The Inspiration And Authority

Of The Bible
By
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology
in the Theological Seminary of Princeton
New Jersey, 1887–1921
Edited by
Samuel G. Craig
With an Introduction by Cornelius Van Til
“The Scripture cannot be broken”
Published by
The Presbyterian And Reformed Publishing Company

Copyright, 1948,
By The Presbyterian And Reformed Publishing Company
Phillipsburg, N.J.
ISBN 0–87552–527x
Library Of Congress Catalog Card Number 53–12862

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 Introduction
In the present volume there is offered to the public a reproduction of the major writings of
the late, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield on the doctrine of Scripture. In his day Dr. Warfield was
perhaps the greatest defender of what is frequently called “the high Protestant doctrine of the
Bible.” More particularly as one of the outstanding Reformed theologians of his day he was
deeply concerned to defend the view of Scripture set forth in the Westminster Confession of
Faith. He was not concerned to defend the classical Reformed view of Scripture merely because
it was found in the Confession to which, perhaps for other reasons, he had subscribed.1 For him
the classical doctrine of the infallible inspiration of Scripture was involved in the doctrine of divine
sovereignty. God could not be sovereign in his disposition of rational human beings if he were
not also sovereign in his revelation of himself to them. If God is sovereign in the realm of being,
he is surely also sovereign in the realm of knowledge. Scripture is a factor in the redeeming work
of God, a component part of the series of his redeeming acts, without which that series would
be incomplete and so far inoperative for its main end.2 As one deeply interested in the progress
of the doctrine of God’s sovereign grace, Warfield put all his erudition to work for the vindication
of an infallible Bible.
In his writings there is a discussion on the general problem of Scripture. There is also a very
detailed and painstaking analysis of questions pertaining to textual and higher criticism. Through
it all there is the contention that the Bible is, in its autographa, the infallible Word of God.
It is not our purpose here to analyze or recapitulate that argument. The reader can see at a
glance with what care and acumen it proceeds. It is our purpose rather to ask whether it is true,
as is frequently asserted, that the day for such an argument has passed. There will always be
room, it is said, for a critical analysis of the text of Scripture as there will always be room for a
critical analysis of the text of The Critique of Pure Reason. But who today thinks that the original
manuscripts of Scripture will ever be found? And who today thinks that, if they could be found,
we should be in actual possession of the infallible Word of God? In any case, does not God come
to man by free and living personal encounter even when he uses the words of the past? With
such rhetorical questions many would dismiss Warfield’s argument as wholly irrelevant to our
present situation. It is perhaps not too much to say that, for many professing Christian
theologians, the idea of a final and finished revelation from God to man about himself and his
place in the universe has no serious significance today.
No doubt the first thing that those who still profess adherence to the traditional view of the
Bible should do is to ask whether in stating the argument for their view they have done it in such
a way as to challenge the best thought of our age. To challenge that thought requires of us that
we should enter sympathetically into the problems of the modern theory of knowledge. Modern
man asks how knowledge is possible. In answering this question he wants to be critical rather
than dogmatic. He says he seeks to test all assumptions, not excluding his own.
Those who believe the Bible in the traditional sense have no cavil with this manner of stating
the matter. Certainly Warfield would not have had. He was a profound as well as an erudite

1 Cf. p. 419.
2 Cf. p. 80.

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theologian. His many contributions in the field of doctrine and apologetics show him to have
been a man fully abreast of the thought of his time. He was aware of the developments in post-
Kantian philosophy as well as post-Kantian theology. Nor was he unmindful of the philosophical
assumptions that underlie the factual studies of modern biblical research.
Since Warfield’s day the matter of the philosophical presuppositions that underline the
factual discussion of the data of knowledge has come to stand in the foreground of interest. Great
emphasis is being placed upon the subject’s contribution in the knowledge situation. Every fact,
we are told, is taken as much as given. It is as useless to speak of facts by themselves as it is to
speak of a noise in the woods a hundred miles from the woodman’s house. In consequence the
distinction so commonly made by Ritschlian theologians between judgments about pure facts
and judgments about values is not so common as it was a generation ago. In a recent analysis of
the question of religious knowledge in our day Alan Richardson says:
“The consequences of this false distinction between judgments of fact and judgments of
value have proved a veritable hereditas damnosa in subsequent theological discussion. From it
springs directly the false contrast between the ‘simple Gospel’ of Jesus and the ‘theology’ of the
apostolic Church. The true Gospel is regarded as consisting in the simple facts about and
teachings of the historical Jesus, who can thus be objectively portrayed by modern historical
research, while the interpretations of St. Paul and the other apostles may be discarded as
representing values for them which are no longer values for us.”3
The Ritschlians were seeking to safeguard or reinstate the rightful place of objectivity in the
gospel message. “They were trying to safeguard the objectivity of the facts themselves, as
existing independently of the wishes of the believer. They thus placed great emphasis upon the
historical character of the revelation, and they held that historical research, being scientific and
independent of all value-judgments, could put an end to subjective speculation and free us from
all the ‘accretions’ of traditional dogma.”4 Yet the Ritschlians themselves knew that “many able
and well-disposed minds have looked at the historical facts and have found no revelation in them
…”5 Thus “the illusion of ‘objective’ or uninterpreted history is finally swept away. The facts of
history cannot be disentangled from the principles of interpretation by which alone they can be
presented to us as history, that is, as a coherent and connected series or order of events. Christian
faith supplies the necessary principle of interpretation by which the facts of the biblical and
Christian history can be rationally seen and understood.”6
It is this principle of the inseparability of the facts from the principle of interpretation by
which they are observed that has been greatly stressed since Warfield’s time. We shall call this
the new, the current, or modern principle. In contending for the relevance of Warfield’s
argument for our day it is with this principle that we shall primarily need to be concerned. In it
lies embedded the current form of the problem of objectivity in religious knowledge.
It is claimed that it is only by means of this principle that true objective knowledge of God
and of his Christ can be obtained. For in it, the subjective itself has been taken into the objective.

3 Christian Apologetics, p. 148. London: The S. C. M. Press, 1947; New York: Harper & Brothers,
1948.
4 Idem., p. 149.
5 Idem., p. 150.
6 Idem., p. 150.

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In the traditional view, we are told, the subject stood hostile over against the object. The object
of knowledge itself was conceived in a static sort of way. In consequence the subject’s activity in
relation to the object was discounted or disparaged. When the subject rebelled against this
artificial and dictatorial sort of treatment its only recourse was to cut itself loose from all
connection with the objective aspect of the gospel. The result was rationalism, materialism and
secularism.
The contention is further made that only by the use of the principle of the interdependence
of fact and interpretation can the uniqueness of the Christian revelation be maintained.
Christianity is an historical religion. It stands or falls with the facts of the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. But the categories of orthodoxy could do no justice to the
uniqueness of historical facts. According to the tenets of traditional belief, we are told, the facts
of history are handled as roughly as Procrustes was accustomed to handling his guests. According
to orthodoxy the whole of history is said to be but the expression in time of a static, changeless
plan of God. God himself was conceived statically. He was eternally the same. There was no
increment of being or wisdom in him. He was all-glorious. How then could anything that should
take place in the course of history really add to his glory? Man’s chief end was said to be to glorify
God while all that man might have done in the course of fulfilling this task had already been done,
or could not be done. God was thought of as the first cause of man and his world, thus making
all things in the world, including man, mechanically dependent upon him. Man was endowed
with certain static qualities such as rationality and will which together were called the image of
God. These qualities man could neither gain nor lose. Even though he was said to have fallen, and
thus to have lost original knowledge, righteousness and holiness, this fall was pre-determined.
And among those that had thus “fallen” there were some that were pre-determined to a
changeless eternal life and others who were pre-determined to a changeless eternal death. Thus
the whole of history, including even its purported miracles, was reduced to something static.
The form of revelation that went with this static conception of reality as a whole was naturally
that of conveying to man in the form of intellectual propositions the content of this eternally
changeless plan. The mind of man was not given any significant function in the realization of this
plan. All man could do was to accept passively the set of propositions, together forming a system
of doctrine, that was laid before him. No difference was made in orthodox theology between the
revelation that took place in the events of history and the recording of that revelation in the
Scripture. Even the minds of the prophets, who were called the special media of revelation, were
thought of as being primarily passive in their reception of revelation.
But with the acceptance of the notion of the interdependence of the facts of history and their
principle of interpretation, we are told, all that has changed. Revelation is now seen to be
historical or eventual. The events are genuinely significant for it is their very individuality and
reality that is presupposed even for the making of a “system of truth.” It is no longer some
abstract static deity, who stands back of history from whom in some mysterious, wholly
unintelligible way a set number of propositions drop till he decides it is enough, but it is the living
God who gives himself in his revelation. When God thus actively gives himself then man
spontaneously responds. He responds with love and adoration because it is through God giving
himself that man is able to respond. Revelation thus becomes a process of interaction between
God giving himself to man and man by God’s grace in return giving himself to God. God is what
he is for man and man is what he is for God. It is this divine-human encounter in constant living

4
form that is said to overcome the meaningless and artificial staticism of the traditional concept
of Scripture.
In claiming true objectivity and uniqueness for itself the modern principle also claims certain
other advantages. It claims to have solved the problem of authority and reason. Those who stress
the need for authority and those who stress the need for reason are both in search of objectivity.
Those who advocate the idea of authority hold that reason cannot give objective certainty in
knowledge. In particular it cannot give objective certainty in the religious field. Reason may assert
things about God and about things beyond the experience of man but what it thus asserts cannot
be said to be a part of knowledge by experience. By reason man cannot reach into the field of
the divine. At least he cannot there speak with the same assurance that he is wont to employ
with respect to the empirical realm.
Therefore if there is to be any certainty with respect to the unique historical facts of
Christianity and, in particular, if there is to be any assurance with respect to the miraculous
element in Scripture, this, it is often said, will have to be accepted on purely non-rational grounds.
Now this is precisely, it is said, what the traditional view wanted men to do. Men were required
to believe the utterly non-rational and even the irrational, or meaningless. They were asked to
believe in the self-existent and self-contained God. This God was said to be eternal and
unchangeable. And then they were asked to believe in the causal creation of the universe at a
certain time. This is to say they were asked to hold that this world and all that it contains were
rationalistically related to and dependent upon God and at the same time they were asked to
believe that this rational dependence of the universe upon God was effectuated by means of the
arbitrary action of God’s will. Thus they were asked to be both rationalists and irrationalists at
the same time. But fundamentally it was irrationalism that prevailed. The believer was to accept
blindly what was offered by absolute authority.
It is true that the Roman Catholics tried hard to soften down the bald antithesis between
authority and reason by their doctrine of analogy of being. They did not have the courage of their
conviction and therefore did not start with the Creator-creature distinction as basic to all their
interpretation of doctrine. They started with the idea of being as such and introduced the
distinction of Creator and creature as a secondary something. This did at first seem to produce
the necessary rational connection between God and man. For it posited a principle of unity that
reduced the Creator-creature distinction to a matter of gradation within one general being. And
then corresponding to the principle of continuity thus brought into Christian thought from Plato
and Aristotle, they did also hold to a measure of real individuality in history. They attributed a
measure of freedom to man in independence of the plan of God. They even gave God a measure
of freedom so that by his will he did not always need to follow the dictates of a rational eternally
unchangeable nature.
“The distinction between the inner necessity of the very being of God and the free
determination of His will is in Thomism a distinction of opposites. The element of necessity is
understood as inherent to the relations within the Godhead. The causation of created being, on
the other hand, is attributed to the will of God, who does not create of necessity (Qu. 19, a.3). In
this latter sense God exercises ‘liberum arbitrium’

5
 (a. 10). ‘The will of God has no cause’ (a.5). This arbitrary nature of divine freewill must needs
be extended to the Ideas in God.”7
It is also true that Lutheran and Arminian theology to some extent followed Rome in both of
these respects. But neither Lutheranism nor Arminianism had the courage of its convictions. They
always fell back on the Scriptures as an infallible external authority. And this is also, though to a
lesser degree, true of Rome.
So it remained true, we are told, that by and large orthodox Christians continued to believe
in a non-rational concept of authority. The early Reformers seemed to have a more modern or
dialectical view but then they were soon followed by those who made the belief in an infallible
book the test of orthodoxy. But how can such a view of authority expect to yield the objectivity
of which it was in search? Such an authority can, in the nature of the case, speak only of that
which is beyond the reach of man. It must speak of that which has no intelligible relation to man.
It speaks of a God who exists in such a form as to be wholly out of touch with the categories of
man’s own existence. It therefore speaks of what must be inherently meaningless for man.
In particular it must be noted that the traditional view of authority led to self-frustration.
Nowhere is this more clearly the case than when it sought to deal with the facts of history. The
notion of absolutely authoritative revelation with respect to the facts of history is a contradiction
in terms.
But, we are told, now all that is changed. With the new principle we are no longer asked to
talk about the inherently meaningless. When we are asked to believe the Word of the prophets
we are not asked to think of some blank of which they are first supposed to have thought. We
can now think of the facts of revelation as they appeared in history. Then we may use the insights
of the prophets for the interpretation of these events. “Christians believe that the perspective of
biblical faith enables us to see very clearly and without distortion the biblical facts as they really
are: they see the facts clearly because they see their true meaning. On the other hand, when
once the Christian meaning of the facts is denied, the facts themselves begin to disappear into
the mists of doubt and vagueness.”8
In short we are asked to accept the expert authority of a great personality, not that of abstract
system. We stand face to face with the great personality of Jesus Christ as the central figure of
the category of revelation. We trust in him. The traditional view could not deal with genuine
history because it reduced historical fact to mere logical connection in a timeless system. On the
other hand, the system that was presented by the traditional view was, because of the very
destruction of history it required, totally aloof from those whose experience is time-conditioned.9
The problem of reason too is said to be solved by the modern principle. Our reason is no
longer asked to abdicate. It is not asked to accept blindly an abstract system of truth. Neither is
our reason even required to admit that there is an area about which it has nothing to say.
According to the traditional view there were two sources of revelation quite distinct from one
another. “Natural theology, as distinct from revealed theology, consisted of those truths about
the divine Being which could be discovered by the unaided powers of human reason. This kind of

7 Evgueny Lampert, The Divine Realm, London, 1944, p. 37.

8 Alan Richardson: Op. cit., p. 105.
9 Cf. Dorothy M. Emmet, Philosophy and Faith, London, 1936; William Temple, Nature, Man and

God, London, 1935.

