, and learning the profession is in large part learning the language and how to use it. This facilitates communication between members of the specific profession and allows work to be done properly and efficiently. It also allows for the easy identification of an outsider, or somebody who does not have the requisite competence in the field.⁴⁵

The creeds establish a foundational catholicity across the centuries which sets the ultimate baseline for the Christian faith. However, protecting the "the pattern of sound words" has been neglected to the point where many today associate the term "catholic" to a specific institution.

What the Reformed pursue is Reformed Catholicity⁴⁶: we see ourselves as being entirely in line with the historic, one holy apostolic Church. As the Church is a single organism which logically precedes the visible churches⁴⁷, we don't speak of catholicity in an exclusive sense, we simply maintain that the Reformed confessions are the most faithful to Scriptural truth and the creedal tradition⁴⁸.

Thus, 20th century theologian Cornelius Van Til (d. 1985) can write:

Do Reformed Christians want their own witness, the only consistent witness to the Christian faith, to be heard in the world? Then let them band together with all Reformed men and groups of Reformed men everywhere for a common testimony to that which alone can really challenge the wisdom of the world.⁴⁹

Christianity has a set terminology as expressed in the historic creeds, catechisms, and confessions, but this terminology becomes abstract, and possibly forgotten or redefined, when detached from their original context. Due to lack of care, many confused people in the Reformed church today associate the concept of infusion with Rome even though it's explicitly codified as a Reformed concept in both WLC 77 and CD3/4.11.

As we proceed, this creedal foundation as dedication to the pattern of sound words will help us maintain foundational theological fellowship with all Christians while avoiding reliance on milk with those in our own Reformed faith. Recreating the whole of a theological system isn't feasible and relying on our own powers outside of the centuries of peer-review is simply, to put it euphemistically, unwise.

In other words, we will not proceed pretending as if we're the first people to ever open a Bible. We will do so as part of a community of faith going back through the Reformed faith, Calvin, Augustine, Irenaeus, the Apostles, Isaiah, Moses, and Abel (Luke 11:50-51). With this in place, we can move forward into catholic, confessional hermeneutics that helps us stand on the shoulders of giants.

Scriptural Trustworthiness

The Reformers didn't invent the concept of Scriptural infallibility; that was established long before the reformation⁵⁰. Furthermore, the lack of confidence in Scripture, even in Rome⁵¹, is due to enlightenment and post-modern influences.

Whereas scriptural infallibility relates to the inability for Scripture to lead you astray, inerrancy relates to its absolute truthfulness. However, these descriptions don't really get to the heart of the matter: is it trustworthy? is it to be obeyed?⁵². We can cut any Gordian knot by acknowledging that the Scriptures are the Word of God: if God wrote it, that settles it⁵³. Historian Richard Muller gets to the point:

The [Reformed] orthodox do not attempt to rise from effects to cause and to prove the divinity of Scripture by recourse to an evidentialistic argument—rather they move from cause to effect, arguing the divinity of Scripture first and foremost and then noting how the divine handiwork is evidenced in the text.⁵⁴

In other words, we have to get our priorities straight: we don't stand in judgement over Scripture, but come to be judged by it.

John Calvin (d. 1564) writes:

credibility of doctrine is not established until we are persuaded beyond doubt that God is its Author. Thus, the highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in it. The prophets and apostles do not boast either of their keenness or of anything that obtains credit for them as they speak; nor do they dwell upon rational proofs. Rather, they bring forward God’s holy name, that by it the whole world may be brought into obedience to him.⁵⁵

The Word is the Son of God who reveals the Father (John 1:1), yet the Word is also the revelation from the eternal Word at first as unwritten Word (e.g. to Abraham), later as written Word (WCF 1.2). Muller writes:

[The Reformed] identified Scripture as the Word of God, but they also very clearly recognized that Word was, ultimately, the identity of the second person of the Trinity. They also recognized that the second person of the Trinity, as Word, was the agent of divine revelation throughout all ages...⁵⁶

We speak of it being the same Word because it's the same authoritative Speaker⁵⁷. As such, we say that the Scriptures are autopistos: trustworthy in and of itself⁵⁸. This is why we can speak of Scripture as the Word of God, but maintain that the Son is the Word in John 1.

Later Muller adds:

The different modes [unwritten, written] of revelation correspond to the maturity of the church as it grew from infancy to adulthood: in the time of the church’s infantile stammering, the living voice of God came directly (agraphon); later in the childhood of the church and under the guidance of the law, the living voice taught and made to write even as adolescents are taught and given lessons by the voice of a teacher. Now in the adult age of the church, we have the written Word and its doctrines to lead us.⁵⁹

The unwritten Word expressed to the Patriarchs was no less the Word of God than and no different than what we have in our Bibles. On this point WCF 1.1 states:

it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing

While the progressive revelation over time leaves us with more detailed revelation, therefore more demands on us and removes all excuses, the Word to the Patriarchs was sufficient for their day⁶⁰. It was the same in content, but not in detail. It's better to think of it as progressively detailed revelation.

Something we don't immediately think of is the fact that the lives of the Patriarchs were vastly longer than ours Methuselah's lifespan, for example, overlapped with Adam and Noah. He saw the first parents, the advent of cities, the invention of various tools, the expanse of culture, and was able to spread the message of God to myriad generations⁶¹.

On this point, John Owen (d. 1683) writes:

There was during this season a sufficient ministry for the declaration of the revelations which God made of himself and his will. There was the natural ministry of parents, who were obliged to instruct their children and families in the knowledge of the truth which they had received; and whereas this began in Adam, who first received the promise, and therewithal whatsoever was necessary unto faith and obedience, the knowledge of it could not be lost without the wilful neglect of parents in teaching, or of children and families in learning.⁶²

The importance of catechizing our kids has never lessened in importance, but we sometimes forget that there was a time when catechizing doubled as the only method of transmitting the Word. Edward Leigh (d. 1671) writes that "Cains and Abels sacrificing is an evidence of catechising before the flood ; there was no word written then, therefore it is like their fathers taught them."⁶³.

Owen writes that:

...it may be manifested that from the giving of the first promise, when divine external revelations began to be the rule of faith and life unto the church, to the writing of the law, there was always alive one or other, who, receiving divine revelations immediately, were a kind of infallible guides unto others.⁶⁴

When care are isn't taken in catechizing, subsequent generations receive an incomplete message. Over time this turns into unrecognizable gibberish. This is evident in the narration of the events surrounding the flood. Because 100% of the world population (a total of eight people) experienced the flood, the events were going to be retold, but, over time, it became muddled, evolving into the various ancient flood myths such as the Atrahasis epic ⁶⁵ or the flood of Ziusudra⁶⁶. Though Noah had another 350 years (Gen 9:28), his lack of care in catechizing wouldn't be surprising given his state after the flood (Gen 9:20).

God continued giving unwritten Word during the line of the Patriarchs, but there may have been a pause in revelation. The time in Egypt wasn't merely physical bondage, but a time of Word famine. It may be that the luxuries of Egypt caused neglect in catechizing, leading to a loss of God's presence. Owen writes:

If [continual Word revelation] was otherwise at any time, it was after the death of the patriarchs, before the call of Moses, during which time all things went into darkness and confusion; for oral tradition alone would not preserve the truth of former revelations. But by whomsoever these instructions were received, they had a sufficient outward means for their illumination, before any divine revelations were recorded by writing. ⁶⁷

When God's Word is gone, God Himself is said to be gone. Trueman makes this point regarding Amos 8:11-12:

Amos 8 talks of a time when God will turn his back on his people and bring great darkness and despair upon the land. The climactic moment of this description of what we might call “the active absence of God” comes in verses 11–12.⁶⁸

Trueman writes of the terrifying consequence:

The famine will be of the word of God; and the frantic search of the people for that word is clearly also the frantic search of the people for God himself. His word is not to be found; he himself is absent from his people. That is what will make this moment so terrifying: the silence of God is the absence of God.⁶⁹

Put simply, "words are the means God has chosen for his presence and therefore are by definition an adequate means for that presence."⁷⁰.

Immediately after leaving Egypt, the Israelites declared their vote of no confidence of God who freed them⁷¹ (Ex 15:24). Instead of destroying them, God showed Moses a tree which he was to use to make the bitter waters of Marah safe to drink. Underlying this passage is something hidden from translations:

John Mackay writes:

The word translated ‘showed’ in the first part of the verse is closely related to the word ‘law’, which itself basically means ‘instruction’ rather than ‘legal enactment’. What was happening was that there were basic instructions being laid down for them.⁷²

What we call Torah isn't so much "law" as it is God's instruction. We see a transition point between unwritten, ad hoc revelation to written, structured revelation in the Marrah passage. God wasn't merely freeing His people from bondage, He was expanding His revelation and remaining with His people. This understanding of Torah is how we should understand Psalm 119: "Oh, how I love your law".

Even without the outward physical manifestations of the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire, God was with His people by his Word. What they perceived as plenty in Egypt was actually famine, and they perceived as famine was actually the beginning of the harvest of the Word. Accompanying this time of plenty was the explicit commands for catechesis (Deut 5:31, Deut 6:4-8) so they may never experience Word famine again.

In every era, the Word is the Word because of its Divine source. It's self-attested, and requires no external confirmation. The Hebrew Bible is called the Tanakh based on the initial letters of it's three sections: Torah (Instruction), Neviʾim (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). These make up the written Word at the time of the incarnation, as such, as Van Til wrote, "it was recognized and considered authoritative by Christ. Christ considers the Old Testament to be an expression of God’s counsel. An appeal to the Old Testament was the end of all argument." ⁷³

When logos asarkas (Word without flesh) took on a human nature becoming logos ensarkas (Enfleshed Word), He too was self-attested, requiring no external confirmation (John 7:12-18). The Word of God is final⁷⁴. It's authoritative because of the author. Even Christ's resurrection, like all His acts in history, is subordinate to the value of His Person as Word.

Though the resurrection provides additional external attestation, Christ Himself in a parable had one character say "If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead." (Luke 16:31). If one refuses to listen to God's word, they will deny His works. This demanding of evidence is precisely what's meant by putting God to the test (Luke 4:12).

Even after the resurrection, the self-attested, finality of both the unwritten and written Word began in Christ's post-Pentecost acts through the Apostolate by the Spirit⁷⁵. Thus, Gaffin writes that in light of Acts 1:8, "Acts documents a completed, universal, apostolic task. Acts records the finished founding of the “one holy catholic” church".⁷⁶

The red is Apostles, by the Spirit, recording the words of Christ, while the black is the Apostles, by that same Spirit, recording words about Christ. In both cases, the Spirit speaks of Christ as the Apostles' expound Him. Thus, the black letters of the Bible are exactly as authoritative as the red⁷⁷.

Scriptural infallibility and inerrancy flow from the objective basis of God's authorship, not from our own assessment of evidences.

Herman Bavinck (d. 1921) writes:

Just as light is distinguished from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter, so Scripture is recognized by its own truth. But Scripture acquires certainty as God’s own Word with us by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Though proofs and reasonings are of great value, this testimony surpasses them by far; it is more excellent than all reason. ⁷⁸

Bavinck mentions two points that must be addressed: the "testimony of the Holy Spirit" and "proofs and reasonings", giving us three related issues: objective Divine authorship⁷⁹, the objective external evidences, and the subjective reception of Scriptural truth.

The external evidences of Scripture, such as their internal coherence across multiple human authors, prophetic record, and textual preservation are helpful, but they're never primary. They serve to confirm our faith, they never establish it.

Van Til correctly stated that "you don't think that Christ possibly, probably rose form the dead; you know he rose from the dead."⁸⁰ Centuries earlier, Owen similarly wrote:

whatever persuasion these reasons may beget in the minds of men that the things which they profess to believe are true, yet if they are alone, it is not divine faith whereby they do believe, but that which is merely human, as being resolved into human testimony only, or an opinion on probable arguments⁸¹

Pointing us to Scriptural examples, he writes that "when he gave unto us the law of our lives, the eternal and unchangeable rule of our obedience unto him, in the ten commandments, he gives no other reason to oblige us thereunto but this only, “I am the LORD thy God.”". He later writes that "when [the Apostles] were accused to have followed “cunningly-devised fables,” they appealed unto Moses and the prophets, to the revelations they had themselves received, and those that were before recorded."⁸²

Owen, doesn't ignore evidences, but places them in their proper place. Because you can't reach the infinite via finite means, probable evidences can only create a probable faith⁸³. This isn't the goal.

Some of the core doctrines of the faith are only accepted via faith, because they're beyond the comprehension of finite beings, such as the Trinity⁸⁴. In these cases, evidences have no place but to demonstrate their coherence with supernatural revelation⁸⁵.

Setting the external evidences as the foundation not only treats man as not radically depraved⁸⁶, it also elevates people who can follow complex argument for Scriptural infallibility too highly. On this point Owen writes:

God forbid we should think that none believe the Scriptures aright but those who are able to apprehend and manage the subtile arguments of learned men produced in their confirmation! yea, we affirm, on the contrary, that those who believe them on no other grounds have, indeed, no true divine faith at all.⁸⁷

Our assurance doesn't come from human reasoning. Owen can point us in the right direction:

The ground whereon we are to receive them is the authority and veracity of God speaking in them; we believe them because they are the word of God. Now, this faith, whereby we so believe, is divine and supernatural, because the formal reason of it is so,—namely, God’s truth and authority. Wherefore, we do not nor ought only to believe the Scripture as highly probable, or with a moral persuasion and assurance, built upon arguments absolutely fallible and human; for if this be the formal reason of faith, namely, the veracity and authority of God, if we believe not with faith divine and supernatural, we believe not at all.⁸⁸

Owen is writing about what Bavinck alluded to earlier: the subjective reception of Scriptural truth, which the Reformed call the internal testimony of the Spirit, or salvific illumination. This opens your eyes to accept the infallible testimony of the Divine author (see Rom. 12:2; Eph. 1:18, 19, 3:16-19⁸⁹), as well as that which enables you to understand the Word.

Bavinck summarizes this internal testimony:

...his Word does not find belief in the hearts of human beings before it is sealed by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who spoke through the mouths of the prophets must work in our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been commanded by God...⁹⁰

At this point, Bavinck is merely following the groundbreaking work of Calvin, who wrote:

those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated; hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning...it seriously affects us only when it is sealed upon our hearts through the Spirit. Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men.⁹¹

In one of Owen's catechism, he simplifies this:

Q. 4. How know you them to be the word of God?

A. By the testimony of God’s Spirit, working faith in my heart to close with that heavenly majesty, and clear divine truth, that shineth in them.⁹²

While the inward work is the initiating work in the Christian life, "the [external objective certainty resting on evidence] must also be present if the subjective conviction is to be grounded in reality."⁹³. Muller notes that:

Calvin attempts to strike...what Reformed orthodoxy would find to be an increasingly difficult balance between the subjective and inward certainty resting on the Spirit and on faith alone and an external objective certainty resting on evidence.⁹⁴

Given that God is the author of both Scripture and creation, it makes sense that they're consistent, so, subsequent to accepting Scripture the Word of God⁹⁵, evidences can be used to confirm it to yourself. Getting these backwards in any form is sacrilegious.

WCF 1.4 is explicit on this point, even declaring what is to be our correct motive:

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.

The testimony of the Church, as well as any and all other evidences are viable only after the foundation of Divine authorship is solidly, objectively established by the subjective, inward reception and testimony of the Spirit. These aren't the reasons for our acceptance of the word of God. We accept Scripture because it's autopistos.

God uses means, but these means don't add anything new to Scripture. External evidences, like the sacraments, confirm the Word⁹⁶. This coincides with WCF 1.5, which prioritizes the internal work of the Spirit over external evidences⁹⁷:

We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

In other words, the testimony of the Church and the internal evidences of Divine authorship are helpful, but the reason we believe is the due to the "inward work of the Holy Spirit". Article 5 of the Belgic Confession is just as clear by placing the inner work of the Spirit before mentioning evidences:

We receive all these books, and these only, as holy and canonical, for the regulation, foundation, and confirmation of our faith; believing without any doubt all things contained in them, not so much because the church receives and approves them as such, but more especially because the Holy Spirit witnesses in our hearts that they are from God, and also because they carry the evidence thereof in themselves. For the very blind are able to perceive that the things foretold in them are being fulfilled.

A century after the Belgic Confession was written, Leigh equolently wrote:

None of all these arguments can undoubtedly persuade the heart...that the holy Scripture, or any doctrine contained in it is the word of God, till we be taught it of God, till the holy Spirit of God have inwardly certified and assured us of it. This is called the Sealing of the Spirit of God, Ephes. 1. 13. by this the Scripture is imprinted in our hearts as the signe of the Seale in the Wax. Other arguments may convince, but this is absolutely necessary; this is alsufficient to perswade certainly, Matth. 11. 25. The Holy Ghost is the authour of light, by which we understand the Scripture, and the persuader of the heart, by which we believe the things therein to be truly divine, 1 John 5. 6. It is the Spirit that beareth witnesse, because the Spirit...the doctrine delivered by the Spirit...is truth. So to prove that there is a God, reasons may be brought from nature and the testimony of the Church, but no man can believe it savingly, but by the Holy Ghost.⁹⁸

The reason Leigh's language sounds salvific is because it is. The head-heart separation has no place in the Spirit's work. The point is that the Spirit is the one who raises you from death, and the one who confirms the Divine authorship of the Word. This shows us the tight integration between the Spirit's work in the acceptance of Divine authorship and the Spirit's work in the acceptance of Divine redemption. Bavinck writes:

Nor was this testimony of the Holy Spirit isolated from the totality of the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers but integrally united with it...The testimony of the Holy Spirit is not a source of new revelations but establishes believers in relation to the truth of God, which is completely contained in Scripture. It is he who makes faith a sure knowledge that excludes all doubt. It finds its analogy, finally, in the testimony our conscience offers to the law of God and in the assurance we have concerning God’s existence.⁹⁹

Faith, for the Reformed, is a gift from the Father which applies Christ to the believer by the means of the Spirit. It's not the direct result of reflection and study, yet neither is it separated from the ordinary means of the Word. Faith, being a gift of the Spirit, is that which enables us and causes us to see Christ's beauty and His message.

The resurrection of Lazarus was merely a physical, sub-eschatological raising, but it gives a picture to our actual resurrection. Just as Lazarus was called forth, our calling into life is called effectual calling. See LC67:

What is effectual calling? A. Effectual calling is the work of God's almighty power and grace, whereby (out of his free and special love to his elect, and from nothing in them moving him thereunto) he doth, in his accepted time, invite and draw them to Jesus Christ, by his word and Spirit; savingly enlightening their minds, renewing and powerfully determining their wills, so as they (although in themselves dead in sin) are hereby made willing and able freely to answer his call, and to accept and embrace the grace offered and conveyed therein.

Our entry point into the Christian life isn't just a "mental assent", as is often heard in evangelicalism, nor a mere "change of heart" as is heard in predestinarian evangelicalism, but it's a change of the whole person, not merely from death to life, but from death to the eschatological life which was offered to Adam.

Our salvation the start of our Christian life by the Father, through Christ, applied by the Spirit calling us from death into eschatological life, "savingly enlightening" our minds and "renewing" our wills. This inward renewal is that which enables both the possibility and reality of us turning to Christ by granting to us the faith in Christ as written about in WCF 3.6:

...they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power, through faith, unto salvation...

We speak of faith as having three components: notitia, assensus, and fiducia¹⁰⁰. You must know of Christ and His events (notitia): knowledge which all demons share. You must believe it (assensus). This too the demons have; in fact, they saw the events take place and have no reason to doubt their own witness. Using the term "faith" when speaking of merely data and assent is working with a concept that would qualify even demons for an evangelical "altar call".

Read the first part of CD3/4.14:

Faith is therefore to be considered as the gift of God, not on account of its being offered by God to man, to be accepted or rejected at his pleasure, but because it is in reality conferred upon him, breathed and infused into him...

The reliance on Christ (fiducia) is the final Spirit-applied component which instrumentally unites the new believer to Christ and causes an actual change beyond mental assent in the person. This final piece is that which separates the mere human faith by means of scriptural evidences, like apologetic proofs of the resurrection, and the Spirit's gift of faith which unites us to Christ and enables us to accept the Divine authorship of Scripture.

This faith is that which is what grabs ahold of Christ as BC22 states: "the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits, appropriates Him, and seeks nothing more besides Him." See also WCF 11.2: "Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification..." True, a Christian may live inconsistently, being truly raised, but not entirely accepting Divine authorship -- such is the nature of latent sin.

What this faith instrumentally accomplishes is beautifully described in CD3/4.11:

But when God accomplishes His good pleasure in the elect, or works in them true conversion, He not only causes the gospel to be externally preached to them, and powerfully illuminates their minds by His Holy Spirit, that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God; but by the efficacy of the same regenerating Spirit He pervades the inmost recesses of man; He opens the closed and softens the hardened heart, and circumcises that which was uncircumcised; infuses new qualities into the will, which, though heretofore dead, He quickens; from being evil, disobedient, and refractory, He renders it good, obedient, and pliable; actuates and strengthens it, that like a good tree, it may bring forth the fruits of good actions.

Illumination and Revelation

In evangelicalism the term revelation applies to the Spirit's work in the original authors while illumination deals with the Spirit's enabling our understanding. Those with deeper historical roots, such as the Reformed or Reformed-friendly Anglicans, will treat them as synonyms with context driving the meaning.

The Spirit that guided the writing of the books is the same Spirit Who applies Christ to you, testifies to its Divine authorship, and enables your understanding. In both the case of authorship and in understanding, it's the same Spirit Who brings light to the individuals, that is, he illuminates them, yet we may also rightfully speak of the Spirit revealing to the authors, revealing Christ to you personally, as well as revealing meaning, intuition, and application to you.

Thompson reminds us that:

Unlike any other text we might name, the biblical text never leaves the presence of its ultimate author. God attends not only the production but the reception of this text. Paul was not just given a message to proclaim but his proclamation of that message was accompanied by the convicting work of the Spirit of God.¹⁰¹

Later he states it simply: "God has not only spoken. In this text he still speaks."¹⁰².

Indeed WCF 1.10 states:

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

WCF 8.8 even clarifies that this work of the Spirit is truly the work of Christ, Who reveals, in any by the Word:

To all those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption, he doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same; making intercession for them, and revealing unto them, in and by the Word, the mysteries of salvation...

Just as Christ accomplished our redemption, and now engages in the application of that redemption, which we perceive as salvation, Christ also accomplished revelation, is the preeminent revelation of God Himself, and now engages in the application of that revelation by His Spirit¹⁰³. There's no new accomplishing of revelation in the same way there's no new accomplishing of redemption. They are accomplished and are now being applied.

Owen confirms the Scriptural propriety of using the term revelation as a synonym for illumination:

The communication of this light unto us the Scripture calleth revealing and revelation: Matt. 11:25, “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes;” that is, given them to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, when they were preached unto them. And “no man knoweth the Father, but he to whom the Son will reveal him,” verse 27.¹⁰⁴

What Owen denies, as we must as well, is the continued viability of "immediate, divine, prophetical revelation"¹⁰⁵.

We also need to take account of the context when we simply read the word "illumination". The internal testimony of Holy Spirit is not always the same as illumination of the Holy Spirit: only context will tell. We've already encountered salvific illumination¹⁰⁶ in both Leigh and LC67: this is the same as the internal testimony. However, sometimes the word "illumination" implies pedagogical illumination: the Spirit's elevating your mind to grasp the accomodated meaning of the Scripture you're reading.

Whereas Bavinck strongly clarifies the important of the testimony of the Spirit, later he affirms that:

the illumination of the Holy Spirit is not the cognitive source of Christian truth. It does not disclose to us any material truths that are hidden from the “natural” [unspiritual] person. It only gives us a spiritual understanding of these same things, one that is different and deeper. Paul expressly states that the Spirit makes known to us the things objectively granted us by God in Christ (1 Cor. 2)...the truths themselves are known to us from other parts of Scripture; they are only subjectively sealed by the witness of the Holy Spirit.¹⁰⁷.

It may be best to think of salvific illumination and pedogogical illumination as analogous to definitive sanctification and progressive sanctification: one is the initial break from darkness, while the other in progress in the light.

Illumination Decay

In addition to different types of illumination, some authors write in ways that seem to disconnect the Spirit's activating work from the Spirit's assisting efforts. Bavinck writes that during the 17th century the internal testimony of the Spirit...

...was weakened and identified with the so-called illumination of the Holy Spirit by which the intellect is enabled to note the marks and criteria of the divinity of Holy Scripture. Faith no longer connects directly and immediately with Scripture but is the product of insight into the marks of truth and divinity it bears. Inserted between Scripture and faith, then, are the marks of the truth of Scripture.¹⁰⁸

In other words, over time, the testimony of the Spirit was decoupled from the Spirit's enlivening work, leaving illumination to be an elevation of our mental capacities. Subtleties like this can be hard to spot in passing conversation, and incredibly difficult to clarify when confessional foundations aren't shared. We can see the subtle shift by looking at two 17th century figures and their successors.

In writing of the Scripturs trustworthiness, the otherwise incredibly helpful Petrus van Mastricht (d. 1706) starts off quite well:

(1) The authority of Scripture depends on its author alone, for it is a testimony, the authority of which customarily depends on the veracity of the one testifying. (2) The authority of Scripture is credible in itself and trustworthy, and it is also the first article of faith...¹⁰⁹

Then, in point 3, he adds that the "authority of Scripture is sufficiently grasped from the marks of divinity innate in it"¹¹⁰. This in itself isn't a problem. However, a few pages later he writes:

The internal persuasion of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2:12), which is not in the least an enthusiastic persuasion, as if it proffered and instilled that truth in our mind, but rather an illuminative persuasion, by which the very power of our understanding is elevated so that it can perceive those marks of divinity that God impressed upon Scripture.¹¹¹

On the next page he adds:

This testimony of the Holy Spirit does not consist in some kind of enthusiasm, which, as it were, instills and insinuates this axiom into our mind that the Scripture is from God, but rather, it consists in the illumination and elevation of our intellect, that we may acknowledge and discern the marks of divinity divinely impressed upon Scripture.¹¹²

There's nothing inherent wrong here either. However, to those without a solid Reformed foundation, and absolutely no respect for historical context, it sounds as if the Spirit is merely giving us the tools to make our own judgements, cutting Mastricht off from the Reformed. We can understand what he means a little better by looking at John Owen.

Owen helpfully keeps us on guard against the idea of an inward vocal testimony:

It is not an outward or inward vocal testimony concerning the Word, as the Papist would impose upon us to believe and assent. We do not affirm that the Spirit immediately, by himself, saith unto every individual believer, This book is, or contains, the word of God. We say not that the Spirit ever speaks to us of the Word, but by the Word. Such an enthusiasm as they fancy is rarely pretended...¹¹³

The key here is "by the Word". Furthermore, though Owen is adamant that we need the Spirit's initial work for us to understand the Word, he sometimes uses the term "internal testimony" as "internal testimony of the Spirit in the Word":

The testimony of the Spirit of God in the word itself—witnessing it to be of God, by that stamp and impress, or, which comes to the same, by those notes and marks of divinity which everywhere appear in it—is the immediate and principal, and a sufficient, reason of our believing it to be the word of God, and the medium the Spirit useth in working faith in us, or making us assent to the divinity of the Scripture.¹¹⁴

Both Mastricht and Owen mention "enthusiasm". This is the historical context needed to understand their statements. This is what the Reformed also call immediate revelation, or what today we might refer to as Pentecostal revelations (which Rome also continued). Indeed, their enthusiasts are our radical Pentecostal or charismatics who seek the Spirit speaking outside of the Word¹¹⁵.

The point that Mastricht and Owen are making is that the Spirit isn't speaking anything to you outside of the Word. That is, our options are not limited to either being academically convinced of the Divinity of Scriptura or must be told audibly by the Spirit of their Divinity. The third option is the vital Reformed concept of the Word and Spirit: the Spirit uses the Word.

Because the confessions provides the DNA for the term Reformed, we think of "Reformed Charismatic" as a contradiction; however, when we look closer, and see that the Holy Spirit speaks in the Scripture (WCF 1.10), the same term can be seen as a redundancy. So, Bavinck can write:

Scripture is the ongoing rapport between heaven and earth, between Christ and his church, between God and his children. It does not just tie us to the past; it binds us to the living Lord in the heavens. It is the living voice of God, the letter of the omnipotent God to his creature... It was not only “God-breathed” at the time it was written; it is “God-breathing.”¹¹⁶

Our expressions are never truly absolute, but shaped relative to our circumstances¹¹⁷; thus, for example, making it appropriate for one to claim to be an evangelical when speaking with Muslims. Likewise, Owen's entire ministry was tormented by the enthusiasts, causing him to adjust the terminology, saying that the "testimony of the Spirit in the word is open, public, general, to all, if they have but eyes to see it; whereas the inward application of it by the efficiency of the Spirit is only to believers."¹¹⁸. He keeps the Reformed concept attached to the word "inward" more than "testimony", which is entirely fair given that the whole of the Scriptures are available to all and they are, in fact, the testimony of God's grace in Christ.

It's worth reiterating that when an author surprises us with statements so seemingly out of place, it may be that the historical context of his day forced him to word things in a particular manner: when writing to the forerunners of our Pentecostals, an author may choose to spend much of the time on the external evidences; when writing to rationalists, the focus may be on the internal testimony of the Spirit. We need to take this into account when interpreting any author's work, including Scripture itself, as we see in how we're to read Paul (Galatians 2:16) and James (James 2:24) together.

In Mastricht's case, it's likely that his more immediate threat was those who sought "enthusiastic persuasion". This was definitely the case of Owen who was in endless battles against them and the Papists who were both constantly citing new immediate revelations.

When we read Mastricht and Owen as a whole, we shouldn't accuse them of saying anything radically different than Calvin. In fact, these formulations taken together help us see the Spirit's work in granting us fiducia and assensus based on the notitia provided by the Word. This also comports with WCF 8.8 and 1.10.

Returning to Bavinck's concern regarding deviation from the Reformed doctrine of the testimony, we see that he cites Turretin who focused on the marks of Scripture. In the passage Bavinck cited, Turretin writes:

if the question is why, or on account of what, do I believe the Bible to be divine, I will answer that I do so on account of the Scripture itself which by its marks proves itself to be such. If it is asked whence or from what I believe, I will answer from the Holy Spirit who produces that belief in me¹¹⁹

Turretin states both illuminations, which is no different than what the Belgic Confession does in article 5: "...the Holy Spirit witnesses in our hearts that they are from God, and also because they carry the evidence thereof in themselves". The work of the Spirit takes precedence, and the evidences confirm what the Spirit establishes as truth.

Nonetheless, Bavinck's concern is genuine. We need to be clear that the Spirit's work truly is more than a mere raising of the intellect. His reason for citing Turretin, assuming the citation is original not due to a later editorial addition, may be due to the fact that Francis Turretin's own son, Jean-Alphonse Turretin, took the next step by elevating human analysis of the marks. Martin Klauber writes:

Concerning special revelation, he used external arguments that relied upon rational proofs to establish the divine origin of Scripture and virtually abandoned the fideistic defence of the witness of the Holy Spirit. By doing so, he rationalized the process of salvation and reduced the faith to intellectual assent to the fundamental doctrines.¹²⁰

Later Klauber writes:

[Jean-Alphonse] Turretin did not make use of Calvin's primary defence of the divine authority of Scripture, the interior witness of the Holy Spirit; he limited the role of the Spirit in regeneration to the point where salvation was virtually equivalent to intellectual assent to a few fundamental doctrines. To prove these truths, Turretin did not rely upon the self-authenticating nature of Scripture, but used the external marks of its authority to construct a rational defence of biblical historicity.¹²¹

Klauber is quick to mention that Jean-Alphonse was "not a harbinger of Englightenment thought"¹²², but he says "his emphasis, however, upon a faith based on reason led eventually to the destruction of many of the very fundamentals of Christian belief that he had so ardently argued to preserve." ¹²³

Jean-Alphonse's successor was Jacob Vernet, who took the next logical step toward what we would now call theological liberalism. Klauber says that Vernet revealed his "penchant for rationalism and his complete disregard for the internal witness of the Holy Spirit"¹²⁴. However, being a transitional figure, he continuously defended himself against heresy¹²⁵. Vernet wrote the following:

You seem surprised by our reliance on natural light, we who have always made profession of the word of God as the unique rule of the faith . . . We derive our Articles of Faith solely from the Scriptures, but we make use of both Scripture and Reason in order to combat error.¹²⁶

This could just have easily been written by contemporary evangelical apologists Norman Geisler or Lee Strobel. This type of statement doesn't lead to theological spaghetti; rather, it's evidence of it.

Vernet's contemporary, the famous philosopher Voltaire, even called Vernet out for his hypocrisy saying Vernet's methodology would lead to deism¹²⁷. We Reformed must simply agree. Without that internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, you're on the path to deism, but you're already in a theological mess.

Regarding Jean-Alphonse Turretin's intent, Klauber writes:

He was the author ofan enlightened orthodoxy that attempted to square the Christian faith with the methodology of the Enlightenment. Although this enlightened orthodoxy rejected many of the distinctive elements of the Reformed faith, Turretin would never have countenanced the rejection of a core of essential Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation.¹²⁸

So it goes with those who seek a modified orthodoxy to retain relevance for a contemporary philosophy or culture. A solid example of where this can lead one seriously astray can be seen in Reformed vs. Evangelical attempts at working with Biblical Canonicity.

Canonicity

The term canon has two primary uses in the Reformed faith, both relating to "a rule" or "a measuring device". First, it can mean a judgement (e.g. having been measured and having been found lacking). The Canons of Trent are the judgements of Trent. Similarly, the Canons of Dort, aren't merely articles of a new confession, but the judgements against the Remonstrants at the Synod of Dort: the canons are the rejections, though we call the entire document the "Canons of Dort".

Second, canon can also relate to some type of basis for comparison, such as how one would use a ruler. Though we want to be careful to avoid word games, "what is the rule of faith and life?" can be stated in terms of scope: "what is the canon of faith and life?" In this context, we're really asking two questions: 1) which books are part of the Biblical corpus? and 2) how do we know?

Regarding the second question, one evangelical model seeks to use historical and archeological analysis to look at the issue of Canon from a perspective of objective neutrality to examine various criteria for canonicity. Historical books are examined regarding their human authorship, date, and content to guage the likelihood of Divine authorship. Michael Kruger describes one popular evangelical undertanding of Canon as follows:

(1) the New Testament can be proved to be generally reliable history (but not inspired); (2) the New Testament testifies to the miracle of the resurrection; (3) the resurrection authenticates Jesus as the Son of God; (4) Jesus appointed twelve apostles to be his authoritative witnesses; (5) therefore, books by apostles should be received as authoritative.¹²⁹

When we look at the work of evangelicals R.C. Sproul and John Gerstner, we see something with an even more unstable, based on a series of incredibly shakey premises¹³⁰:

(1) It is virtually granted that the Bible (not assumed to be inspired) contains generally reliable history.

(2) The Bible records miracles as part of its generally reliable history.

(3) These miracles authenticate the Bible's messengers and their message.

(4) Therefore, the Bible message ought to be received as divine.

(5) The Bible message includes the doctrine of its own inspiration.

(6) Therefore, the Bible is more than a generally reliable record. It is a divinely inspired record.

Gerstner explicitly states that these steps are intended to replace the "circular reasoning" of "many Christians today"¹³¹. This is the exact accusation many made against the Reformed. What's the Reformed response to Gerstner and Sproul? Simply this: what looks like a circle, is simply a loop that starts with and ends with God Himself. It definitely helps us to see the crass enlightenment influences in evangelicalism and the danger that Bavinck was warning us about.

Kruger rightfully responds to the type of argument of Sproul and Gerstner by saying "How can the Scriptures be the ultimate standard of truth if their reception is dependent upon some other (presumably more certain) standard?"¹³². Furthermore, in addition to entirely violating everything we just discussed about the priority of the Spirit over evidences, as Kruger rightfully points out "The reason there is no religiously neutral approach to historical study is that there is no religiously neutral approach to anything."¹³³.

When seeking to identify the canon of Scripture, the teaching of Scripture must be taken into account. We already understand that everything about Scripture and reality must be viewed in light of the whole of Scripture; this includes methodologies allowing us to ascertain which books are included in the Biblical canon. Kruger writes:

We are applying Scripture to the question of which books belong in the New Testament. Perhaps this is a more tangible way to think of a self-authenticating canon because it is not all that different (in principle) from the way we apply the teaching of Scripture to any other question before us, whether politics, science, the arts, or anything else.¹³⁴

He identifies are more realistic view of canonicity by stating that we need three components: providential exposure, attributes of canonicity (divine qualities, corporate deception, apostolic origins), and the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit:

Providential exposure. In order for the church to be able to recognize the books of the canon, it must first be providentially exposed to these books. The church cannot recognize a book that it does not have.

Attributes of canonicity. These attributes are basically characteristics that distinguish canonical books from all other books. There are three attributes of canonicity: (1) divine qualities (canonical books bear the “marks” of divinity), (2) corporate reception (canonical books are recognized by the church as a whole), and (3) apostolic origins (canonical books are the result of the redemptive-historical activity of the apostles).

Internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. In order for believers to rightly recognize these attributes of canonicity, the Holy Spirit works to overcome the noetic effects of sin and produces belief that these books are from God.¹³⁵

This is no different than what we've already discussed regarding the internal testimony of the Spirit and confirming evidences. However, here we're speaking at the corporate level (discussed more in a moment). His inclusion of providential exposure simpliy limits the range of possibilities. Kruger writes that "Christ’s promise that his sheep will respond to his voice pertains only to books that have had their voice actually heard by the sheep (John 10:27)."¹³⁶.

Kruger gives an example of what this could mean¹³⁷:

...canonical books...cannot be lost. If they are lost, then they were never canonical books to begin with. So, even if we were to discover Paul’s lost letter in the desert sands today, we would not place it into the canon as the twenty-eighth book. Instead, we would simply recognize that God had not preserved this book to be a permanent foundation for the church. Putting such a letter into the canon now would not change that fact; it could not make a book foundational that clearly never was.¹³⁸

While nothing outranks the Spirit's work, the evidences are nonetheless important. They help us see clearly which books have no place in the Bible, even if they're otherwise quite helpful. For example, regarding the lack of Apostolic authority, "there were many books within early Christianity that were deemed to be orthodox but not canonical (e.g., the Shepherd of Hermas, 1 Clement)."¹³⁹.

Some books that are often cited as "lost books" are non-canonical because they're blatantly contradictory with the whole of Scripture. Anti-theists who seek to cite contradictions in Scripture should keep in mind the church has already barred such books from the Canon.

Both Reformed and Evangelicalism have come to the same conclusion regarding the list of Biblical books, but evangelicalism leaves the list as unwritten. The idea is that everyone will simply agree upon the Biblical included in the pew Bible. This seems a bit like relying on the limits of songs because of what's included in a hymnal: if this is the standard, then just as we accept additional hymns via handouts, why not suspect additional Biblical books from the pulpit?

There's simply no written contract in place which prevents additions or removals¹⁴⁰. Even the closest thing evangelicalism has to a confession, the Baptist Faith & Message, provides no definition for what books are in the Bible. When there is a contract in place, it's only done in a hyper-congregationalist manner, extending only to the local congregational, which is Rome's idea of institutional unity, just at a smaller scale.

Rome takes advantage of this lack of definition by pushing its own model of canonicity. In contrast to an evangelical-style historical analysis of texts, Kruger writes:

the [Roman] Catholic model is in a slightly better position because at least it purports to rest the canon on divine revelation (through the infallible pope and church), whereas the criteria-of-canonicity model rests the canon on “neutral” human assessments of historical evidence.¹⁴¹

However, Rome and evangelicalism are easily comparable by their contrast in institutional unity: while Rome demands it, evangelicalism has no use for it. Everything about Rome is oriented around a an institution, while evangelicalism is largely individualistic with a reliance on weak social contracts. On this point, Kruger writes:

some approaches have been so intent on avoiding the mistakes of Roman Catholicism that they have virtually ignored the role of the church altogether, creating a just-me-and-God type of individualism where canon is determined entirely outside any ecclesiastical or corporate considerations.¹⁴²

The Reformed perspective is like the Roman perspective in that Divine intervention is required, but is like evangelicalism in that it's not tied to a specific institution. Recall that, Reformed ecclesiology states that the church (singular) precedes the churches (plural) logically, not historically.

Just as water is water be it a drop or an ocean, we can answer the question "which is the true church?" by pointing to any instance of the visible Gospel-preaching, sacraments-observing church to answer the question (cf. WCF 25.4). It's beyond preposterous and insulting to consider the bride of Christ to be a single visible institution with a specific name. It is expressed in each and every local, visible congregation. This bride is the recipient of the Spirit, not merely each individual.

