We may define ‘authority’ simply in this way: Authority is a relational word. ‘It is the right to rule’, or more fully, ‘Authority is the right and power to command belief and/or action.’ Where it is accepted, authority is acknowledged by compliance and conformity. Without the right or permission to rule being granted, power becomes despotic and dangerous. Without the power to exercise it, authority becomes ineffectual and weak. Both power and authority are ultimately derived from God.
 
As Christians we believe that God has the right to determine what we are to believe and how we are to live and that furthermore, he has delegated both power and authority to men to enable them to operate in many spheres under his jurisdiction in order to bring about his will, the visible manifestation of his kingly rule. These areas would include such spheres as those that concern the authority of a husband in the home, of parents over their children, of the State over a nation, of teachers in a school and of the leaders in a church.
 
Governing the actions and conduct of all of these authoritative agents, working as they are by God’s appointment, direction and final control, should be the authority of God himself speaking in his Word. This is the Authority of Scripture. Without this, authority tends to become authoritarian. Authoritarianism appears when the submission demanded cannot be justified in terms of truth or morality. Scriptural truth alone warrants and sets proper limits to the exercise of legitimate authority – or as the apostles put it in a situation of tension involving the tyrannical governments of their day, ‘Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’ sight to obey you rather than God.’ (Acts 4:20)
 
But the matter of the Authority of Scripture itself arouses considerable contention and debate today. It would be no exaggeration to say that it is almost completely ignored in formerly Christian societies like America and Europe, largely because it has been significantly attacked and eroded within the Church itself in these nations.
 
For those of us in Newfrontiers, seen as both as local churches and as a movement, the conviction needs to be continually recovered and carefully maintained that Holy Spirit renewal and revival as well as Church reformation and restoration, cannot be long sustained without at the same time recovering and sustaining our belief in the Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, in the way that the Scriptures themselves define those terms. To us, it is plain that God does not primarily exercise authority in the direct fashion of speaking to us by his Spirit in prophecy and other leadings; he has supremely created for us a Book, the Bible. Because the Bible conveys his message, it carries the same weight God himself would command if he were speaking to us personally. It is where his voice is heard with the greatest clarity and the greatest authority. This can be said of nothing else, not even the gift of New Testament prophecy which is a mixed phenomenon of the human and the divine and requires testing in a way that the Holy Scriptures do not.
 
As Calvinists we share so much in common with other streams of Christianity. We affirm the doctrine of the Trinity, salvation by the atoning blood of Christ, the Creation as God’s handiwork, the availability of the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit and so on. But one of the great distinctives of the Reformed faith is its vigorous adherence to Scripture. Of course we hold in common with many other evangelicals, belief in the full inspiration, infallibility, authority and inerrancy or scripture. But the Reformed tend to give it a prominence and priority lacking in many other systems.
 
We hold that our view of God and our faith in general is utterly dependent on the Bible, hence the priority of the Bible among us. It is foundational to our belief and practice.
 
Our foundation is not religious experience for that can be dangerously subjective even deceiving, and tends to set too much store by private revelation.
 
Nor is it based upon human reason. Indeed we mistrust reason given man’s fallen and frail nature and the moral culpability that causes men to ‘hold down the truth in unrighteousness’ as Paul puts it (Rom. 1:18ff), suppressing its claims and implications because they are unjust and in sin.
 

We are equally wary of human tradition, even religious tradition,
because it tends, according to Jesus (Mk 7:8), to be so valued above the living word of God so as to eventually supplant it in the loyalties of men. Tradition is often transmitted by and filtered through the biases of sinful men and thus becomes ‘traditionalism’ – ‘Tradition is the living faith of those now dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of those now living.’ The Church is not our authority, nor do we submit finally to the authority of any individual within it. We have higher authority than that.
 
The Bible, by contrast, is God’s word, given by him, protected and preserved by him, and still speaking for him. Its final truth and its complete authority, finally depend on the fact that it has been given to us by God. Any of the subsequent investigations, discoveries or affirmations of men do not confirm this, for that would be to concede to mere men an authority on a par with or superior to, the authority of God himself. Instead we presuppose the existence of God and the fact that he has, as he himself has claimed, spoken to us in his Word. It would be an amazing arrogance on man’s part to insist that either God or his word stand in need of any verification other than the verification they both already possess by reason of their nature, and confirmed by the internal witness of the Holy Spirit himself, at work in the hearts of believing men and women.
 