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knowledge of God, it was held, was accessible to pagans as well as to Christians, and indeed, after
the days of Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, it was generally conceded that Aristotle
was the great master of this type of knowledge of God. But this natural knowledge of God, it was
held, does not give to man all that he needs to know; it is not saving knowledge, and it cannot
satisfy the craving of the human soul for that measure of truth which is beyond the natural
capacity of the human mind. The full Christian knowledge of God and of His redemptive activity
on man’s behalf, as expressed in such doctrines as those of the Incarnation and the Trinity, can
be learnt only from revelation and is not ascertainable by the natural reason. Man is an ens
incompletum and therefore stands in need of the divine grace.”10 Against this orthodox
conception of the relation of faith to reason, says Richardson, the old liberal view argued that in
revelation we had little more than the republication of what is essentially discoverable by reason.
But this view “finds few supporters amongst theologians of the front rank today.”11 It is only with
the full recognition of the value of the new principle that we have found the harmony between
the “natural knowledge of man” and “special revelation.” It is no longer necessary to distinguish
between the natural and the supernatural in revelation. There is rather general and special
revelation. “The only kind of theory of the knowledge of God which will adequately embrace all
the facts of man’s experience will be one which recognizes that there are two kinds of revelation
or divine disclosure of truth. There is first general revelation, which pertains to the universal
religious consciousness of mankind; and there is also special revelation, which is mediated
through particular episodes at definite times and places in history. The broad distinction between
general and special revelation is that the former is non-historical, in that its content is not
communicated to mankind through particular historical situations but is quite independent of
the accidents of time and place, whereas the latter is historical, that is, bound up with a certain
series of historical persons and happenings through which it is communicated to mankind.”12
It is true of course that in matters of historical communication we cannot attain unto impartial
and impersonal knowledge of facts. “The illusion of having attained an impartial scientific
viewpoint is the inevitable penalty of embracing the rationalist theory of the nature of historical
research; there are no such things as ‘absolute perspectives’ in existential matters; we see facts
not as they are in themselves, but in the light of our own personal categories of belief and
interpretation.”13
At last then there has come to us what is essentially a solution of the age-old problem of
authority and reason. Authority no longer speaks of an abstraction; reason no longer refuses to
accept the expert assertions about the “beyond.” The faith principle must be freely accepted in
the interpretation of the whole of history. Christianity deals with the supernatural and the
miraculous. It is in vain to follow the rationalists in their efforts to expunge all of the miraculous
from the earliest documents of Christianity. Nor is it necessary to do so. In fact it is precisely the
supernatural and the unique that we desire. History would not be history without it. But to hold
to the historical element in religion and with it to true uniqueness, yes even to hold to the
miraculous character of Christianity, is not to hold to what is out of relation with general human

10 Idem., pp. 110–111.

11 Idem. p. 113.
12 Idem. p. 113.
13 Idem., p. 107.

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experience. “We must never deny to the philosophical activity of the mind its proper function of
elucidating and unifying all our experience.”14 Our experience of religious truth, as of truth of
historical fact in general, may indeed be doubted from a strict historical point of view. Christianity
stands or falls with the idea of the resurrection of Christ under Pontius Pilate. “A Christianity
without the belief in the resurrection of Christ as an historical event would be another Christianity
than that which the world has hitherto known; …”15 But it is quite possible for historical research
as such to doubt the fact of the resurrection. “What we find in the accounts of the resurrection
of Jesus is obviously, from the modern historian’s point of view, full of difficulties, which there is
no probability that any further investigation at this distance of time could entirely remove.”16
“But the strictly religious interest in these events does not demand that the historian’s curiosity
should be fully satisfied before faith is accorded to them.”17 Only a genuine experience of
intercourse with a living historical person victorious over death can lie behind the creation of the
Christian church. In this way we have not left the safe ground of experience in talking about the
resurrection of Christ. We have used it as a “fact” that is required as a limit without which our
experience of the church community is unintelligible.
If there is anything that is clearly implied in the preceding discussion, it is that the rejection
of the Bible as the infallible Word of God is connected with the rejection of that of which the
Bible claims to give infallible revelation. The rejection of the traditional view of Scripture involves
the rejection of Christianity as orthodoxy holds to it. The argument about the Bible and its claim
to infallibility is certainly no longer, if it ever was, exclusively an argument about “facts.” Nor is it
characterized on the part of those who reject biblical infallibility by the older deistic and
rationalistic effort to reduce the whole of life to an illustration of the law of non-contradiction.
Pure factuality, that is pure non-rationality, is freely allowed a place in the philosophical principles
of those who are engaged in biblical criticism.
To be sure, it is taken for granted that not much can be said today from the point of view of
factual defense for the orthodox point of view. It is also customary to assert that the benefits of
old liberalism must be conserved. Old liberalism is said to have been right in its rejection of
orthodoxy and its literalism. But, it is argued, we must now go beyond old liberalism. It was
rationalistic. It claimed to be able to give what was tantamount to an exhaustive explanation of
reality. It too did not allow for genuine historical fact. It did not permit of newness in science or
miracle in religion. We must now make room for both. We must substitute for a philosophy of
static being the transcendental philosophy of pure act. Then we shall be able to save the insights
of orthodoxy. For orthodoxy was not wholly wrong. Luther and Calvin knew that Christianity was
unique, that it was historical and that it required the Holy Spirit’s testimony for men to accept it.
They knew that it was not rationally defensible in the strict sense of the term. But all these
insights were burdened down with the incompatible ideas of an infallible Bible and a fixed system
of truth as revealed in that Bible. The salvation of men was made to depend upon their accidental
acquaintance or non-acquaintance with, and their acceptance or non-acceptance of, a set of
propositions about the nature of reality found in a certain book. Thus the Reformers were

14 Clement C. J. Webb, The Historical Element in Religion, London, 1935; p. 93.

15 Idem., p. 100.
16 Idem., p. 103.
17 Idem., p. 103.

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rationalists in their teaching of salvation by system and irrationalists in their willingness to permit
this supposedly indispensable system of truth to be distributed by the winds of chance.
Rejecting both this rationalism and this irrationalism of orthodoxy, and rejecting also the
remnants of rationalism found in old liberalism, we now at last have reached a category of
revelation that is not mechanical but personal. In the Bible we now confront God as personal
Creator—our Creator, not the cause of the universe.
Orthodoxy left the question as to how God and his world might be brought together unsolved.
Its conception of causation led logically to his identification with the world. “To see in God the
cause of the world or its prime mover means either to substitute the idea of causality for its
opposite and utterly deform it, or to make an attempt on God (and on the world!), by making
Him wholly immanent in the world and dragging them both into a single monistic being—vide
Aristotelianism!”18 “The existence of God is known by an act of madness, daring, and love: it is to
throw the thread of life into the heavens in the certainty that it will take hold there without any
guarantees of causality; it is a dumb, beseeching act; it is a prayer. Sursum corda, sursum, sursum,
sursum!”19
Creation, then, is a mystery. But its mystery is “positively implied in the depths of our very
existence: as such it becomes accessible to us; it illuminates and gives impetus to our thought
and knowledge.… Created life, then, must be regarded as the other-being of this world in the
relative. In creation divine life becomes other to its divine subject. In it take place, as it were,
God’s mysterious self-alienation and return to Himself through His object which was still Himself,
a losing of His self-sameness, self-negation and re-appropriation of Himself in the other. The very
act of creation is an activity whereby this world exists, is ‘planned-out’ as a being other than the
Creator. Creation is therefore the establishment of other existence or existence in the other.”20
Still further, as orthodoxy interpreted the problem of origins in terms of impersonal physical
causation so it interpreted the problem of sin in impersonal biological terms of inheritance. By
the new principle every man virtually stands where orthodoxy claims that Adam and Eve stood,
face to face with the claims of the personal God. Better than that, in terms of the new principle
every man comes directly face to face with Christ and the necessity of choosing for or against
him. The last vestiges of impersonalism have disappeared.
In view of all these claims it is apparent that the orthodox apologist cannot pacify the
adherents of the new principle by making certain concessions. There are otherwise orthodox
believers who are willing to concede that Scripture was not infallibly inspired. They seek to
preserve the general historical trustworthiness of the Bible without maintaining its infallibility.
Those who make such “minor concessions” will find, however, that the same objections that are
raised against an infallible Bible will hold in large degree against a Bible that is essentially
trustworthy in some more or less orthodox sense of the word. Those who recede from the high
claim of Scriptural infallibility as maintained by Warfield to the position of maintaining the
general trustworthiness of Scripture, do not in the least thereby shield themselves against the
attack of the modern principle as outlined above. That principle attacks the very possibility of the
existence in history of an existential system. And the orthodox advocates of the general

18 Evgueny Lampert: The Divine Realm, p. 42.

19 Idem., p. 43.
20 Idem., p. 50.

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trustworthiness of Scripture cannot afford to give up the claim of Scripture to provide such a
system.
It is of importance to note that the current principle of Scripture is of a piece with modern
philosophical and scientific procedure in general. The history of recent philosophy has been in
the direction of “phenomenalism.” We are not now concerned about the internal differences
among modern philosophers. What is of significance in the present discussion is that, by and
large, the methodology of modern philosophy and science involves the idea of the wholly unique
or the purely factual. Since Kant the idea of pure fact ordinarily stands for pure existential
possibility. On this question German philosophy has gone its course till it has reached a position
fitly exemplified by Heidegger’s notion of reality temporalizing itself. The British-American point
of view is expressed by Samuel Alexander’s Space Time and Deity and by the works of John Dewey
or Alfred North Whitehead. In France the philosophy of Bergson is typical. There is a general
assumption that reality has an utterly non-rational aspect. Moreover, what is true of modern
philosophy is, generally speaking, also true of modern science. Current scientific methodology
also assumes absolute contingency in the sphere of fact.
So then the whole emphasis of the modern principle with respect to the Bible, insofar as that
is expressed in willingness to accept the “supernatural” and the “miraculous” is in accord with
the idea of general philosophy and science. Philosophy and science also accept the “miraculous”
and the “unique,” but they mean by the supernatural and the unique that which men have not
yet rationalized, or that which may be forever unrationalizable, that is, the purely contingent. In
fact emphasis should be laid upon the latter idea. Reality is assumed to have something
ultimately mysterious in it. The God of modern thought is no less surrounded by mystery than is
man. Events in history are therefore in part determined by that within them which is made up of
the ultimately irrational.
On this assumption of modern thought there could be no infallible interpretation of historical
fact, no existential system of truth in the orthodox sense of the term. The orthodox principle of
continuity is taken to be impossible by an assumed doctrine of chance.
Corresponding to this general concept of factuality as ultimately non-rational is the idea of
rational coherence as being merely a matter of perspective. If factuality is non-rational, it is to be
expected that rationality will be merely “practical.” That is to say rationality will not be that which
the “rationalists” before Kant thought it was. Post-Kantian rationality is, broadly speaking,
correlative to non-rational factuality. It does not pretend to reduce factuality itself to relations
within an exhaustively rational system. If there is to be no individuation by complete description
there can be no claim to a system that is exhaustive. A non-rational principle of individuation
allows only for a de facto system.
We are now prepared to state the issue between the basic principle of interpretation of
human life and experience that thus comes to expression in modern theology, philosophy and
science and that which comes to expression in the idea of an infallible Bible as set forth by
Warfield. That issue may be stated simply and comprehensively by saying that in the Christian
view of things it is the self-contained God who is the final point of reference while in the case of
the modern view it is the would-be self-contained man who is the final point of reference in all
interpretation.
For the Christian, facts are what they are, in the last analysis, by virtue of the place they take
in the plan of God. Idealist logicians have frequently stressed the idea that if facts are to be

10
intelligible they must be integrally related to system. But idealist philosophers do not have any
such system as their negative argument against the adherents of the “open universe” requires
them to have. Together with the pragmatists they assume an utterly non-rational concept of pure
fact. Thus there is in their view no individuation by complete description. There is a kernel of
thingness in every concrete fact that utterly escapes all possibility of expression. “There always
are, and always will be, loose ends, ‘bare’ conjunctions not understood, in all our actual natural
knowledge, just because it all starts from and refers to the historical and’ individual, which
analysis cannot exhaust.”21 Taylor does not mean to say merely that God does and man does not
have the ability to exhaust the meaning of individual facts. He is making an assertion about reality
which, he assumes, is true for God as well as for man. Both God and man are, for Taylor,
confronted with non-rational material.
So then only the orthodox Christians actually hold to that which idealist philosophers cannot
hold while yet they recognize it to be the minimal requirement even for the distinguishing of facts
from one another. And among orthodox Christians it is only they who hold with Warfield to the
comprehensiveness of God’s plan who do full justice to the Christian principle.
This does not mean that the orthodox position is tantamount to a return to pre-Kantian
rationalism. Not even those rationalists were able to do altogether without “truths of fact” which,
to the precise extent that they existed, detracted from the “rational” interpretation of the whole
of reality that was the aim of a Leibniz or a Wolff. They did not make the God-man distinction
fundamental in their thought. The orthodox Christian does. He claims for God complete control
over all the facts and forces of the universe. Hence he claims for God exhaustive knowledge of
all things. All the light of men is in relation to him who is the Light as candlelight is in relation to
the sun. All interpretation on the part of man must, to be true, be reinterpretation of the
interpretation of God by which facts are what they are.
That this is the case has never been so clear as it is now. All too frequently Christian theology
and apologetics has not been consistent with its own principles. It has sought to prove the
existence of God and the propriety or necessity of believing in the Bible as the Word of God by
arguments that assumed the possibility of sound and true interpretation without God and
without the Bible. Following the example of Aquinas such men as Bishop Butler and his many
followers assumed that by “reason,” quite apart from any reference to the Bible, it was possible
to establish theism. Fearing to offend the unbeliever they thus failed to challenge his basic
approach. Thus the full claim of Scripture about itself was not even presented. Virtually assuming
that the candle of human reason derived its light exclusively from itself they set out to prove that
there was another, an even greater light than the candle, namely, the sun.
The Aquinas-Butler type of argument assumed that there is an area of “fact” on the
interpretation of which Christians and non-Christians agree. It virtually assumes a non-rational
principle of individuation. It therefore concedes that since historical facts are “unique” nothing
certain can be asserted of them. But this assumption, always untrue, has never before appeared
so clearly false as today.
To be sure, there is a sense in which it must be said that all men have the facts “in common.”
Saint and sinner alike are face to face with God and the universe of God. But the sinner is like the
man with colored glasses on his nose. Assuming the truth of Scripture we must hold that the facts

21 A. E. Taylor: The Faith of a Moralist, London, 1931, Series 2, p. 172.

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speak plainly of God. Rom 1:20, Rom 2:14–15, etc. But all is yellow to the jaundiced eye. As he
speaks of the facts the sinner reports them to himself and others as yellow every one. There are
no exceptions to this. And it is the facts as reported to himself, that is as distorted by his own
subjective condition, which he assumes to be the facts as they really are.
Failing to keep these things in mind, Thomas and Butler appeal to the sinner as though there
were in his repertoire of “facts” some that he did not “see yellow.” Nor was this done merely for
the sake of the argument. Thomas and Butler actually placed themselves on a common position
with their opponents on certain “questions of fact.”
The compromising character of this position is obvious. It is compromising, in the first place
with respect to the objective clarity of the evidence for the truth of Christian theism. The psalmist
does not say that the heavens probably declare the glory of God, they surely and clearly do.
Probability is not, or at least should not be, the guide of life. He who runs may read. Men ought,
says Calvin following Paul, to believe in God, for each one is surrounded with a superabundance
of evidence with respect to him. The whole universe is lit up by God. Scripture requires men to
accept its interpretation of history as true without doubt. Doubt of this is as unreasonable as
doubt with respect to the primacy of the light of the sun in relation to the light bulbs in our
homes.
But according to Thomas and Butler men have done full justice by the evidence if they
conclude that God probably exists. Worse than that, according to this position they are assumed
to have done full justice by the evidence if they conclude that a God exists. And a God is a finite
God, is no God, is an idol. How then can the Bible speak to men of the God on whom all things
depend?
In presupposing a non-Christian philosophy of fact the Thomas-Butler type of argument
naturally also presupposes a non-Christian principle of coherence, or rationality. The two go hand
in hand. The law of non-contradiction employed positively or negatively is made the standard of
what is possible or impossible. On this basis the Bible could not speak to man of any God whose
revelation and whose very nature is not essentially penetrable to the intellect of man.
In the second place, the Thomas-Butler type of argument is compromising on the subjective
side. It allows that the natural man has the plenary ability to interpret certain facts correctly even
though he wears the colored spectacles of the covenantbreaker. As though covenant-breakers
had no axe to grind. As though they were not anxious to keep from seeing the facts for what they
really are.
The traditional argument of Thomas and of Butler was, moreover, not only compromising but
also self-frustrative. More than ever before, men frankly assert that “facts” are taken as much as
given. Thus they admit that they wear glasses. But these glasses are said to help rather than to
hinder vision. Modern man assumes that seeing facts through the glasses of himself as ultimate
he can really see these facts for what they are. For him it is the orthodox believer who wears the
colored glasses of prejudice. Thus the Christian walks in the valley of those who more than ever
before identify their false interpretations of the facts with the facts themselves.
The argument of Thomas or of Butler does not challenge men on this point. It virtually grants
that they are right. But then, if men are virtually told that they are right in thus identifying their
false interpretations of the facts with the facts themselves in certain instances, why should such
men accept the Christian interpretation of other facts? Are not all facts within one universe? If

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men are virtually told that they are quite right in interpreting certain facts without God they have
every logical right to continue their interpretation of all other facts without God.
From the side of the believer in the infallible Word of God the claim should be made that
there are not because there cannot be other facts than God-interpreted facts. In practice, this
means that, since sin has come into the world, God’s interpretation of the facts must come in
finished, written form and be comprehensive in character. God continues to reveal himself in the
facts of the created world but the sinner needs to interpret every one of them in the light of
Scripture. Every thought on every subject must become obedient to the requirement of God as
he speaks in his Word. The Thomas-Butler argument fails to make this requirement and thus
fatally compromises the claims of Scripture.
It has frequently been argued that this view of Scripture is impracticable. Christians differ
among themselves in their interpretation of Scripture. And even Christ, says A. E. Taylor, if we
grant his genuine humanity, would himself introduce a subjective element into the picture. Or,
assuming he did not, and assuming we knew his words without doubt, those who would live by
his words would in each instance insinuate a subjective element.
These objections, however, are not to the point. No one denies a subjective element in a
restricted, sense. The real issue is whether God exists as self-contained, whether therefore the
world runs according to his plan, and whether God has confronted those who would frustrate
the realization of that plan with a self-contained interpretation of that plan. The fact that
Christians individually and collectively can never do more than restate the given self-contained
interpretation of that plan approximately does not correlativize that plan itself or the
interpretation of that plan.
The self-contained circle of the ontological trinity is not broken up by the fact that there is an
economical relation of this triune God with respect to man. No more is the self-contained
character of Scripture broken up by the fact that there is an economy of transmission and
acceptance of the word of God it contains. Such at least is, or ought to be, the contention of
Christians if they would really challenge the modern principle. The Christian principle must
present the full force and breadth of its claim. It is compelled to engage in an all-out war.
But if the Christian position has not always been consistent with itself the same holds true of
the non-Christian position.
It has not been brought out clearly in the history of non-Christian philosophy till recent times
that; from its point of view, all predication that is to be meaningful must have its reference point
in man as ultimate. But that this is actually the case is now more plain than ever. This is the
significance of Kant’s “Copernican Revolution.” It is only in our day that there can therefore be
anything like a fully consistent presentation of one system of interpretation over against the
other. For the first time in history the stage is set for a head-on collision. There is now a clear-cut
antithesis between the two positions. It is of the utmost significance that we see what is meant
by this antithesis. It does not mean that any one person fully exemplifies either system perfectly.
But it does mean that to the extent that the two systems of interpretation are self-consistently
expressed it will be an all-out global war between them. To illustrate this point we may refer to
Paul’s teaching on the new man and the old man in the Christian. It is the new man in Christ Jesus
who is the true man. But this new man in every concrete instance finds that he has an old man
within him which wars within his members and represses the working out of the principles of his
true new man. Similarly it may be said that the non-believer has his new man. It is that man which

13
in the fall declared independence of God, seeking to be his own reference point. As such this new
man is a covenant breaker. He is a covenant breaker always and everywhere. He is as much a
covenant breaker when he is engaged in the work of the laboratory as he is when he is engaged
in worshiping gods of wood or stone. But as in the new man of the Christian the new man of the
unbeliever finds within himself an old man warring in his members against his will. It is the sense
of deity, the knowledge of creaturehood and of responsibility to his Creator and Judge which, as
did Conscience in Bunyan’s Holy War, keeps speaking of King Shaddai to whom man really
belongs. Now the covenant breaker never fully succeeds in this life in suppressing the old man
that he has within him. He is never a finished product. That is the reason for his doing the
relatively good though in his heart, in his new man, he is wholly evil. So then the situation is
always mixed. In any one’s statement of personal philosophy there will be remnants of his old
man. In the case of the Christian this keeps him from being consistently Christian in his philosophy
of life and in his practice. In the case of the non-believer this keeps him from being fully Satanic
in his opposition to God. But however true it is that non-Christians are always much better in
their statements of philosophy and in their lives than their own principle would lead us to expect
and however true it is that Christians are always much worse in the statement of their philosophy
and in their lives than their principle would lead us to expect, it is none the less also true that in
principle there axe two mutually exclusive systems, based upon two mutually exclusive principles
of interpretation. And in our day the non-Christian principle of interpretation has come to a quite
consistent form of expression. It has done so most of all by stressing the relativity of all
knowledge in any field to man as its ultimate reference point. It would seem to follow from this
that Christians ought not to be behind in stressing the fact that in their thinking all depends upon
making God the final reference point in human predication. The Thomas-Butler type of argument
confuses this basic issue.
Secondly, the issue at the present time is not whether man is himself involved in all that he
knows, whether facts are taken as much as given. That man as the subject of his knowledge is to
some extent taking as well as giving facts may be taken for granted by all. As such it is a quite
formal matter. The question is whether in his taking of facts man assumes himself to be ultimate
or to be created. Both Descartes and Calvin believed in some form of innateness of ideas, yet the
former made man and the latter made God the final reference point in human thought.
The issue about the Bible is thus seen to involve the issue about the sovereign God of the
Bible. It involves the idea of an existential system. The opposition between the two points of view
is all comprehensive. There is no question of agreeing on an area or dimension of reality. Reason
employed by a Christian always comes to other conclusions than reason employed by a non-
Christian. There is no agreement on the faith principle that is employed. Each has his own
conception of reason and his own conception of faith. The non-Christian conception of reason
and the non-Christian principle of faith stand or fall together. The same is true of the relation
between the Christian principles of reason and of faith. The one will always be in analogy with
the other. If one starts with man as ultimate and therefore with his reason as virtually legislative
for reality then the faith principle that is added to this in order to fill out the interpretation of
man’s religious as well as his scientific interests will be of such a sort as to allow only for such
facts and such rationality as are also allowed by his reason. There will be occasion to develop this
point more fully when we are dealing more directly with the Romanist view of tradition.

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Romanism makes the effort to attach a Christian faith principle to a non-Christian principle of
reason. The result is compromise with the non-Christian principle of the autonomous man.
On the surface it might seem that there is on the modern principle a great difference if not a
contrast between the procedure of faith and that of reason. It will be said that in the field of
science and philosophy man is merely following a method that involves no personal relationships
at all. Science and philosophy is said to deal with the impersonalist factors of the material
universe. It is said to deal merely with the subject-object relationships in a non-personal way. It
is said to be non-existential. Then it is added—and in this the modern view is joined by those who
claim to be critical of it in the realm of religion, the Romanists and the dialecticists in theology—
that of course in natural things the impersonal method of human reason must be allowed to have
full sway. Certainly no man is to be asked to make a sacrificium intellectus. Only orthodoxy
requires us to make that. The “absurdity of Christianity” has no bearing on the facts of chemistry
and biology.
Frequently, and in particular in the case of the Romanist, it may then be added that God will
not require man to believe on faith something that is contrary to what he has already learned to
know by his God-given reason. Appeal is made to the idea of man’s creation in the image of God.
In doing so men virtually assert that the faith principle that is to be accepted must be adjusted to
the principle of reason that is already at work in the so-called lower dimensions of life. Man is
said to be created in the image of God, but the explanation is made that this does not mean that
he has been causally produced by God. In other words the image idea is itself interpreted in terms
that are out of accord with orthodox theology. In the case of Thomas Aquinas this takes the form
of saying that as far as reason is concerned it is not possible to disprove that Aristotle was right
about his conception of eternity for the world. That means that if creation is to be accepted it
must be accepted by a non-rational principle of faith. Thus the faith principle is made to fit the
non-Christian principle of reason used in the first place. The faith principle must then be made
non-rational. It must be identified with the idea of accepting as an aspect of reality that which is
non-rational.
Then if the harmony of the two is to be effected it can be done and is done by the notion of
correlativity. The principle of faith then stands for belief in the unique as that comes to us in the
facts of history. The principle of reason then stands for the notion of coherence as that comes to
us primarily in science. The two may be combined and that which is believed in faith will be
analogous to what is believed in science and in philosophy. There will be the same principle of
continuity and the same principle of discontinuity in both faith and reason. The only difference
will be one of degree. In the realm of faith there is more of discontinuity and less of continuity
while in science there is more of continuity and less of discontinuity. Then too the seemingly
sharp difference between the impersonal realm of science and the personal confrontation of
religion will virtually disappear. The impersonal realm is not ultimately impersonal at all. How
could it be if in science we also have “selective subjectivism?” It is true that those who hold to
the modern principle continue to speak of the non-biased historian as imitating the method of
science in its impersonalism. But there is no unbiased historian and there is no unbiased scientist.
Both have the same fundamental bias. Both have the same fundamental bias of making man
ultimate. Therefore science is as personalist as is religion.
On the other hand the two of them are equally impersonal. A point of great importance to
the modern approach is its claim that it for the first time has done full justice to religion as

15
personal confrontation. The effort at this point is the same as that of personalist philosophy in
general.22 But all non-orthodox personalisms are virtually impersonalist. This too is not difficult
to perceive. They all want to start with man as ultimate in the realm of science and philosophy.
They argue that if our beliefs are to be affirmed without reasons then there is no difference
between Nazism and Christianity and no settlement but by force. If God himself put propositions
into our minds he would have to appeal to our reason or we could not tell his truth from the
devil’s falsehood. But the assumption of this manner of putting things is that man himself as such
must be the standard between the truth of God and the devil’s falsehood. And unless he is willing
to assert that he is himself directly the source and standard of law as an individual he must appeal
to some abstract law above himself and other individuals. He must with Socrates demand a
definition of holiness in itself apart from what gods or men have said about it. In the rational
realm he will appeal to the law of non-contradiction. He will not accept as revelation from God
that which he cannot order by means of the law of non-contradiction. But then he ought really
to do away with the idea of speaking of God as personal and with speaking of Christ as his Lord
whom he would obey. He can then listen to God if God can show him that what he says is in
accord with the non-personal law of contradiction or the impersonal law of the good as man
himself in any given situation interprets this.
The conclusion then is that both in religion and in science the modern temper is impersonalist
in its conception of some abstract super-personal law and personalist in that in practice even this
impersonal law is interpreted in terms of the standards that are within man himself apart from
God. Thus there is no personal confrontation of man with either God or Christ. Both of these
become impersonal ideals that man has set before himself. These depersonalizations may be
hypostatized and then anew personalized. It is only then that they meet the demands of modern
man and answer to the requirements that man has set for himself as his own ultimate standard
of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood.
It will now be apparent in what way the argument between those who hold to the infallible
Bible and those who hold to man as the final reference point will have to be carried on. It cannot
be carried on in the traditional way that has been set for both the Romanist and the Protestant
by Thomas Aquinas and his school. This method does indeed fit into a Romanist scheme of things.
Of this more in the sequel. But, as already pointed out, it does not fit in with the Protestant view
of Scripture and of theology.
We have now cleared the ground by pointing out that both the position of those who believe
and that of those who do not believe in the ultimate authority of Scripture have to be brought to
a measure of internal self-consistency if the argument between them is to be really fruitful.
There can be then no way of avoiding the fact that it is in the theology of Warfield, the
Reformed Faith, that we have the most consistent defense of the idea of the infallibility of
Scripture. This is not to lack appreciation of the Evangelicals or non-Reformed Protestants who
hold con amore to the Bible as the infallible Word of God. But it is only in a theology such as that
of Warfield, a theology in which the doctrine of salvation by the grace of the sovereign God has
come to something like adequate expression that the doctrine of the Bible as the infallible Word
of God can, with full consistency, be maintained. It is only on this basis that the modern idea of
revelation as event without being at the same time in part man’s own interpretation of event can

22 Cf. the writings of Borden P. Bowne, Knudson, E. S. Brightman and Flewelling.

16
be opposed at every point. If God is really self-contained and if he has really causally created this
world and if he really controls it by his providence then the revelation of himself and about this
world must be that of fully interpreted fact. All facts in the whole of created reality are then God-
interpreted.
This is true no less of the things of nature than of the things of Scripture. Accordingly when
man is confronted with the facts of nature and is called upon to give them a scientific
interpretation he is no less engaged in the re-interpretation of that which has already been fully
interpreted by God to himself than when he reads his Bible. This does not mean that God has
exhaustively revealed the meaning of these facts to man. Man would not even be able to receive
into his mind a full revelation of all that God has in his mind. Moreover it is true that the revelation
of God in nature is “factual,” rather than propositional. This is partly true even of Scripture. Just
the same it is also true, and this is basic, that as man studies any of the factual revelation of either
nature or Scripture he is required to do so in subordination to and in conformity with the
propositional revelation given him in the way of direct communication by God. This was true even
before the Fall. The revelation of God in the facts of nature has always required and been
accompanied by revelation in propositional form given by supernatural positive communication.
Natural and supernatural revelation are limiting concepts the one of the other.
Thus the work of scientists and philosophers is no less a re-interpretative enterprise than is
that of theology. And only thus can a genuine unity of outlook be obtained. Then and then only
is there an intelligible, and at the same time a consistently Christian, connection between general
and special revelation. From the formal point of view it is to be appreciated that the modern
principle has worked out what it believes so consistently as to have a unified concept of both the
natural and the supernatural. We have seen how it is maintained that general and special
revelation are both a piece with one another. This is no doubt true. Orthodox Christianity ought
to maintain the same thing from its own point of view. But then in its case this unity of outlook
comes from the fact that all human interpretation is regarded as re-interpretative of God’s self-
conscious interpretation.
It is in this way that the place of Scripture as the infallible Word of God can be seen to fit in
with the idea of orthodox theology in general. The idea of Scripture must, as the Reformed
theologians have pointed out so fully and clearly, be brought into connection with sin. But in
order to see the precise connection between Scripture and sin it is first necessary to indicate that
even prior to the entrance of sin man needed supernatural communication. Man as finite needs
to be told directly by God about the ultimate direction of the course of history. He cannot deal
as he ought, as a covenant keeping being, with anything that he deals with at all, unless he deals
with it in the light of the destiny of the whole of the created realm of being. Each thing is what it
is in relation to the final goal of history. Therefore if he is to deal with each thing as it ought to
be dealt with, that is, according to its “essence,” he must ever keep this destiny clearly in view.
He has, to be sure, innate knowledge of God. But this innate knowledge is not a timeless principle
within him from which he can logically deduce what will happen in the course of time. Neither is
this innate knowledge a sort of potentiality that will naturally develop into an actual knowledge
of God. Least of all is it a mere form that needs for its correlativity a filling that derives from the
realm of brute fact. It is a God-given activity within man that needs to feed upon factual material
which is itself the manifestation of the self-contained plan of God. It is therefore a limiting

17
concept that needs over against itself another limiting concept, namely, that of factual material
that can serve as grist for its mill.
But then when sin comes into the picture there is an ethical complication. Sinful man wants
to suppress the truth of God that comes to him. His new man within him suppresses or seeks to
suppress that which springs from the old man within him. The natural man is at enmity with God.
He always seeks to make himself believe that he has not been confronted with God; his forms of
worship are ways by which he makes himself believe that God is finite. Even when he says he
needs and sorely needs a transcendent God, he will say that this transcendent God can only
probably be known.23 If he can make himself believe that the evidence is doubtful he has again
found excuse for himself. In reality the evidence is perfectly clear. All men, says Calvin, following
Paul’s Romans cannot help but know God. The objective facts are facts precisely and alone
because they reveal God. And the only true thing that can be said about them is response about
them to God. So it is not because the evidence is not clear but because man has taken out his
spiritual eyes that he does not, and ethically cannot, see any of the facts of the world for what
they really are.
This is not to say that man is a devil. Man is not a finished product. He is in principle opposed
to God but his old man within keeps that principle from manifesting itself in full fruition in this
life. In principle he is engaged in all-out war against God. Hence his need for redemption. And
this redemption must be by God himself. Hence, the substitutionary atonement. Hence the death
of Christ for those whom God has given him. The whole of man’s relationships as a finite
personality were, in the first place, with God. So now redemption cannot be mediated by certain
facts that are not themselves wholly related to and dependent upon the plan of God. Such facts
would not be revelational of God’s grace at all; they would be revelational of nothing. More than
that, and of special significance in this connection, the facts, as such, could not be revelational in
themselves without the Word. The very idea of objective revelation to man required for its
completion the idea of objective revelation to man by supernatural propositions about the facts
that it records. In the idea of objective revelation to man the ideas of fact and interpretation of
fact are therefore limiting concepts one of the other.
But we have to proceed further. Just as facts and word revelation require one another so the
doctrine of inspiration of Scripture is once again the limiting concept that is required as
supplementation to the idea of fact revelation given to us in word revelation. The issue here is
not at all a question of the use of man’s natural abilities. The orthodox view does not hold that
in receiving revelation from God man’s abilities need to be suppressed. Warfield points out that
God could and did freely use the various gifts of intellect and heart that he himself had given to
men who were the special instruments of his revelation. The issue is therefore whether those
who were called upon to be prophets or apostles needed the direction and illumination of the
Spirit so as to guide them and keep them from error. And the answer is that only God can reveal
God.
Thus we have the objective situation before us. If sinful man is to be saved he must be saved
against his will. He hates God. God’s work of salvation must be a work into territory that belongs
to him by right but that has been usurped by King Diabolus. And the government illegitimately in

23Cf. Dorothy M. Emmet—The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking, London, 1946; Harold A.

Larrabee—Reliable Knowledge, New York, 1945.

18
control of man’s soul controls all the means of entrance, through eye gate, ear gate and nose
gate. So an entrance has to be forced. Concrete has to be built under water. And when God by
grace makes friends within the enemy country these friends are still but creatures. They are as
much as was Adam in need of supernatural word revelation. And they are, even so, often and
always to an extent under the influence of the old man within them and so would even when
redeemed never be able to interpret mere revelational facts correctly and fully. Hence the
necessity of Scripture.
Protestants also claim that Scripture is perspicuous. This does not mean that it is exhaustively
penetrable to men. When the Christian restates the content of Scriptural revelation in the form
of a “system” such a system is based upon and therefore analogous to the “existential system”
that God himself possesses. Being based upon God’s revelation it is on the one hand, fully true
and, on the other hand, at no point identical with the content of God’s mind. Scripture is
therefore perspicuous in the way that all of God’s revelation of himself as the self-contained God
is perspicuous. All things in the universe are perspicuous in that they can be nothing but speakers
of God. The very essence of things is exhausted ultimately in what they are in relation to God.
And God is wholly light, in him is no darkness at all. So in Scripture God’s purpose for man in his
relation to his environment in this world and in his relation to God who controls both him and his
environment is so clear that he who runs may read it.
Scripture is further said to be sufficient. It is a finished revelation of God. It does not stand in
a relation of correlativity to its acceptance as the word of God by man. It may be compared to
the internal completeness of the ontological trinity. This trinity requires within itself the idea of
the intercorrelativity of the three persons of the Godhead and the correlativity of the diversity
represented by these three persons to the essence of God. As important therefore as it is to keep
a clear distinction between the ontological and the economical trinity in the field of theology so
important is it to make clear that the facts of God’s revelation in general and of his special
revelation are mutually dependent upon one another for their intelligibility and again the facts
of Scripture are related by way of interdependence upon the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiration.
It is only if this interdependence is maintained that it is possible to indicate clearly that the
work of the Church in collecting the canon or the acceptance of the revelation of Scripture as the
word of God stands in a relation of one way dependence upon it. It is true that as far as the whole
plan of God with history, and, in particular, with redemption, is concerned the revelation in
Scripture requires the acceptance of that revelation by the Church and the individual for what it
is. It is true further that for the acceptance of that revelation it is again upon the testimony of the
Spirit that we must depend. And this testimony brings no direct personal information to the
individual. It works within the mind and heart of the individual the conviction that the Scriptures
are the objective Word in the sense described. Still further it is of the utmost importance to stress
that this testimony of the Spirit is in the heart of the believer as supernatural as is the work of
inspiration of Scripture itself. If this were not the case the main point of our argument to the
effect that in Christianity God is the final reference point of man would not be true. Even as the
internal completeness of Scriptural revelation may be compared to the internal completeness of
the ontological trinity, so the acceptance of this revelation as the part of man under the influence
of the Holy Spirit may be compared to the work of the economical trinity. On the one hand
creation and providence must be maintained as being an expression of the plan of God. Yet this
work is not an emanation of the being but an expression of the will of God. And these two are