As part of a healthy, Reformed catholicity, we seek theological unity by codifying baseline theological expressions in councils. It's not so much the institution, nor is it ever merely the individual. There's a both a Spiritual (capital-S) unity created by Christ at Pentecost and a creedal/confessional theological unity. In this context, Kruger notes that:

If the testimonium can reliably lead an individual to belief in the canon, there seems little reason why we should not affirm such reliability for the church as a whole. On the contrary, one might even argue that there are biblical reasons to be more confident in the role of the testimonium on a corporate level. After all, we have additional biblical testimony that we should heed “an abundance of counselors” (Prov. 11:14) and run the same path as the “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) that have gone before us.¹⁴³.

The Reformed answer isn't strict institutional unity or an absolute isolationist free-for-all, but confessional catholic canonicity as expressed in the list of canonical books in BC4¹⁴⁴ and WCF1.2. Additionally, BC6 and WCF 1.3 both explicitly exclude the apocraphal books, but BC goes one step further by explicitly naming the common apocraphal books of the day:

We distinguish those sacred books from the apocryphal, viz.: the third and fourth books of Esdras, the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Jesus Sirach, Baruch, the Appendix to the book of Esther, the Song of the Three Children in the Furnace, the History of Susannah, of Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasseh, and the two books of the Maccabees. All of which the church may read and take instruction from, so far as they agree with the canonical books; but they are far from having such power and efficacy that we may from their testimony confirm any point of faith or of the Christian religion; much less may they be used to detract from the authority of the other, that is, the sacred books.

However, it's BC5, which we've already discussed which explicitly states that our reason for holding to the 66 books of the Bible isn't "so much because the church receives and approves", but "because the Holy Spirit witnesses in our hearts that they are from God, and also because they carry the evidence thereof in themselves". Therefore, our discussion of Divine authorship largely covers the concept of canon, but it's important to set it in the context of the corporate, catholic church.

Sola Scriptura

Having set out the foundations of historical theology and of Scripture, we can now clarify confusion relating to the term sola Scriptura. It's often defined in such an overly simplistic way that it ends up being entirely self-defeating.

Much of what's under the guise of sola Scriptura is actually solo Scriptura. This grammatically gibberish term is equally ideologically nonsensical. This methodological heresy turns to theological heresy when there's an attempt to take it consistently.

Pastor Youngchun Cho writes:

The Protestant slogan of sola Scriptura has been often misunderstood and abused as a sort of iconoclasm that destroys the doctrinal and exegetical traditions of previous eras. This misconception can be refuted easily by a cursory glance at the writings of the Reformers, who interacted extensively with the church fathers and medieval theologians in their biblical exegesis. They also sought to produce their own confessions and catechisms to teach Protestant tenets distinct from the papal church.¹⁴⁵

The state of the Church today isn't merely from raw liberalism, but probably more so from an absolute abandonment of catholicity. History is simply repeating itself. In the 17th century, the worst heretics were the Bible-only heretics. The worst of the worst in the 17 century were the Socinians. Regarding Westminster Divine Anthony Tuckney (d. 1670), Cho writes of the Socinians that they were...

... considered greater threats than previous heretics, not because of what they argued but due to how they developed their arguments. They claimed themselves to be Bible-believing Christians and cited Scripture explicitly in support of their theological agendas. For example, the Racovian Catechism, which was the official confession of Socinianism in the seventeenth century, begins with a strong affirmation of the divine authority, certainty, sufficiency, and perspicuity of the Holy Scriptures. Paul Best’s Mysteries Discovered (1647) is also replete with Bible verses and denies the notion that Christ is divine and coequal with the Father on the ground that there is “not one such word, or any one text tending to that purpose in the whole holy Scriptures.”¹⁴⁶

What's being described isn't Christianity, but what's called Biblicism. It's insistence on using only the Bible functionally invalidates the doctrine of the Church. Though Rome has no Gospel and absolutely no theological unity, relying instead on a fictional "institutional unity", they're entirely correct in pointing out that protestantism is a schismatic mess.

Everyone is trying to be Biblical, but without the unifying creeds and confessions, there is no concept of unity within the church today or with the church in the past. Where unity is sought it's only in the Roman institutional unity sense where one is merely keeping the band together despite creedal or confessional heterodoxy¹⁴⁷. Cho states it well when he writes that "Doctrinal unity is the solid foundation on which authentic Christian unity can be built up."¹⁴⁸.

Solo (not sola) Scriptura is the idea that your theology comes only from Scripture, or that it's truly your only theological standard. While it sounds pious, it's actually incredibly arrogant. Theologian Robert Letham explains:

This [solo Scriptura] perspective values what the Holy Spirit putatively makes known to us at the expense of what he has made known to the church of Jesus Christ over the last two thousand years. Moreover, it is impossible to come to the Bible with a blank mind, unaffected by philosophical or cultural presuppositions, or previously received teaching. It is better to acknowledge these factors than to pretend that one's biblical interpretation is pure and unalloyed when it may be far from it.¹⁴⁹

If the arrogance isn't yet clear, let's consult Trueman:

The Lord has graciously provided us with a great cloud of witnesses throughout history who can help us to understand the Bible and to apply it to our present day. To ignore such might not be so much a sign of biblical humility as of overbearing hubris and confidence in our own abilities and the uniqueness of our own age.¹⁵⁰

Finally, Van Til writes:

Under the slogan of going back to the Bible, [“Fundamentalism”] often ignores the great insight into the truth of the Bible that the Church has already obtained in the generations past. This insight has been deposited in the creeds of the church. He who ignores the creeds under the slogan of going to the Bible does despite to the Spirit who has led the church into all truth.¹⁵¹

We must ask, then, what is sola scriptura? While we can simply state that Scripture is, per WCF 1.2, "the Word of God written", there's little argument against this fairly uncontroversial statement. It also doesn't answer the question. Citing WLC3 doesn't answer the question either:

Q. What is the Word of God?

A. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience.

This is also fairly uncontroversial within evangelicalism. To understand sola Scriptura, we can look at it as being analagous to sola fide.

As we have only one ultimate redemption by the incarnate word we have only one ultimate message that is the written word; yet, as God grants us the means of grace (word, sacrament, prayer, cf. WLC 154) in that redemption, God grants us the illuminations from the church.

Just as sola fide doesn't imply a rejection of the church (WCF 25.2), sola Scriptura doesn't imply a rejection of the church teachings. Nonetheless, it's not the sacraments which are inherently effectual, but the working of the Spirit; likewise, the teachings of the church don't share the same honor as Scripture itself or as the Spirit speaking to us via that word. Stated negatively, while solo scriptura is a rejection of historic, peer-reviewed ecclesiastical teaching, we might use the equally grammatically incorrect term solo fide for the rejection of the church (either sacraments or attendance.)

It may be easier to understand the relationship between church teaching and Scriptura, and therefore sola Scriptura, by switching to the correct terminology. We speak of the creeds, catechisms, and confessions as the norma normata (rule that is ruled or normed norm) while we speak of Scripture as the norma normans (the rule that rules or norning norm)¹⁵².

This allows us to rightfully understand Scriptura as having the highest and final authority, while retaining, not merely the general usefulness of, but subordinate, though real, authority of codified, peer-reviewed ecclesiastical documents. While everything must be normed by Scripture, as we saw during our discussion of the creeds, for any meaningful theological fellowship to flourish we view the norming by the normed.

Cho writes:

The confessions and catechisms have a pastoral role, guiding those who are weak in understanding to discover distorted interpretations of the Scriptures and to better grasp the true meaning of the Word of God. In providing helpful boundaries of legitimate interpretations, the confessional writings uphold the authority of Scripture rather than undermine it.¹⁵³

Later he writes:

Tuckey pointed out that mere reference to biblical passages does not guarantee the legitimacy of a certain position. Theological claims must be examined and regulated by creeds and confessions. This is not because Scripture is insufficient or ambiguous but because our understanding and judgment are limited and prone to error.¹⁵⁴

We need to work within the history of the church. This is done not simply by citing isolated individuals within church history (e.g. Spurgeon, Calvin), thus engaging in the "genius theologian" problem of which Fesko wrote, but by continually deepening our understanding of the agreed upon theological foundations and boundaries of the faith set out in the creeds and confessions.

This is important to realize in order to prevent abuse that comes from leaders applying fresh, private intuitions to ecclesiastical situations. The Reformed have built-in mechanisms to prevent many forms of abuse by removing single-person authority, moving it to a consistory or session. Discipline is done by a group of men, not a single person.

Additionally, all evangelicals are seeking to be Biblical, but this becomes dangerous without an agreed upon subordinate standard. The Reformed, by definition, stand on these subordinate standards by personally confessing them. Church discipline and counseling driven by fleeting exegesis is abuse, not discipline. Scripture as distilled by the publicly available confessions and taught by the catechisms gives us the boundaries we use to understand the ten commandments.

Furthermore, it's also not a violation of sola Scriptura to insist on marriage being between one man and one woman (WCF 24.1)¹⁵⁵. There are many arguments today that use the Bible as a pretext to redefine marriage: just as the headship of the husband is called a Pauline social construct, Jesus can also be said to speak of local customs in Matthew 19:4-6 (even though both Paul and Christ appeal beyond all customs to Eden!) We can ignore all their attempts by a common confession.

Fleeting Scriptural exegesis by "genius theologians" never overrides the practical matters of faith as explicitly stated in the creeds and confessions. No "genius theologian" private interpretation ever overrides the corporate creeds and confessions; indeed, deviations must be ignored as verifiably heterodox.

While WLC3 states that Scripture is "the only rule of faith and obedience", this is in the sense of it being the final rule. Nobody can deny that civil governments have a duty to create their own subordinate standards of obedience in the form of constitutions and civil laws, but, of course, these subordinate standards are to be conformed by the final standard of Scripture. Diminishing the authority of civil laws or the creeds because of a misunderstanding of sola Scriptura has caused to no end of both civil and ecclesiastical evils.

Just as one would expect with civil law, it's not a violation of sola Scriptua to demand, entirely without debate, that our children be protected from crass moral law violations such as Sabbath breaking or images of Christ (cf. WLC 151.2). As Joel Beeke notes, "all such images are abominated in Scripture and roundly rejected by the Reformed confessional heritage without exception."¹⁵⁶. Further research is done by examining the works of the authors of the standards, not merely by going to Scripture directly¹⁵⁷ as "genius theologians". The dangers associated with Matthew 18:6 are serious enough for one to step back from the private and accept the confessions without decrying it as a violation of sola Scriptura.

Perhaps the confusion relating to sola Scriptura can be avoided by thinking of the term as ablative: by Scripture alone. Salvation is by Christ alone by Faith alone by the Word alone. This effectively describes the Reformed Christ-centered theology of Word and Spirit. As we saw from Owen, "we say not that the Spirit ever speaks to us of the Word, but by the Word."

The Text

On the objective side, we may state that Scripture is "by [God's] singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical" (WCF 1.8). However, this doesn't say anything about how the Word is kept pure. Before the written Word, revelation was passed verbally via the patriarchs. Though the events of the flood evolved over time as it moved to various other cultures¹⁵⁸, God Himself spoke as the ultimate primary source, revealing the rule of faith to be written under Moses and the Prophets.

The way God used to spread the written Word of the New Testament is the exact same as what he used to spread the message of the Gospel: decentralization. As the Gospel spread through His people, so did the written Word as copied manuscripts. The Scriptures being the written word of God means that it goes with the people (see Trueman on Amos above). The Christian life is guided by Word and Spirit.

Though preaching is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the nations (1 Corinthians 1:23), even from a merely human standpoint, there's much wisdom to this method of decentralized textual transmission. Decentralization entirely removes even the potential of centralized corruption¹⁵⁹, both in terms of explicit revisionism and a "telephone game" (Chinese whispers). Multiple lines of transmssion spread in parallel means that later content can be compared over time to reach the original.

While some of these manuscripts are nearly as long as the New Testament itself, others, such as what's known as P52 is tiny, but goes back to the year 125¹⁶⁰. Whereas in the 17th century, there were only a handful of manuscripts, with the earliest coming from the 10th century, in the 19th century there were 2000 manuscripts with the earliest going back to the 4th century. In 2006, we had over 5,700 manuscripts going back to the 2nd century. As time moves forward, we're increasing our confidence of the text of the written Word¹⁶¹.

However, the goal is never textual certainty, it's textual confidence. Accusations of Biblical corruption are common from theological liberals and Muslims, but this is largely a word game. James White writes:

It is easy to find scholarly sources that affirm both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures to have been corrupted. They have been. But what does this mean? In scholarly parlance, corruption simply means that, over time, errors have been made in the handwritten copying process. At the least, this is true of all documents that began their existence prior to the printing press and, in reality, prior to 1949, when the photocopying process was invented. Hence, by nature, all ancient documents are “corrupt” to one degree or another.¹⁶²

Hebrew and Arabaic textual transmission differs by degree: there's less decentralization due to the literally centralized temple; however, the diaspora does create the all-important multiple lines of transmission. In addition, the creation of the Greek transation, the Septuagint (aka LXX), gives us another place of comparison.

Even long before artificial intelligence and machine learning was able to finish sentences or replace sections of photos, paleographers have been able to intelligently collate the manuscripts and apply basic techniques to acquire the original intent. Though beyond our scope, the methods for determining original text is not very complex.

There's absolutely no question that we have the original text, the issue is removing added content and clarifying which of the readings are original. However, there's no theology affected. Even the undeniable fact that 1 John 5:7 and John 7:53-8:11 do not come from Divine authorship in no way affects our doctrine of the Trinity or the mercy of Christ.

Thinking of textual transmission as analagous to Gospel spread should help us avoid a secular mindset. Even the works of Plato and Aristotle were copied by hand, but they were not spread by keeping the Word and Spirit together.

Given that this Author never leaves His message, we must think in terms of WCF 5.3 (Of Providence) to appreciate :

God, in his ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at his pleasure.

God did not choose to wait for Xerox or the Internet; rather, he chose to protect His text using a means that's a stumbling block to fundamentalist extremism and foolishness to liberal textual critics. God will protect His message, just as be said he would protect His church (Matt 17:18).

Making it personal, we must say that the existence of variant readings in the Biblical manuscripts leads us to make a decision: does one doubt the Bible's reliability (liberal/despair), does one elevate a single translation to a higher, near inspired, status (King James-onlyism), or does one rely on time-tested, well-established paleographic data combined with textual-critical techniques to create a strong confidence in the Biblical text (conservative)?.

It's important to remember that while the Reformation was starting, the renaissance was well underway. Protestants vilify Erasmus for siding with Rome against Luther, but the Greek textual work of Erasmus is foundational for all future textual efforts. Closer to home is the work of Calvin's successor in Geneva Theodore Beza. Jan Krans writes:

Whereas for Erasmus, the Greek text of the New Testament is first of all a source, which he treats in essentially the same way as any other classical text, for Beza, it is first of all (holy) Scripture, which has to be treated with the utmost reverence. In Beza we observe the Greek teacher at work, the humanist scholar with a vast knowledge of classical literature, but also the Reformation theologian for whom Scripture is the infallible source of salvation.¹⁶⁴

This highlights the difference between textual transmission and textual criticism as a raw literary enterprise vs. understanding the Spirit with the Word. The work of Erasmus, Beza, and others set the foundations for future textual criticism, were the foundations for the King James Bible, and act as testimonies of God's preservation of His Word.

Next to this is the concept of translation method. Though it's beyond our scope, translation method is not well understood in America due to rampant monolingualism and a deeply archaic, counter-intuitive manner in which language is taught in school (the grammar-translation method). Despite popular belief, one need not be overly precise in language to get a point across. Context does most of the heavy lifting. Content, not grammar, drives language.

If Greek can exist without ablative, so can Latin. If Spanish can exist without stating the subject in inflection, so can Greek. If English can survive without grammatical gender, so can Spanish. If Chinese can exist without a plural, so can English. The fact that French exists even without pronouncing the ends of their words and Arabic and Hebrew can exist without vowels should entirely silence inappropriately pedentic language teachers. Much of the language studies taught in homeschooling inevitably leads one to a functional denial of the doctrine of perspicuity.

Thompson writes:

The fragility of human language can be overstated. In reality, verbal communication succeeds most of the time, and when it doesn’t, it is not at all clear that language itself is the problem.¹⁶⁵

We'll touch on these topics more later in the grammatical-historical section.

What are we to say has Divine authorship? Is it the vernacular Bible, only the text in the original languages, or only the originally written texts? Put simply, all of them are the authentic Word of God.

Though not entirely unanimous¹⁶⁶, Mastricht writes of a distinction between the canonical and authentic¹⁶⁷:

For this reason, we only receive Scripture as canonical and authentic that is in those languages [Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek]. And that applies not only to the autographs, which for many reasons, according to his most wise counsel, God in his providence has allowed to pass away, but also to the apographs as well...And yet Holy Scripture is not so tied to those languages that it cannot, and also ought not, be translated into other languages for the common use of the church. Likewise, all versions in those languages are considered authentic to the extent that they express the sources, according to which they must always be measured. ¹⁶⁸

Yet, this has nothing to do with the teaching of Scripture, because we're always meant to read the local in light of the overall coherent whole, giving us the ability for Scripture to naturally expel our invalid understandings. Muller writes:

despite the insistence of the Reformed that the very words of the original are inspired, the theological force of their argument falls in the substance or res rather than on the individual words: translations can be authoritative quoad res because the authority is not so much in the words as in the entirety of the teaching as distributed throughout the canon.¹⁶⁹

Exegetical Model

Even assuming a strong textual basis and a good translation method (or original language skills), Richard Muller points out:

...it is one thing to argue the infallibility of the text in all matters of faith and practice and then to interpret the text following the fourfold “allegorical” exegesis typical of the medieval commentators...and quite another thing to make the same statement of the infallibility of the text in the context of a literal method of exegesis...¹⁷⁰

In other words, you can have the highest view of Scripture while still having an extremely sloppy way of reading it. They're separate issues. The medieval church developed a model called the quadriga. This is a model of looking at a text to get a fourfold meaning of a text: the literal, the allegorical, the tropological (moral), and the the anagogical (heavenly, or relating to the afterlife).

This is an eisegetical model of putting foreign meanings onto a text. However, it's also not much different than reading the Bible with your creed-less, cultural lenses on, then forcing an immediate application. Reading a text like this leads to misguided subjective interpretations that lead to rampant disagreements at every level.

During the late medieval period more people learned Greek and Hebrew and read the texts themselves, leading to various Christian humanist scholars seeing the clarity of the basic message of Scripture themselves¹⁷¹. Furthermore, interpretation was leaning toward a more natural approach¹⁷². This was one of the fuels for the upcoming reformation¹⁷³.

This grew to replace the earlier quadriga leading to what we call a literal sense of Scripture (sensus literalis). However, over time, the term "literal" has gained an additional meaning causing some to equate it with "wooden literal", but this is a caricature.

The literal sense simply means the plain sense intended by the author, not simply the original human author in his own unique local context, but even more so the divine Author. This means that the whole of revelation sheds light on the true intent¹⁷⁴.

Turretin explains:

The literal sense is not so much that which is derived from proper words and not figurative, as it may be distinguished from the figurative (and is sometimes so used by the fathers); but that which is intended by the Holy Spirit and is expressed in words either proper or figurative¹⁷⁵

In other words, the intention for a passage in the mind of the human author will not exhaust the intention for the same passage according to the Divine Author in the grand scheme of history. The human authors are merely expressing the peice of the puzzle which they are privileged to be given by the Spirit.

Wilhelmus à Brakel (d. 1711), theologian of the Nadere Reformatie (the Dutch parallel to Puritanism), describes the goal:

We should not merely cleave to the literal meaning, however, as so many literalists do. This is being merely satisfied with the rind of the fruit which provides neither strength nor food for the soul. One must penetrate to the kernel itself, seeking to perceive the internal essence of the matter. For this the natural man is blind, regardless of how learned, proficient in the Word of God, and able he may be to understand the context and convey the literal meaning of the text to others. A godly person, on the contrary, immediately begins to view the unique clarity, nature, and power of spiritual matters contained in the text and his perception increases the more he engages himself in observing and meditating upon these matters.¹⁷⁶

Muller gives an example:

even apart from prophecy, an inspired text can be argued to point toward or to provide an indication of a doctrine presumably unknown or historically and culturally unattainable by a human author but known to God. The trinitarian nature of the Godhead, unknown to the Israelites and presumably unknown to Moses except by a special revelation, can be adumbrated in Genesis chapter 1, not a prophecy, but simply because the text indicates the divine creative operation which is, by definition, trinitarian. Moses, arguably, could not have been responsible for placing this doctrine into the text—but the auctor primarius, God, simply reflected his own nature in speaking, through Moses, about himself, his Spirit moving on the face of the waters and his creative word. The capability of an inspired text pointing beyond the historical letter is, therefore, clearly an issue related to hermeneutics—specifically to the way in which a text is assumed to “work” in relation to the larger body of Christian doctrine.¹⁷⁷

Much of evangelicalism today listens to the voice of the enlightenment that encourage reading merely according to the human authors. These enlightenment influences are almost indistinguishible from the rationalistic, Biblicisitic Socinian voices in the 17th century. It's truly no surprise that evangelicalism has Biblicisitic trends.