The Westminster Confession summarises this admirably:
 
‘The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (Who is the truth itself), the author thereof; and therefore it is to be believed because it is the Word of God.’ (Section IV)
 
It is not that we deny or neglect the writings, spoken utterances of men or the fruits of the theological enterprise, past or present. Nor do we devalue the more ‘subjective’ leadings, promptings or God-given insights of men in the spiritual realm. But rather that we assert that whatever light they contain derives from the activity of the Holy Spirit himself who never speaks in contradiction of His word, and that such insights, whenever genuine, flow from a saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word, and that also every purported gift of the Spirit must be tested by its accordance with and submission to the written word of God. The Westminster Confession is again helpful here:
 
‘The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions, of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits (or revelations), is to be the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture.’ (Section X)
 
Because of this high view of the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the Reformed faith maintains a truly ‘catholic’ orientation and utility of Scripture i.e. we believe that the Bible has a universal jurisdiction and application in all times, all places and all cultures, and that it has supreme authority over all of our beliefs, behaviour and practice. God’s word is to govern the totality of our lives, so that nothing remains unaffected by its influence and government. Cornelius Van Til expressed our position admirably when he said, ‘The Scripture is infallible on every upon which it speaks, and it speaks on everything.’
 
The Bible is not just a ‘salvationist’ book, in terms only of its relevance to the beginnings of the Christian life, it is a manual for the whole of our subsequent life; for politics, law, culture, economics, family, school, church, work and much more. It is designed to sanctify all of life, for all of life is meant to be sacred i.e. sanctified or set apart for God’s glory. The Bible, in keeping with Hebrew thought in general, rather than Greek thinking, is not dualistic about life. It rejects the sacred-secular distinction so prevalent in modern Western thought. To it, there is nothing secular except sin. In giving us a Bible God intended that it’s goal be no less than to act as the primary tool of dominion for the people of God in the subjugation and sanctification of the whole of our life to God’s glory.
 
Any attempt then to limit the authority and relevance of the Bible in terms of its scope or jurisdiction, is an attempt to limit God and His dominion. It is to declare some parts of life ‘off limits’ to the Creator, and to usurp them as the private domain of man and his autonomous reason. This was of course the explicit agenda of the philosophical Enlightenment of the 18th century onwards and of the Deism that gave birth to it. But our faith cannot be boxed into some corner of creation in this way; and nor can our God!
 
Our religion is not a privatised affair confined in the narrow box of Sunday morning piety, while the rest of the cosmos is shared out among scientists, politicians and entrepreneurs who alone have jurisdiction in these realms. On the contrary, Christ claims jurisdiction over all of life, and both mandates and equips His people to engage with Him in that task of dominion primarily through the instrumentality of knowing and obeying his infallible world deposited in Scripture. The Bible is not a church book, it is God’s Book for all of life – church, state, school, business, family, arts, sciences, health care and man’s total well-being.
 
It intrudes into and breaks up the vaunted autonomy of man because it not only denies that man is a god, it insists that only God is God, and that he alone has claims on the totality of man’s life and will judge all attempts adopt a stance in rebellion against this, ‘For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?’ (I Cor. 1:19-20).
 
It is to be expected that unbelievers would try to attempt and ignore this word of God, but tragic when we find that even believers show alarming tendencies to ignore or deny the authority of this word and show an unwillingness to read, understand and submit to it.
 
Now, our doctrine of Scripture is, in common with all other doctrines essential to the faith, derived from Scripture itself. It does not require the philosophical seal of approval from men, no matter how devout or able they may be. For us, whatever God says is truth, for God is truth itself. He cannot lie. There are two classic places in the epistles of Paul where that doctrine is laid out clearly in all of its essentials.
 
1. I Corinthians 2:6-16 and
2. II Timothy 3:10 – 4:2. The first from an epistle written very early on in Paul’s Apostolic Ministry, the second from the very end of that ministry when Paul was facing imminent death. The consistency is amazing.
 