19
not to be contrasted with one another in the way that we have seen Thomas Aquinas contrast
them. And not being contrasted to one another they cannot be made correlative of one another.
The ontological trinity is wholly complete within itself. The works of God within do not require
the works of God without. The revelation of God in creation and providence is wholly voluntary.
In the same way also the acceptance or the rejection of the revelation of God on the part of man
must be kept distinct from revelation itself. To be sure, even the acceptance of revelation is itself
revelational of God in the more comprehensive sense that all that happens in the universe
happens in accord with the will of God. In this sense even the rejection of the will of God by man
is revelational of God. For Satan is not some sort of principle of non-being that is somehow given
some sort of power independent of God. He is a creature of God that has fallen into sin. And the
entrance of sin is within the plan of God. It is on this basis only that one can maintain the
sovereignty of grace. It is the God who is truly sovereign in all things who alone can be sovereign
in giving or withholding grace.
On this basis alone is it possible to distinguish the orthodox position of the relation of
objective revelation and subjective acceptance of this revelation from the modern view in which
the two have become correlative to one another and even made into aspects of one process. It
is said in the modern view that revelation and discovery are like the convex and the concave sides
of the same disc. And there is not much that the Romanist or the Arminian views can offer in
opposition to this. The modern view has substituted for the ontological trinity and the free
creation of the world the idea of reality as a process. In this process God and man are aspects of
the same reality. But the consistently orthodox position keeps God and the universe apart. The
laws of the universe depend on God and do the bidding of God but they are not laws of the being
of God. 80 the activity of the mind of created man depends upon God. It can function only in
connection with a universe that is itself wholly dependent upon God. The two together must be
revelational of the same God. Man must re-think God’s revelation. So man is responsible for the
revelation of God in the universe about him and within him. He is again responsible for the
revelation of grace as it comes to him. His rejection of the original revelation of God did not take
place except within the counsel of God; his renewed rejection of the revelation of the grace of
God does not happen independently of his counsel. But in each case it is a genuine action on his
part. The acceptance or the rejection of God’s revelation is no more identical with revelation than
are the laws of the created universe identical with the internal procession of the Son from the
Father.
Finally a word must be said about the authority of Scripture. Here again our start may be
made from the idea of the ontological trinity. The self-contained God is self-determinate. He
cannot refer to anything outside that which has proceeded from himself for corroboration of his
words. Once more the conservative view stands squarely over against the modern view when
this conservative view is set forth according to the principles of the Reformed Faith. For on this
basis, as already emphasized a moment ago, the mind of man is itself in all of its activities
dependent upon and functional within revelation. So also it is, as already made clear, with respect
to the material that confronts it anywhere. All the facts are through and through revelational of
the same God that has made the mind of man. If then appeal is made from the Bible to the facts
of history or of nature outside the Bible recorded in some documents totally independent of the
Bible it must be remembered that these facts themselves can be seen for what they are only if
they are regarded in the light of the Bible. It is by the light of the flashlight that has derived its

20
energy from the sun that we may in this way seek for an answer to the question whether there
be a sun. This is not to disparage the light of reason. It is only to indicate its total dependence
upon God. Nor is it to disparage the usefulness of arguments for the corroboration of the
Scripture that comes from archaeology. It is only to say that such corroboration is not of
independent power. It is not a testimony that has its source anywhere but in God himself. Here
the facts and the principle of their interpretation are again seen to be involved in one another.
Thus the modern and the orthodox positions stand directly over against one another ready for a
head-on collision.
It is now apparent in what manner we would contend in our day for the philosophical
relevance of Scripture. Such philosophical relevance cannot be established unless it be shown
that all human predication is intelligible only on the presupposition of the truth of what the Bible
teaches about God, man and the universe. If it be first granted that man can correctly interpret
an aspect or dimension of reality while making man the final reference point then there is no
justification for denying him the same competence in the field of religion. If the necessity for the
belief in Scripture is established in terms of “experience” which is not itself interpreted in terms
of Scripture it is not the necessity of Scripture that is established. The Scripture offers itself as the
sun by which alone men can see their experience in its true setting. The facts of nature and history
corroborate the Bible when it is made clear that they fit into no frame but that which Scripture
offers.
If the non-believer works according to the principles of the new man within him and the
Christian works according to the principles of the new man within him then there is no
interpretative content of any sort on which they can agree. Then both maintain that their position
is reasonable. Both maintain that it is according to reason and according to fact. Both bring the
whole of reality in connection with their main principle of interpretation and their final reference
points.
It might seem then that there can be no argument between them. It might seem that the
orthodox view of authority is to be spread only by testimony and by prayer, not by argument.
But this would militate directly against the very foundation of all Christian revelation, namely, to
the effect that all things in the universe are nothing if not revelational of God. Christianity must
claim that it alone is rational. It must not be satisfied to claim that God probably exists. The Bible
does not say that God probably exists. Nor does it say that Christ probably rose from the dead.
The Christian is bound to believe and hold that his system of doctrine is certainly true and that
other systems are certainly false. And he must say this about a system of doctrine which involves
the existence and sovereign action of a self-contained God whose ways are past finding out.
The method of argument that alone will fit these conditions may be compared to preaching.
Romanist and Arminian theologians contend that since according to the Reformed Faith man is
dead in trespasses and sin there is no use in appealing to him to repent. They contend that since
the Bible does appeal to the natural man it implies that he has a certain ability to accept the
revelation of God. They contend further that Scripture attributes a measure of true knowledge
of God to the natural man. To all this the Reformed theologian answers by saying that the Bible
nowhere makes appeal to the natural man as able to accept or as already to some extent having
given a true, though not comprehensive and fully adequate, interpretation to the revelation of
God. To be sure, the natural man knows God. He does not merely know that a god or that
probably a god exists. By virtue of his old man within him he knows that he is a creature of God

21
and responsible to God. But as far as his new man is concerned he does not know this. He will
not own this. He represses it. His ethical hostility will never permit him to recognize the facts to
be true which, deep, down in his heart, he knows in spite of himself to be true. It is this new man
of the natural man that we must be concerned to oppose. And it is to his old man that we must
make our appeal. Not as though there are after all certain good tendencies within this old man
which, if sufficiently played upon, will assert themselves and reach the ascendency. Not as though
we can, after the fashion of a liberating army, appeal to the underground army of true patriots
who really love their country. The true appeal may be compared to Christ’s speaking to Lazarus.
There was not some little life left in some part of his body to which Christ could make his appeal.
Yet he made his appeal to Lazarus, not to a stone. So the natural man is made in the image of
God. He has the knowledge of God. The appeal is made to what is suppressed. And then as it is
the grace of God that must give man the ability to see the truth in preaching so it is also the Spirit
of God that must give man the ability to accept the truth as it is presented to him in apologetical
reasoning.
This reasoning will accordingly have to be by way of presupposition. Since there is no fact and
no law on which the two parties to the argument agree they will have to place themselves upon
one another’s positions for the sake of argument. This does not mean that we are thus after all
granting to the natural man the ability to reason correctly. He can follow a process of reasoning
intellectually. He may even have a superior intellect. But of himself he always makes the wrong
use of it. A saw may be ever so shiny and sharp, but if its set is wrong it will always cut on a slant.
Hence, following Paul’s example when he asks, “Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this
world,” we also place ourselves on the ground of the opponent. We may first ask him to place
himself on our ground. We can then show that if there is to be rationality at any point there must
be rationality at the basis of all. But on his own basis he will understand this to mean that there
can be nothing temporal and unique. He will claim that this is determinism.
We may then ask him to show how on his position there is genuine significance in the
individual facts of history. He will answer that this is the case because his principle of coherence
by which he unites these facts is not determinist but is itself correlative to the facts in their
individuality. He will say that he begins by presupposing the genuine individuality of’ these facts
and that this is a basic ingredient in his thought.
At this point it will be necessary to point out that on this basis individuality consists of non-
rationality. By definition the individuality and reality of temporal things must then have nothing
to do with an all-controlling plan of God. Creation is set over against causation by God. In similar
fashion the orthodox idea of providence is denied. The principle of discontinuity is not found
within the plan but in opposition to the idea of a plan of God. To be sure, a plan of God may be
accepted but then it will be accepted as a limiting concept in the modern critical sense of the
term. And this limiting concept is the opposite of the idea of a plan as a constitutive concept. It
is of the essence of the modern principle to say that the thingness of the thing, to the extent that
this may be spoken of at all outside its relation to the human knower of that thing, is independent
of any divine knowledge or activity. In other words all antecedent being is rigorously excluded
from the idea of individuality.
This involves the view that all reality, as far as can ever be known by man, is of a piece. But
even this cannot really be said. It can only be said that all the reality that man will know must be
of one piece. At least reality must not be distinguished into uncreated and created reality in the

22
way that orthodoxy does. But as far as there may be any sort of reality that is beyond the
knowledge of the human mind it must have no qualities at all. It must be interchangeable with
the idea of pure possibility. The only alternative to making God the source of the possible in the
universe is to make pure possibility or chance ultimate and therefore the mother of all being.
The point just made should be stressed. The modern approach requires the notion of pure
non-being. At least it needs the notion of being in which there is no rationality at all. Then this
pure being must, as far as the world of power is concerned, be identified with creativity. This sort
of view has found expression in the works of Alexander, Bergson, Whitehead and Dewey. But it
is important for us to know that it is precisely from this same point that all modern theology must
also begin if it is to be true to its principle. Fundamental to the idea of uniqueness in history or in
any other dimension on this basis is the notion of pure Chance. When theologians speak of this
they call it the Father.
This is only to say that for modern thought time is ultimate. If God is said to have
consciousness it must be consciousness in time. He must himself be subject to the same
conditions to which man is subject. But then it must be remembered that on this basis the idea
of God is a personalization of a non-rational force. All non-orthodox views are essentially non-
personalist. This is usually admitted in the field of science. But it is no less true in theology. There
could be no harmony between science and theology on this basis if both did not share an ultimate
impersonalism with respect to man’s environment. Theology then becomes a matter of
hypostatizing and personalizing forces that in reality are non-personal. Gilson says with respect
to Aristotle that so far as he has a god that exists this god is plural and that so far as he has a god
that is known this god is a principle. The same may be said for all non-Christian philosophy.
So then we may distinguish between two aspects of the idea of individuality on the non-
orthodox basis. There is first this notion of pure possibility or force as hypostatized and
personalized. But as such it is a limiting concept and out of reach of the actual knowledge of man.
It is but a projection into the void of personal ideals that man has formed individually or
collectively. From the orthodox point of view such a God is but an idol since he has proceeded
from the mind of sinful man that is opposed to God.
This God then is as unknown to man and as unreachable by man as was the God of Plotinus.
As it is the projection of an ideal on the part of man so the only way it can be reached by man is
by way of his identification with it. And this is in reality the aim that is back of the method of non-
orthodox theology and non-Christian philosophy or science. The whole of the ethical struggle on
this basis becomes one of lifting man into the same high idealized realm of being into which he
has put his God. This is virtually how A. E. Taylor puts it when he says that the Greek and the
Christian views of the ethical problem are the same, namely, that of escaping the limitations of
finitude.
In the second place individuality is that which is such for man. That is, so much of this chance
reality as has been brought within the categories of human logic must conform to the laws of this
logic. It may be said that space and time are not categories of logic but institutions that precede
all logical manipulation. But at some point in the activity of the mind of man the miracle of
contact must take place between the logical function of the human mind and non-logical or non-
rational existence. Every handling of factual material such as counting is in reality the making of
a judgment about the nature of the whole of being.

23
 Between these two individuals—the one that is wholly by itself and unknown and the one
that is for man—there is therefore a wide difference. If Christ were to be thought of as the
individual that is for us and therefore known he would have nothing unique about him. In fact on
that basis there is nothing unique about human personality in general. It is then woven into the
patterns of relationships that are impersonal. On the other hand if Christ is to be identified with
the individual that is in itself and prior to all relationships with human knowledge then he is or it
is wholly meaningless.
This then is the dilemma. If the individual is to be really individual it is unknown; if it is known
it is no longer individual but an instance of a law.
One can see that it is this dilemma that faces the modern principle when it seeks to combine
its concepts of science and of religion. In the former all is said to be impersonal and in the latter
all is personal. Yet if there is to be any harmony between the two outlooks they must either be
both personal or both impersonal. Both are personal in that both presuppose the human person
as ultimate and both are impersonal as both surround this human person with an ultimate
impersonal environment.
But for the moment our main point is to stress that the rejection of the orthodox principle of
continuity requires the acceptance of a non-Christian principle of discontinuity. And this is a
notion of individuality as wholly non-rational taken as a limit.
So Christ according to the modern principle becomes an ideal that man has set for himself.
Corresponding to this non-Christian principle of discontinuity is that of continuity. The
rejection of the Christian principle of discontinuity between God and man requires the
acceptance of a rationalistic principle of continuity. It cannot be stressed too much that the most
irrationalist positions today are still rationalist. They are rationalist in the sense that negatively
nothing can be accepted by them but what man can himself see through by means of the principle
of non-contradiction. No matter how much men stress the fact that rationalism is out of date and
however much they laugh at old Parmenides, it remains true that they do the same thing that he
did and that Procrustes did before him. The only difference is that they use the principle of non-
contradiction negatively while Parmenides used it positively as well as negatively. In consequence
Christ stands for ideal rationality which is said to be present to but not fully expressed in the
process of reality.
But perhaps we should say that as interpreted by the modern principle Christ is in part free
and in part rational. He is then an hypostatization and impersonation of what man is himself,
namely, a combination of pure irrational factuality and formal rationality.
When this principle of pure rationality is allowed to function freely all individuality
disappears. But lest this should happen pure rationality is made correlative to pure irrationality.
Neither is ever allowed to function by itself. The result is that there is an appearance of real
freedom, or transcendence and also an appearance of coherence while in reality there is neither.
The dilemma that faces modern theology with respect to the person of Christ must also be
applied to its conception of revelation. There has been a great movement away from rationalism
of the pre-Kantian sort. This seems to make room for revelation. But it is the sort of revelation
that is allowed also in modern science. It is the wholly different. As wholly different it is also
wholly irrational. Then when it seems that the wholly irrational would control all things there
appears an influx of the principle of rationality and this rationality would kill all miracle and all
newness of any sort.

