The Authority and Usefulness of the Word of God
This is the sixth and the last in the exposition series of 2 Timothy 3:14-17. For a recap of the earlier parts:
Navigating Adversity in Pastoral Leadership: From Christendom to Missional Ministry
Equipped by the Word: The Man of God’s Response to Adversity and Leadership Challenges
Let us revisit our central question:
In what way the word of God can make you, a man or woman of God perfect, complete, and thoroughly equipped for every good work?
Our first response is, "God can make you perfect, complete, and thoroughly equipped if you continue to study His word.”
Our second response is God can make you perfect, complete, and thoroughly equipped if you are convinced that only the word of God can make you wise.
Now for our third and last reply:
God can make you perfect, complete, and thoroughly equipped if you are certain about the authority and usefulness of the word of God.
In another version, instead of usefulness, they translated it as “profitable”. However, due to the popularity of the anti-free market mentality, better to stick with the word “useful” to prevent the implication that the word of God is being commercialized.
I will not go into the details of the usefulness of the Bible. Instead, I want to explore the relationship between its usefulness and its authority.
2 Timothy 3:16 is considered an exegetically sound New Testament text that gives us the basis for the doctrine of biblical authority based on the phrase “God-breathed.”
While preparing this message, I happened to stumble upon a new take on this text by Jeremy Myers. Before giving his interpretation, he mentioned four factors that made him decide to come up with a new translation and interpretation. He translated "theopneustos" not as “God-breathed” but as “whispering”. He also does not like the word “inspired”. He suggests to make it “inspiring” instead. What puzzles me is that based on his translation, he concluded that the Scripture is the voice or the breath of God. I have no problem with that conclusion for biblical exegete like Warfield arrived at the same conclusion without becoming too “creative” in his translation. The major difference between Myers and Warfield is that for the former you cannot use this text as a basis to argue for the authority or origin of the Bible, only its function, usefulness, and purpose. For Warfield, authority is basic to purpose and usefulness.
Authority is the second attribute of the Bible based on the Westminster Standards. In the book The Hoax of Higher Criticism published in 1989, Gary North gave us a critical examination of the methods and assumptions underlying the higher criticism of the Bible. Though we cannot cover all the details of North’s arguments, I think the following points are enough to provide us with a general overview of the author’s evaluation of Higher Criticism:
Higher criticism seeks to investigate the origins, authorship, and historical context of biblical texts, often questioning their traditional interpretations and divine inspiration.
North acknowledged a place for an evangelical response to Higher Criticism in the division of intellectual labor for Christian scholars who are linguistically skilled and equipped to defend the integrity of the Bible. However, he did not think that such a task deserves a priority in Christian scholarship.
North is convinced “that the single greatest failure of modern anti-critical Bible scholars is the acceptance of the humanists' timetables.” To correct this failure, North claims that “a great deal of research” must be done “on the chronology of the Pentateuch – not on when Moses wrote” it, but on what was going on in the surrounding nations at the time of the exodus.” He believes that there is a need to reconstruct “ancient chronology, one based on the presupposition that the Bible gives us the authoritative primary source documents, not Egypt or Babylon.” Accomplishing this project “would keep a lot of linguistical skilled scholars productively busy for several generations.”
For over a century, Higher Criticism has been successful in achieving its goal of undermining biblical authority. The sad thing is that even most theological seminaries including the evangelicals are now embracing the view of higher critics regarding the origin of the Bible.
Higher criticism is not purely about biblical scholarship, but a vital part of the intellectual and the socio-political climate of the day. As such, “higher criticism is fundamentally flawed and driven by ideological biases rather than objective scholarship.”
Closely related to the foregoing, Higher Criticism is “part of a broader cultural and intellectual trend that seeks to diminish the role of Christianity in public life.”
Interestingly, North claims that the intellectual foundation of Higher Criticism did not originate in German scholarship of the 19th century. Instead, it was English Deism of the late 17th to late 18th centuries that laid such a foundation.
The history of Higher Criticism is not properly understood if one fails to grasp the ethical nature of the intellectual conflict of the day.
Understanding such conflict, hostility to the Old Testament, and the role of hermeneutics are very important.
Why such hostility? North narrates that “it was the Old Testament . . . that offered guidance about king and state, about a commonwealth organized under divine statutes, about law and property, about war, about ritual and ceremony, about priesthood, continuity and succession.”
How about the role of hermeneutics in politics? All the identified issues have been controversial since the day of the Reformers. As such, these issues “generated deep differences in biblical interpretation.” The assumption that the Bible was authoritative “stimulated new notions about its own nature.” “It was because men sought answers to problems of life and society, as well as of thought and belief, that the Bible stimulated 'critical' modes of understanding itself.”
- Lastly, North attacks “the presuppositions of higher critics, such as their reliance on naturalism, their dismissal of supernatural events, and their tendency to read the Bible through a secular lens.”
Conclusion
Amidst adversity and in contrast to evil men and impostors that will go from bad to worse, a man of God finds the antidote both to unsound doctrine and moral decline that threatens the church by continuing or by remaining faithful in the study of God’s word, by maintaining his conviction that only the word of God can make him wise, and by being certain about the authority and usefulness of the Sacred Writings for he believes that only the word of God can make him complete, perfect, and thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Reference
North, Gary. 1989. The Hoax of Higher Criticism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics).