The Belgic Confession, Article III: The Written Word of God

We confess that this Word of God was not sent nor delivered by the will of man, but that men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit, as the apostle Peter says; and that afterwards God, from a special care which He has for us and our salvation, commanded His servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit His revealed word to writing; and He Himself wrote with His own finger the two tables of the law. Therefore we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures. (BC, Article III)

In our last look at the Belgic Confession, we saw that God is made known to us through two primary means:  General Revelation and Special Revelation.  General revelation affirms that God exists and that he is powerful.  We then looked at four logical proofs for God’s existence that make use of some feature of general revelation.  We concluded, however, that general revelation provides just enough information to hang us.  Due to our fallen nature, we suppress the truth of general revelation either through outright denial or through distortion.

Thankfully God does not stop at general revelation.  He understands our predicament and condescends to reveal himself intimately through special revelation.  The bedrock of Christianity is that it is a revealed faith.  By that I mean that the content of our faith is revealed to us by God.  God does not leave it up for us to stumble around in the dark to discover the truth.  He realizes that in our fallen state we do not seek out nor understand spiritual truth (1 Corinthians 2:14).  Therefore if we’re to know anything about God that is beyond the scope of general revelation, God must reveal it to us.

The author of Hebrews opens his letter by saying, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Hebrews 1:1-2).  It is an article of faith that we believe and confess that God is in the business of revealing himself to us.  He has done so throughout human history in various ways culminating in the incarnation of his Son, Jesus Christ.  It is an article of faith ultimately because it cannot be proven beyond a shadow of doubt.  In other words, I cannot provide an iron-clad proof that will silence all doubters.

On the other hand, being an article of faith doesn’t make our belief groundless.  The old canard that faith is belief without proof is simply false.  Faith is based on a foundation of trust in someone or something.  For example, I have faith that the train that I am currently riding on will get me to my destination safely.  My faith is justified based on the level of trust I have in the safety record of the train company.  I would lose my faith in the train company if the rate of train accidents rose significantly over the past month; the trust upon which my faith is built would begin to crumble as the accident rate rose.

The Christian faith is also built on a foundation of trust in someone-namely, Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is the ground of our faith and he is proof that God has spoken to us.  We have four ‘biographies’ that describe in some detail the life of a man named Jesus of Nazareth.  These biographies make the claim that Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Jewish people.  The biographies also make the claim that Jesus was the Son of God.  These claims are attested to by his miracles and ultimately by his resurrection.  These biographies were written and compiled within the lifetimes of many who were witnesses to the events described within them, and the details of these biographies have stood the test of time against skeptics who seek to refute them.

If we can be reasonably certain that the men who wrote these biographies (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were honest men who reported accurately what they heard and saw, then we can be reasonably certain that the portrait of Jesus they paint is an accurate description of the man.  Now when it comes to trying to refute the gospels, the bulk of the arguments fall into the following three categories:

• Redaction – The four gospels were written after the fact and redacted to portray a Jesus who performed miracles and claimed to be God. In other words, they don’t reflect the ‘historical’ Jesus
• Collusion – The four gospel writers colluded to portray a ‘united front’ picture of Jesus. This explains the amazing amount of agreement amongst the synoptic gospels
• Pseudonymity – The four gospel writers who claimed to be original disciples or close associates of original disciples are really pseudonyms for later writers

What gives strength to these arguments is the belief that the gospels were written in either the 2^nd or 3^rd centuries AD; long after the facts they purport to describe.  If the gospels are 2^nd or 3^rd century works, then it becomes difficult, if not nigh impossible, to verify their contents.  No contemporaries of Jesus or the disciples would be alive to refute any of the gospel claims.  However, the bulk of conservative evangelical scholarship believes that the gospels (with the exception of John’s) were all written before 70 AD[1].  Depending on whom you read, either Mark or Matthew was written first with the date of first writing being as early as 50 AD.  Luke is generally believed to have been written before 62 AD as that is the time given for the Apostle Paul’s first imprisonment and the Acts of the Apostles ends with Paul’s first imprisonment.

The point being if the gospels were all written in the mid to late 1^st century, then arguments against their veracity begin to lose their strength.  First century dates completely demolish the redaction argument for the sole reason that they would not have withstood scrutiny of living witnesses to the events described.  For example, the gospels all claim that Jesus was crucified, died, buried and resurrected.  If there were any negative evidence to refute this claim, the gospels would have died a quick death.  Let’s consider a more recent example.  Suppose I believe that the Nazi Holocaust was a complete hoax and I write a book to that effect.  All it would take is a group of surviving holocaust victims to refute me.  However, the further removed I am from the actual events, the more successful I would be in making my claim.  The gospels were written within 20-30 years of the events they describe.  That is just not enough time for all the eye witnesses to have died off and legend to creep in.  The redaction argument fails.

