How is the Bible Self-Authenticating?
This is a paper I wrote in seminary for an Independent Study. I don’t think it’s good enough to be published anywhere else lol, but I do think there are ways one might benefit from reading it. I hope it’s helpful to your reflection on the truth of Scripture!
ABSTRACT: The Westminster Larger Catechism, in Question 4, declares that one may know the Scriptures are the word of God by the “consent of all its parts”, the beauty of the whole, and its power on the human condition. These self-authenticating (or self-convincing) features are called the indicia. But some claim that this argument is either too circular or too subjective. In this paper, I try to provide a coherent account of how exactly the indicia reveal Scripture to be the word of God. I argue that the indicia are ultimately elements of God’s revelation in Scripture which, when rightly employed by a Scripturally-shaped imagination, exhibit fittingness with the claim that Scripture is the word of God. Just as the specific features of Beethoven’s symphonies enable one to apprehend Beethoven’s musical genius (as these features fit with the mind of a genius), the features of God’s word enable an intuitive apprehension of its truthfulness.
The animating energy pulsating through every thread of the Biblical story is God’s gracious desire to give himself in all things. Wonder of wonders: God can be known, cherished, adored, and participated in. And astonishingly, God opens up the beauty of his being in the Scriptures of Israel and the apostolic witness. The Old and New Testament are constituted by God’s own gracious act of disclosing himself to humanity; therefore, the Bible has a divine origin, being breathed out by God’s Self-Giving Love as “men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”[1] But by what markers does the Bible show itself to be divine? Are there attributes of Scripture itself by which it manifests its origin as a divine text—indeed, as the word of God? The Westminster divines thought so.[2] In this paper, I will attempt to build upon and defend a traditional Reformed answer to the question: the Bible shows itself to be the word of God by the indicia—aspects of God’s revelation in Scripture which, when rightly apprehended and employed by the imagination, exhibit fittingness with the claim that Scripture is God’s normative, sanctifying revelation of himself to humanity. First, I will define all necessary terms. Then, I will specify categories and examples of indicia. Finally, I will conclude with an analysis of the role of the Spirit in apprehending the indicia.
Preliminary Issues: Scripture, Imagination, and Indicia
What, exactly, does it mean for the Bible to be the Word of God? By claiming Scripture that is God’s Word, I mean to say that Scripture is the norming, communicative, self-revealing inscribed act of the triune God performed for humanity’s enjoyment of God’s glory and holistic conformity to the image of the Son.[3][4] Scripture is, first and foremost, a self-revealing act of God accomplished in and through human agency. Scripture is the product of the divine agency elevating (not eliminating or displacing!) human agency so as to constitute revelation. The content of all revelation is Godself; God intends, in all that he does, to communicatively display his own divine excellencies in all things.[5] While God has many means through which he communicates himself unto conformity to Jesus, Scripture alone serves as the canonical norm—the “measuring stick”—by which Christians are to test all other claims to divine revelation, and through which Christians are to interpret, imagine, and live in the world.[6] Moreover, Scripture is God’s communicative act; God not only reveals what he’s like, but communicates himself to the world. Jonathan Edwards defines God’s self-communication as God’s “self-diffusion.”[7] God communicates himself by sharing or imparting his perfections in creation (i.e the communicable aspects of God). Scripture enables humanity to determine what counts as divine self-communication and how to recognize it. Scripture is normative divine self-revelation effecting divine self-communication through which God establishes self-participation between creation and the life of the Trinity.[8] In this sense, Scripture is the word of God precisely because it is the normative “spectacles” through which humans may rightly apprehend existence as the “theatre of God’s glory”, and by which humans ought to live unto conformity to Christ.