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 The net result is that there is nothing by way of revelation that is added to what man knows
or can know by himself. Revelation is not higher than the highest in man and the coherence of
that which is higher and is given by revelation to man is in reality but an extension of the
coherence that is already in man.
It should be added that the problem here is the same as that which may be found throughout
the whole field of science and philosophy. The problem is everywhere that of methodology. And
the dilemma is always that of pure single thingness without meaning and abstract rationality
without content.
So then it appears that the modern principle has neither uniqueness nor coherence to offer.
It may speak of objective connection of contents between observed experiences. It may reject
the orthodox idea of authority because there is then said to be no test between various claimants
to authority. But it can itself point to no objective connections between any one fact and any
other fact. It cannot show how one fact can be differentiated from any other fact. It cannot find
any application for the law of contradiction. It cannot even furnish a footing on the basis of which
it might make an intelligent negation of the Christian position. Yet it is required to do so if it is to
live up to its standard of being critical. But then it is not critical. There is no real reflective inquiry
here. There is no real analysis of the basic concepts underlying knowledge. There is a dogmatic
exclusion of a certain position without having shown how there is a foundation for excluding
anything. There is a rejection of the Christian position as involving us in meaningless mystery. But
there is instead an acceptance of that which is empty of all content. If the Christian notion of
mystery is rejected because it is not penetrable to the mind of man, it ought to be possible for
man to penetrate the whole of reality. And if he cannot penetrate the whole of reality he ought
to be able to give an intelligible reason as to why it is that he cannot. But this he cannot do. He
merely appeals to the use of the law of non-contradiction. But he himself has to maintain, unless
he is a rationalist in the Leibnitzian sense of the term, that by this means it is not possible to
establish the nature of reality. He must maintain that reality is prior to logic. But when he does
this, then he has no reason to think that what he says in terms of logic will answer to what he
himself says must be there in terms of fact. This is especially true inasmuch as he has by logic, by
the law of contradiction, first excluded as impossible the idea that things should have any logical
relation in them apart from what is put in them for the first time by their connection with the
human mind.
So then it appears that the only position that has any connection between rationality and
factuality is the position that works in terms of the self-contained God. It is true that there is
mystery between this God and his creature. But it is also true that the only alternative to this
mystery is mystery that is behind and before and around all forms of rationality. The Christian
concept of mystery is that which is involved in the idea of God as the self-contained being and
his plan for the whole of the created universe. The non-Christian concept of mystery, as implied
in the modern principle, is that which is involved in assuming that all reality is flux and that
factuality is more basic than logic or plan. The Christian concept of mystery is rejected as involving
that which is meaningless. It is said to be meaningless on no better basis than that man cannot
see through it clearly. Then the non-Christian concept of mystery is accepted though it involves
the acceptance of the idea of complete separation of being and knowledge. But on this basis the
process of learning cannot be explained at all.

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 There are then two positions with respect to reality and knowledge. Applied to the question
of the Bible it now appears that the infallible Bible is required if man is to have any knowledge
and if his process of learning is to be intelligible. This does not mean that on the basis of Scripture
it is exhaustively intelligible to man. Nothing is. And the all or nothing demand that underlies the
modern principle is the source of the debacle that has come about. But man does not need to
know all. He needs only to know that all reality is rationally controlled. It does not kill his
spontaneity and his reason if he has to think God’s thoughts after him. It does kill all this if it has
to function in a vacuum. And this, precisely, is what the modern principle asks man to do.
Christians need not be worried about the fact that the autographa are lost.24 On the other
hand they must be deeply concerned to maintain that an infallible revelation has actually entered
into history. This is precisely as necessary as is the idea of the sovereignty of God in theology. The
existence of all things in the world are what they are by the plan of God. The knowledge of
anything is by way of understanding the connection that it has with the plan of God. The sin of
man is within the plan of God. Its removal is within the plan of God. The facts of redemption, the
explanation of those facts, are together a part of the plan of God. Man’s acceptance is within this
plan of God. On the current principle one thing can be exactly identical with the other in the
realm of pure blankness. Hence anything as well as any other thing might happen. And if one
thing rather than another does happen they are again reduced to virtual identity, by being placed
as interchangeable parts in a timeless system. Or rather they are made to differ by means of
complete description by the mind of man. That is, they could be made to differ only if there were
such minute description. But there cannot be and so there will always be substitution of one for

24 It is well known that Emil Brunner regards the orthodox view of the infallibility of the
autographa of Scripture as not only useless but as idolatrous. In addition to that he thinks that
textual criticism has made it utterly untenable. How completely meaningless it is, to speak with
Warfield of a sort of “Bible-X” of which nothing can be really known and of which we must,
none the less, assert that it is virtually the same as the Bible we now possess (Revelation and
Reason, p. 274).
But is the orthodox view so useless? We have shown that unless it is true men are lost in the
boundless and bottomless ocean of chance. Is it idolatrous? Without it men must make and do
make themselves the source and goal of all intellectual and moral effort; the true God if he
revealed himself at all could not but reveal himself infallibly. Are the known facts of textual
criticism out of accord with the idea of an original perfect text? On the contrary the whole
process of this criticism gets its meaning from the presupposition of such a text. Without this
presupposition there is no more point to turning to Scripture than to the Upanishads for the
Word of God. The existence of a perfect original text of Scripture is the presupposition of the
possibility of the process of human learning. Without it there would be no criterion for man’s
knowledge.
Orthodox scholars therefore pursue the search for this text with enthusiasm. Each step they
take in dealing with existing manuscripts removes some “difficulty.” And should a few errors of
detail remain unsolved in time to come this does not discourage them. They have every right to
believe that they are on the right road and that the end of their way is near at hand. For those
who do not hold to the orthodox view are at the mercy of a purely pragmatic and humanistic
view of reality and truth.

26
the other. This itself expresses the idea that in matters of history one cannot be too absolutely
sure. We may feel that there is enough certainty at the bottom of things but we cannot be sure
of any particular thing. We cannot be sure of the identity of Christ. In fact, as Brunner says, the
identity of Christ is theoretically subject to question in the field of pure history. According to the
rationalist position of the modern principle there should be individuation by minute description
and therefore identity of indiscernibles in Leibnitz’ sense of the term. Yet according to the
irrationalism of the same principle real individuality must be due to the non-rational. Therefore
there must be real difference in that which is indiscernible. But then the principle of individuation
practically employed is a combination of these two principles. Hence it is that Urgeschichte is said
to be related to present history while yet it is also said not to be related. It is wholly other. Nothing
can be said about it. Yet it becomes wholly identical ideally.
With this we might conclude this introduction to the biblical writings of Warfield. The whole
issue may be further clarified, however, if note is taken of two forms of theological thought
current in our day, namely, Romanism and dialecticism, which claim to have rejected the modern
view without accepting the traditional Protestant position. Both of these viewpoints claim to
have solved the problem of the relation of authority and reason. Is there then, after all, we ask,
another alternative? Have we been too hasty in our insistence that one must either return to the
infallible Bible or else forfeit the claim even to explain the possibility of science?

Lutheranism
Before turning to Romanism and dialecticism a word must be said in passing about orthodox
Lutheranism. Its position on the relation of Scripture to reason is unique. It would challenge our
main contention. It argues that it is in Lutheranism rather than in Calvinism that the Protestant
doctrine of Scripture has found adequate expression and adherence. So far from really bowing
to the infallible authority of Scripture the typically Reformed theologian, we are told, constructs
his system of theology according to the requirements of reason. “Reformed theology is, in its
distinctive characteristics, a philosophical system. Reason could not ask for more.”25 “Reformed
theology insists that the Bible must be interpreted according to human reason, or according to
rationalistic axioms.”26 These charges against the Reformed Faith center on the latter’s effort to
show the presence of coherent relationships between the various teachings of Scripture. “Calvin
tells us, in his Institutes, that whatever does not agree, logically, with this central thought, is
absurd and therefore false.”27 Calvinism is said at all costs to seek for a “logically harmonious
whole” while Lutheranism is primarily concerned to ask what Scripture teaches.
What is forgotten in this criticism of Reformed thinking is that the latter, when true to itself,
does not seek for “system” in the way that a non-Christian does. Its contention is that a “system”
in the Christian sense of the terms rests upon the presupposition that whatever Scripture teaches
is true because Scripture teaches it. With every thought captive to the obedience of Christ the

25 Th. Engelder: Reason or Revelation? St. Louis, 1941, p. 74.

26 John Theodore Mueller: Christian Dogmatics St. Louis, 1934, p. 20.
27 Engelder: Op. Cit, p. 74.

27
Reformed theologian seeks to order, as far as he can, the content of God’s special revelation. The
Calvinist philosopher or scientist seeks to order the content of God’s general revelation in self-
conscious subordination to the infallible authority of Scripture. Nothing could be more
unacceptable from the point of view of reason as taken by Engelder and Mueller.
Moreover it is only if the Christian “system” be set over against the non-Christian system that
unbelief can be effectively challenged. Reformed thinking claims that Christianity is reasonable.
To make good its claim it shows that reason itself must be interpreted in terms of the truths of
Scripture about it. It is reasonable for a creature of God to believe in God. It is unreasonable for
a creature of God to set up itself as God requiring a system of interpretation in which man stands
as the ultimate point of reference. Not having a system of theology and philosophy in which
reason itself is interpreted in terms of exclusively biblical principles, Romanism and Arminianism
cannot effectively challenge the reason of the natural man.
It is here too that orthodox Lutheranism fails. In spite of specific Scripture teaching to the
contrary it assumes, as does Arminianism, that man can initiate action apart from the plan of
God. This is a basic concession to the non-Christian conception of reason. For the essence of this
conception is its autonomy.
It is this basic concession to the non-Christian assumption of human autonomy that makes it
impossible for orthodox Lutheranism to appreciate fully the difference between the Christian and
the non-Christian ideas of system. On the one hand it will therefore decry system and reason
wherever it sees these in John Calvin as well as in John Dewey. In doing so it virtually presents
Christianity as being irrational giving foothold, unwittingly, to the idea of autonomy that lurks
underneath all irrationalism. On the other hand when it undertakes, in spite of this, to speak of
“the absolute unity of the whole body of truth” and of “the perfect coherency of its elemental
parts”28 it appeals to reason in the non-Christian sense of the term. As though Christianity may
be thought rational, at least to some extent, by the “paramour of Satan.” “As the rational study
of the book of nature points to its divine Creator, so the rational study of the book of revelation
suggests that it is the work of a divine Author and that therefore it is more reasonable to believe
than to disbelieve its claims (the scientific proof for the divine authority of Scripture).”29 Failing
to work out a truly biblical view of human reason orthodox Lutheranism is largely at the mercy
of the cross currents of irrationalism and rationalism that constitute modern thought. Unable to
put full biblical content into its own distinction between the ministerial and the magisterial use
of reason orthodox Lutheranism fails to distinguish between what is objectively true and
reasonable and what is subjectively acceptable to the natural man. The net result is that, for all
its praiseworthy emphasis upon the fact that “Scripture cannot be broken” orthodox Lutheranism
is subject to the criticism that has earlier been made on general evangelical or Arminian
Protestantism, to the effect that it is insufficiently Protestant and therefore unable adequately
to challenge the modern principle of interpretation that we have discussed.
The two positions to which we must now turn are those of the Roman Catholic church and of
the Theology of Crisis. Each in its own way, these two positions oppose both the classical
Protestant and the modern views of Scripture. Generally speaking, the Roman view stands closer
to the traditional Protestant one and the dialectical view stands closer to the modern one. In fact,

28 Mueller, Op. Cit., p. 80.

29 Idem., p. 123.

28
there is a deep antagonism between these two positions. One would surmise this antagonism to
hinge on the question of antecedent being. Romanism claims to teach an existential system; Karl
Barth and Emil Brunner, the two outstanding protagonists of the Theology of Crisis, are adherents
of a modern critical epistemology and therefore abhor the idea of such a system. But the issue is
not thus clearly drawn between them. Nor could it be. The reason is that Romanism itself suffers
from the virus of the modern principle whose evil consequences it seeks to oppose.