It's hard to overstate the importance of the fact that the solution to an overly allegorized understanding of Scripture is not simply replacing it with a wooden literal reading merely according to the intend of the original human author. The reason we can have a single story of redemption and eschatology across 66 books is because of the Divine Author. This alone should help us see that there's a meaning beyond the local human author's intent. This also means that one need not even stay in a certain pericope to glean its meaning; though we should try to stick with the words of a single author first because sometimes words are used differently by different authors¹⁷⁸

Christianity isn't promoting eisegesis by seeing the Son of God in Genesis 3:15; rather, this is undoubtably what the original Divine Author intended. The same can be said for the Angel of the Lord¹⁷⁹ and the burning bush¹⁸⁰.

The Divine Author's intention isn't merely by the explicit words of Scripture, but also by that which is a good and necessary consequence¹⁸¹ of what's explicitly stated. This principle is one of the more important principles in hermeneutics that we need to understand early in our walk. It's also the second of the three concepts that we must highlight as major factors in explaining theological differences between Christians.

Professor Ryan McGraw writes:

...“good and necessary consequence” refers to doctrines and precepts that are truly contained in and intended by the divine Author of Scripture, yet are not found or stated on the surface of the text and must be legitimately inferred from one or more passages of Scripture. As the phrase indicates, such inferences must be “good,” or legitimately drawn from the text of Scripture. In addition, they must be “necessary,” as opposed to imposed or arbitrary.¹⁸²

In giving a concrete example of this, he writes:

When believers in the Lord Jesus hear teachings and doctrines unfamiliar to them, they demand, properly, “Show me in the Bible!” Yet a biblical answer to this mandate will not always come by citing chapter and verse. There are some doctrines (such as the doctrine of the Trinity) that are dear to Christians, but that cannot be proved by any single passage of Scripture. Such doctrines must be inferred and pieced together from several passages of Scripture.¹⁸³

McGraw notes that "nearly every New Testament citation of the Old Testament is an application of the principle of good and necessary consequence."¹⁸⁴. When we use an American evangelical understanding of the Scriptures, we also entirely miss the Old Testament references used by Christ and the Apostles.

Thomas Boston (d. 1732) writes:

Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, while he would prove the fundamental article of the resurrection against the Sadducees, does not seek after a text that said in express words, that the dead shall rise again, but proves it by good consequence, yet no less firmly than if he had produced an express text for it, Matthew 22:32. And it is no less evident that the apostles follow him in this method ; as in treating of the resurrection of Christ, Acts 2:25. of the resurrection of all mankind, 1 Cor. 15. and of the justification of a sinner before God, in the epistles to the Romans and Galatians.¹⁸⁵

Without good and necessary consequence, we stare in absolute bewilderment at how Reformed authors could have come to such a conclusion or how the Apostles could have possibly ended up with such an application of an Old Testament text. The former is disrespectful, the latter accuses the Apostles of mishandling Scripture.

At a bare minimum, admitting to yourself that you already have a strong reliance on good and necessary consequence, perhaps by the fact that you accept that God is Triune, goes a long way in helping you not give up on theological studies.

The outcomes of good and necessary consequence are based on the literal sense of Scripture, but the literal sense of Scripture in light of the whole of Scripture. This is one reason that the principle of good and necessary consequence gained confessional status in the WCF. Read the first part of WCF 1.6:

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.

We're sometimes required to correlate texts and rely on previously, solidly established theology. This reuse is called the analogy of faith or analogia fidei¹⁸⁷. Once you've established that 10 + 10 = 20, you can simply trust that truth everywhere you go. Our systematic theological understandings need not be doubted at every turn.

Christians should keep their trust of theology at least at the level of trust they have for the stability of mathematics. You read Scripture with the Trinity, Christ, redemption, etc, in mind. This correlates interpretation with infallibility in order to speak of an infallible rule of interpretation.

McGraw explains:

Reformed Protestants interpreted Scripture in terms of the analogy of faith (analogia fidei). The analogy of faith referred to the fact that the Bible must be interpreted in terms of an already-established body of doctrine. Initially this referred to the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Decalogue (as it had in the Middle Ages), but it eventually included the later catechisms and confessions of the church...One text of Scripture must not only harmonize with all other passages of Scripture, but its interpreters must also avoid reading a text in such a way that it contradicts the received body of doctrine that has been derived from Scripture.¹⁸⁸

He provides an example:

...if we believe on the basis of Romans 9 and Ephesians 1 that God sovereignly chooses some to everlasting life and passes by others, consigning them to eternal destruction, and that the elect only are the objects of God’s saving love, we will not likely forget these established doctrines when we read in Ezekiel 18 that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The idea is not to impose creedal formulations upon the text of Scripture, but rather to harmonize individual passages with the theology of the Bible as a whole, based on the assumption that those creedal formulations are proper expositions and summaries of Scripture.¹⁸⁹

Calvin gives an example where the analogia fidei would solve a problem perceived by many Christians:

The Spirit declares through Paul’s mouth that Abraham attained righteousness through faith, not through works [Rom. 4:3; Gal. 3:6]. We also teach that by faith all are justified apart from the works of the law. The same Spirit teaches through James that the faith both of Abraham and of ourselves consists in works, not only in faith. It is sure that the Spirit is not in conflict with himself.¹⁹⁰

The analogia fidei is a hermeneutical principle that also gained confessional status in the Westminster Confession. Section 1.9 says:

The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

Closely related to the analogia fidei is the analogia Scripturae (analogy of Scripture): for any given event, we must read the unclear through the light of the clear.

Thompson writes:

From the earliest days, Christians have insisted that Scripture should be compared with Scripture. Recourse to this ‘analogy of Scripture (analogia scripturae)’ can be found in the work of Irenaeus, Augustine and many others. This is what Luther had in mind when he insisted that ‘Scripture is its own interpreter’.¹⁹¹

Combining the analogia fidei and analogia Scripturae with good and necessary consequence gives us tools to lay out boundary markers of impossible interpretations, as we've seen in McGraw's example. Once something is established as an absolute truth, such as the Trinity, everything contradicting it is marked out as impossible.

We use these principles together constantly, but we often brush off unfamiliar results as either "obvious" or "impossible". We need to look closer at unfamiliar theology, but also rethink our own theology in light our continual increase in understanding. For example, Matthew 28:19 starts out with "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them..." Many will read this part of the great commission as meaning "create Christians"; however, good and necessary consequence combined with the analogia fidei will lead us to realize that disciples imply the existence of teachers, thus a better understanding is "create Church members". Yes, go out and tell others of Christ according to your given gifts, but also guide them to the bride of Christ, the Church, for further growth and corporate worship (Hebrews 10:24-25).

Furthermore, we can, should, and must rely on those who came before us who already set out the boundary markers. No rework is necessary. Indeed, the creeds, catechisms, and confessions give us our boundaries by which we should read Scripture without going through the truly infeasible task of proving everything at every level.

McGraw writes "Nearly every New Testament citation of the Old Testament is an application of the principle of good and necessary consequence."¹⁹² The same could be said of the authors of the creeds, catechisms, and confessions. Raw proof-texting is not an admirable task. We are to continuously correlate the exegetical, Biblical-theological, Systematic, while standing on the historical to continuously polish our understanding of theology.

Speaking of the Westminster Divines (the authors of the WCF), Stephen Casselli writes:

The Protestant orthodox divines of the seventeenth century believed that any dogmatic inference, as long as it was “raised” from Scripture, was as much Scripture truth as any other....Their commentary work reveals the source from which their theological conclusions were drawn. This is one clear specimen of how theology and polemics were framed in the seventeenth century. Each doctrine drawn from Scripture was shown to be consistent with the received tradition of orthodox theology and defended against opposing opinions.¹⁹³

Feelings of tension within Scripture are signals of cognitive dissonance relating to your incomplete understanding, not signs of objective Biblical contradiction¹⁹⁴. The Bible is speaking the whole, thus the whole must be taken into account with the analogia fidei as one of your your guide with eschatology, good and necessary consequence, etc.

Analogia Scripturae and analogia fidei aren't obscure theological techniques. Even babies learning about their new world are instinctively testing using what they know to clarify what they don't know and using their existing knowledge as boundaries. The world for a baby has a learning curve appropriate to the expectations one would have for babies. They understand their world according to their own progressively increasing abilities with the occational difficulty requiring outside help. The same can be said of us as we read Scripture.

We call this perspicuity: Scripture is clear. Thompson states the concept simply:

The clarity of Scripture is that quality of the biblical text that, as God’s communicative act, ensures its meaning is accessible to all who come to it in faith.¹⁹⁵

In other words, "God has something to say and he is very good at saying it."¹⁹⁶.

We can, of course, look closer by seeing that the external and internal evidences have analogues in perspicuity. Thompson writes of external and internal clarity:

Which leads us to one of Luther’s most distinctive contributions, his delineation of two kinds of clarity in Scripture. There is, he insisted, an ‘external clarity’, which concerns the public accessibility of Scripture. God has graciously chosen to express himself in the ordinary conventions of human language, with the result that ‘everything there is in the Scriptures has been brought out by the Word into the most definite light, and published to all the world’.24 This is the aspect of clarity that makes the public ministry of the word possible as well as the appeal to Scripture in all matters of doctrine and Christian living.¹⁹⁷

This roughly maps to our concept of the objective evidences and marks. Thompson continues:

Yet there is another aspect of Scripture’s clarity: ‘internal clarity’. There is a sense in which, to use his words, ‘no man perceives one iota of what is in the Scriptures unless he has the Spirit of God’.25 It is possible to know how to quote Scripture, to recite everything in it in a way that makes perfect sense and to ‘apprehend and truly understand nothing of it’. Understanding, in the true Christian sense, is more than making sense of the words on the page. The clarity of Scripture, Luther argued, needs to be understood at both of these levels, external and internal, and we must remember that God involves himself in both. The clarity of Scripture is no mere once and for all accomplishment, ‘a static property of the text’, to use the popular caricature. Scripture remains God’s word by which he addresses the human heart. God’s clear word is made clear to believers by God.¹⁹⁸

Perspicuity can confuse you if you always think in absolute terms: if the Bible is clear why do concepts such as good and necessary consequence exist? Why do large multi-volume theological book sets exist? Furthermore, doesn't Peter himself, under the inspiration of the Spirit, explicitly deny perspicuity? See 2 Peter 3:14-18:

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Here Peter acknowledges that the New Testament writings by Paul are inspired ("wisdom given him"), yet he says that "there are some things in them that are hard to understand". The following words "which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures" merely state that these hard-to-understand words are subsequently abused, "as they do the other Scriptures". This doesn't clarify perspicuity, nor does Peter's admonition to not be carried away by these.

Thompson helps us again:

No serious defence of claritas scripturae has ever denied that there are difficulties in Scripture. Clarity is not the same as uniform simplicity or even transparency. In some cases the clear meaning of a passage is hard won, often because of factors that have little to do with a problem in the text itself.¹⁹⁹

Van Til writes:

Perspicuity does not mean that every portion is equally easy to be understood. It means that with ordinary intelligence any person can obtain, without the intervention of priests, the main point of the things he needs to know.²⁰⁰

Furthermore, we already have the solution to how to handle the difficult writings of Paul: analogia fidei and analogia Scripturae. When working with Scripture, we must do so in light of the whole. We're in a much better situation today than those in Paul and Peter's day. We have the entire corpus of Paul's writings in front of us.

While all of Scripture is written by a single Divine Author, the human personalities, writing style, and vocabulary are particular to a single author, and that author's writing style may cause difficulty for some readers. However, we don't want to be too strict on this point, as everyone knows that we all grow in our style and vocabulary over time. We all speak and write using different registers in different context. Critical scholarship puts too much weight in literary styles, causing them to deny Pauline authorship of certain books²⁰¹.

Nonetheless, we still need take care to be quick to listen and slow to speak (James 1:19). Thompson gives us encouragement:

...the presence of Scripture in the world of fallen men and women exposes it to the possibility of abuse and misappropriation. A clear text does not do away with the need for diligence. In those cases where the clarity might be hard won, confidence need not be abandoned – but we need to be alert to the reality of self-interested abuse of God’s good gift.²⁰²

Perspicuity has also been raised to confessional status by WCF 1.7 which states:

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

Where Thompson writes of "those cases where the clarity might be hard won", WCF speaks to the "due use of the ordinary means". We must read and meditate on the Word daily and in conversation with the Church catholic. This may mean adding readings of the creeds to your daily devotional times. Furthermore, we must attend corporate worship, receive the sacraments, and prayer continually.

When we're not sabatoshing our own efforts via neglect and other sins and are active engaging with God's ordinary means, in the proper cadence (daily and weekly), we'll be better prepared to see Scripture as God intends.

Biblical-Theological Framework

To use the analogia fidei effectively, we won't directly correlate Scripture passages in an attempt to create little more than verse lists. Scripture has an underlying consistency that is only coherently understood when read through all prior understandings. We'll continually read the Bible through a correct understanding of the Bible.

What we call "word of God" is both the understanding developed from Scripture as well as Scripture itself. Bavinck writes:

...we must definitely distinguish between the word of God and Scripture... the word in most cases does not come to us at all as Scripture, that is, in the form of Scripture. In fact, it comes in such a way that, having been absorbed from Scripture into the consciousness of the church, it proceeds from there to the most diverse people in the form of admonition and speech, nurture and education, books, magazines, tracts, and speeches and exerts its effect. And always it is God who stands behind that word. It is he who causes that word to go forth to people in all those diverse forms and thereby calls them to repentance and life.²⁰³

This brings us back to the fact we never come to Scripture without a prior understanding. At first, much of your theology comes from society. Even someone who has never has any interactions with Christianity still has a sense of morality that will always have a theological aspect. Just as we always have a creed which we must be honest with ourselves and others about, we always have a theological intuition built out of an underlying framework. We must make this explicit.

Our progressive, conscious internalization of the Biblical message will take the shape of an intuitive, explicit Biblical-theological framework which expresses systematic theology. We must actively develop this so that it replaces our implicit framework. Our reading will be guided by our framework while our applications will flow from it. We must develop a structured, developed understanding of theology, not merely an arsenal of facts.

Scriptural meditation requires this framework, as does 1 Peter 3:15:

...in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect

Meaningful defenses of the faith require an understanding of Scripture informed by the whole of Scripture. This will come from a rich, ever-growing structured interpretive-framework providing grounding and support. Getting theology directly from a single passage, even one that seems to fit in the local context, can lead to disastrous long-term results. This is how entire theological traditions become led astray.

It's easy to point out that teachers of different theological traditions need to be more Biblical, but, in reality, everyone is trying to be Biblical. Teachers like Joyce Meyer don't start ministries for the purposes of deceiving people. Their intentions are generally good an they truly believe they're being Biblical by going directly to the Bible without external interference.

However, without structural Biblical unity with the analogia fidei at the forefront of our minds and the creeds and confessions in continual discussion with historical theology, we're lead to the wax nose problem: twisting Scripture to fit whatever you want. This is what Rome warned the Reformers about.

There's an expanding layer of understanding between data and tentative conclusions in most fields of study. Physicians don't have a one-to-one mapping between problems and solutions; they use their training to account for a wide variety of contexts. In Biblical studies, this is analagous to our Biblical-theological layer that sits between Scriptural exegesis and application. It's neither a list of passages nor a set of dogmatic facts.

This layer always exists, and when it's not explicitly set out, it will develop on its own and can lead to dreadful confusion and needless disagreements. Ultimately, you will claim to be Biblical and while you vehemently deny the existence of any external tradition, this imperceptible framework²⁰⁴ will increase its stranglehold on your thought.

This should sound familiar: it's exactly what will happen without explicit creeds and confessions. Indeed, in addition to understanding basic principles such as analogia fidei and good and necessary consequence as well as a correct starting point in terms of creeds and confessions, this layer is the third major factor which explains major theological differences between Christians.

Sinclair Ferguson helps us:

What was sometimes overlooked was the fact that Scripture is not pre-theological nor is biblical interpretation a-theological. [The Bible] contains its own theological controls, its own "form of doctrine" (Rom. 6:17) to which believers are committed by the gospel. The theology taught in Scripture in turn provides an underlying framework for exegesis and biblical theology. The unity of Scripture makes that possible and in fact demands it. Sadly, however, the adage that scholars were "simply following the text" did not always take account of the fact that the text ought never to be isolated from its theological framework.²⁰⁵

We need to seek to replicate this theological framework from the Bible into our own minds, then use it to continue to understand the Bible, ourselves, and everything else. The wider redemptive-historical context and your ever-growing Biblical-theological framework connected with analogia fidei, good and necessary consequence will act as the interpretive lens through which all further studies will flow.

Not everyone is familiar with the idea of Biblical Theology and a proper theological method²⁰⁶. Most people are familiar with the dangers of proof-texting, but even with the local context, it's easy to abuse a passage when its disconnected from an overall eschatological plan or the fact that Scripture has a single ultimate Author. An explicit understanding of Biblical theology acts as a map to guide your local understandings in light of the global.

Sinclair Ferguson helps us again:

Depending on the “tradition” of theological education in which we have been reared, we tend to be introduced to “biblical theology” from different sources. Indeed the phrase itself means different things to different people. The majority of theological teachers and students did not suck in biblical theology with their mother's milk (to rework some words of Calvin), and have accessed it through relatively recent literature; in addition they are often little versed in the theological literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is easy therefore to fall into the error of assuming that biblical theological, redemptive historical, and exegetical perspectives have been known and employed only relatively recently.

...the Westminster Divines were deeply opposed to producing a confession with proof texts and did so only under duress at the command of the English Parliament

...The truth is that there is an intricate weaving of exegesis and biblical and redemptive historical theology behind the wording of the Confession... ²⁰⁷

To reiterate, our systematic theology doesn't always come directly from Scripture, it also comes from the results of good and necessary consequence and good and necessary consequence, further analysis of Biblical theology, and integrating other dogmatic (systematic-theological) structures. Ferguson's example also demonstrates that we can quickly get up to speed on a Biblical-theological framework by studying the Westminster confession.

It's difficult to overstate the importance of being conscious of your theological framework. Simply citing Scripture directly without a theological framework ranges anywhere from unhelpful to actively dangerous; think, for example, of the often quoted words "judge not".

To develop a Biblical-theological framework, we must understand the role of exegesis, Biblical theology, and systematic theology. Glenn Butner writes:

Exegesis attempts to determine the intended meaning of a given text, attending to literary form, lexical meaning, textual variants, and historical and cultural context. Biblical theology is a type of hermeneutics, a theological interpretation of the Bible as a whole that considers key themes and ideas within their canonical context. The biblical theologian builds on exegesis, offering a first-order reflection on the information contained through exegesis by considering canonical narrative, intertextuality, and significance within the context of Christian community. Therefore, biblical theology moves beyond the intended meaning of a given passage, but still develops scripturally informed theological insights.²⁰⁸

Exegesis works on a given text while Biblical-theology works between texts. These scripturally informed theological insights help us keep track of the flow of the redemptive narrative.

However, because God Himself is outside of time and outside of history, it's often deadly to work backwards from creation to assess something about the Creator. We'll dive deeper into this specific topic later when we speak of Prolegomena, but at this point it's important to understand that systematic theology heavily relies on Biblical Theology, but sometimes must work outside of it. Butner writes:

Systematic theology stands one step further removed from the Bible than does biblical theology. Biblical theology attempts to explain synthetically the meaning of the biblical text in continuity with the meaning intended for its original audience, but it extends this meaning through redemptive historical analysis. Systematic theology draws on the Bible directly and on the conclusions of biblical theology to explain questions that are often foreign to the biblical authors and even the canon as a whole, questions which can nonetheless be answered with confidence given the scope of the Bible.²⁰⁹

Later he simplifies a definition:

Systematic theology [is] a second-order reflection on biblical themes that draws on philosophy to provide conceptual clarity concerning who God must be or what God must have done, given scriptural teaching.²¹⁰

For a text to have any ultimate meaning, it must be read in its local grammatical-historical context within its wider redemptive-historical, eschatological context -- yet, sometimes we're left with a mystery that makes no sense in a historical context which must be assessed by the systematic-theological. When speaking of impassibility and the eternal generation of the Son, for example, we need to speak of systematic theology, not so much Biblical theology.