I Corinthians 2:6-16

By the inspiration of scripture, we mean that supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit upon the scriptural writers which rendered their writings an accurate record of the revelation or which resulted in what they wrote actually being the Word of God. This passage is one of the most important passages in the NT with regard to the relationship between the HS and the Word, resulting in the production of Holy Scripture. This passage is also one of the clearest we find anywhere in scripture detailing the process by which this result came about. It is fascinating that it occurs in a broader context discussing the contrast between God’s wisdom and human folly. We may base our religious convictions on only two alternatives: human speculative philosophy and divine revelation, sometimes a curious mixture of both. But we are not left to depend on the emptiness and only relative value of human philosophy, since God is a God of revelation. He has given to his people a ‘wisdom’ (Sophia) that is far superior to that which can be obtained from merely human resources. Three things about this wisdom:
 
1. It is for the Mature (v.6) – Gk. Teleios, ‘the spiritually mature’; it is not for the unregenerate or mere babes in Christ who need milk not solid food. It is a childish or carnal thing to engage in when we dispute the wisdom of scripture.
 
2. It is from God (v.7a) – and so was long hidden to the unaided intellects of men. It is not a passing fashion in philosophy nor is it the world’s accumulated wisdom. Its source is entirely from God, secret unless revealed. And so we do not allow competitors or rivals, let alone imagined successors to be placed alongside of it in terms of its authority.

 
3. It is for our Glory (v.7b) – Gk. Doxa, for our ‘eschatological glorification’, dealing not just with the beginnings of the Christian life in justification, but the ongoing process of sanctification culmination in eternity at our glorification. There is a difference between our evangelistic message in winning converts and our Christian nurture of those same converts, between our kerugma and our didache. It is a serious thought that our spiritual development may be retarded or even halted by finding ourselves at odds with the teaching of Scripture.
 
The understanding of God’s total purpose for our lives individually and corporately can only come by revelation. The necessity of that revelation is spoken of in v.9 using a loose translation of Isaiah 64:4. It tells us of the completely inaccessible nature of this information to the unaided human intellect. It is
• Invisible – no eye has ever seen it
• Inaudible – no ear has heard it
• Inconceivable – no mind has ever imagined it. So that it cannot be grasped by either scientific investigation or poetic imagination. It is beyond human speculation and inquiry altogether.
 
That is why it has to be revealed. But what the eye, the ear and the mind cannot conceive, God can reveal to all three faculties by his Spirit (v.10). The rest of the passage explains the process. We can put it under four phases each connected with the work of the Holy Spirit.
 
1. Investigation – The Searching Spirit (v.10-11): Since our little minds cannot fathom the infinite mind of God we need the assistance of Someone who can. Only a Person can search out the thoughts of another person, so the Spirit is personal. Just as you alone have access to your own mind and know to some degree what is going on in it, so the Spirit of God has complete access to God’s mind and is prepared to ‘search the depths’ of God on our behalf, and disclose them to his chosen prophets and apostles like Paul, so that they could be disclosed to others in Scripture. The word ‘search out’ here was used of customs officials who rummaged through the bags of travellers at border crossings. And the ‘deep things’ was a word hijacked form Gnostic terminology boasting of an elite knowledge of divine things. Only God’s Holy Spirit has that knowledge. The Holy Spirit is God who alone can explore and fathom the depths of the mind of the infinite God. He alone has access to the ‘things’ of God, for He is God.
 
2. Revelation – the Revealing Spirit (v.12): What the Holy Spirit finds out he wants to make known. He has done this with the Apostles (the ‘we’ who both ‘received’ and ‘understood’ this data as it was revealed to them). God gave them both salvation, and the ability to understand that salvation in all of its fullness and vast implications. Paul’s understanding is a wonderful illustration. He had a personal revelation of the Saviour on the Damascus Road, and in the years following he saw the meaning of such things as the Cross, the Resurrection, the two age eschatology, faith, baptism, the giving of the Spirit, the two Adams, sanctification, the future resurrection and glorification of believers, the Parousia etc. All of this wonderful doctrine, and more, came to him from the Spirit.
 