Romanism
The church of Rome claims to be the true defender of authority. Its argument is that the
traditional Protestant view of the right of “private judgment” as introduced by the early
Reformers reaps its mature fruitage in the modern Protestant view of “religion without God.”
But the issue between “the Church” and the fathers of the Reformation was not limited to a
question of interpretation of the Scripture. Back of the difference with respect to private or
church interpretation of the Scripture lay the difference on the doctrine of Scripture itself.
This difference can be signalized briefly by calling to mind again the gulf that separates a
theology that does, and a theology that does not, take the distinction between the ontological
and the economical trinity seriously. The former thinks in terms of an inner correlativity of
personality and action within the Godhead. It makes this inner self-complete activity its
controlling concept. It therefore employs a consistently Christian principle of continuity; it
teaches an existential system. It therefore also employs a consistently Christian principle of
discontinuity; it teaches man to think analogically. In contrast, the latter breaks up the internal
completeness of the ontological trinity. It does so by positing man’s ability to make ultimate
decisions. Therewith the idea of an existential system is set aside. The God of Romanism does
not determine whatsoever comes to pass. Space-time eventuation is set over against the plan of
God. If the two are then to be brought together it must be by way of correlativity. Rationality and
factuality are then abstractions unless joined in a process of correlativity.
It is in this way that Romanist theology, in positing man’s “freedom” over against God,
virtually throws overboard the biblical principles of continuity and of discontinuity and
substitutes for them the non-Christian principles of continuity and of discontinuity. True,
Romanism does not assert man’s total independence of God. Accordingly its position is not
consistently non-Christian. It seeks to build its theology in terms of two mutually exclusive
principles. In practice this results in compromise. To the extent that it employs the Christian
principle Rome should hold to the internal completeness of the ontological trinity, to an
existential system and therefore also to an internally complete and self-authenticating revelation
of God to sinful man in Scripture. To the extent that it employs a non-Christian principle it denies
all these. Using both at the same time Romanism is like a Janus. It is like a Janus in its use of the
principle of continuity. Against modern irrationalism it openly avows allegiance to the idea of
transcendent being, the mystery of the trinity and a revelation of God that is not correlative to
man. But then when going in this direction Rome seems to go much farther than does traditional
Protestantism. It virtually holds to a principle of continuity that precedes or supersedes the
Creator-creature distinction. In the clearest possible way Arthur O. Lovejoy points this out. He

29
first quotes the following words from Thomas Aquinas: “ ‘Everyone desires the perfection of that
which for its own sake he wills and loves: for the things we love for their own sakes, we wish …
to be multiplied as much as possible. But God wills and loves His essence for its own sake. Now
that essence is not augmentable or multipliable in itself but can be multiplied only in its likeness,
which is shared by many. God therefore wills things to be multiplied, inasmuch as he wills and
loves his own perfection.… Moreover, God in willing himself wills all the things which are in
himself; but all things in a certain manner pre-exist in God by their types (rationes). God,
therefore, in willing himself wills other things.… Again, the will follows the understanding. But
God in primarily understanding himself, understands all other things; therefore, once more, in
willing himself primarily, he wills all other things.’ ”30 Then in reply to the argument of a Roman
apologist who denies that Thomas really meant to teach the necessary creation of all possibles
he adds: “Not only might the passage mean this; it can, in consistency with assumptions which
Aquinas elsewhere accepts, mean nothing else. All possibles ‘fall under an infinite
understanding,’ in Spinoza’s phrase, and, indeed, belong to its essence; and therefore nothing
less than the sum of all genuine possibles could be the object of the divine will, i.e., of the creative
act.”31
According to the Thomistic principle of continuity then there should be not merely a theistic
existential system but a Parmenidean type of changeless reality. But to save Christianity from
modern irrationalism with a principle of continuity that is essentially Greek rather than Christian
is to kill that which one seeks to save. Continuity in history is saved by reducing the facts of history
to foci in a timeless logic. Thus to save is also to kill. In this respect, therefore, the Romanist
argument against irrationalism is in the same position as is the idealist philosophy of such men
as Bradley and Bosanquet.
But then Rome is well aware of the monistic character of its principle of continuity or
coherence. It therefore blames it on others, on Plato, on Descartes, or especially on Calvin. It
hopes to escape the complete identification of man with God that is inherent in its concept of
univocism by means of its principle of equivocism. It refers the creation of the world to the will
of God. It speaks of the mystery of the trinity. It stresses the genuineness of historical fact and of
the freedom of man. It does all this against the “rationalism” and “necessitarianism” of
pantheistic philosophers and Calvinistic theologians. But as in its principle of continuity
Romanism leads directly into monism, so, in its principle of discontinuity or equivocism,
Romanism leads directly into modern existentialism and irrationalism. In noting this fact Lovejoy
quotes from Thomas the following words: “ ‘Since good, understood to be such, is the proper
object of the will, the will may fasten on any object conceived by the intellect in which the notion
of good is fulfilled. Hence, though the being of anything, as such, is good, and its not-being is evil;
still, the very not-being of a thing may become an object to the will, though not of necessity, by
reason of some good which is attached to it; for it is good for a thing to be, even at the cost of
the non-existence of something else. The only good, then, which the will by its constitution
cannot wish not to be is the good whose non-existence would destroy the notion of good
altogether. Such a good is none other than God. The will, then, by its constitution can will the
non-existence of anything except God. But in God there is will according to the fullness of the

30 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge, 1942, p. 73.

31 Idem., p. 74.

30
power of willing, for in Him all things without exception exist in a perfect manner. He therefore
can will the non-existence of any being except himself, and consequently does not of necessity
will other things than himself.’ ”32 Then he adds, “But the argument by which the great
Schoolman seeks to evade the dangerous consequences of his other, and equally definitely
affirmed, premise is plainly at variance with itself as well as with some of the most fundamental
principles of his system. It asserts that the existence of anything, in so far as it is possible, is
intrinsically a good; that the divine will always chooses the good; and yet that its perfection
permits (or requires) it to will the nonexistence of some possible, and therefore good, things.”33
Summing up then it must be maintained that the Thomistic principle of continuity is largely
rationalistic and its principle of discontinuity is largely irrationalistic. When it defends the idea of
the Bible as giving God’s interpretation to man it is defending what any non-Christian idealist
philosopher might for the most part agree with, namely, the need of unity if man is to appreciate
diversity. On the other hand when it defends the idea of the concrete historical character of God’s
revelation through the living church in its authoritative teaching function it is defending what any
non-Christian pragmatic philosopher might for the most part agree with, namely, a non-rational
principle of individuation. The result of defending both principles at the same time as correlative
of one another is the idea of a growing system enveloping both God and man, a system in which
God grows less than man and man grows more than God.
There is, then, no fundamental difference between the Roman and the modern principle of
interpretation. The opposition of Rome to the modern principle springs from the elements of
Christianity that are retained.
Turning more directly now to the Romanist view of Scripture it is convenient to look at two
points. The one pertains to the question of the attributes of Scripture and the other pertains to
the place of tradition and that of the church.
Roman dogmaticians are wont to think of the attributes of Scripture as these are set forth by
Protestants as clearly exhibiting the rationalist character of traditional Protestantism. The
argument at this point is virtually identical in nature with that employed by modern
Protestantism. Christianity, it is said, is not the religion of a book.34 The point is that if we think
of Scripture as being the book of Christianity we think of it as an abstraction, as some sort of
abstract universal. As such it would be purely formal. We cannot apply the attributes of necessity,
clarity, sufficiency and authority to an abstraction. We can use such adjectives only if we
supplement the Scriptures with the idea of tradition and with that of the living church.
The assumption of this argument is that God cannot give a finished, clear, self-authenticating
revelation about the course of history as a whole. The “unwritten traditions” are said to have
been “received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles
themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating …”35 A great deal of research has been expended on the

32 Arthur O. Lovejoy, Op. Cit., pp. 74, 75.

33 Idem., p. 75.
34 Bernhard Bartmann: Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, Freiburg in Breisgau, 1923, Erster Band, p. 28.
35 Cf. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent,

Vol. 2, p. 80.

31
question of the meaning of these traditions.36 The points of greatest importance for our purpose
are as follows:
There is a distinction made between declarative and constitutive tradition. As the terms
indicate it is only in the latter that we meet the idea of revelational content given by God in
addition to Scripture. Bartmann contends that it is not so much the former as the latter to which
Protestants object.37 This is scarcely correct. The idea of constitutive tradition militates against
the Protestant doctrine of Scripture’s sufficiency. But Rome does far more than maintain that
there have been preserved some teachings of Christ or the Apostles not recorded in Scripture.
For these by themselves might, on the Romanist principle, become a dead letter. It is in the claim
of declarative tradition that the activistic character of Rome’s concept of revelation is most
clearly expressed.
Bartmann himself speaks of an objective content and an activity as equally contained in the
idea of tradition (“tr. activa simul et obiectiva.’ ”38 It is this present declarative activity that is of
greatest importance. The Protestant is glad to make use of the works of great Bible expositors.
He believes in the guidance of the Spirit in the church’s work of interpretation of Scripture.
Protestant churches formulate their creeds and these creeds are said to give the best brief
systematic exposition of Scripture. But only Rome, in its concept of the active and finally
authoritative teaching function of the church virtually identifies its interpretation of revelation
with revelation itself.
Scripture and tradition objectively considered are said to be the regula fidei remota, the
church is the regula fidei proxima39 The church received the Bible from God. According to its God-
given charisma it explains this Scripture authoritatively. Scripture has its authority in se but the
church has authority quoad nos. In its teaching function the church is infallible?40 The church
does not give authority to Scripture. That she has in herself through inspiration. But the church
represents Scripture and its authority with men. When Calvin argues that the church is built upon
the authority of the Bible rather than the Bible upon the authority of the church this is right, says
Bartmann, when we speak of auctoritas in se, but not when we speak of auctoritas quoad nos.41
It is now no longer difficult to see that the Roman view of Scripture is the fruitage and
expression of its general principle of interpretation. The reasons Rome gives for rejecting the idea
of the sufficiency and direct authority of Scripture are, to all intents and purposes, the same as
those given by the modern principle. The idea of a self-authenticating Scripture implies the idea
of an exhaustive interpretation by God, in finished form, of the whole course of history. But for
Rome no less than for the modern Protestant theologian such an interpretation is an abstraction
and needs in practice to be made intelligible to man by means of the teaching function of the
living church. Rome stands no doubt near to the top of the incline and modern Protestantism lies
near to the bottom of the incline. Yet it is the same decline on which both are found.

36 Cf. August Deneffe, S. J., Der Traditionsbegriff, Munster, 1931; Joseph Ranft, Der Ursprung
des katholischen Traditionsprinzips, Wurzburg, 1931.
37 Op. Cit., p. 34.
38 Op. Cit., p. 28.
39 Bartmann, Op. Cit., p. 37.
40 Idem., p. 38.
41 Idem., p. 37.

32
 Theology Of Crisis
Turning now to the Theology of Crisis we seem at first to be in an atmosphere of genuine
Protestantism. Barth’s consistent polemic against the Roman idea of analogia entis is well known.
Both Barth and Brunner claim to teach a theology of the Word.
This claim is directed against the Roman conception of tradition and the Church.42 And the
acceptance of the Word is said to be due to the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.
Moreover, the Theology of the Word sets itself in opposition to modern Protestantism.
Turning away from Schleiermacher and Ritschl it stresses the transcendence of God. God is said
to be wholly other than man. Brunner would speak of Revelation and Reason rather than of
Reason and Revelation. We are asked to accept a theology of Luther and Calvin.
Yet even a cursory reading of the Crisis theologians reveals that Luther and Calvin are seen
through the glasses of a modern critical epistemology. Accordingly we are asked to drop all
metaphysics once and for all. When speaking of God’s transcendence we are not to think of some
being existing in self-contained form prior to his relation to man. God is identical with His
revelation.43 As identical with His revelation God is Lord. And “Lordship is freedom.”44 God has
freedom to become wholly divorced from himself and then to return into himself. In the
incarnation God is free for us. Christ is God for man and man for God. He stands for the process
of revelation, or atonement that brings man into unity of being with God.
Without going into further details it is at once apparent that it is Luther and Calvin rather than
Schleiermacher and Ritschl that really constitute the foe of the Crisis theologians. The very heart
of a true Protestant theology is the self-contained character of God. But it is this heart that has
been cut out of theology by both Barth and Brunner. For the internal correlativity of the three
persons of the trinity as taught by orthodox theology they have substituted the correlativity
between God and man.
In every major respect, then, the dialectical principle of interpretation is identical with that
of the modern principle discussed above. There is the same assumption of the autonomous man
as the ultimate reference point for predication. Hence there is the same sort of principle of
discontinuity and the same sort of principle of continuity. There is, consequently, in effect, the
same denial of all the affirmations of orthodoxy. We say in effect there is the same denial. For
verbally the reverse is often true.
In noting the bearing of the general dialectical principle upon the problem of Scripture we
may consider Brunner’s latest and fullest discussion of the subject in his work on Revelation and
Reason. It is clear throughout this book that the ramshackle dwelling of orthodoxy must be
completely demolished if the new and permanent edifice of dialecticism is to stand. A Scripture
that claims to speak of an antecedent God, a metaphysical Christ, requires us to make a
sacrificium intellectus and therefore cannot be accepted. “Faith is aware of the higher rationality
and the higher actuality of the truth of revelation, and is ready to maintain this; but it is also
aware of the impossibility of asserting its validity within the sphere which the autonomous
human reason has delimited for itself.… The truth of revelation is not in opposition to any truth

42 Emil Brunner: Revelation and Reason, tr. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia, 1946, pp. 127, 146.
43 Barth: Kirchliche Dogmatik, 1, 1, p. 313.
44 Idem., 1, 1, p. 323.