What about the collusion argument?  This is where critics try to have it both ways.  Because of the similarities of the four gospels, the critics claim the authors colluded to get their stories straight.  However, since the gospels are sufficiently dissimilar, some critics claim they contradict one another.  You can’t have it both ways!  The gospels are not identical, but they do share some common material.  In other words, the gospels are similar enough to tell a unified story, but not too similar to warrant charges of collusion.  How do we defend this?  Some theories have been presented to support the common material of the gospels. 

One theory is the ‘Q’ theory (from the German Quelle for ’source’)[2].  As the theory goes, the ‘Q’ document is a hypothetical source document from which the material that is common Matthew and Luke was derived.  This theory presupposes that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their gospels.  However, there is material common to Matthew and Luke that is not found in Mark, hence the ‘Q’ document.  This theory seems to currently be the majority report among evangelical scholars.  The major weakness to this theory is the fact that ‘Q’ is hypothetical; no evidence has been found to substantiate the ‘Q’ document.

As far as the differences with the gospels (wording, ordering of material, etc.), it is clear that the individual writers have different purposes in writing their gospels.  When the gospels are described as biographies, they are not meant to be thought of as biographies in the modern day sense.  They are theological biographies.  What this means is that the overriding purpose of writing the gospels was to make a theological point, not simply tell about the life of a man named Jesus.  Furthermore, topical arrangement of material oftentimes trumps chronological arrangement.  Matthew was intentional about making the argument of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.  John was intentional about making the argument that Jesus was the Son of God.  These different purposes explain the differences found in the gospels.

Finally we have the argument for pseudonymity.  In other words, the authors of the gospels were not Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but some other people using these names to promote their work.  If the gospels were not written by whom we believe they were written by, then we have no reason to believe their contents.  However, the overwhelming evidence of church tradition affirms that the authors of the gospels were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Matthew would have been one of the Twelve as well as John who was also part of the ‘inner circle.’  Mark is the man named John Mark in the book of Acts who was a travelling companion of Paul.  It is believed that Mark also became a disciple of Peter and recorded his memoires; this is why many consider Mark ‘Peter’s Gospel.’  Finally Luke was a physician and historian who travelled with Paul.  His gospel was the result of meticulous research (Luke 1:1-4) and is believed to be the most historically accurate.  The weight of evidence is against pseudonymity.

There is one final thing regarding the reliability of the gospels I want to consider.  All of the disciples, along with Paul, died martyr’s deaths.  They went to their deaths precisely because of their beliefs, which none of them recanted even as they were facing death.  It is highly unlikely that someone would willingly face death for something they knew to be false.  We all know people who have martyred themselves for convictions that they believed to be true (e.g., Islamic terrorists).  That is a far cry from dying for something you know to be false; it makes no sense.  Furthermore, who colludes to concoct a belief system that would lead to persecution and martyrdom?  I can certainly believe someone creating a lie for personal gain, but not martyrdom.  The bottom line in all this is that when taken together, the arguments in favor of the gospels being reliable and accurate are stronger than the arguments against.

This lengthy introduction on the reliability of the gospels serves to give credence to Christianity being a revealed faith.  The line of argument is as follows:  If the gospels are reliable, then one can conclude that the rest of the Bible is reliable and accurate.  The rest of this article will now focus on the process of inspiration and transmission, which is what Article III of the Belgic Confession is all about.

We confess that this Word of God was not sent nor delivered by the will of man, but that men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit, as the apostle Peter says.  The first part of Article III deals with the issue of inspiration.  Precisely how did God communicate his divine word to man?  We’re going to look at two Bible passages that talk about inspiration.  The first is 2 Timothy 3:16, which reads, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”  What this verse teaches is that the Bible (“All Scripture”) is ‘breathed out’ by God.  Theologians call this divine inspiration, but this is really a misnomer.  More accurately, this should be called divine expiration.  God literally spoke out his word.  Staying with the traditional nomenclature, there are several different understandings of inspiration.  One understanding sees God as only inspiring the thoughts, not the individual words (e.g., God inspired Paul to write about love, so he penned 1 Corinthians 13).  Another understanding sees only certain parts of the Bible as inspired (i.e., accepting the acceptable parts and rejecting the objectionable parts).  The third view sees every word of the Bible is inspired by God; this view is called verbal, plenary inspiration, and is the view of orthodox Christianity.