But how do the spectacles of Scripture function to reveal God’s perfections unto humanity’s enjoyment of and conformity to Christ? John Piper argues that the glory of God shines through the meaning of Scripture; hence, when one rightly apprehends the constellation of meaning in Scripture, they will eventually come to see God’s glorious character portrayed in a self-authenticating way.[9] What does it mean to rightly apprehend meaning? Piper explains “right apprehension” as understanding what an author intends to communicate through the words on the page.[10] The reader then must obey the text to participate in God’s glory. I think this is close to right, but two elaborations must be made. First, what exactly does it mean to understand authorial intention? We cannot access the subjective psychological state of the author when reading her work, so is the task impossible? Kevin Vanhoozer masterfully sheds light on this matter. According to Vanhoozer, intention describes what an author does in “tending” words; for him, intention involves locution (a chosen grammatical and linguistic “sign”—words that have sense or referrent—embedded within a conventionally agreed upon language system) and illocutionary force (what an author does with his or her words, or the direction of “fit” between an author’s words and the world—e.g a warning is directed towards bringing about a state of affairs in the world, a story constructs a literary world, etcetera).[11][12] This is right so far as it goes. However, I would disagree with both Vanhoozer and Searle that perlocutionary intention—what an author attempts to bring about in the world—is outside the purview of understanding intention. For example, suppose my wife says, “Sean, there’s a train coming!” The locution is the phonetic or linguistic entity capable of bearing referent or meaning (“Sean, there’s a train coming”). The illocution consists in what my wife actually does with the words—she warns me with words. The perlocution consists in the resulting state of affairs my wife intends to bring about as a result of the utterance. While Searle and Vanhoozer argues that understanding perlocutionary intent depends on understanding the locution and illocution of the action, it is nevertheless consequential to understanding the act. There is a difference, in their view, between understanding the intended act as such and understanding the resulting state of affairs aimed at. I disagree. It seems to me that understanding perlocutionary intent helps an interpreter to understand subsets of illocutionary acts. Suppose my wife might warn me by saying “there’s a train coming!” Now suppose I’m sight-seeing for trains, standing on the tracks. I rightly interpret my wife as warning me and drawing my attention to the train; however, I wrongly assume that she’s trying to get me to notice the coming train before it goes by (more or less: “Sean, if you don’t look you’ll miss the train!”). In truth, she’s trying to save my life and get me off the tracks. Is it reasonable to say that I’ve understood her intended act? I don’t think so. It seems to me that understanding perlocutionary intention—what the author aims to bring about in the world—is essential to grasp the directedness of particular illocutions. I’ll assume that understanding meaning involves understanding the resulting state of affairs the author aims to bring about through his or her words.
The second elaboration involves the role of imagination in understanding. Piper rightly points out that understanding individual speech-acts won’t necessarily reveal God’s peculiar glory, nor do they serve as an interpretative lens through which to view the world. One could read the statement “Herod was king of Judea”, understand the meaning of that phrase, and not see anything distinctively “God-revealing.” Other than being a neat historical fact, this proposition doesn’t orient one’s life in any significant way. Rather, one needs to see the relation between the sayings, genres, and various communicative acts that constitute God’s communicative act of Scripture. Discerning such a relation requires imagination. Kevin Vanhoozer defines the imagination as “the ability to grasp meaningful patterns or conceive unified wholes out of apparently unrelated elements.”[13] In the context of a self-orienting narrative, imagination involves organizing events, truths, and experiences into a meaningful, inter-related whole in which to experience and make sense of life. For example, if one imagines themselves as living in a world governed by the loving providence of God, their experience of, say, cancer will be very different than one who imagines themselves as living in a naturalistic universe. The latter might not experience cancer as unwelcome, but the former will experience the cancer as “working together for the good of those who love God.”[14] A Scriptural imagination will therefore imagine the events, structure, and experiences of the world in lieu of the kind of reality Scripture depicts as being true reality. And just as a man, walking through segregated portions of the southside of Chicago, might hear the story of red-lining and discern its plausibility through a self-evident “fit”, my contention is that such “fits” are discernible when viewing the world through a Scriptural imagination—rendering Scripture’s status as the Word of God plausible.
These “fits” are, I believe, what the Reformed tradition call the indicia. The Reformed tradition strongly suggests that Scripture is autopistos—self-convincing. That is, it bears the marks of divinity in itself. But what is it about Scripture that gives it its self-convincing quality? The answer are the indicia—the objective qualities of Scripture through which the church has recognized it as the word of God.[15] Calvin draws upon several tactile analogies; one knows that honey is sweet or light is bright by the indicia—a phenomenological, self-convincing apprehension—of honey or light. Indeed, Michael Kruger argues that the objective indicia were apprehended by the church so as to ground the church’s recognition (not “determination”) of the canon.[16]
The indicia are both intuited and articulatable. We might draw an analogy here between the aesthetic experience of music. In hearing a grand symphony, a listener might apprehend the symphony as beautiful and lovely without being able to articulate why she hears it as such. But, even in the absence of her being able to articulate the “why” behind her experience, she is still able to apprehend the beauty of the piece. A musician might come along and show her the particular harmonies she perceives, explaining to her what exactly she hears as beautiful—and indeed, this explanation might ring true for her. The musician might be able to put into words what she could not. Nevertheless, she has seen something that was truly “there.” Similarly, one might apprehend the grand narrative of Scripture, imagine God, the world, and oneself in relation to all other things within the context of Scripture, and discern a self-convincing fittingness (the indicia). Although the indicia are in principle able to be articulated, they are nevertheless able to be intuited. Nevertheless, I will attempt to put some of the indicia into words, so that the nature of these “fittingness-indicators” and the way in which they authenticate Scripture might become more apparent.
The Indicia: Theo-centric, Creational, Anthropological
There are three categories of indicia that I will examine: theological indicia, creational indicia, and anthropological indicia. An imagination formed by Scripture will apprehend qualities of the God revealed in Scripture, the nature of creation, and the nature of humanity that fit with what Scripture is claimed by the church to be.