Steven Duby writes that "dogmatic [systematic] theology is but one form of exegesis if “exegesis” simply means an unfolding and setting forth of what is already there in the biblical text."²¹¹. Exegesis is an interaction with the text, which is still what we're doing when we're applying good and necessary consequence. We can also consider correlating systematic-theological findings as exegesis, as that's exactly what we're doing with analogia fidei.

Regarding Biblical theology, Gaffin explains the relationship between it and Systematics as follows²¹²:

Biblical theology is the indispensable servant of systematic theology, where the latter is understood as providing a presentation, under appropriate topics, of the teaching of the Bible as a whole. Biblical theology is indispensable for systematic theology because its distinguishing attention to the text in its redemptive-historical context is indispensable for the exegesis that is the lifeblood of sound systematic theology. Biblical theology is also systematic theology’s servant. It is subordinate to systematic theology in the sense that its distinguishing focus on the specific and distinctive revelatory contributions of each of the various secondary, human authors of Scripture (and by others recorded in their writings) is not for its own sake but only as it serves the more ultimate end of presenting the unified and coherent teaching of the Bible in its entirety as the word of God, its primary author. For instance, our interest in Romans or in Paul’s theology is not ultimately in what he says but what God says there and elsewhere in Scripture.²¹³

Vos also famously summarized the relationship between the Biblical theological and the systematic theological as follows:

In Biblical Theology the principle is one of historical, in Systematic Theology it is one of logical construction. Biblical Theology draws a line of development. Systematic Theology draws a circle.²¹⁴

Put another way, Biblical Theology speaks of a great epic, while systematic theology is the plot and character analysis of that epic²¹⁵.

You should think of systematic theology similarly to how we should think about mathematics: there's just one thing called mathematics just a there's just one creation. Mathematics is the language we use to interact with that one creation. However, as we progress through school, things are split up into pedagogical chunks: algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, etc. As you progress through each chunk, you must reassess the others. Your algebra must be reexamined in light of your trigonometry, which must be reexamined as you progress through calculus. Higher level mathematics will require reassessing and expanding everything. This is be cause areas of mathematics aren't really separate: they separated them to make them easier to understand.

So it goes with systematic theology: as you learn Christology, you need to reassess your Pneumatology. As you learn more about the resurrection, you need to revisit Christology. It's one diamond which we can study from any number of angles. The areas of theology don't really exist, they're just different ways of looking at theology. There's only one internally coherent theology, because there's only one God. As you grow in your understanding, the walls between the areas start to fade until they finally disappear. You will work within your framework of understanding which abstracts all underlying theological categories. This is how we may read all of Scripture through an understanding of all of Scripture.

Furthermore, within this overall framework, we must continually increase ours skills in exegesis, dogmatics (systematic theology), and Biblical theology. The exegetical, biblical, and systematic interpenetrate and expand each other. McGraw writes "exposition is the foundation of theology, but exposition is also helped and informed by theology."²¹⁶

Think perhaps of a baby in the womb: it's not just the baby which is growing, the environment is also changing to accompany the baby. In turn, the baby grows. Along side this are the other biological processes which intertwine with both the baby's and the environment's growth. They're all expanding together.

Poythress summarizes:

The circle from the Bible to systematic theology to hermeneutics to the Bible is not a vicious circle, but a spiral of growth and progress, guided by the work of the Holy Spirit in illumination.²¹⁷

As we've already discussed, Scripture interprets Scripture, not merely by directly correlating texts, but by reading Scripture through a proper understanding of Scripture (e.g. analogia fidei). This understanding is expressed by your Biblical-theological framework.

One point of fairly significant frustration is that those with the most polished Biblical-theological frameworks and a solid systematic theology are those who are accused the most often of eisegesis. It's often easy to look at a text, even a text which seems to be in its local context, and come to a dogmatic conclusion and accuse others of eisegesis. In fact, this is colloquially refered to as the "Baptist hermeneutic": "point me to the verse where it says..." Today this has become a hallmark of evangelical hermeneutics. Because confessional Reformed Baptists use a much better hermeneutic, we'll use the term evangelical hermeneutic.

It's the presence of an ever growing theological framework, a better grasp of good and necessary consequence, and a solid creedal and confessional foundation that brings forth humility, a meaningful application, a better foundation for further studies²¹⁸, and guardrails against reading a contradiction into the text. It will help us avoid impossible situations were two people are debating a doctrine using entirely incompatible foundations.²¹⁹.

This is undoubtably why there are so many different understandings of the Book of Revelation. It's quite easy to make a passage have any meaning without a framework in which it must fit. We can avoid this by building out our Biblical-theological framework²²⁰ fed from the whole of Scripture. Revelation, like the book of Hebrews, is particularly dependent on a foundational understanding of the entirety of the Old Testament as seen in light of Christ.

This is one reason why the Westminster Assembly objected to Parlament's requirement to add proof-texts to the confession: without the understandings from their lectures, sermons, and commentaries to explain the Biblical-theological aspect, the Scripture citations don't seem to directly support the systematic-theological statements in the confession²²¹.

John Bower, in his analysis of the creation of the WCF, writes "For a document as the confession, it would have required "a Volume" to adequately explain the strength and connection behind each proof."²²². John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion follows a similar pattern: one is meant to refer to his commentaries and sermons for the deeper exegetical legwork²²³.

One potential question at this point may be: what about BC's Scripture citations? WCF and BC show two different ways to express theology. WCF expresses the complexity of theology spread over logical categories, so we see extensive repetition: when we trace Pauline eschatology (discussed in the next section), we find ourselves jumping back and forth between chapters 4 (creation), 6 (fall), 7 (covenant), 8 (Mediator), and others constantly. You can't cleanly isolate theology into "doctrines". WCF does a great job of showing how our man-made categories can't properly contain internally coherent truth.

BC expresses theology in a less complex manner which allows it to be expressed as a literary masterpeice, beautifully interweaving the text of Scripture into the text. One moment you're reading the text of the confession itself, the next you're reading Scripture. Put simply, it's fairly to say that BC is written like a 16th century Reformed confession while WCF is written like a mini-systematic theology. This may make BC a better entry point into the Reformed faith for evangelicals.

Whereas the Reformed of the 17th century prized a rich Biblical-theological framework, we can see a sad example on the opposite end of the spectrum by looking at the the Presbyterian Church USA in the early 20th century. Today we think of this organization as a non-church which doesn't preach the Gospel; however, a Church doesn't generally abandon the Gospel without warning: before their abandonment of truth entirely, even the better of the theologians of the day were confused by the WCF.

The specific issue was that their literalistic evangelical hermeneutic made them so unqualified to hold office that they couldn't find the Holy Spirit in WCF. Thus in 1903, they sought to update it to dedicate a chapter to the Spirit. Though B.B. Warfield was appointed to the revision committee, he initially objected to the revision, instead opting for a reaffirmation²²⁴. Warfield's own Biblical-Theological framework was rich enough to clearly see that the Spirit's work is ubiquitous in the WCF. He understood that WCF has nine chapters dedicated to the work of the Spirit²²⁵.

When all you see is doctrines, which is the essence of evangelicalism, it's hard to see the importance of a Biblical-theological framework or even the vital importance of the internal coherence of truth that the 16th and 17th centuries set out in the confessions.

The increase in evangelicalism in the 20th century may be one reason that these concepts were so rapidly attacked when taught by Cornelius Van Til. His apologetics methodology was a conscious awareness of internal coherence of truth combined with a solidly confessionally Reformed belief in Divine authorship (per WCF 1) and the ubiquitous Reformed distinction between Archetype and ectype (discussed later). The originality in Van Til was the application and expression.

Van Til himself stood on a solid creedal foundation and directly studied under the father of Reformed Biblical Theology, Geerhardus Vos, himself. He saw evangelicalism's unhealthy relationship with anti-creedal fundamentalism and enlightenment thought, he saw the incompatbility between the Reformed faith and evangelicalism.

He once wrote:

...the positive affirmations of Evangelicals are, without exception, confused and compromising in character. It is for the confused and compromising witness of Fundamentalism that Reformed Christians become co-responsible in any effort at giving common witness to the world.²²⁶

The reason we can have a Biblical-theological framework is because of the internal coherence of theology. The more we read the Word, study systematic theology, get better at exegesis, and understand the plan of redemption and eschatology, the more we see how the various aspects of theology are all part of one whole. This will show itself in your Biblical-theological framework, and, in turn, strengthen each of the aforementioned activities and deeper our theological and ethical maturity. With the creedal and confessional foundation uniting us, we can grow together in this effort.

Pauline Eschatology

Let's look at an example in Genesis to emphasize the need for reading any part in light of the whole and in light of a Biblical-theological framework, an established systematic theology, a solid creedal foundation, and the principle of good and necessary consequence.

While knowing the original author and cultural context is helpful for understanding each Biblical book, knowing the ultimate Author and His intent is vital for understanding His work overall. The eschatological context is the ultimate context which each local text supports. Knowing Him and His intent for humanity from Genesis to Revelation is even more critical than understanding the reasons why, for example, Hosea wrote his work. Without keeping the divine Author and His intent as the controlling principle of hermeneutics, the doctrine of divine inspiration remains a theoretical doctrine without practical application.

The Divine Author uses later human authors to reveal more details of things given to prior authors. The Old Testament speaks of the same Christ as the New. Both equally point to Christ as their goal. Yet must read the work of Moses in the light of the work of Paul because of the extra layer of detail given to the latter.

Because the primary author of Genesis is God, not Moses, Genesis without Paul isn't incomplete, but it's eschatological intent remains out of focus. God's later writings via Paul sharpens the existing image. When we overlay Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Cor. 15:34-40 on top of Genesis, we see the true meaning of the events.

When we tell the story of the garden of Eden to our kids, we should do it from the perspective of the whole narrative of Genesis. By using only the literal words of Genesis leaves vital details out of focus. This proof-texting approach uses the evangelical hermeneutic, not the whole counsel of God.

In that model, we hear about Adam, Eve, a Serpent, and sin with only a tiny reference to the coming of Christ (Genesis 3:15). Without a Biblical-theological framework developed from an understanding of Pauline theology and the principle of good and necessary consequence, we're putting on a blindfold, needlessly hindering our own efforts.

Westminster Divine Anthony Burgess (d. 1664) says plainly:

Yea, Paul guided by the Spirit of God, finds out that mystery, which none of us ever could discover, by reading the History of Mans Fall, related by Moses; For there indeed we could see the cause of death, how that came upon all mankind, but that Adams sin was ours, That we all sinned in him, that hereupon we were all involved in sin and misery; for this we are to bless God for Paul, who hath so largely discovered it.²²⁷

Similarly, Vos writes:

Paul had been the first to grasp with his master-mind the single items of eschatological belief scattered through Scripture, and to weave them into a compact, well-rounded system, so coherent, that, speaking after the manner of man, it became next to impossible for any of the precious texture henceforth to be lost.²²⁸

In the following overly summarized exegetical work, we'll very briefly see how we can use Biblical texts together in a redemptive-historical manner to understand an important aspect of Pauline theology, one that represents the backbone of Reformed thinking. The goal won't be to exhaustively work through the ocean of Scripture used in such a foundational concept, but to give a theological survey which can be expanded on by studying the referenced works.

Furthermore, we will also see a fuller example of good and necessary consequence. Gaffin writes:

...one makes full sense of Paul’s letters as a whole, of his theology, only by being prepared to wrestle with matters of good and necessary consequence, with the difficult and sometimes thorny questions that involves.²²⁹

Romans 5:12-21 combined with 1 Cor. 15:34-40 fills out what was happening in Genesis in what's called the two-Adam Christology. Whereas the Romans text contrasts the representative heads Christ and Adam in redemption, 1 Corinthians does so in terms of eschatology. Compare Romans 5:15b: "...For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many." (redemption) with 1 Cor 15:45 "Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit." (eschatology)

The significance of this is almost always lost in a quick read. The words "living being" (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν) represents a quotation of the Greek Old Testament (the LXX), specifically Genesis 2:7²³⁰. This is important because the fall doesn't happen until Genesis 3. Therefore, Paul is contrasting Christ, not with Adam as fallen, but as Adam as originally created. Paul, by the inspiration of the Spirit, views the resurrection as such an incredible elevation that he actually contrasts it with that which God calls good. The resurrection is better than good: it's eschatological.

Furthermore, and this is absolutely critical, lest we fall into the pit of felix culpa (a happy sin), we must quickly deny that Adam's sin caused us to ultimately gain something better than what we would have received without sin (e.g. "the ends justify the means"). This tells us that Adam in the garden was not yet in his highest estate, but was always intended to reach that higher state which we, after the fall, may obtain. Had Adam obeyed God in the garden, he would have been rewarded with the elevation by the Spirit to eschatological life.

Tipton helps us link this concept with the Tree of Life:

The point that Vos and other Reformed theologians make is that this imagery of the tree of life that you find in Genesis 2:9, this imagery reappears at the end of history in the book of Revelation in a consummate and glorious context, a heavenly context where Jesus has been raised and glorified, and shows us that this tree of life imagery in Eden, actually finds its fulfillment in a consummate glorious heavenly context, and it does so because Jesus has been crucified and raised, and he brings what is symbolically present in the tree of life to its heavenly climax and conclusion. Jesus obtains that immortality and higher life and heavenly life that was promised to Adam.²³¹

Without the fall, the Spirit would have transformed the first Adam, but, because of the fall, per the Romans 5 text, Christ was sent to do what Adam didn't do and to also account for Adam's sin. In other words, the fall means that this path to eschatological life had to go through redemptive mediation. Consequently, it was Christ, the second Adam, Who was elevated to eschatological life.

The Formula Consensus Helvetica summarized this in 1675 as follows:

Canon VIII: Moreover that promise connected to the Covenant of Works was not a continuation only of earthly life and happiness, but the possession especially of eternal and celestial life, a life, namely, of both body and soul in heaven, if indeed man ran the course of perfect obedience, with unspeakable joy in communion with God. For not only did the Tree of Life prefigure this very thing unto Adam, but the power of the law, which, being fulfilled by Christ, who went under it in our place, awards to us nothing other than celestial life in Christ who kept the same righteousness of the law. The power of the law also threatens man with both temporal and eternal death.²³²

This eschatological arrangement God had with Adam was such a ubiquitous concept in Reformed theology that it ended up having many names such as Covenant of Life, Covenant of Nature, and Covenant of Works. The concept lays the ground work for the future work of Christ in the covenant of grace. Brakel rightfully states that "whoever denies the covenant of works, must rightly be suspected to be in error concerning the covenant of grace as well."²³³

All Christians have a theology relating to covenant; one cannot read the book of Genesis or Jeremiah and not see God's dealing with humanity in this manner. Various Reformed groups can differ on how the covenants are expressed in history, however what's called Covenant Theology relates to existence, not a particular historical expression, of the Covenant of Works and Covenant of Grace. This is what gives Reformed theology its overall internal structure.

Because death is not a natural process, but the result of sin, Christ's taking our sin on the cross killed Him. Though Christ is inherently God Himself, thus death has no power over Him, He was kept under the power of death until the third day as expressed by the words of the Apostles' Creed "He descended into hell (e.g. the grave)". WCF 8.4, rephrasing the creed states that Christ "...was crucified, and died, was buried, and remained under the power of death (cf. WLC 50). This point is rightfully emphasized in the creeds: in the Apostles' creed to emphasize the human nature of Christ²³⁴ and in WCF/WLC to highlight the lowest of Christ's state of humiliation (starting at conception). Christ's resurrection marks the start of His state of exaltation (see WLC 46-54).

The goal of eschatological life combined with the need for redemption was accounted for by Christ's perfect life and in the cross-resurrection event.

Gaffin summarizes:

The multiple elements that Peter delineates as a single complex of events in his Pentecost sermon— resurrection, ascension, reception of the Spirit in the ascension, and outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost (Acts 2:32‒33)...²³⁵

Paul himself connected these as a single inseparable event in 1 Cor 15:3-5:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures...

The resurrection is a move from death to life because of Adam's sin, which created death in the first place. The resurrection, however, isn't merely a move from death, but also a movement to eschatological life. It's movement to a life which an individual did not have before; thus, it's different than what we see, for example, with Lazarus.

This resurrection was experienced by Christ and it's that which we experience in our own salvation. Inwardly now, outwardly at the general, bodily resurrection. The combination of the need for redemption and eschatology highlights the absolute inseparability of the single death-resurrection event. Attempting to separate them leaves us in an incoherent state: Christ leaving us without sin removes the need for final death, but our resurrection is because of His resurrection (Romans 6, 1 Cor. 15:12-19). Our outward death remains only because we still await the ourward aspect of the resurrection, whereas Christ received both the inward and outward aspect together.

Paul's structure of representative heads in Romans 5 and 1 Cor 15:21-22 means that when Adam sinned, his sin is credited to the account, that is imputed, to all those in Adam, because "just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" (v12). On the other side, Christ, who pre-exists Adam as the eternal Son of God, thus was never in Adam²³⁶ lived a perfect life, not for himself, but for us.

Thus, the God-man died for us to pay for the penalty of sin and was raised so that we can obtain resurrection. This righteousness of Christ is imputed to all those moved to be in Christ As Paul writes "because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ" (v17)

This righteousness isn't merely the passive righteousness of Christ required to account for sin, but also the active righteousness of Christ. The former is based on Christ's passive obedience as seen in his sufferings on the cross while the latter is based on Christ's active obedience as seen in His perfect life. The passive accounts for the removal of judicial penalty while the active account for our eschatological life. Together, the imputation of the passive and active obedience of Christ make up the double in double imputation²³⁷.

For some, however, the application of eschatological life won't even come via the resurrection from the dead: those who are already raised with Christ inwardly who are "physically alive" in a merely sub-eschatological manner at the return of Christ will receive that outward aspect of that one eschatological resurrection. This is reflected in WCF 32.2: "At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed". Similarly, BC 37 states that "As for those who will then be living, they will not die as the others, but be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and from corruptible become incorruptible." These, of course, are just making the implications in 1 Cor 15:52 more explicit: "For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality".

This incorruptibility was the reward Adam was offered. It's the Spirit's transformation of the whole person to a state in which the person can live in the echatological realm with God for the rest of eternity²³⁸. This is that which Christ was granted for us by his resurrection and ascension, and what He gives His church during the extended Pentecost event (Acts 2, 8, 10, and 19²³⁹). Gaffin writes:

Pentecost is the down payment on the eschatological inheritance of the church, not its full inheritance. Pentecost brings the firstfruits of the eschatological harvest, itself fully eschatological but not the full harvest.²⁴⁰

Regarding Paul's metaphors for the Spirit's work, Gaffin writes:

To describe the Spirit present in the church and at work in believers, all told, Paul uses a couple of metaphors, the one commercial, the other agricultural: the Spirit as a “deposit,” “down payment,” “guarantee” (ἀρραβών; 2 Cor 1: 22; 5: 5; Eph. 1: 14) 10 and as “firstfruits” (ἀπαρχή; Rom. 8: 23).²⁴¹

The entire point is that the eschatological life which Christ gives us breaks into our history, granting us this initial deposit in our current epoch, with the full amount of it in our bodily resurrection. In other words, we are not waiting for salvation, it was brought to us; yet, even this is only a downpayment of the full.

Gaffin again explains:

What Pentecost does not do is bring the even greater fullness of the presence and working of the Spirit that will come at Christ’s return, and not before, with the third and final stage of the kingdom: the full finality of the Spirit’s work realized in the bodily resurrection of believers and the attendant renovation of the whole creation (Rom. 8: 19‒ 22) as “a new heaven and earth” (Rev. 21: 1).²⁴²

While we must acknowledge something special about our current post-resurrection age, eschatological life doesn't merely extend to our history today, but all the way back through the Patriarchs. Thus, WCF 7.5 reads:

This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old testament.

Compare 8.6²⁴³:

Although the work of redemption was not actually wrought by Christ till after his incarnation, yet the virtue, efficacy, and benefits thereof were communicated unto the elect, in all ages successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices, wherein he was revealed, and signified to be the seed of the woman which should bruise the serpent’s head; and the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world; being yesterday and today the same, and forever.

This section also highlights the care one must take in understanding the Reformed confessions in their Reformed culture: these words should sound truly odd to anyone steeped in American Evangelicalism. The typical thought is that the Old Covenant rites were merely outward, always awaiting Christ for their forgiveness. In reality, Christ's atonement and eschatological gift reaches back into history, not merely back to the time of the cross-resurrection event, but "in all ages successively from the beginning of the world".

It's no surprise that we speak of it being the Spirit Who transforms us as it's by the Spirit that the Father interacts with history; recall the words "through the operation of the Spirit" in WCF 7.5. However, to head off any confusion, let's clarify that while eschatological life comes by the Spirit, the reception of the Spirit isn't our goal per se. We must keep in mind the absolute unity of the Trinity: what we're talking about is eschatological life from the Father, through the Son, applied by the Spirit.