33
of reason, nor to any fact that has been discovered by the use of reason. Genuine truths of faith
are never in conflict with logic or with the sciences; they conflict only with the rationalistic or
positivistic metaphysics, that is, with a reason that arrogates to itself the right to define the whole
range of truth from the standpoint of man.”45 And this means in practice for Brunner that the
Bible cannot teach anything about the “phenomenal world.” According to the critical principles
adopted in earlier works and assumed in the present one the phenomenal world is the world of
impersonal forces. And revelation is said to deal with the world of “personal encounter.” But
orthodox theology speaks of God as creating the “phenomenal world.” By creating orthodoxy
means causing it to come into existence. It does not realize that the impersonal mechanical
conception of causality within the universe can tell us nothing about a personal God beyond the
universe.46 Further, orthodoxy speaks of certain all-determining events that took place at the
beginning of the history of the “phenomenal” world. It thinks of God’s creation of man in his
image, of man’s breaking the covenant that God had made with him, as being determinative of
his own present personal relation to God. The Apostle Paul apparently thought that through one
man, representing all his descendents, sin came into the world and passed upon all men.
But all this, Brunner argues or assumes, is but imaginary impersonation in a world of
impersonal forces. If man is really to know himself as standing in personal relation to God, he
must be rid of this attempt on the part of orthodox theology to reduce personalistic relations to
impersonal physical and biological categories.
Moreover, what holds for the past holds, of course, also for the present and the future. How
could the uniqueness of Christ and his work be maintained if he were identified with a man called
Jesus of Nazareth? If the incarnation really meant the eternal Son’s entrance into, and even
partial identification with, some individual man in his physico-biological existence as orthodoxy
maintains, this would again be the reduction of the personal to the impersonal. Then as to the
future, orthodoxy speaks of a judgment day, a last day. But how could a personal God mediate
his judgments by way of impersonal forces in an impersonal environment?
The entire idea of thinking of Scriptural revelation as confronting man with an existential
system must be cast aside. The ideas of system and that of personal encounter are mutually
exclusive of one another.
Brunner thinks of the idea of system as being, in the nature of the case, non-historical. The
orthodox view cannot, he says, do justice to the uniqueness of the historical. Thus orthodoxy kills
the very idea of prophetic prediction. “Thus where, as in the orthodox view, revelation is
identified with supernaturally communicated doctrinal truth, the difference between that which
was foretold and its fulfillment can well be ignored. It is timeless; that is, it is a doctrine perfectly
communicated in one form of revelation and imperfectly in another. This point of view leaves
out of account the decisive element in the Biblical revelation, namely, its historical character.”47
In presenting a non-historical system orthodoxy does despite to the freedom of the Holy
Spirit.48 It leads to “a breach of the Second Commandment; it is the deification of a creature,

45 Emil Brunner: Revelation and Reason, p. 213.

46 Idem., p. 286.
47 Emil Brunner: Revelation and Reason, p. 98.
48 Idem., p. 145.

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bibliolatry.”49 It “lacks a sense of community” and “does not allow for the necessary mediation
between the word of the Bible and the modern man through the viva vox ecclesiae.”50 With its
“fatal confusion of revelation with the communication of theological truths in doctrinal form”
orthodoxy tends toward moralism and legalism.51 In its direct identification of the words of the
Bible with the Word of God orthodoxy interposes a curtain between the believer and his Christ.52
It does not permit the believer to become genuinely contemporary with Christ.53
Substituting the idea of revelation as personal encounter for the orthodox one of system I
may as a believer become as contemporary with Christ as was Peter.54 “No longer must I first of
all ask the Apostle whether Jesus is really Lord. I know it as well as the Apostle himself, and indeed
I know it exactly as the Apostle knew it; namely, from the Lord Himself, who reveals it to me.”55
Being thus contemporaneous with Christ the believer now shares in the grace and glory of God.56
Being face to face with Christ as his contemporary also means having the true content of
revelation. “We must say quite clearly: Christ is the Truth. He is the content; He is the ‘point’ of
all preaching of the Church; but He is also really its content.”57 The Scriptures want to point to
him. They want to be as a telescope through which the Christ is drawn near to us and we to him.
In addition to killing the true conception of revelation as personal encounter, orthodoxy, says
Brunner, has done almost irreparable damage to the very idea of faith. “All Christian faith is
based, according to this theory, upon faith in the trustworthiness of the Biblical writers. The
whole edifice of faith is built upon them, upon their absolute and complete inspiration. What a
fearful caricature of what the Bible itself means by faith. And on what a quaking ground has the
Church of the Reformation, in its ‘orthodox’ perversion, placed both itself and its message! We
owe a profound debt of gratitude to the historical criticism that has made it quite impossible to
maintain this position. This mistaken faith in the Bible has turned everything topsy-turvy! It bases
our faith-relation to Jesus Christ upon our faith in the Apostles. It is impossible to describe the
amount of harm and confusion that has been caused by this fatal perversion of the foundations
of faith, both in the Church as a whole and in the hearts of individuals.”58
Over against this orthodox idea of a “closed Bible” Brunner advocates the idea of the “open
Bible.” “It is not faith on an assumption based on an authoritarian pre-conception, but it is faith
founded upon our relation to the content of that which is proclaimed in the Scriptures, or rather
to the Person Himself, God manifest in the flesh, who speaks to me, personally, in the
Scriptures.”59

49 Idem., p. 120.
50 Idem., p. 145.
51 Idem., p. 154.
52 Idem., p. 145.
53 Idem., p. 170.
54 Ibid.
55 Idem., p. 171.
56 Idem., p. 117.
57 Idem., p. 151.
58 Idem., p. 168.
59 Idem., p. 169.

35
 Enough has now been said to indicate that Brunner shares with the modern principle its non-
rational principle of individuation. Revelational events must be separated from anything like
propositional revelation. The correlativity between being and interpretation within the Godhead
as maintained by orthodox theology is rejected. It is to be expected then that Brunner will also
share the modern rationalistic conception of coherence. One who rejects the internal
correlativity between revelational fact and revelational word by implication asserts the
correlativity between non-rational factuality and abstract non-personal logic.
Looking at Brunner’s principle of coherence or continuity what strikes us most is its pure
formality. This is strictly in accord with a critical epistemology. And it is the only thing that fits in
with the completely non-rational principle of individuality. Brunner says that the form and the
content of revelation are fitted to one another. Now the content of revelation, as Brunner views
the matter, is anything but systematic. Orthodoxy sought to harmonize the various teachings of
the separate parts of Scripture in the interest of unity. But true unity includes all varieties of
teaching. A true unity is such as not to kill the true uniqueness of history. And by uniqueness
Brunner means, as we have seen, the non-rational. “Where the main concern is with unity of
doctrine, historical differences continually cause painful embarrassment; but where the main
concern is the unity of the divine purpose in saving history, historical differences are not only not
embarrassing; they are necessary.”60
Having been liberated from the orthodox doctrine of an infallible Bible by higher criticism,
Brunner feels that he is also liberated from all concern for internal consistency of the Bible’s
testimony to Christ. “For at some points the variety of the Apostolic doctrine, regarded purely
from the theological and intellectual point of view, is an irreconcilable contradiction.”61
The real unity of revelation lies beyond and above the unifying efforts of logic. “It is precisely
the most contradictory elements that belong to one another, because only thus can the truth of
the Christ, which lies beyond all these doctrines, be plainly perceived.”62
All this, however, seems to be purely negative. But this very negativity clearly brings out the
pure formality of the principle of continuity employed. And being thus purely formal it is, in
practice, correlative to the idea of pure contingency. The result is a form of transcendentalism.
Accordingly, there can be no knowledge of anything transcendent. All reference to that which is
transcendent must be in the way of ideals rather than in concepts.
All religious concepts are merely regulative not constitutive. Thus the whole of the realm of
personal encounter between man and God is in the realm of the practical rather than the
theoretical.
Yet we are not to think that there is no positive intellectual content in this theology of
dialecticism. Since it so vigorously negates the orthodox view of reality which is based upon the
Creator-creature distinction it naturally advocates a position which leads to man’s absorption in
God. Brunner’s principle of continuity presupposes the virtual identity of man with God. It also
self-consciously aims at the complete envelopment of the human subject by the divine Subject.
Revelation and knowledge in this world, says Brunner, is always imperfect.63 But we aim to reach

60 Idem., p. 197.
61 Idem., p. 290.
62 Ibid.
63 Idem., p. 185.

36
the perfect revelation, when we shall know as we are known. “Knowledge and revelation are
then one; moreover, we are drawn into the inner being of God, and it is He alone who moves us
inwardly to know Him.… What is meant is that I am so drawn toward God that I have ‘utterly
passed over into God,’ I am ‘poured over into the will of God,’ so that I have a share in His
innermost creative movement; but, we must note, it is I who share in this movement.”64
Of course, when Brunner’s principle of continuity thus leads him to complete absorption of
man in God he quickly brings in the correlative principle of discontinuity by saying: “I do not
disappear; my living movement, even though it is derived from God alone, is still my movement.
I have nothing of my own to say, yet through God’s perfect revelation I have a share is what He
is saying, and what He says is Reality. Thus I am what God says, what God thinks, and what He
wills. The contrast between subject and object will completely disappear, but the fact of personal
encounter, and thus of the nonidentity of God and myself, will remain. For I am in the truth and
the truth is in me, as truth which is given to me and received by me, and this truth will be my very
being, and my life.”65
This then is Brunner’s Christ. “This truth will be no other than the God-man, Jesus Christ.”66
No Bible, in the orthodox sense, could possibly speak of such a Christ. The kind of Bible that fits
with the dialectical principle is virtually the same as that which, as we have noted, fits with the
modern principle. It is a Bible that “does not add to my knowledge.”67 It is a Bible that bears
witness to a God who “does not ‘instruct’ or ‘lecture’ His people.”68 It is a Bible that contains high
prophetic and apostolic perspectives from which, if we wish, we too may view reality.
If we accept the high perspective of prophets and apostles we too are prophets and apostles;
we know precisely in the way they know. And though according to all our principles of knowledge
the world of force is controlled by impersonal law yet we believe that somehow our ideal, our
Christ, our virtual identification with God will be realized. “The personal truth of revelation, faith,
and love includes within itself the impersonal truth connected with ‘things,’ and the impersonal
truth connected with abstractions, but not vice versa. God Himself thinks, but He is not a thought.
God has ideas, but He is not an idea. God has a plan, and He creates an order, but He is not a
world order. God’s Logos includes all the logos of reason within Himself, but He Himself is Person,
the eternal Son.”69
The impasse that faces Brunner when he seeks somehow to combine his wholly impersonal
realm of the phenomenal and his wholly personal realm of the noumenal is the same as that of
the modern principle. We believe it is obvious that it is only in orthodoxy that there is really
personal confrontation of God and man. God meets man in nature. God meets man in the Old
Testament. God, the triune God, meets man everywhere. In introducing the idea of an impersonal
environment for man in nature, in the Old Testament and even in the propositional revelation of
the New Testament while yet maintaining that only in the dialectical principle does religion mean
personal confrontation of man with God, Brunner is compelled to make the person of man the

64 Idem., p. 192.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid., p. 27.
68 Ibid., p. 87.
69 Ibid., p. 373.

37
final reference point. In the last analysis every theology or philosophy is personalistic. Everything
“impersonal” must be brought into relationship with an ultimate personal point of reference.
Orthodoxy takes the self-contained ontological trinity to be this point of reference. The only
alternative to this is to make man himself the final point of reference. Thus dialectical theology
is not a theology of the Word; it knows of no God who could speak a word. The God and the
Christ of dialectical theology, like the God and the Christ of the modern principle is a projection
of man himself. Feuerbach has every right to smile at this transcendence theology which is but
undercover anthropology. It appears then that the Theology of Crisis works on the basis of a
critical epistemology similar to that of Schleiermacher and his spiritual descendents and that it
therefore holds a view of revelation and Scripture that is also similar to theirs.
The total picture that results from our brief general analysis then is as follows: The view of
Scripture as so ably presented and defended by Warfield is held by orthodox Protestants alone.
And among these orthodox Protestants it is only the followers of Calvin who have a theology that
fully fits in with this idea of Scripture. Only a God who controls whatsoever comes to pass can
offer to man His interpretation of the course of history in the form of an existential system. An
evangelical, that is a virtually Arminian, theology makes concessions to the principle that controls
a “theology of experience.” In admitting and even maintaining a measure of autonomy for man,
such evangelicalism is bound to admit that the non-Christian principles of continuity and of
discontinuity have a measure of truth in them. And to the precise extent that evangelicalism
makes these concessions in its theology does it weaken its own defense of the infallible Bible.
Such evangelicals have done and are doing excellent detail work in the defense of Scripture but
they lack the theology that can give coherence to their effort. Therefore they also lack the general
apologetic methodology that can make their detail-work stand out in its real challenge against
the principle of experience.
The Roman Catholic position goes much further along the road of Evangelicalism in the
direction of an experience theology. It breaks openly with the idea of the Bible as a self-contained
revelation. Its conception of tradition and the church leads directly in the direction of the modern
view.
As for the theology of Experience we have seen that it is today divided into two main camps.
Of these two it is the Theology of Crisis that seems to stand nearer to the orthodox view than
does the other. Yet this is only appearance. In the case of both camps it is the experience of man
himself, individually or collectively, that is the final reference point of all meaning.
This theology of Experience, as has been shown, now faces the abyss of the utterly
meaningless. The principle of discontinuity is frankly irrational. It is embraced in the interest of
the uniqueness of historical fact and revelation. But this uniqueness is purchased at the price of
utter darkness. Then as to its principle of continuity this is purely formal and, therefore, without
ability to come into contact with reality. It is embraced in the interest of flexibility. And indeed it
is flexible. It comports with and even requires the idea of the utterly irrational for its correlative.
And in all this the theology of Experience is of a piece with modern science and modern
philosophy. The prodigal is at the swine-trough but finds that he cannot as a rational creature
feed himself with the husks that non-rational creatures eat.
It is in this situation that the present volume goes out, beseeching the prodigal to return to
the father’s house. In the father’s house are many mansions. In it alone will the “son” find refuge
and food. The presupposition of all intelligible meaning for man in the intellectual, the moral and

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the aesthetic spheres is the existence of the God of the Bible who, if he speaks at all in grace
cannot, without denying himself, but speak in a self-contained infallible fashion. Only in a return
to the Bible as infallibly inspired in its autography is there hope for science, for philosophy and
for theology. Without returning to this Bible science and philosophy may flourish with borrowed
capital as the prodigal flourished for a while with his father’s substance. But the prodigal had no
self-sustaining principle. No man has till he accepts the Scripture that Warfield presents.1

1Cornelius Van Til and Eric H. Sigward, The Articles of Cornelius Van Til, Electronic ed. (Labels
Army Company: New York, 1997).

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