Theo-centric Indicia
There are two theo-centric indicia that fit with the claim that Scripture is God’s word. In other words, there are several “fits” between the nature of God as depicted in Scripture, and the claim that Scripture is divinely inspired. First, if Scripture is God’s sanctifying self-revelation, then we should expect it to present a coherent picture of God. Scripture, as God’s self-unveiling, should harmonize in such a way so as to bear a unified witness to God—“the scope of the whole” should “give glory to God”, in the words of the Westminster catechism. Indeed, this would be a fairly strong indicia, as a unified picture of God through the Old and New Testament seems unexpected in light of the diverse historical, cultural, philosophical, and linguistic contexts of the authors. Second, we should expect that the nature of the God revealed is the transcendently excellent Fountainhead of the Good. For God is claimed to be both the Fount of all Good, Truth, and Beauty in the world, and beyond human comprehension. The purity and excellency of his character, then, should be both lovely (to the one who loves moral excellence) and yet challenging (since his purity should confront, subvert, and excel our own). Moreover, just as the sun, being the source of the day’s brightness, contains that brightness in itself, so God should be the kind of being of whom it makes sense to say: “he is the Sum of all virtue, and the Fount of all good.” All moral virtue—all that is good, lovely, pure, and just—should find its unifying essence in its resemblance to the God of Scripture.
God’s character possesses what Robert Jenson calls “dramatic coherence.”[17] Dramatic coherence is what happens when, in Aristotle’s terms, one event in a narrative unfolds after another in such a way that, while the latter could not be predicted from the former, there is a fit (in a good story) such that the latter event is a proper development. The coherence here is analogous to the coherence in the life of a renowned public servant. As a boy, this person might have stood up for the bullied kids in his class; as a man, he grows up to defend the least of these as a policy maker. While God never changes, his character is revealed through the story Scripture tells. The narrative story told by Scripture presents a remarkable stability to God; he does not “act out of character”, as it were. Surely, there are developments in our knowledge of God, but these developments do not overturn prior parts of Scriptural revelation but cohere and deepen them. There are several theo-centric themes that run through the Bible through which we may trace the unity of his character, but we will focus on theme of creation and judgment.
God’s character is revealed through a dialectic of creation and judgment, with the emphasis on the former and the latter serving the former. God creates the world as a divine temple through his speaking (word) and with the Spirit; he intends to take up residence in the world, like a king taking up residence in a temple.[18] God creates humanity as royal representatives—image bearers—designed to reflect his worth, wisdom, and rule into the world.[19] God, declaring creation good, is therefore portrayed as the generous giver and source of all good in the world. God communicates life from himself to creation, and creates humanity to further communicate his life to the ends of the earth. If God is the source of all life and good, it would make sense then that deviation from his commands brings death and evil into our world. If God is the Source of all good, and if he loves what is good, then it fits that he would stand in diametric opposition to all that defaces the beauty of his good world. Thus, in Genesis 3, God is portrayed as Judge; he judges all agents of evil in lieu of their broken relationship to himself and to the world. The judgment is death, which coheres well with the depiction of God as the Source of life. What else could turning from this Source result in? But this judgment itself carries the seeds of re-creation: through the seed of the woman, God will crush the serpent’s head. The dialectic continues in the Flood account; though God judges all of humanity for their evil and murderous intent, his very judgment is the means through which he “baptizes the world.”[20] God’s judgment on the Egyptians is simultaneously the creation of a new kind of life for Israel. God’s judgment on the Canaanites is also the advancement of God’s plan to renew the world through Abraham. God’s exilic judgment on Israel reconfigures their religious life, providing typologies and patterns which the Son takes up and fulfills. Finally, God eschatologically judges the world by exposing evil eternally and putting all things to right.
In the process of this unfolding dialectic, God’s nature becomes clearer and clearer. God is the one who gives—indeed, gives his very self in all things (for all the world proclaims his glory).[21] Consonant with God’s design in creation, God relates to humanity via relational covenants which set the conditions for the generation of life and the flourishing of the world in particular historical circumstances. It is fitting, then, that this God is revealed as a Trinity. The very being of God is a dynamic movement of self-giving love. The Father begets the Son eternally, giving all that He is to the Son, and the Son returns all that He is to the Father. This movement of Love is personified in the Spirit. The nature of God, then, is consonant with God’s creative acts in history—whereby the God who is by nature self-giving love makes creation a temple that corresponds to the inner logic of his own being. Moreover, it is fitting that the God who is holy Love should reject evil. Perfect love for what is good, pure, and beautiful also perfectly rejects what is evil, impure, and destructive. God’s concrete expressions of hatred for evil, then, reflect the intensity to which God treasures the divine excellencies portrayed in creation. Christ, then, is a fitting summation of the Scriptural narrative. The dialectic of creation and judgment find a unified expression in the person of Christ, in whom God creates the possibility (and certainty!) of new life for the cosmos through the judgment of death and the victory of resurrection. His hatred of evil and love for the good, true, and beautiful are on full display in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. In salvation history, and in Jesus supremely, the meaning of the divine name in Exodus 34 is given full expression. God is indeed slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love—forgiving (re-creating relationship between God and humanity) without excusing evil.
This God—YHWH—is transcendently morally excellent. He is transcendent in that he is unconstrained by anything in creation (being the Lord of creation, the sustainer of all things, the one who directs history’s course unto himself) and in that his Trinitarian nature defies categories of human understanding. He is morally excellent in the “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies” displayed in his works and in his ends for history. God is portrayed as the sovereign Lord over all, transcending creation; yet he fills all things, being nearer to creatures than their own breath. God is seen as incredibly holy, so as to expose all wickedness by the light of his own presence. In the economy of the Torah, he is rightly set apart from all marks of sin and brokenness that mar creation. Yet God draws near to the wicked, the sinner, and the sick in history and supremely in Jesus Christ. He is majestic and fierce, and yet a humble lamb who dies for his enemies. He destroys idols and idol-worshippers and effects reconciliation for all things in heaven and on earth. Moreover, God is the Fountainhead of all good by virtue of the resemblance all good bears to God’s character. The Lord exhibits humility in the very act of creation, for he expresses his character in terms far beneath him (material and heavenly) and gives himself for the sake of reality outside of himself. The Lord is kind, binding up the broken, afflicted, orphan, and widow. The Lord is just “who will be no means clear the guilty” and he punishes all evil impartially. Supremely, God is a communion of love—the highest moral value. Finally, God is excellent in his ends. His ends involve “self-diffusion”; he intends to display the goodness of his character in all things. Far from being narcissistic, this fits the claim that this God is the Source of all that is good and beautiful. For if God is the Source of all that is good and beautiful, then all that is good and beautiful are such because they reflect God’s character. Thus, if God seeks ends that are good and beautiful, then He must seek ends that are God-displaying.[22] In short, morally perfect Divine Being, who is the source of all that is good, can only fittingly seek to diffuse the goodness of Being. God, in seeking his own self-display, seeks to display what is ultimately good, beautiful, and true.
Creational Indicia
There are several indicia true of a Scriptural imagination with respect to the nature of creation. I will focus on three. A Scriptural imagination reveals the fittingness of creational-design, the fittingness of creational-beauty, and the fittingness of creational-numinosity.
When the world is viewed through the imaginative world of Scripture, creational-design finds a neat home. Creational-design consists in several perceived qualities of the natural world: the world seems to exhibit a sort of “logic” that reveals its contingency as well as a certain teleological ordering that fits the nature of the Trinity. These perceived qualities have led most cultures through history to believe in a deity or divine designer of some sort. These ordered features of creational-design fit well with a world-story that includes the existence of an intelligent, wise, and generous Creator. But what does it mean for there to be an internal logos of the world? By this, I mean that there are certain “rules”, apprehended intuitively by the mind, that signify intelligence. A board game, for example, has a certain logic that orders the moves you can make and creates patterns within the constrains of the rules. These patterns are the “instantiations” of the rules. For example, within the game of chess, one might observe that a Knight moves “L-wise.” As they further observe the game, they might continue to observe more and more such patterns—they apprehend the “forms”, as it were, that govern the game. To understand these rules is to understand the particular expression of intelligence that constitutes these rules. Similarly, creation has an internal logical ordering—rules—that generate the stability of being. Hume’s “problem of induction” draws attention to this phenomena quite nicely. On what basis, Hume asks, can we ground inductive inference?[23] There is no logical contradiction in the idea that gravity should spontaneously give out, or water should poison instead of nourish, or flowers should reek instead of relish. Moreover, these rules (of chemistry, biology, physics, etcetera) cannot be grounded in themselves. The laws of gravity are dependent on mass—the resistance of a material body to an applied force; and any item with mass is therefore dependent on matter. But material things are further dependent on constitution. A bolt of electricity depends on micro-physical constituents, which in turn depends on further constituents. Water receives its being from a certain arrangement of molecules, which in turn receive their being from an arrangement of atoms, which in turn receive being from an arrangement of protons, neutrons, and electrons, etc. They must ultimately be grounded in something other than themselves. The stability of being is an analogue to the stability generated by rules, and the contingency of being suggests the dependency of these rules on something other than material (composite) entities. This phenomena fits well within a Scriptural imagination, for the stability is grounded in the will of God the Creator. The question humans ask from cradle to grave—why is there something rather than nothing—reveals the well-grounded intuition that creation receives its being from something else. The intelligence and power of God is writ large in creation’s being; indeed, it makes sense to say that “in God we live and move and have our being.”[24]
Creation also exhibits a teleological ordering that fits the nature of the Trinity quite well. The world exists in an inter-related bond of mutuality. Ecosystems, for example, are systems wherein the participants are mutually dependent on each other’s life. Flowers yield their life to bees, even as bees propagate flowery life. Bacteria in the gut provide nourishment via consuming the food we provide. Trees draw nutrients from the soil while simultaneously increasing the soil’s fertility. The reproductive structure of the world implies a “giving-and-receiving-and-giving” of being. Indeed, creation itself is infused with a generative capacity; creation exists in a structure of life-begetting-life and harmonious mutuality. The order of creation echoes the doctrine of perichoresis quite well.[25] It seems like the life of any given object in creation is ordered towards the exchange of being. This fits well if “the heavens tell the glory of God” and if the “divine nature is clearly perceived in the things that have been made.”[26] Creation seems to dimly reflect the fundamental dynamic of love that characterizes the Trinitarian communion.
Creational-fittingness posses an aesthetic component. According to Jonathan Edwards, beauty largely consists in the “consent of being to being.”[27] That is, beauty largely consists in the way various things mutually enrich, enhance, harmonize, or “agree” (to use Edwards’ term) with each other. In this way of thinking, a rainbow is beautiful precisely because the various colors of the rainbow mutually enhance, enrich, and enliven each other. We are not drawn to the “redness” of the rainbow over and against the “purpleness”; we are drawn to the whole spectrum of colors in lieu of the agreeing, consenting, or harmonious relationship they have to each other. A sunset’s beauty lies in the peculiar way the colors mesh on the horizon so as to enrich the horizon, the colors on the horizon, and all that the light of the sunset touches. “Consent of being to being” is, for Edwards, even more fundamental than the classical definitions of proportionality or harmony—for even these mathematical concepts contain, at their core, the mutually enriching relation of diverse things.
The aesthetic dimension of creation fits well with a Scriptural imagination that sees the world’s very being as a sheer gift. The structures of the world enable aesthetic displays like the Northern Lights or existence of rainbow or the abundant variety of flowers or birds or the beautiful shape of a pine-cone. Yet almost none of these structures are evolutionary advantageous. The captivating dance of the Northern Lights add no material benefit to creaturely existence. The incredible shape of Nebulae, the outskirts of the Milky Way, a night sky enriched by the heavenly jewels we call “stars”, the sheer variety of flowers and trees and fruits—these are gratuitous, it seems. This sense of the gratuity of being, which often produces thankfulness to be alive in the human heart, fits well within a story that includes a God who is sufficient in himself and thus creates out of the sheer overflow of goodness.
Creational-fittingness consists also in the home creational-numinosity finds in a Scriptural imagination. Creational-numinosity consists in the pervasive presence of the sublime and awe-inspiring—that which C.S. Lewis calls “the Numinous.”[28] The experience of awe is characterized by vastness and accommodation; vastness relates to “anything that is experienced as being much larger than oneself or the self’s ordinary level of experience” whereas accommodation denotes the adjusting of one’s mental structures—or one’s orientation to the world, we might say—in order to accommodate the experience.[29] For example, I find the process of nuclear fusion and fission at the heart of a star awe-inspiring. The vistas of a mountain, the fury of a thunderstorm, the sheer size of the galaxy—all of these experiences have at their core a confrontation with a reality which is bigger, in some way, than me. The emotion of awe isn’t fear—I’m hardly afraid of a tremendous mountain peak or the tremendous energy generated by a star (although sometimes awe evokes fear). It is its own phenomena. The phenomena of the numinous is well-suited to the Christian story. In the imaginative world of Scripture, reality is fundamentally sacramental. That is, it both refers to the Divine Reality outside of itself whilst also bringing us into contact with that Reality.[30] There is a certain intuitive fittingness to say that the experience of the Grand Canyon or the sight of a Thunderstorm is referential to something even Bigger. The majesty of these created things are an echo of a Greater Majesty. Moreover, if awe is a signpost of the Divine, then it makes sense that awe should orient the awe-struck towards the vastness of reality outside of herself. For that disposition—orientation towards Being-in-General, of which we are only a small part—is an essential component of the kind of humility with which one ought to approach the Lord. After all, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”[31]
Anthropological Indicia
The human condition is certainly complex. We are largely mysteries to ourselves! Nevertheless, there does seem to be some discernible structure to the human experience. I will argue that human nature finds several fits with the world as it is apprehended by the Scriptural imagination. These indicia consists in fittingness between the doctrine of imago-dei and humanity’s sense of its relation to the world, fittingness between the nature of human fulfillment and the nature of the triune God, fittingness between the human experience of evil—particularly moral evil, sickness, and death—and (finally and most importantly) fittingness between the human condition and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
. The Scriptural imagination envisions a world wherein humans are made in the image of God. What, precisely, does it mean to be made in God’s image? There are (at least) three fundamental features. First, to be made in the image of God means that humans are meant to be the unique bearers of the divine presence to the world. Humanity, uniquely among all creatures, represents God to the rest of the world while also summing up the praises of creation unto God.[32] Humans are meant to mediate, as it were, the divine presence. Second, the divine presence in humanity is such that the various facets of human nature are meant to integrate and relate, such that the integrity of human nature resembles and reflects the glory and beauty of God to a greater degree than anything else in creation.[33] This God-reflecting integrity is ordered to particular purpose: subdual of the earth and dominion over all things. Humans, then, are lords under the Lord. We can some up the concept of the image of God as such: God made humans to intentionally royally reflect his own glory and beauty into the world in such a way that, in reflecting his beauty and glory, humans would bring God-glorifying order to the world and God-imitating rule over the world. All ontological capacities and features of humanity are ordered towards and entailed by the mandate to rule over the world as royal representatives of the divine wisdom and kingship. Humans are meant to be God-reflecting, life-giving kings and queens in whom something of God’s face shines. This telos, and all that it requires (intentionality, a certain physical composition that analogizes God unto this end, certain mental capacities) constitute the image of God.
There are several features of the human condition that find a home in the Scriptural imagination: our sense of responsibility to non-human creatures, our quest to understand the world, our desire to cultivate the environment, our artistic endeavors, and our sense of ethical responsibility to each other. The human impulse to care for other species finds a fitting home within a Scriptural imagination. The existence of organizations like PETA, the field of animal ethics, and the rehabilitative efforts of conservations all attest to a felt sense of responsibility to work for the flourishing of animals. Moreover, humans, among all the creatures of the world, are uniquely equipped for this task.[34] The quest to understand our world—the whole field of scientific study—makes sense within the context of our image-of-God-ness. If humans are “priests” designed to sum up the praises of creation unto God, revealing the Creator’s wisdom in all of his works, then it makes sense that we felt drawn to study the deep structures of reality. In uncovering more and more of the world’s workings, we apprehend and make visible the depths of God’s wisdom. The scientific impulse is related to the environmental impulse: our deep study of the world is funded by a sense of obligation to the created environment around us. Studying biology allows humanity to care for animals and plant-life effectively. Studying ecology helps humans order the environment in the best way. Combining scientific fields enable humans to make inventions that have the capacity to cultivate the ground. Of course, it would be untrue to say that scientific study is funded only by obligation. It is funded also by a sense of the splendor, awe, and beauty of creation (which fits the mandate to cultivate praise). Our desire for beauty leads us to create beauty. Humans (and humans alone!) are capable of composing symphonies, or writing poetry, or painting masterpieces. Humans are not the kinds of beings that merely order the world towards functionality; indeed, we plant gardens right alongside farming for food for the sheer joy of beautifying the world. Gregory Ganssle draws the right connection by suggesting that humanity’s impulse to create beauty parallels the Creator’s impulse to create beauty.[35] artistic pursuit fits the claim that we are made in the image of a Divine Artist.
The fundamental structure of human fulfillment also fits best in a universe wherein we are made in the image of the triune God. As Ganssle points out, human beings flourish in relationship.[36] The bests kinds of relationship, it seems, are non-exploitative—that is, relationships wherein the relationship is treasured for its own sake rather than for some ulterior good. It would be immoral, for example, for a man to befriend another man simply because he gets food or access to a car out of the relationship. Similarly, no one likes discovering that someone was only their “friend” because of the benefits they could get out of the relationship. As C.S. Lewis puts it, “friendship is unnecessary…it has no survival value, rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”[37] The relationship of romance itself, interestingly, fits the narrative of Scripture really well. Society doesn’t generally think of marriage as a means to sex. Indeed, if I told my wife that I only married her for the sex, she would be rightly horrified and repulsed! The relationship is to be seen as a good in itself. Moreover, sexuality among humans is intuitively more meaningful than it is among the animals. Animals get over sexual encounters fairly fast! But sexual expression among human beings often leave deep and lasting impressions (even yielding artful reflection, like Song of Solomon). The realities of relationality, both in friendship and romance, find a fit in the world of the Scriptural imagination. The Highest Good—God—is himself a triune relationship. And indeed, God’s trinitarian nature is the very archetype for all love (being the Lover, Loved, and Love itself).[38] It would make sense, then, that humans—being representatives of the Creator—would flourish after the pattern of the Creator. The most intimate relationship among humans itself is oriented first and foremost towards displaying the relationship between Christ and the church.[39] Sexuality is so meaningful to us, on this account, because the very act is intentionally infused with significance beyond itself.
The Scriptural imagination accounts not only for positive features of human existence, but fittingly locates negative aspects as well. The world is infused with moral atrocity, sickness, and death. Every day, people murder, rape, exploit, pillage, and demean each other. People die from cancer, pandemics, the flu, accidents, etcetera. Death stalks life like a foreboding shadow. How do these realities fit into the world as imagined by Scripture? Moral atrocity, in such a world, is the result of “worshipping the creature rather than the Creator.”[40] This is the fundamental root of all other sin: a prioritization of some good in creation over the Creator himself. For example, if I make animals the center of my world, I will ignore the wellbeing of humans. If I make food the center of my world, I’ll ignore the well-being of the environment, animals, and people. If I make other people the center of my world, then I will place upon them expectations that end up crushing them (the “clingy” lover, for example). And supremely, if I make self the center of my world, I’ll displace just about everything around me. Ultimately, the primordial “no” to God in Genesis 3 results in a world that looks God-forsaken. It makes sense that turning from the Source of the Good would yield evil in our world. Likewise, it makes sense that turning from the Source of all health would yield sickness. And it fits that turning from the Source of all Life would yield death.