The sole reason the eternal Son of God took on a human nature was for redemption. Christ's own eschatological elevation of His human nature (body and soul) by the Spirit was the reception of the gift offered to Adam. Indeed to be baptized by the Spirit, is better expressed as baptized with the Spirit: the Spirit is the "material" with which one is baptized²⁴⁴. Christ as the God-man was glorified with the glory with which he eternally, inherently shares with the Father and Spirit. At the resurrection, Christ Himself, though God, is brought into a state, as man, which he was not before: first under weakness (e.g. humiliation, Heb. 2:5-7), then in power (e.g. exaltation, Rom 1:4).

Because Christ's resurrection is called the firstfruits (1 Cor 15:20), we can speak of our resurrection as being of the same resurrection harvest. While we receive the inward aspect, still waiting the outward²⁴⁵, Christ's resurrection is unique in that He received the inward and outward simultaneously, and in addition to the inherent ontological unity the Father, Son, and Spirit shared outside of time, now there is also a special economic unity between Christ and the Spirit that allows Paul to refer to Christ as the "life-giving Spirit" (1 Cor 15:45), leading Sinclair Ferguson to write:

Christ on his ascension came into such complete possession of the Spirit who had sustained him throughout his ministry that economically the resurrected Christ and the Spirit are one to us. ²⁴⁶

This allows us to speak of the unique Spirit-Christ unity as Christological-Pneumatology²⁴⁷. On this point Gaffin writes:

...there is no Pneumatology independent of Christology; any such stand-alone concern with the Holy Spirit or reflection on his work is misplaced. In the New Testament, Christology and Pneumatology belong together; they inevitably interpenetrate.²⁴⁸

He clarifies what Pentecost is:

Presence of the Spirit is the presence of Christ, specifically as Christ is exalted. The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost is the coming of Christ to be with the Church. Jesus will be with the Church to the very end of history active in the power of the Spirit.²⁴⁹

Sinclair Ferguson gets right to the point by using Paul's terminology of life-giving Spirit to describe Christological-Pneumatology (cf. ²⁵⁰):

Christ has become ‘life-giving Spirit’. Having the Spirit is the equivalent, indeed the very mode, of having the incarnate, obedient, crucified, resurrected and exalted Christ indwelling us so that we are united to him as he is united to the Father.²⁵¹

The word "mode" has special meaning to students of Calvin. This is the word (modus) Calvin uses to describe how Christ is represented in the Supper²⁵².

The need for redemption means that we always go through the Mediator who shares in our nature and has completed the work of redemption. There is no access to the Father outside of Christ. As such, our Reformed confessions agree with Lutheranism that the statement "eating the body of Christ according to His divine nature" has no meaning. Since the Supper is the visible, tangible redemption-oriented Gospel, the Lutherans are correct in insisting on the real presence of Christ's body and blood²⁵³. Indeed, WCF 29.7 states that we "receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified". This has no meaning outside of a human nature.

The Reformed simply disagree with the Lutherans on the mode: Christ is not physical eaten with our mouths, but "we receive [the true body and true blood of Christ] by faith, which is the hand and mouth of our souls." (BC 35)²⁵⁴ Christ isn't present in the elements, as it's not the plate which is to receive the nourishment. The hand feeds the mouth with bread, the Spirit feeds the soul with Christ.

The mode of Christ's presence in the Supper is just as true and real as His presence within us²⁵⁵: it's by the Spirit. The presence of the Spirit is the presence of Christ. This isn't simply a restatement of basic Trinitarian orthodoxy: "God is Triune, thus the Father, Son, and Spirit are omnipresent, therefore Christ is in the Supper". No, we're speaking of the special presence of the incarnate Christ by the Spirit. How does this work? BC 35 avoids rationalism entirely by explicitly stating that the "manner surpasses our understanding and cannot be comprehended by us", a statement that would not be required if we were only speaking of Christ's divinity.

The inseparable two-sided event of the death and resurrection with the larger event complex, which includes the ascension and Pentecost, together constitute the inseparable aspects of the completed work of redemption, which also includes the incarnation and the life of Christ. This together with the person of Christ is what we refer to as the person and work of Christ, which is celebrated each and every Sabbath and is observed in the Supper (e.g. not merely His death).

The Supper is the Supper because of the completed work of redemption, the transformed Mediator, and His return to be with His Church by the Spirit²⁵⁶. Christ's institution of the Supper was before His death because it had to be. Paul's restatement is merely the received restatement of that institution. Yet, it's the Christological-Pneumatological foundation, not merely the death of Christ, which makes it as effectual as prayer, preaching, and Bible reading. It's not a mere memorial of His death, but it's effectual because of the completed event complex of redemption. It's the visible Gospel, the only authorized image of Christ, and it, no less than the Tree of Life, is our representation of that eschatological life we are given in Christ.

The bookends of human history is Spirit-applied eschatological transformation, but sin added the additional requirement of the redemption of humanity in Christ applied by the Spirit. This is the center point of the entire Scriptures²⁵⁸. Francis Roberts (d. 1675) puts it poetically:

That Jesus Christ our Mediator, and the salvation of sinners by him, is the very substance, marrow, soul, and Scope of the whole Scriptures. As many passages not obscurely intimate unto us. What are the whole Scriptures, but as it were the spiritual swadling-cloathes of the Holy child Jesus?²⁵⁹

The Reformers and Reformed refered to Christ as the "scope" of the Scriptures; however, while we read scope to mean the range or extent, they used it in the Greek (σκοπέω) sense of focal point like in the words microscope or telescope. At every point in our Scripture reading, we're looking at a point on the map to eschatological triumph. Our biblical-theological framework needs to reflect this reality.

These concepts surveyed here should highlight the importance of a biblical-theological framework. Calvin and his Reformed grandchildren didn't engage in gross proof-texting, they responded with the whole of Scripture. This is the entire point: we never look at Scripture in isolation, but in light of the whole of Scripture. This will take the shape of a rich Biblical-theological framework and systematic theology guided by God's eschatological plan and within the guardrails of the creeds and confessions.

Grammatical-historical

While we don't want to lose the forest for the trees, the search for an overall message and an author's theology doesn't preclude the need for local contexts. It's the grammatical-historical aspect of hermeneutics which allows us to mine the riches of the local contexts of the literature God set before us.

Most hermeneutics books focus on the grammatical-historical aspect. The largest portions of each of these books often relate to basic reading comprehension and literary analysis:

• who wrote it?
• when was it written?
• where's the main point?
• what's the subject?
• what is the meaning of this text with respect to its literary genre in the local context within the overall historical context?

Being able to answer these questions is critical, not just for reading the Bible, but for reading a newspaper or movie reviews. In addition, the grammatical-historical aspect gives us the tools to help examine register, idiolect, and basic points of grammar in the local historical context. You can't get through a day in contemporary life without these skills; even texting would be out of reach.

R.C. Sproul's classic Knowing Scripture helps us here:

The term genre means simply "kind," "sort" or "species." Genre analysis involves the study of such things as literary forms, figures of speech and style. We do this with all kinds of literature. We distinguish between lyric poetry and legal briefs, between newspaper accounts of current events and epic poems. We distinguish between the style of historical narratives and sermons, between realistic graphic description and hyperbole. Failure to make these distinctions when dealing with the Bible can lead to a host of problems with interpretation. Literary analysis is crucial to accurate interpretation.²⁶⁰

However, a meaningful grammatical-historical book goes beyond the basic ability to pass a high school introduction to literature exam, they'll also help you understand how to apply Hebrew literary principles to the content of Proverbs, the Psalter, and the prophets. You don't really stand a chance of understanding Biblical poetry without being able to identify synonymous, synthetic, and antithetical parallelism as well as chiastic structures. Sproul gives us an example:

The ability to recognize parallelisms can often clear up apparent difficulties in understanding a text. It can also greatly enrich our depth perception of various passages. In the King James Version of the Bible there is a passage that has caused many to stumble. Isaiah 45:6-7 says:

I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

I have been asked about this verse many times. Doesn't it clearly teach that God creates evil? Doesn't this make God the author of sin? The resolution of this problematic passage is simple if we recognize the obvious presence of an antithetic parallelism in it. In the first part light is set in contrast with darkness. In the second part peace is set in contrast with evil. What is the opposite of peace? The kind of "evil" is that evil which is contrasted not with goodness but with "peace." The New American Standard Bible, a recent translation reads, "Causing well-being and creating calamity." That is a more accurate rendition of this thought expressed by antithetic parallelism. The point of the passage is that ultimately God brings the blessing of well-being and peace to a godly people but visits them with calamity when he acts in judgment. That is a long way from a notion of being the creator of evil originally.²⁶¹

Within this area exists also the concepts relating to language itself, that is after all what the "grammatical" part of the name means. You would do yourself a great service by learning the basics of linguistics and perhaps even starting to learn Ancient Greek; though, quite literally, learning any foreign language is helpful. There are far too many language myths out there for you to go out unarmed.

One incredibly naive statement you're likely to hear is that interpreters interpreter and translators translate, and never interpret. In reality, interpretation is a core part of translation. Moises Silva doesn't overstate things when he writes...

Translators who view their work as pure renderings rather than interpretations only delude themselves; indeed, if they could achieve some kind of noninterpretative rendering, their work would be completely useless.²⁶²

One illustration of this can be seen in a beginning Latin reader (A New Latin Primer, 1933). In one part it says "haec est magistra". You might translate this as "this is a teacher", but the next words are "non magister est" (this is not a teacher). You have use this new information to interpret the first, which will cause you to change that first translation to "this is a female teacher", making the second "this is not a male teacher". Interpretation is merely the use of context, thus interpretation and translation are tightly bound.

There's also the matter of specific words. Words don't simply have meaning, they have ranges of meaning. Words also don't own a meaning, other words can share in that same meaning. Furthermore, Biblical authors used their own personality and writing to pen the words of God. When we forget this, we fall into odd exegetical fallacies. Quite possibly the most common error is trying to take too much from the words agapao (ἀγαπάω ) and phileo (φιλέω). Don Carson's book Exegetical Fallacies helps with issues like this:

...although it is doubtless true that the entire range of ἀγαπάω (agapaō, to love) and the entire range of φιλέω (phileō, to love) are not exactly the same, nevertheless they enjoy substantial overlap; and where they overlap, appeal to a “root meaning” in order to discern a difference is fallacious. In 2 Samuel 13 (LXX), both ἀγαπάω (agapaō, to love) and the cognate ἀγάπη (agapē, love) can refer to Amnon’s incestuous rape of his half sister Tamar (2 Sam. 13:15, LXX). When we read that Demas forsook Paul because he loved this present, evil world, there is no linguistic reason to be surprised that the verb is ἀγαπάω (agapaō, 2 Tim. 4:10). John 3:35 records that the Father loves the Son and uses the verb ἀγαπάω (agapaō); John 5:20 repeats the thought, but uses φιλέω (phileō)—without any discernible shift in meaning. The false assumptions surrounding this pair of words are ubiquitous... My only point here is that there is nothing intrinsic to the verb ἀγαπάω (agapaō) or the noun ἀγάπη (agapē) to prove its real meaning or hidden meaning refers to some special kind of love.²⁶³

Robert Frost's statement that "poetry is what gets lost in translation" always applies. Specifically, nuance and poetry don't translate well. You can see the difficulties by comparing multiple translations. However, English translations often influence each other too much. For example, the ESV is heavily influenced by the KJV-line of translations, so it's helpful to reference a different translation tradition like the NET Bible. It's also incredibly helpful to reference foreign translations. You would do well to take the advice of Clair Davis:²⁶⁴

These considerations should highlight the importance of reading the local, grammatical-historical in light of the global, redemptive-historical. You might find that the grammar and cultural considerations are leading you toward a distinctly non-Christian understanding, but your overall biblical-theological framework should help re-align you toward a better understanding.

When we tie the grammatical-historical and redemptive-historical properly, we'll understand what it means to keep things in context. Gaffin writes:

...every unit of biblical material, however quantified, is qualified by a pattern of contexts relative to itself. Any unit is anchored in an expanding horizon of contexts—like the center of a series of increasingly larger concentric circles—that extends to the Bible as a whole.²⁶⁵

It's critical to keep in mind that the grammatical-historical aspect in isolation is not a Christian model. Even resurrection-denying theological liberals can heartily recommend analysis of grammar, history, context, and themes to their students. When studying any given text you must consult the overall, redemptive-historical context (as expressed by your Biblical-theological framework), established systematic theology, and the creeds and confessions.

Means of Grace

In addition to the redemptive-historical and grammatical-historical, there's another aspect hermeneutics, which actually precedes the others: the Spirit-worked. We've covered this in detail earlier, but we'll come at it again from a more personal perspective.

In the Reformed tradition, the three means of grace are Word, Sacrament, and prayer. These are the ordinary ways Christ guides His people in growth. Speaking of the Puritan hermeneutic, Joel Beeke and Mark Jones tell us:

In the Puritan view, correct interpretation of the Scriptures was not only a matter of employing the right interpretative tools, but also of having and using the right spiritual tools, such as prayerful dependence upon the Holy Spirit for illumination.²⁶⁶

The non-Reformed world tends to mock the idea of a means of grace, since, of course, grace isn't a quantifiable concept, it's unmerited favor. However, if we understand that engaging in sinful activities are means of the devil, we shouldn't have any issue with understanding the Word, Sacrament, and prayer as means of grace. There's nothing abstract about the means of grace, just as there's nothing abstract about the devil's work. Far from being an abstract philosophical concept, grace is the basis of our being conformed to the image of the risen, transformed, glorified Christ.

Trueman writes:

...grace must always be connected to the work of Christ, not simply in its origin in the merciful will of God but also in its execution. This is because grace is not a divine sentiment. It is the concrete, divine response to the human problem of sin and death that is manifested in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot talk about grace without talking about Christ; grace is Christ, not an abstraction.²⁶⁷

Everyone who understands that excercise, good sleep, a good diet help should also understand that throwing constant immorality and negativity into the lifestyle, negates long term effects. So also with the means of grace, daily Biblical meditation, weekly Sabbath and worship, as well as regularly partaking of the Supper to feed the soul greatly and truly benefit the Christian. Trials are not required for sanctification. This is the purpose of the ordinary means of grace.

This grace is given to us by the glorified Christ by His Spirit. Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC) 88 says:

Q. 88. What are the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption? A. The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption, are his ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer; all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation.

Brakel writes:

...the Word is a special means for sanctification...God's Word does not only work sanctification by means of continual exhortation by which the soul is inclined towards obedience by the very voice of God. It also works sanctification through a continual dialogue with God Himself while hearing, reading, and meditating upon His Word as the believer seeks to regulate his life by means of the Word. In addition to this the soul will be more exercised in faith and will become more established in the truth by virtue of its consistent use of God's Word.²⁶⁸

Quickly comparing this against the evangelical (mysticism) and Papal models, Herman Bavinck writes:

How does Christ communicate his benefits to his people, to the church? Does he use means? Mystics deny this; Rome insists that they are essential and tied to the sacramental power of the institutional church’s priesthood. The Reformation adopted a position in between this mystical undervaluation and magical overvaluation of the means of grace.²⁶⁹

It's hard to overstate the importance of avoiding abstract, mystical, philosophical ideas of the Spirit or grace disconnected from the risen Christ, as is often seen in contemporary evangelicalism. Reformed theology is weaved together by the fabric of the Spirit of Christ in such a way that there's no salvation, no growth, no sacraments, and no illumination without Christ indwelling you by His Spirit.

Core to the Word as a means of grace is meditation. Hermeneutics without Christ-centered meditation is a secular endeavor. In addition to regular Biblical study, daily Biblical meditation is vital. Study implies an interaction with a text, perhaps even doing a comparative analysis. Meditation is entirely different. There's an interaction, but it's more contemptative than analytical. It's never disconnected from the Word, but the goal isn't new education, but rather deeper appriciation.

Thomas Watson (d. 1686) says:

The design of study is notion, the design of meditation is piety: the design of study is the finding out of a truth ; the design of meditation is the spiritual improvement of a truth ; the one searcheth for the vein of gold , the other digs out the gold.²⁷⁰

While we who are not yet glorified may never seek to see Christ with our eyes, we may and must see Him by faith (2 Cor 5:7). Thus, Isaac Abrose (d. 1664) writes:

A frequent access to Christ, in a way of meditation, cannot but warm the soul in spiritual comforts. When the sun in the spring draws pear our part of the earth, how do all things congratulate its approach! The earth looks green, the trees shoot forth, the plants revive, the birds sing sweetly, the face of all things smiles upon us, and all the creatures below rejoice. Christians! if you would but draw near, and look on this Sun of righteousness, Jesus Christ, what a spring of joy would it be within you ? How would your graces be fresh and green ? How would you forget your winter-sorrows ? How early would you rise ( as those birds in the spring) to sing the praise of our great Creator, and dear Redeemer.²⁷¹

Today, this part of hermeneutics is often oversimplified to "application", but this misses the point. Attempts to force a direct, immediate application ignores, and sometimes even tries to force the work of the Spirit. Between study and application must be meditation. Without it, you've not appreciated that which are you to apply at the time of the Spirit's choosing. When the Spirit does bring you the application, you won't be applying textbook knowledge, you'll be applying understood and appreciated Scripture.

Brakel makes exactly this point:

One should refrain... from insisting upon the application of a specific text of Scripture at a specific moment of time, for such expectation will readily rob him of a sweet, spiritual frame. It is therefore desirable to read or hear the Bible read frequently so that one may have ready access to a supply of Scripture in time of need.²⁷²

In addition to the Word and sacraments, we have been given the other direction of communication as a means of grace: prayer. Trueman writes:

we can say that prayer is a means of grace because it is one of God’s chosen means or instruments for achieving his gracious purposes. Christ is the great example of this, praying for his Father’s will to be done and praying for his disciples, both during his earthly ministry and now as he sits in heaven. These prayers of Christ are not a piece of theater. They are part of God’s chosen means of bringing about his will on earth.²⁷³

Gaffin states:

We are on speaking terms with no one less than the creator of the universe. No one less than the creator of heaven and earth. Our fellowship is with the true and living God. Like Abraham, but in a much fuller sense. We are friends of God, and if there is one thing that is true of friends, one thing that marks friendship, it is at friend's talk to each other.²⁷⁴

Now reread Roman 8:26-27

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Here we see the Spirit performing an action beyond merely holding us up as we pray (Exodus 17:12). The Spirit's intercession at this point is the groanings on our behalf according to the will of God²⁷⁵.

While we're meant to actively engage our minds in Scripture, we need to live by the Truth that we're studying. Tuckney writes:

Study much but pray more: for this wisdom must be got by asking, James 1:5. as it must be digged for. Prov. 2:4. so it must be cried after [Prov. 2:3]. ²⁷⁶

In our reading of Scripture, without the Spirit, our limits will always be blocking us. Without the Spirit, we won't see what the Spirit wants us to see. Human reason alone is the fountain of heresy, but just as the authors of the Scripture used their own personalities with the Spirit's revelation, we use our own reason under the Spirit's illumination.

Joel Beeke and Mark Jones tell us how this shaped Puritan hermeneutics:

In Puritan England the role of reason in theology was a major point of contention between Reformed and Socinian theologians. Puritan theologians accused the Socinians of giving reason a place of preeminence above the Scriptures. Because they did this, the Puritans disagreed with the Socinians on almost every point of doctrine. And the Arminians also gave a place to reason that made it the rule of faith, which explains many of their own theological errors. The Lutherans and the Papists also were criticized by Reformed theologians for leaving reason at the door, so to speak, in their understanding of the Lord’s Supper.

For the Puritans, then, reason was helpful, but it had its limits. The mystery of the gospel holds out a number of truths that, on the surface, appear to be contradictions, but the Holy Spirit enables Christians to receive all of these truths without letting reason dominate in a way that leads to various theological errors.

...

Thus, the Holy Spirit is given by God to the saints in order for them to believe the truths of Scripture that reason, on its own, cannot accept.²⁷⁷

The relationship between the Spirit and human reason is directly shaped by how we think about revelation in the first place. This is where Reformed theology speaks about prolegomena.

Prolegomena

Though likely unknown to most Christians, the topic of Prolegomena is a vitally important topic for serious theological analysis. Because the "branches" of theology exist only as pedagogical devices, it's a "branch" of systematic theology that leaks into other areas.

This area isn't so much its own area as it's a different way of looking at the whole of theology. Prolegomena is definitely about the initial topics of theology, but it's viewing them in a deeper manner. In other words, you don't start studying theology with Prolegomena. You go deeper with theology by using an understanding of Prolegomena.

