Authority of Scriptures as God's Word. Article 2 Part 1

We believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God and the only rule of faith and practice (Article 2). God has spoken to his people, and they have kept his words for us to keep and pass to the next generation. The Bible is the written record that God has given us to know the truth and is therefore the final standard by which we judge every thought or act. This second article states how we prove all the other beliefs we hold, so we should carefully consider how we prove that it is true. The Scriptures that have been handed down to us through the generations in the Primitive Baptist Church as the Bible are the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments and for our place and time translated into English as the King James Authorized Version.

The first point is that these Scriptures are the word of God. As stated in Article 1, we have a personal relationship with God when he regenerates us into spiritual life and reveals himself to us vitally. Our ability to recognize the words in the Bible as his words is possible because he has taught us to know him. See John 6:41-47. When the Jews in this passage looked at Jesus, they simply saw a man that was the son of Joseph and Mary. What Jesus was saying is that in order for men to see Jesus as more than just a man, as the Bread of God given for the life of the world, they have to be taught by God himself. Likewise, without being born of the Spirit, man can only see another book that is written by men when they look at the Bible. But by the grace of God, those who are drawn and taught by God can see the Bible as precious and true because they tell us of the will of God and how we have eternal life.

Jesus is the Truth (John 14:6), so his words carry all authority. When we validate this Bible as the truth, it must be validated on its own terms, else we must look to some more authoritative source to ground our knowledge. If God didn’t provide the means to validate his word in his word, then we don’t have enough information to know the truth and the whole enterprise of arguing is a useless and meaningless endeavor. But he has given us enough validation.

We must recognize the lack of neutrality on this matter. Every notion I have about God—his nature and character—is informed by this Bible. Therefore, if I were to validate this Bible without referencing this Bible (presupposing its truth), I would have contradicted it by appealing to something else that is actually more authoritative. Also please notice that when someone asks us to justify the Bible based on a “neutral” reasoning, they are not being neutral. We should ask them to give us the ultimate standard by which we should judge the text and see if they can justify their ultimate standard without referencing itself. They can’t. At the ultimate level, they will be relying on their own individual human judgement or on some other arbitrary proposition that we must accept as self-evident. If anyone says something is true without depending on what God says, they contradict the Bible and are therefore not neutral. You have to choose one horse or another from the beginning: either your own human mind is the standard or God’s word is. I will stand on the Bible as the ultimate standard of truth and put that up against any other standard in its ability to make sense of reason, morality, and other realities that we know.

 The Bible is proven to be true, because without it, knowledge is impossible. That is, if someone denies the truth of the Bible, they know no foundational truth that can prove anything without being arbitrary or meaningless.

The second point is that it’s our only rule of faith and practice. Christ established a spiritual kingdom on this earth to worship him. John 4:24, John 18:36, Luke 12:21. He set the example for us by appealing to the scriptures as having authority to settle every question. Paul commended the Bereans in Acts 17 as being noble for comparing his preaching to the scriptures. Every believer must test the words of elders and whoever has authority with the teachings of scripture. Those who are wise and know the Scriptures have an ability and responsibility to teach the sense and the meaning of the Scriptures, but there is no tradition or declaration made by men that equals the authority of the Scriptures. Every truth we need to affirm and every practice we need to keep in the church is established in the Scriptures. 2 Tim 3:16-17, and 2 Pe 1:3. This means that the revelation we were given in Scripture is perfect and complete. So, if a church practices anything that isn’t taught and regulated by God’s word, it is denying the scriptural teaching that God’s revelation delivered in the first generation of the church is perfect. This also means that to some extent or another, teaching or practicing it will hurt the church and diminish her witness in this world.

We feel the power of God’s words in our hearts because we have a vital knowledge of God, but to prove all our verbal, falsifiable, propositional beliefs (which are what articles of faith are), we rely on the text spoken by God.