Finally, the gospel of Jesus Christ fits well with honest self-reflection. Humans are oriented towards that which bring death, sickness, evil, and God-forsakenness to the world. This wrongful orientation is so pervasive that it has become an adage to say “no one’s perfect.” Indeed, “we all sin and fall short of the glory of God.”[41] Any one of us, if we live long enough, will find that we’ve done something of which we are utterly ashamed. Upon reflecting upon both the nature of justice and the nature of evil, it becomes apparent that we cannot save ourselves. Doing more good than bad cannot cancel out the bad; if a judge were to pardon a murderous criminal without any sentence, we would rightly call that a perversion of justice. God, as the Supreme Good, must utterly oppose all that is evil. He must expose it for what it is. Thus, human beings find in their consciences evidences of personal guilt. On an even deeper level, we cannot ultimately save ourselves. If I’m a selfish person by habit, then I cannot just “become” selfless one day. And even if I trade self-centeredness for animal-centeredness or human-centeredness, I end up perpetuating creation’s brokenness. Ultimately, we need to be swept up out of the world-destroying, God-opposing narratives we inhabit and into the whole new kind of existence that Christ offers. The gospel answers these desires. In Jesus, we see both what it looks like when God rules his world and the possibility of a truly human existence. The kinds of healings he brings in his life are the kinds of healings we long for in our world—an answer to sickness and suffering. The kind of healing he brings in his death answers to the sentence of death that hangs over all of us. And finally, the kind of healing he brings in his resurrection answers our longings for a world made right. We long to see our loved ones again and to preserve, in any way we can, their presence among us (why else do we bury our dead?). In Jesus, God promises the resurrection of the dead and the abolition of death itself. And through all of creation’s bound-up-ness with Jesus, effected by the Holy Spirit, God has placed the history of the cosmos on a collision course with his glory. Evil will be finally and fully judged, and God will be all in all. This is the good news humanity needs.[42]
Conclusion: The Role of the Spirit
I believe there is much more that can (and should) be said about the way in which the Bible shines with the divine glory of its Creator. The divine glory of the Bible is perceived when the imagination, formed by Scripture, apprehends God, the world, and one’s relation to the world in lieu of the Biblical story. The indicia—the way the Scriptural imagination interlocks with our world—are fittingness-markers that indicate the truthfulness of Scripture’s claim to be the word of God. These are self-convincing marks in the Biblical text that, though able to be articulated, nevertheless provide an intuitive force so as to rationally ground trust in Scripture as the Word of God.
This raises a key question. If these markers really are so self-convincing, why is it that so many people do not see the divine glory of the Bible? In keeping with the Reformed tradition, I think this is owing to the noetic effects of sin. There is a twofold ignorance that plagues humanity. First, there is an ignorance that is in us due to our hardness of hearts, and for which we are morally accountable.[43] Humans are so stubborn that, often, in our stubborn rebellion we misconstrue the Biblical text so as to avoid accountability to it. Second, there is an ignorance that is effected on humanity by virtue of the fact that we live in a fallen world. The noetic effects of sin have long reaching consequences on creation and our mental faculties; there very well may be many conditions (linguistic mis-construal, errant interpretation that leads to perceived cacophony rather than harmony among the Biblical authors, etcetera) that result from the kind of world effected by the Fall. Moreover, there simply are difficult texts to fit with the over-arching thrust of Scripture. I believe there are plausible ways of doing so, but some passages might be disconcerting and seemingly discordant with other parts of Scripture. How, then, are the indica supposed to convince anyone?
The role of the Spirit is absolutely vital to the function the indicia play in forming faith. The Spirit plays a two-fold role, in my view. The testimonium of the Holy Spirit enlivens the eyes of the heart and mind to the indicia. The Holy Spirit, in my view, is the very condition of viewing the world through the lens of a Scriptural imagination. The Spirit, by a gift of sheer grace, opens the heart to hear the voice of the Shepherd permeate Scripture; the Spirit himself operates on the heart so that it resonates with the Biblical text. Anyone who sees the world through a Scriptural imagination does so only by grace. Second, and vitally, the Spirit mediates the presence of Father and Son as the very bond of their love in the light of the text. The Spirit, through the written Word, makes the Incarnate Word—who is the radiance of the Father—present to the reader. This is not an addition to the text, crucially. Rather, it is a realization of the text. Just as the story of a World War II veteran might “come alive” and take on new color when told by the veteran (even if it was read before!), so God’s personal presence—colored by the text—draws near through the Holy Spirit. This is why the Westminster catechism is right to say that the Holy Spirit’s witness alone by and with the text is sufficient to fully persuade and compel faith in Jesus Christ. The Spirit attunes the mind to indicia through the text, and with the text draws near to the reader in a way that fits the text. And in drawing near to us with the text, the Spirit incorporates us into that all-satisfying, ever-lasting, transfiguring love that characterizes the very life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Beale, G.K. The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004.
