In our last piece on the Confession, we examined paragraph 1.4 on the authority of Scripture. Men ought to accept Scripture as God’s words (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:19-21) on the authority of God alone (1 Thess 2:13) since the testimony of God is greater than the testimony of man (1 John 5:9). By way of contrast, one ought not to believe Scripture on the authority of a single individual or the church at large. The authority upon which one receives Scripture cannot reside in the creaturely realm; rather, the final authority must rest on the Creator and Redeemer who speaks.
The Confession transitions in 1.5, saying, “We may be moved and induced…” In doing so, it recognizes the validity of motives for believing Scripture without grounding the authority of Scripture in these various testimonies. Consider the first motive that might move the believer, “The testimony of the church of God.” For Protestants, the testimony of the church should serve as a motive but never a ground. However, the next motive, “the heavenliness of the matter,” may often be mistaken for a ground. This inducement to faith differs from the testimony of the church in that it is contained in Holy Scripture whereas the church’s testimony is external to it. We would rightly label “the heavenliness of the matter” as a mark of divinity contained in Scripture while acknowledging that marks of divinity are not the ground of authority upon which we receive Scripture as God’s word.
The marks of divinity, according to the Confession, serve as “arguments whereby [Scripture] doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God.” Yet, these lines of evidence serve as motives rather than as the ground of our faith upon which the authority of Scripture rests. The Confession seeks to preserve the self-authenticating nature of Scripture rooted in God’s testimony to Himself in His speech. Thus, we rest in the authority of God’s testimony rather than the things He testified to. We receive all the things about which God has spoken but we do not receive God’s speech because we have reasoned from the things He has spoken. In arguing this way, the Confession maintains the immediate ground of authority: God’s self-authenticating speech.
Should the grounds of Scripture’s authority shift from God’s speech to the things about which God speaks, then the authority of God is mediated through the thing spoken. This subtle shift can create room for human reason to fill the gap between the thing spoken and the authority upon which it is received. In this way, we might reason in a similar vein to the Roman Catholic Church. For some, the testimony of the Roman Catholic Church becomes the authority upon which Scripture is received whereas the reasoning process that detects the marks of divinity and reasons to a God who speaks also becomes a mediating principle upon which the authority of Scripture is received. God’s speech, then, fails to serve as the ground of authority, loses its self-authenticating power, and ceases to function as a first principle.
Bavinck traces the problem identified here in his Reformed Dogmatics, when he writes, “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. This occurred first in the sense that the recognition of those criteria was attributed to an illumination of intellect by the Holy Spirit. But rationalism soon considered illumination unnecessary, assigned the study of the truth of revelation to reason, and based the authority of Scripture on historical proofs,” (Reformed Dogmatics, I.584). Over time, Bavinck argues, reason replaces faith and, although the testimony of the church is denied as the ground of faith, the reason of man becomes the new testimony upon which the authority of Scripture finds its ground.
Owen reasons similarly to Bavinck in The Reason of Faith. Early in this work, Owen differentiates between the formal object of faith and the material object of faith. He writes, “And in our believing, or our faith, two things are to be considered:—(1.) What it is that we do believe; and, (2) Wherefore we do so believe it. The first is the material object of our faith,—namely, the things which we do believe; the latter the formal object of it, or the cause and reason why we do believe them,” (The Reason of Faith, IV.16). God reveals the things we ought to believe but we ought to believe the things revealed because God revealed them (The Reason of Faith, IV.18). For Owen and Bavinck, God’s self-testimony is the ground of faith and the things testified to serve as good evidence or motives derived from the first principle upon which our faith rests. As Owen reasons, “And if this testimony be divine, so is that faith whereby we give assent unto it, on the part of the object. But the doctrines contained in the Scripture, or the subject-matter of the truth to be believed, have not in them the nature of testimony, but are the material, not formal objects of faith, which must always differ,” (The Reason of Faith, IV.53).
This exposition sought to differentiate between the authority upon which we receive Scripture and those truths which may move and induce us to believe. Some of this evidence is external to Scripture, such as the testimony of the church, and others are contained in Scripture as marks of divinity. The marks of divinity are truths we ought to believe, but we believe them because they come from God who is Truth and speaks truth. Thus, we receive the truths in Scripture on God’s own testimony.