OK, so we know that the Bible is ‘breathed out’ by God, but how did God’s word get to man?  Does verbal, plenary inspiration essentially mean divine dictation?  This is where the second passage sheds some light.  The Apostle Peter (referenced in the Confession) wrote, “Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).  Going back to the passage in Hebrews quoted above, we know that God spoke to us in various times in history and through various means.  We see incidents of direct, divine communication such as God speaking directly to Moses or the other OT prophets.  We also see God communicating through dreams, such as Joseph and Daniel.  But by and large, the most common way in which God speaks to us is indirectly through the written word.  Even the cases of direct, divine communication were eventually recorded.

What Peter teaches us is that the motivation for Biblical authors to write Scripture came from being ‘carried along’ by the Holy Spirit.  To adequately know how divine inspiration works, we need to know what is meant by being ‘carried along by the Holy Spirit.’  The phrase in 2 Peter 1:21 “as they were carried along” is one word in the original Greek, pheromenoi, which is the participial form of the verb phero.  This word essentially means “to carry, to bear, or to bring.”  It is actually used twice in this verse:  “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”  In other words, the Bible is not the product of human wisdom and creativity.  To be sure, men wrote the Bible, but as noted earlier the motivation did not originate in man. 

One of the uses of phero is to speak of a ship being ‘carried along’ by the wind.  I believe that is the sense in which it is being used in the phrase ‘carried along by the Holy Spirit.’  The Scriptures did not originate in the will of men, but the human authors of Scripture were acted upon (the verb is in the passive voice) by the Holy Spirit.  Like a breeze that moves a sailboat along the sea, the Holy Spirit[3] carried the authors of Scripture along, guiding and directing the process by which the Scriptures were written.  It a nutshell then, divine inspiration is the process by which the Holy Spirit acts upon the divinely chosen authors of Scripture in order to produce writings which convey the very words God has chosen to communicate.

It is important to note that inspiration is not divine dictation.  God did not sit the Apostle Paul down and say “Paul, write this down.”  I would even hazard a guess that often times the authors of Scripture didn’t realize they were divinely inspired.  Another thing to note is divine inspiration doesn’t only refer to actual writings of the authors.  By that I mean a divinely inspired author might actually be a divinely inspired editor.  For example, while Moses ‘wrote’ the Pentateuch, he didn’t write it in its final form.  The Holy Spirit would have also superintended the redaction and editorial process.  Finally, it is important to note that the authors themselves are not inspired, but their writings.  I am certain that Paul wrote more than 13 letters;[4] however, only those 13 letters were divinely inspired.

And that afterwards God, from a special care which He has for us and our salvation, commanded His servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit His revealed word to writing; and He Himself wrote with His own finger the two tables of the law. Therefore we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures.  The last half of Article III discusses the topic of transmission.  We know that God inspired the authors of Scripture to communicate his word to men.  As the Confession says, God commanded his servants to write these divinely inspired communications down for all generations.  In the OT, God specifically commanded his prophets to ‘write the vision’ down (e.g., Jeremiah 22:30; Ezekiel 24:2).  These writings have been preserved through the centuries by God’s providence.  There have been so many attempts throughout human history where people and governments hostile to Christianity (i.e., controlled by Satan) have sought to wipe Christianity and the Bible from the face of the earth.  Yet here we stand in the 21^st century and not only is Christianity one of the three major religions of the world, but the Bible is the best-selling book of all time!

There is a phrase from the Confession I want to focus on:  From a special care which he has for us and our salvation.  This is the personal side of God.  As mentioned at the top of this article, God understands our predicament.  He not only understands that we do not inherently seek after him, but that without him we have no hope for salvation.  The Scriptures, aside from being God’s self-revelation to us, is the story of creation, fall, rescue and redemption.  This book of collected writings from over 40 different authors spanning a time period of 1,500 years tells one unified story of redemption-God’s plan of restoration after the fall.  God loves us and he wants us to know how we can be redeemed.  That is the story of Scripture!  Until next time.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!!!

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[1] See The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg for a scholarly treatment of this issue.  For a more popular treatment, see The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

[2] Ibid.

[3] It is no accident that the Greek word for ‘Spirit’ (pneuma) means ‘wind.’

[4] In fact, reading the two Corinthian letters we can surmise that he wrote at least four letters to that church.