C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves. Arlington Heights, IL: Harvest Books, n.d.
Edwards, Jonathan. A Treatise Concerning The End for Which God Created the World. Vol. God’s Passion for His Glory. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.
———. The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Vol. 1. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2017.
Foster, John. The Divine Lawmaker: Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God. Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 2004.
Ganssle, Gregory. Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity press, 2017.
Hans Boersma. Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011.
Hoekma, Anthony. Created in God’s Image. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994.
Hume, David. David Hume: Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Hollywood, Flordia: Simon & Brown, 2011.
Jenson, Robert. Systematic Theology: The Triune God. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, n.d.
Keltner, Dacher, and Jonathan Haidt. “Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion.” Cognition and Emotion 17, no. 2 (2003): 297–314.
King, Jonathan. The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018.
Kruger, Michael. Canon Revisted: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. 1st ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.
Leithart, Peter. Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2015.
Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. New York, NY: HarperOne, 1944.
Meredith Kline. Images of the Spirit. E: Wipf and Stock, 1999.
Piper, John. A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016.
———. Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017.
Searle, John. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Vanhoozer, Kevin. First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002.
———. Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009.
———. Pictures as a Theological Exhibition: Scenes of the Church’s Worship, Witness, and Wisdom. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016.
Warfield, Benjamin. “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God.” The Princeton Theological Review 7 (1909): 219–325.
Biographical Note: Sean Luke is a Masters of Divinity student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His interests lie at the intersection between philosophy, systematic, and biblical theology. He is especially interested in the role of aesthetics in advancing theological thinking about the triune God.
Email: zsluke@tiu.edu
Postal Address: 1240 Kings Cross, West Chicago IL 60185
[1] 2 Peter 1:21
[2] Westminister Larger Catechism, Q.4
[3] Kevin Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002) 127-205. Vanhoozer argues for the term “communication” rather than “revelation,” as (so he claims) God does more than reveal himself. Scripture “warns”, “promises”, etcetera. But Vanhoozer’s assessment seems mistaken to me. The many illocutionary functions of Scripture are enfolded into God’s program of self-revelation. God gives warnings, promises, etcetera in order to reveal his glory in human life by restoring and renewing the divine image. Communication is not “more” than self-revelation; it is an act of self-revelation.
[4] The glory of God, in this paper, will denote God “making himself visible”; God’s glory is the display of his glorious character.
[5]For an extended defense of this thesis, see Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning The End for Which God Created the World, vol. God’s Passion for His Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012).
[6]Thus, I wholeheartedly affirm Sola Scriptura. For an extended treatment of the nature and formation of the canon, see Michael Kruger, Canon Revisted: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books, 1st ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012).
[7] Edwards 151
[8] John Piper, Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017).
[9] John Piper, A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016).
[10] Piper, Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture. 264
[11] Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009) 201-367.
[12]Vanhoozer draws heavily from Searle’s theory of speech acts, in which he outlines in more detail the definitions of “locution, illocution, and perlocution.” John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
[13] Kevin Vanhoozer, Pictures as a Theological Exhibition: Scenes of the Church’s Worship, Witness, and Wisdom (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016) 21.
[14] Romans 8:28
[15] Benjamin Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God,” The Princeton Theological Review 7 (1909): 219–325.
[16] Kruger, Canon Revisted: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books.
[17] Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology: The Triune God, vol. 1 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, n.d.) 64.
[18] G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004).
[19] Anthony Hoekma, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994).
[20] Gen 6 and 1 Pet 3
[21] Psalm 8
[22] Edwards, A Treatise Concerning The End for Which God Created the World, vol. God’s Passion for His Glory, p. .
[23] David Hume, David Hume: Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Hollywood, Flordia: Simon & Brown, 2011) I.iii.6.
[24]For an extended philosophical defense of this idea, see John Foster, The Divine Lawmaker: Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God (Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 2004).
[25] Peter Leithart, Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2015).
[26] Romans 1:21 and Psalm 19
[27] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2017) 122-142.
[28] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York, NY: HarperOne, 1944) 1-15.
[29] Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, “Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion,” Cognition and Emotion 17, no. 2 (2003): 297–314.
[30]For an extended treatment of and argument for a sacramental worldview, see Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011).
[31] Proverbs 9:10
[32] Meredith Kline, Images of the Spirit (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999).
[33] Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018) 88-140.
[34] We don’t see Chimpanzees or Dolphins engaging in conservation efforts!
[35] Gregory Ganssle, Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity press, 2017). 77-89
[36] Ibid. 33-41
[37] C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Arlington Heights, IL: Harvest Books, 1976). 71
[38] See Jonathan Edwards “Unpublished Essay on the Trinity”
[39] Ephesians 5:22-33
[40] Romans 1:18-32
[41] Romans 3:23
[42] 1 Corinthians 15:28
[43] Ephesians 4:18