When you're deeper in the weeds of theology, it's a good idea to step back and review your creeds, confessions, and catechisms to check where you are on the map. Reviewing the foundations of theology in terms of what theology is also often sheds much needed light on a topic. This is where prolegomena comes in. Prolegomena looks at Scripture and revelation from a systematic-theological perspective.

It's an important topic that often begins more advanced theological works²⁷⁸. While most introductory books entirely omit a section on prolegomena, the works often sneak in some elements. For example, we've already discussed some of it by examining the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.

Prolegomena is the area of theology that relates to the nature of revelation and theology. We start out speaking of Prolegomena in terms of the foundations of theology, or principia theologiae. The first is principle of knowledge, or principium cognoscendi. The second is the principle of being, or principium essendi.

Many theological terms awkward when translated, so it's better to keep with the Latin, especially in this case. We're all already used to using terms like deja vu, mi casa es su casa, and et cetera in daily discourse, so learning these terms shouldn't be much trouble.

The principium cognoscendi is Scripture and the principium essendi is God²⁷⁹. We can see these mapped out in the Westminster Confession as chapter 1 "Of the Holy Scripture" and 2 "Of God, and of the Holy Trinity". In the Belgic Confession, they're reversed, following the pattern of the Apostles' Creed²⁸⁰, but the principia are interlinked ²⁸¹ in Article 8: "In keeping with this truth and Word of God we believe in one God, who is one single essence".

While this may sound like a philosophical game, this is exactly how we discuss the Bible and God with the world; it's also the only way we can speak of theology at all. Furthermore, Hermeneutics is entirely self-defeating outside a conscious effort to know God, and God may not be known outside of revelation. While God requires nothing, we require both. The concept of principia highlights the importance of keeping your hermeneutics and doctrine of God in balance. The principia are mutually informing. We may never separate them. So we speak of the two principia together, either in sequence as seen in WCF, or in an intertwined manner as in BC.

Word and Spirit

We speak further of principium cognoscendi both internally and externally. Externally (principium cognoscendi externum) we speak of the written Word and internally (principium cognoscendi internum) of the Spirit's application of it to our hearts. Of the latter, Muller writes:

The human mind, before the internal testimony of the Spirit, could not receive the Word. Something, indeed, has been changed within the soul that now makes it receptive to the gospel. The full development of this discussion belongs, of course, to soteriology, but the identification of the subjective ground of reception does belong to the principial and preliminary sections of theological system.²⁸²

That is, the principium cognoscendi internum is the internal testimony of the Spirit, demonstrating the link between Scripture and salvation, therefore a link between principia. Hermeneutics is entirely devoid of meaning without this connection. This is the Reformed connection between the Word and Spirit. We only distinguish, never separate, the Word from the work of the Spirit.

This concern absolutely permiates the Westminster Confession:

Chapter 8.8 (Of Christ the Mediator):

...governing their hearts by his Word and Spirit...

Chapter 10.1 (Of Effectual Calling):

All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death...

Chapter 13.1 (Of Sanctification)

They, who are once effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them...

Chapter 14.1 (Of Saving Faith) brings in preaching as well as the sacraments (the visible word) and prayer:

The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word, by which also, and by the administration of the sacraments, and prayer, it is increased and strengthened.

Later, the Confession speaks of the work of the Spirit and our duty to work out our salvation in Chapter 16.3 (cf. Philippians 2), speaks of the right use of the aforementioned ordinary means (14.1) in 18.3, and speaks of our negligence in 18.4. These all demonstrate the vital importance of the ordinary means, of which the Word is central, by which the Spirit works in our lives. The Reformed faith is not compatible with "microwave Christianity".

The Belgic Confession too speaks of the link between Word and Spirit in Article 24 (The Sanctification of Sinners):

We believe that this true faith, being wrought in man by the hearing of the Word of God and the operation of the Holy Spirit, regenerates him and makes him a new man, causing him to live a new life, and freeing him from the bondage of sin.

Therefore, far from being an academic endeavor, study and meditation on the word is vital to maintaining a vibrant Christian life. One need not seek revivals or special extraordinary works of the Spirit, but continuously seek the Spirit's guidance in the Word. This is how one may silence the mystics who seek the Spirit without the word and rationalistic evangelicals who study the word merely for furthering knowledge.

Revelation

The principia give us a much needed categorization and language for how to think about and speak about God and How to know Him. We cannot know God outside of His revelation. If He doesn't reveal it, we have no ability to ever know it.

God truly is entirely beyond us. The distance between God and man isn't a matter of degree, it's a matter of kind which we call an ontological separation: no matter how high man builds his tower, he'll never reach God (Gen. 11).

This has nothing to do with sin. God is entirely separate, and only He can make the first step. The Reformed faith is quick to clarify that God must initiate the salvation of an individual, but this is equally true in revelation, even apart from sin. Muller writes:

For all of the Reformed confessions, then, the sole foundation of all true knowledge of God is God’s own revelation. There can be no true knowledge of God, indeed, no knowledge of God at all, if God does not manifest himself to his creatures. Not only is human knowledge as it now exists clouded and warped by sin, but even the unfallen reason of the first moments of man’s earthly existence could not have been sufficient to reach out to God unaided by God’s own gracious, self-revealing work of mediation.²⁸³

Note his language of "even the unfallen reason of the first moments of man's earthly existence" and "God's own gracious, self-revealing work of mediation". While Christ is the mediator for redemption, for us to have any knowledge of God at all, he needed to reveal himself, which is non-redemptive mediation.

Because genreal theism is idolatrous, we must keep in mind that we're only speaking of the Triune God and His revelation. We can follow this by looking at creation, but by the whole counsel of God, not merely Genesis: we can correlate Genesis 1:1, John 1:1-3, and Colossians 1:16.

In Genesis 1:1, the ESV is correct to capitalize the "S" in Spirit. As anyone who works with multiple languages knows, translation requires context, and the moment you're using context, you're interpreting. Translation implies interpretation. The ESV is correctly relying on the whole scope of revelation in translation; lowercase "s" would border on idolatry. There's no such thing as neutrality.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

John gets into "beginning" to explain it:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Paul in Colossians adds more detail about the Son at creation:

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

Together we see a picture of Trinitarian general revelation²⁸⁴. This is revelation that all creatures can see. Indeed, the Confession begins in Chapter 1.1:

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable...

The first part of the Belgic Confession article 2 has:

We know Him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to “see clearly the invisible things of God, even his everlasting power and divinity,” as the apostle Paul says (Rom. 1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse.

See also Romans 1:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

This inexcusability may only condemn. All humans everywhere are presented with the knowledge of God. There's no way to avoid revelation²⁸⁵. The supression of the knowledge of God is unbelief. This has implications in every area of life as it represents a common notion between a believer and unbeliever. They share the same content, but not the same understanding. Believers accept God's interpretation of His creation, while unbelievers fill the void with whatever they can.

Couching it in philsophical language Van Til writes:

The Reformed apologetic, therefore, does not take for granted, as does the Romanist and the Evangelical, that because men have “common notions” about God by virtue of their creation in God's image, that sinners and saints also have common notions when they are epistemologically self-conscious.²⁸⁶

One who is epistemologically self-conscious, is said to have that understanding that God intends.

Additionally, these passages demonstrate Trinitarian special revelation. It's not that general revelation is pre-fall, and the special revelation is post-fall: we just saw that God spoke the world into being. Furthermore, God spoke with Adam and Eve before the fall (Gen. 2). WCF 4.2 states:

...Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God, and had dominion over the creatures.

God's special, direct Word has always accompanied humanity, even in the garden.

We can continue immediately where we left off in Confession chapter 1.1:

yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church;

This special revelation later became recorded in writing. This written form propagates the truth so that new special revelations have ended. Chapter 1.1 continues:

...and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.

Now let's look at the second half of Belgic Confession article 2:

Second, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation.

While there's nothing salvific in general revelation, special revelation most definitely is, by virtue of the internal testimony of the Spirit. Thus WCF 1.6: "...we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word" and 1.5 "our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts".

With this in mind, we must adjust out concept of principium cognoscendi. If this relates to special revelation (Scripture), where is general revelation? Scott Oliphint helps us extend our definition of principium cognoscendi beyond the redemptive:

Reformed theology teaches us that God is the principium essendi of all disciplines, since it is from God alone that any and every discipline derives all that it is and has. On this view, the principium cognoscendi is the revelation of God, both natural and special. If that is the case, then every discipline is related directly to these two principia.²⁸⁷

Bavinck concurs:

the created world is the external foundation of knowledge (principium cognoscendi externum) for all science²⁸⁸

Archetype and Ectype

To know God, He must reveal, but this revelation cannot simply be His presence. Being everywhere, His infinite essence is beyond infinite creation, thus unknowable. Unless the infinite God bridges the gap via mediation, there's no ability to know Him. Unmediated access to God, even apart from sin, is not possible.

Because of this, must speak of the need for non-redemptive mediation. This is typically described by the church using the phrase finitum non capax infinitum (the finite may not grasp the infinite). We've already seen the answer: revelation; however, we need to look at this closer: if the infinite Creator were the reveal an infinite revelation, creation still has no hope.

This infinite-finite in which we speak of knowing God has been discovered and rediscovered time and time again in the Church. Martin Luther make a distinction between theologia gloria (the theology of the glory) theologia crucis (theology of the cross)²⁸⁹, Calvin between Deus absconditus (God hidden) and Deus revelatus (God revealed)²⁹⁰, and, centuries earlier, John duns Scotus between theologia in se and theologia nostra²⁹¹. The theology is behind each of these categorizations is similar.

The Reformed use the terms Archetype of God and ectype of creation. God's knowledge is Archetypal while man's is ectypal. God, who is the Archetype, creates a ectypal version of knowledge that's accomodated to our finitude.

Without this distinction, the two principia collapse into one: both would be God. This is, in fact, exactly the model of much mysticism, yet also secularism. These two false religions share the common trait of a commonality to all being. All would be God or all would be cosmos.

Mysticism seeks God (principium essendi) directly, outside of a separate principium cognoscendi. Secularism uses reason (principium cognoscendi) to reach higher reason (principium essendi). Everything is on a continuum between lesser and greater. Christianity separates them entirely.

Our established terminology is a bit odd; in fact, it's backwards: moral relativity imples that morality is not relative to God, but is its own absolute and moral absolutes implies that morality is relative to God. Terminological issues aside, only this latter model is Christian as moral absolutes seek to ensure a correspondance of morality of the ectype in the Archetype. When everything is one, either all is God or all is cosmos, each person expresses his own absolute morality, relative only to the self.

Furthermore, with the principia and Archetype-ectype distinction in place, we're heartily read to admit that all Christian logic must sound circular. God wrote the Scriptures, and we know God from Scripture. Our highest confidence is in Scripture, because of the authority of Scripture. We can say this because for anything to have meaning it must have its source in God, not by way of mystical spiritualism, but by revelation²⁹². What seems circular actually has its ultimate source in God, though sharing nothing as the created is separate from the Creator. This is visualized by the Van Til diagram:

Imago Dei

One of God's design patterns is reflection. Man doesn't source the attributes of God from himself, he exists as a pointer to God. Whatever else the imago Dei means, it means that man isn't God.

present in his mind are the ideas of all things; all things are based on thoughts and are created by the word. It is his good pleasure, however, to reproduce in human beings made in his image an ectypal knowledge that reflects this archetypal knowledge (cognitio archetypa) in his own divine mind.²⁹³

God (Archetype) speaks man (ectype) into existence. God is the reality that humanity reflects as a mirror. We may and must move toward God ethically, but never ontologically. We will always be created, and God will always be creator. What we know of God we know in a creaturely manner, not as God knows Himself.

Sin distorts the reflection of the image of God, but the mirror can never truly break. Indeed, we don't merely have the image of God, we are the image of God²⁹⁴. God is always proclaimed through man, despite man's best efforts to fight it. Even anti-Christians must rely on God's creation to express their disregard of Him.

Man is the created image of the Son²⁹⁵, as the Son is the eternal image of the Father. We are the ectypal image of the Son as the Son is the archetypal image of the Father²⁹⁶. Everything about man points to the Son and everything about the Father comes through the Son (cf. Col. 1). As we're the ectypal image of the Son, this image propagates (Gen 5:3) for all in Adam. Of course, the distortion of that image propagates to all those in Adam as well.

The Archetype-ectype distinction provides a hermeneutic of all of reality, not just Scripture. As such, we look to God for our examples of both morality and mathematics. Vern Poythress reminds us "Logic in its divine origin belongs to the eternal self-consistency of God."²⁹⁸. Furthermore, "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all logical in the sense of being consistent with who they are."²⁹⁹.

While many of us have been taught the "law of non-contradiction", it's more of a law of consistency stating that logic retains its consistency. Nonetheless, whereas God's logic is archetypal, ours is ectypal and "Our knowledge of logic is mediated through Christ, who is God and man in one person."³⁰⁰.

There's a tendency to think of human limitations as always being a result of sin, but, as we've already seen, our first limitations come from our finitude. Our variable personal inabilities to grasp the whole of creation isn't merely a result of sin attacking our mental processes; we're simply not built to handle the whole of God's reflection (cf. Exodus 34:35).

On this point, Poythress, whose first doctorate was in mathematics, says "Since God is incomprehensible [archetype], His mathematics sometimes baffles us, and it is to be expected that it should."³⁰¹. Anything we do understand, no manner how much study it took, is by God stooping down to us as He, in the words of Calvin, "lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children"³⁰².

God develops and reveals the ectype. This derived, ectypal image is true, yet not the same. We may have an understanding as simple as something as arithmetic, but we will never know it as God knows it. As contemporary theologian Camden Bucey says:

you do not know that truth as God knows it. Moreover, you know it because God has revealed it to you. And so all of your knowledge is been wrapped in and delivered via revelation. Your knowledge is true, though ectypal... God's knowledge is also true though, exhaustive and archetypal.³⁰³

While God created the universe, and it's true that humanity could have looked different had God so chosen, yet it's not that God created mathematics: it's an representation of consistency. The fact that God is one in essence and three in Person implies there are concepts of unity and plurality are in God Himself. God created and revealed an ectypal version of this truth that created, finite creatures could comprehend.

Everything we have is by this accomodation. We love because God is love. We have justice because God is justice. Even our concept of accomodation is by accomodation. When we speak to our kids according to their capacities, we're reflecting the accomodated accomodation of God Himself.

Analogical Predication

Religions of the world are endlessly speaking of direct comparisons between God and man, but it's inapproprate due to the Archetype-ectype distinction prevents. In language, this expresses itself in analogical predication.

Consider how "God is forgiving" (Archetypal) differs from "Sally is forgiving" (ectypal). Our forgiveness is an image (ectype) of the forgiveness of God, not the same forgiveness. While our forgiveness releases another from a debt, God's releases us from death (Gen 2:17).

While our forgiveness requires merely a release on our part, God's forgiveness requires that it be compatible with His own justice. Owen tells us:

...divine and human forgiveness are plainly of a different kind. The forgiveness of man only respects the hurt; the forgiveness of God respects the guilt.³⁰⁵

Our forgiveness may leave us wronged and cheated (1 Cor 6:7), but God's forgiveness must be compatible with His character. Our forgiveness may lead to reconciliation overtime³⁰⁶, where as God's does so perfectly and immediately. The death of the infinite God-man was always the only means of redemption. Human forgiveness has no such requirements, as it's merely a picture of True forgiveness.

Our speech and God's speech are not the same. Our speech has limited power, but when God spoke creation into existence. We reflect God, though only on a creaturely level.

We also reflect God's ability to express ourselves and understand. We use the terms Word and "speech", but, the existence of the written Word (Bible) demonstrates that not all word-communication is verbal. Indeed, sign langauge is true word-communication. Our ability for word-communication in both expression and understanding reflects God's own. While we talk about creating things, God speaks and the cosmos comes into existence. When God speaks, he's never required to create an ectypal version for us.

Reading Scripture isn't merely reading a book by Tolkien, but the Spirit speaks in the Scriptures. Furthermore, the word of God is creative, not merely descriptive. Listen to Carl Trueman speak about Luther's view of how God's love differs from ours:

...you could say you have almost the whole of Luther's theology summarized in 8, 9, 10 words: Divine Love is creative. Divine love precedes that which it finds lovely. It's electing love. Why does God love you? Not because you have obeyed his law, and therefore he looked down and said "that person has done what is in them; there's something teeny bit attractive about them. I think my love is going to move towards them and bless them." No, Luther says the logic of the Cross is this: God looks down and says "that person is violent disgusting; that is a person who is not [lovely]... I'm going to move towards that person and my love is going to make them lovely"³⁰⁷.

God's bridging of the ontological chasm between Creator and creature is bridged by God speaking it into existence. Elsewhere, Trueman writes:

God’s speech is special; it is creative; it defines his relationship to his creation; it defines who his creatures are; it establishes the nature of his special relationship with peoples and individuals; it is the instrument by which he exercises and withdraws his power; and it is perhaps the most significant mode of his presence.³⁰⁸

God's side of the revelational bridge is infinite and eternal while our side is infinite and limited. This is why analogical predication is so important. How can we possibly speak in a way that's true, yet takes into account that there's no proportionality between the infinite and finite? We can't do it univocally: God's love is different than our love. We can't do it ecuivocally: God's love is nonetheless the pattern for our love. The only way to speak is analogically.

Whereas the Archetype-ectype distinction relates to the reality, analogical predication relates to how we may speak of the topics. This is important because God didn't choose to package doctrine in pictures, he chose words. There was one time he chose to use a Picture, but that was removed so that we may live by here faith, not by sight. Our command to honor the revelation of God means that our focus must be on words, written and audible. Analogical predication is how we may do so honestly, yet truly.

Brakel writes:

Our gift of language belongs to the realm of the physical. Our words and expressions are derived from terrestrial objects. It is therefore a wondrous reality as well as a manifestation of divine goodness that man, in using sounds which are expressive of that which is tangible, is able to give an explanation about divine and spiritual matters by means of the vehicle of language. Our mind, being finite and having limited capacity, must function in the realm of concepts and ideas before comprehension can occur. It is the goodness of God that He adjusts Himself to our limited ability to comprehend. ³⁰⁹

The Person of Christ

Christ is the second person of the Trinity taken on a human nature. While God is simple and immutable, Christ is the God-man, and will have the chemical processes relating to emotions in His human body. None of this affects His deity, yet, his mediation is done according to both natures³¹¹. WLC does an excellent job of explaining this:

Q. 38. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God? A. It was requisite that the mediator should be God, that he might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God, and the power of death; give worth and efficacy to his sufferings, obedience, and intercession; and to satisfy God's justice, procure his favor, purchase a peculiar people, give his Spirit to them, conquer all their enemies, and bring them to everlasting salvation.

The words "give worth and efficacy to his sufferings" speak to the person of Christ in both natures; yet, this worth is the infinite value of God Himself. Furthermore, the only way Christ may satisfy God's justice is for for His person to have infinite worth.

Q. 39. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be man? A. It was requisite that the mediator should be man, that he might advance our nature, perform obedience to the law, suffer and make intercession for us in our nature, have a fellow-feeling of our infirmities; that we might receive the adoption of sons, and have comfort and access with boldness unto the throne of grace.

Christ as man has "a fellow-feeling of our infirmities". In fact, Christ's humanity was perfect and unfalled. Yet, being in a a hostile environment entirely at odds with his perfection implies a suffering in His entire life. This, even before taking account of the cruxificion, shows the love of God in sending Christ.

Puritan Thomas Goodwin (d. 1680), core contributor at the Westminster Assembly, speaks of Christ as follows:

...all that Christ doth for us is but the expression of that love which was taken up originally in God’s own heart. Thus we find that out of that love he gave Christ for us.³¹²

While our morality, forgiveness, and love may not be equated with a divine counterpart, Christ as the glorified God-man is the concrete representation of the highest of human attributes. As we are conformed to the image of the glorified Christ (Romans 8:29) by the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23, cf. WLC 75), we get closer to the best representation for finite humanity.

Hebrews 4:15-16 helps us here:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

In Christ, God has revealed perfected humanity. Far from being a discussion of abstract philosophical deity, here we read that Christ, as the glorified God-man, sympathizes with our weaknesses. Among other things, this passage demonstrates that sympathy is itself not a weakness, since weakness is not an attribute found in the glorified Christ³¹³ (cf. Rom 1:2). Though we may think Christ couldn't possibly understand our sins, we can't truly believe this while emphasizing imputation³¹⁴, Though Himself sinless, he bore the sins of the elect. He does understand and, now glorified, he no longer suffers from our sin, but he fully sympathizes with us.

Behind this Hebrews passage is also a signal that Christ is our access point to true, not merely analogical, predication. Though His is a glorified and perfected love, we do share a love with Christ, as Christ's love is truly human. In Christ is both the ectypal, analogical love, and the Archetypal love, as He is both God and man. While we may never know love as the Father knows love, we may know love as Christ knows love.

Goodwin writes, "‘God is love,’ as John says, and Christ is love covered over with flesh, yea, our flesh."³¹⁵. Christ truly reveals God and He truly feels with us. He is the perfect God-man. As such, he makes God known to us, and we are to look to Him for our direction.

We can see this in the Larger Catechism too. In Q/A 55, we can see how Christ appears before the Father in our nature -- there are no ontological barries between us and Christ:

Q. 55. How doth Christ make intercession?

A. Christ maketh intercession, by his appearing in our nature continually before the Father in heaven, in the merit of his obedience and sacrifice on earth, declaring his will to have it applied to all believers; answering all accusations against them, and procuring for them quiet of conscience, notwithstanding daily failings, access with boldness to the throne of grace, and acceptance of their persons and services.

Your union with God is union with Christ by the risen Christ living in you by the presence of the Spirit. He's not afar off, he's always with you. He guides your illumination just as he guided the authors' revelation. It's the same Spirit, it's the same Christ. This is how we're mean to understand Christ's works in John 16:12-17:

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. e will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. Your Sorrow Will Turn into Joy A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.

Just as "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:2) by using the personalities and skills of the authors, the same Spirit guides you in your reading as you apply your redemptive-historical and grammatical-historical hermeneutics as prolegomena skills.

Without a proper understanding of prolegomena, there's little chance of understanding the Reformed confessions, or, indeed, much of systematic theology. You'll inevitably read your own culture back into Scripture. The Westminster divines rightfully objected to proof-texts, because that's simply not how theology is done.

An example from history may help to clarify the critical role a rich Biblical-theological framework and proper prolegomena play in our understanding of God's word:

John Owen's 1652 doctoral dissertation provides a masterful defense of the necessity of the atonement based on the justice of God. His argument takes into account the Archetype-ectype distinction as well as a mature Biblical-theological framework. His work details that God must require atonement because He Himself is just, and that it's not simply the case that God could have freely and sovereignly forgiven humanity without atonement.³¹⁶

While his work is interesting for multiple reasons, the most popular reason might be the fact that one of his primary adversaries on this issue was an only slightly younger John Owen: in fact, only 5 years younger. In 1647, Owen wrote The Death of Death in the Death of Christ where he stated the exact position he was correcting a mere 5 years later. In The Death of Death he says that "the Scripture affirming no such thing, neither can it be gathered from thence in any good consequence."³¹⁷

His later newfound understandings in prolegomena and a richer Biblical-theological framework led him to use quite a lot of Scripture. This time he was going to the Scripture less directly, but to Scripture through a better overall understanding³¹⁸.

Trueman sums up Owen's move on the matter, touching on the insufficiently of proof-texting, the need to keep each issue in its larger context (e.g. the whole of Owen's thought), and the importance of the history of the debate:

While most of Owen's work on the atonement focuses on the efficiency and intent of the work of Christ, it is worthwhile spending a little time reflecting on his understanding of its sufficiency, if only to clarify the foundations of his thinking on this point. There is, of course, a great temptation to move straight to citations of various proof texts to establish Owen's view on this issue, but such a move is scarcely adequate in that it removes these isolated statements from their context within Owen's thought, within contemporary debate, and within the Western tradition of discussion of the sufficiency of Christ's work.³¹⁹

Theology must be done in communication with the whole of the Church, all the way back through the Reformed and Reformers to the Apostles. It must also be done with an understanding of the theology of revelation. The Church is in desparate need of Christians who understand the importance of prolegomena and it's philosophical underpinnings.

Ethics and Morality

While a deeper study of prolegomena can lead to in-depth philosophical studies, perhaps contrasting Reformed theology with German idealism³²⁰, prolegomena itself leads to a better understanding of ethics, marriage, family, morality, and every other area of life. We're not meant to study ourselves to discover the nature of God, nor are we meant to stare out a window to glean truth, we're meant to study what God told us about Himself.

We don't learn about the love of God by examining the pragmatics of humanity. A moral system, regardless of theological content, that learns about God by looking at man is inherently secular. We're meant to look to God and His Word, not to engage in an ever expanding situational ethic. Not only that, irrespective of content, any system that speaks outside of Christ, is inherently non-Christian. WCF 16.1 states something we should always remind ourselves:

Good works are only such as God hath commanded in his holy Word, and not such as, without the warrant thereof, are devised by men, out of blind zeal, or upon any pretense of good intention.

Even when we seem to speak philosophically about morality and ethics, we never do so like worldly philosophies (e.g. Islam/Judaism, Secularism, Hinduism). God reveals Himself via the Son (Col 1:15-16), the ternal Word of God. Christ is the preeminent revelation of God (John 14:4). We can easily miss the words "he has made him known" at the end of John 1:18³²¹ (cf. Matthew 11:27). Just as we are made in the image of the Son, all images come through the Son.

When speaking of Christian ethics and morality, we're always refering to the moral law. This differs from ceremonial and civil law in that the moral is an ectypal description of the Son of God while the others are visible ways of expressing it.

The moral law represents part of the blueprint of what it means to be the image of God. While the fall marred every aspect of humanity, the image of God remains, because humanity is the image of God; however, the Spirit writes the moral law cleanly on our hearts in our union with Christ. Christians live out the moral law, showing what humanity is meant to look like. Sinclair Ferguson gets to the point when he calls the moral law, "the moral shape that salvation takes"³²².

WLC 93 asks "What is the moral law?", to which is answered:

The moral law is the declaration of the will of God to mankind, directing and binding every one to personal, perfect, and perpetual conformity and obedience thereunto, in the frame and disposition of the whole man, soul, and body, and in performance of all those duties of holiness and righteousness which he oweth to God and man: promising life upon the fulfilling, and threatening death upon the breach of it.

At this point if we ask "why" this is the case, we need to remind ourselves that the moral law is the blueprint of what it means to be the image of God. As Paul writes in Romans 8:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

The next question many have at this point is "what is in this moral law?" This is asked in WLC 98 as "Where is the moral law summarily comprehended?" to which is responded:

The moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments, which were delivered by the voice of God upon mount Sinai, and written by him in two tables of stone; and are recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus; the four first commandments containing our duty to God, and the other six our duty to man.

Because the moral law expressed in the ten commandments isn't merely a raw list, but a set of principles, we must look at it from the perspective of intent, or simply ask yourself how would you want your kids to understand your commands? Are they to follow instructions wooden literally or in terms of intent?

It seems safe to assume that nobody would accept "I didn't hit my sister" as a truthful statement simply because it was the toy which the child threw that hit her. This is explained in detail in WLC 99, which is rather lengthy, split into 8 separate points. Regarding our projectile toy example, we read in point 6:

That under one sin or duty, all of the same kind are forbidden or commanded; together with all the causes, means, occasions, and appearances thereof, and provocations thereunto.

We can see in this that "don't hit your sister" would include "don't throw a toy at your sister".

Furthermore, we read in point 4 that we are to seek the intent of the moral law by reading it directly and by reversing it:

...where a duty is commanded, the contrary sin is forbidden; and, where a sin is forbidden, the contrary duty is commanded: so, where a promise is annexed, the contrary threatening is included; and, where a threatening is annexed, the contrary promise is included.

In terms of what's forbidden in our example, WLC 136 states "The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are...provoking words, oppression, quarreling, striking, wounding, and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any". This is what any parent would want their kids to hear with the words "don't hit your sister".

Reversing this, we must look at what's a positive duty commanded in the sixth commandment, WLC 135 states "The duties required in the sixth commandment are...comforting and succoring the distressed, and protecting and defending the innocent". In other words, don't simply not harm your sister, you must protect her.

The moral law acts as a guide for how we'd like our kids to understand our commands; indeed, they're Fatherly instructions to us which God implanted as the blueprint in the image of God. Even with the Spirit's clarifying this image in our hearts, it may still be hard to read. Thus, we need be in continual personal meditation on Scripture and constantly seeking the illuminations the Spirit gave those prior to us in their own meditations.

Looking at it this way, questions regarding the continued viability of the law seem absurd. Christ fulfilled the law, but not in the "your order has been fulfilled, therefore completed" sense, but in the "fulfill your wedding vows" sense. Christ kept the whole law for your justification. Our parenting example is an example of it being for your sanctification.

Therefore, the answer to WLC 97 becomes almost obvious:

Q. What special use is there of the moral law to the regenerate?

A. Although they that are regenerate, and believe in Christ, be delivered from the moral law as a covenant of works, so as thereby they are neither justified nor condemned; yet besides the general uses thereof common to them with all men, it is of special use, to show them how much they are bound to Christ for his fulfilling it, and enduring the curse thereof in their stead, and for their good; and thereby to provoke them to more thankfulness, and to express the same in their greater care to conform themselves thereunto as the rule of their obedience.

Of course, for the moral law to have any practical meaning in the lives of believers, it must be written somwhere. We should leave social contract morality to the secularists. Thus, as we have seen, WLC 98 reminds us that the moral law is "summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments".

Combining all of this with our understanding of the Archetype-ectype distinction, we can see that it's not simply that we may not murder (#6), but we must protect life as God is the source of all life. Beyond simply not lying, we must maintain the integrity of truth (#9): God is truth. We trust Scripture is because its author is God, who is truth itself (cf. WCF 1.4). The ninth commandment is a call for us to mirror this truth and, therefore, trustworthiness.

We must not only not worship other gods (#1), we must actively worship God (cf. Hebrews 10:25). The constant theme of idolatry as adultery (see Hosea) should make our minds immediately jump to the seventh commandment: you are to have a special type of love for only your spouse. Not only may you not have that love for others, you must nourish it with your spouse (1 Cor 7:3-5).

God must be worshiped as he commands (#2): through the Son (contra Judaism/Islam), by the Spirit, using only authorized means as expressed by His sufficient Word and as His jealousy requires (Ex. 20:4-5, Numbers 25:10-13)³²³. We are to love God as the Persons of the Trinity love each other³²⁴. The inter-Trinitarian perfection that we call love implies perfect content and means.

Closely related to the object (#1) and means (#2) of worship is the reverence for ways He has made Himself known (#3). This commandment is not widely understood, so it's worth referencing the WLC 112:

The third commandment requires, that the name of God, his titles, attributes, ordinances, the word, sacraments, prayer, oaths, vows, lots, his works, and whatsoever else there is whereby he makes himself known, be holily and reverently used in thought, meditation, word, and writing; by an holy profession, and answerable conversation, to the glory of God, and the good of ourselves, and others.

Because this concept is also the first petition in the Lord's Prayer ("hallowed be your name"), it's worth pausing for meditation: what's the preeminent manner "whereby he makes himself known"? Christ. We are not only prohibited from creating images of Christ, which will always be insulting caricatures, but we are to actively revere the image of Christ by faith in our hearts (not by sight nor in our mind). We now live by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). We must live in a way that honors the character and revelation of God at all times, as all times are times of private, if not corporate, worship. If sight has any role in our lives, it's to show the world what it looks like to be like Christ.

Even the 4th commandment, which is typically stated in terms of us reflecting God's 7th day rest, has its basis in God Himself. The moral law reflects the Trinitarian consistency and peace we are to reflect as being made in the image of the Son. Indeed, Sabbath rest isn't at all about sleep-rest, but peace-rest (discussed in the next section). WLC 119 even cites "all omissions of the duties required" and "all profaning the day by idleness" as two things forbidden in this commandment. God Himself works on the Sabbath; and we are to reflect that work in acts of worship, necessity and mercy. This concept requires a very good grasp of good and necessary consequence and a rich Biblical-theological framework, so it's no wonder that it shares the honor with the 2nd commandment as the two longest in Exodus 20. It's also the only commandment which was given a dedicated section in WCF.

This reframes the issue of the Decalogue in terms of alignment to the image of God. It also helps us to understand why Christlikeness (Romans 8:29) and keeping in step the Spirit (Gal 5:16-25) are worded the way they are. It's not merely that one must do this or that, but we're seeking alignment with the Triune God in our sanctification. Furthermore, we can now understand Casselli when he writes: "If [the moral law] is written into the very constitution of human beings, it cannot be abrogated, even after the coming of Christ."³²⁵.

This way of looking at the Decalogue also explains the unity the Reformed have across Paedobaptists and Baptists. While Reformed Paedobaptists hold to a unified covenant of grace over multiple administrations, Baptists hold that the New Covenant is a substantially different covenant than the Old, often equating the New Covenant with the Covenant of Grace³²⁶. Yet, even Reformed Baptists hold to the continued viability of the Decalogue. Why? Because the Decalogue represents the moral law and, therefore, is not affected by any form of covenantal expression. It relates to your humanity, which Christ did not come to abolish, but to redeem.

When we speak of "law" in general, we traditionally speak in terms of ceremonial, civil, and moral law. However, let's be clear that we're not saying that laws cleanly fit into one of these categories. Rather, in this paradigm, the ceremonial law visibly manifests the first four commandments of the moral law while civil law (sometimes called judicial law) visibly manifests the last six³²⁷. This paradigm primarily exists as a way to explain Old Testament laws.

For a general paradigm of Biblical law, we can turn to the distinction between natural, positive, and moral law. This is where we can look closer at general revelation and special revelation. Natural law is part of general revelation: it's law expressed naturally through nature. Positive law is expressed by special revelation as a direct requirement by the will of God. We'll always map natural and positive law to the moral law.

One example of natural law would be how a baby at time of conception requires both a mother and a father, demonstrating that even nature has a concept anticipating positive law of marriage being between one man and one woman. Another example would be God's 7th day rest creating the Sabbath, anticipating positive law on the same.

Natural law is not abbrogated, but simply expresses the moral law in nature. It may, however, be expressed differently in positive law as redemptive history progresses; indeed, "...moral laws are grounded in the nature of God Himself and cannot be abrogated, whereas positive laws, which are fixed by the determination of God, can be changed if God so desires"³²⁸.

One of the clearest examples in the adjustment of positive law regards the Sabbath: while it's moral, therefore universal in substance³²⁹ (cf. ³³⁰), it is expressed in original creation on the 7th day of the week while it's the 1st day of the week after the in-breaking of the new creation (the resurrection).

Resting in Christ

Developing an understanding of Scripture doesn't happen by sparse tid bits of information, but by long term training. Your training will happen with or without your assistance, but when it's developed naturally by a secular society, there's little chance that your resultant intuitive understanding of Scripture will match up with the Author's intent.

This understanding of Scripture is so important that, while it's a daily endeavor, God set apart a day of the week for it. You need this day of separation in your normal cadence of life to detox from the worldliness you're constantly breathing in on the other six days. 60 minutes of corporate worship out of a total of 10,080 isn't how God built us.

Goodwin speaks to this when he reminds us that God gave Adam the day for the contemplation of God, and God Himself used the day for the same purpose:

...the use and end of the Sabbath, which God himself sanctified, and upon it rested, to contemplate his works of creation; and this to be taken as an example unto Adam, how his mind upon this day was to be up, even in the contemplation of the works of God. And that that was the principal duty of the Sabbath...³³¹

The Sabbath is built into the very fabric of creation (Gen 2:2-3), and rooted in the character of God. As such, it precedes both marriage and family. As a prelapsarian (pre-fall) construct, it fully represents a blessing with no shadow of curse.

Vos explains:

It must be remembered that the Sabbath, though a world-aged observance, has passed through the various phases of the development of redemption, remaining the same in essence but modified as to its form, as the new state of affairs at each point might require. The Sabbath is not only the most venerable, it is likewise the most living of all the sacramental realities of our religion. It has faithfully accompanied the people of God on their march through the ages.³³²

Many aren't aware of this accompaniment through the ages: on this side of the fall, the blessings aren't diminished; rather, they're relatively intensified as God's people are surrounded by a chaotic realm of evil. In light of the resurrection, evil is now on the defensive. Yet, as we're still affected by it, the peace of the oasis reaches its relative peak and its stable home.

John Flavel (d. 1691) helpfully elucidates this oasis:

Q. 2. Why will God have a Sabbath on earth?

A. God will have a Sabbath on earth, to give us therein an emblem of that eternal Sabbath in heaven, wherein his people shall be serving him, and praising him without interruption, or mixture of any other business throughout eternity; Heb. 4:9. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.³³³

The blessings God grants us are intensified as Christ lives in us by His Spirit. However, because contemporary Christianity is more affected by evangelicalism than the Reformed faith, this entire concept of the Sabbath as an oasis is entirely foreign to most Christians.

Vos helps us again:

The principle underlying the Sabbath is formulated in the Decalogue itself. It consists in this, that man must copy God in his course of life. The divine creative work completed itself in six days, whereupon the seventh followed as a day of rest for God. In connection with God, ‘rest’ cannot, of course, mean mere cessation from labour, far less recovery from fatigue. Such a meaning is by no means required by the Old Testament usage of the word. ‘Rest’ resembles the word ‘peace’ in this respect, that it has in Scripture, in fact to the Shemitic mind generally, a positive rather than a negative import. It stands for consummation of a work accomplished and the joy and satisfaction attendant upon this. Such was its prototype in God.³³⁴

While we can and should cite the work of God in Gen 2:2-3 as a foundation for Sabbath, notice how Vos mentions both God's rest from work and the Archetypal-ectypal economic relationship: "man must copy God in his course of life" and "such was its prototype in God." He goes on to explain that while our rest is a rest from turmoil, this rest is a reflection of the unchangeable peace in God. Being made in the image of God includes reflecting God's peace in the Sabbath.

Vos continues: "The Sabbath finds its prototype in the life and works of God. Thus, it means fulfillment; not cessation and weariness, but consummation."³³⁵ In other words, "rest from" is always second to "rest in". This better reflects the peace between the Father, Son, and Spirit.

How do we express our peace with God (cf. Romans 5:1)? By focusing on Christ by faith in the ordinary means of grace. The oasis of the Sabbath is both our representation of peace and a dedicated context to focus on Him. Though Christ is now Lord over all, the Sabbath is a time of special focus. It's the only commanded Christian holiday, as it's the holy day that mirrors the reality of God Himself. Within this Sabbath is the inner-sanctum: the worship service where we come to the collective, public means of grace.

Worship isn't over once the benediction is pronounced. The entire day is dedicated to worship. While we share this day with acts of mercy and necessity (WSC 60), our overall focus is particularly on Christ in an increased way. In this weekly context of separation from the world, we can take the time to read the Scriptures and teach our kids of Christ. Heaven forbid we forsake this opportunity to return to the barren wasteland so we can catch up on our favorite TV show, watch a sports game, or, worst of all, prevent restaurant staff from attending worship.

We're given the Word, sacraments, prayer, as well as the cadence of our lives. We're meant to take one day in seven away from the bombardment of accusations, competitiveness, and temptations of the world. The Sabbath in our live's cadence is the downpayment of eschatological rest. We need it for corporate and additional private worship. We must separate from the world weekly. Christ is your peace and your strength, and He gives you an oasis to rest further in Him. Use this time to focus on the Word.

Summary

Without the all-controlling plan of redemption, as seen in the creeds, catechisms, and confessions, you're in danger of losing the forest for the trees. Grammar, history, context, and thematic analysis must be oriented by a developed understanding of God, man, and redemption. Each iteration of study brings a new orientation adjustment, thus a new reading. Your perspective will improve as your biblical theology and systematic theology improve. The Bible never changes, but you constantly are; however, never by our own power, but by the power of Christ living in us by His Spirit. From our expanding biblical theological foundation, we can reinterpret not just Scripture, but our understanding of the whole of reality.

The Scriptures are a treasury of riches, with far more to offer than a first glance would gather. If you were to look to the night sky, you'd see specks of light. If you look again with a telescope, you'd see colored spots. If you were to zoom in further and let in more light over time, those original pin holes of light become full colorful galaxies. Yet, seeing these in isolation has very limited application; we need to view each object in the context of the whole sky. We're not traveling closer, we're simply examining the same light better, and with an ever-broadening context. So goes our close examination of Scripture.

Reformed hermeneutics isn't just about reading the Bible better, it's about understanding God in Christ better. It's a fully trinitarian endeavor from the Father, through Christ, and applied by the Spirit. While we should seek Christ at all times, God has graciously given us a day dedicated for this.

Ultimately, you must take an active role in your theological development. Ad hoc Biblical inquiery via commentaries, study bibles, Bible studies, or even seminary courses are only as effective as the active role you take in extending your Biblical-theological framework. Your continual, active, ceaseless pursuit of the knowledge of God is built on the foundations of eschatological history and accelerated by those who came before us.

This is how we may know Him, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, better.

Works Cited