3. Inspiration – The Inspiring Spirit (v.13a): That same Spirit then enabled him to ‘speak’ and ultimately to write these things for their accurate preservation and transmission to others. There is a chain of transmission from God to the Spirit, from the Spirit to the Apostles, and from the Apostles to others in the pages of the New Testament. Inspiration is thus verbal and supernatural. It is ‘Spiritual truths’ in ‘Spiritual words’. The inspiration was not left to chance, but actually involved the very words the Apostles chose, to communicate what they had seen and heard. This is essential because words matter and they must be used precisely for meaning to be conveyed accurately to others.

 
This was not a process of dictation, for the human personalities of the authors were preserved intact rather than bypassed in the process of inspiration,. This was an organic or concursive rather than coercive operation, employing the faculties, thought patterns, characters and vocabulary of the human agents. The result was that the literally style and particular theological emphasis of each author were preserved not destroyed in the process of inspiration. They even did their own historical researches and edited their own literary sources (Lk. 1:1-4). Yet the Holy Spirit spoke through each author according to their particular literary genre, and this is to be understood according to the plain natural meaning of the words used in the unique historical context and peculiar circumstances and intention of the writer.
 
 
So verbal inspiration means:
 
a. Not that ‘every word is literally true’ – for there are at least 20 kinds of literature in the Bible (history, poetry, prophecy, apocalyptic, letters, proverbs etc) and we must interpret their words accordingly.
 
b. Not that every text is true apart form its context – for false statements are quoted in the Bible in order to highlight the truth contrasted with that (e.g. Job).
 
c. Not that its words were dictated by God – As though the Biblical writes were mere amanuenses, their experience, personalities and gifts totally bypassed and their agency was limited to that of mere reportage of God’s word. The Scriptures themselves indicate a more concursive operation of man and God combined, such that the unique identities of the human authors is conspicuous in the books attributed to them, but that they were preserved from error in that special role.
 
d. But that what God spoke through the human authors, correctly interpreted is true. This means that the Scriptures are thus infallible in their inspiration, in that it can never deceive us for it is the God of truth who speaks in its pages. Second that its inspiration is clearly verbal in the sense we have explained it, and finally inspiration is therefore plenary or full, inspired in its entirety by God so that whatever the authors intended to say and teach – on history, on ethics, on cosmology, on origins – is all covered by inspiration and is as a consequence, inerrant or infallible.
 

Which brings me to the fourth and last operation of the Spirit spoken of here.
 
4. Illumination – The Enlightening Spirit (v.13b-16)
We are not left to ourselves in the attempt to understand what the Apostle and others have written in Scripture. The Spirit works at both ends, in the writers and in the readers. NIV footnote to v.13b says ‘interpreting spiritual truths to spiritual men’ as an alternative translation to ‘expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words’, and therefore connection with the doctrine of illumination not inspiration, v.14 ff not v13a. The verb sugkrino meaning ‘to combine’ can mean ‘to explain’ or ‘to interpret;, and ‘spiritual truths’ (pneumatikois) can mean ‘spiritual men’ – hence ‘explaining spiritual things/truths to spiritual men’ i.e. ‘those who possess the Spirit’. Revelation and Inspiration are to be distinguished from Illumination in this way. Revelation and Inspiration removes the veil over objective realities placed by God before the mind of man so that he sees and understands what he sees. Illumination removes the blindfold on the eyes of others yet to be caught up with such things and that prevents them from understanding what has already been revealed to his apostles. It conveys subjective insight and understanding to them.
 
This section teaches that God illuminates our minds as we read the Scriptures so that we may understand them. And this is said to be a privilege inaccessible to the unspiritual or unregenerate man (or psuchikos), who does not have the Spirit (v.14). He regards such things as both ‘foolish’ and ‘incomprehensible’. But this is a primarily a moral blindness and incapacity in the first instance, and a culpable one at that, a work of the flesh. This fact goes a long way to explains the natural man’s resistance to the authority and sufficiency of scripture in the quest or pursuit of truth, particularly in the ethical sphere.
 
It is the man with the Spirit (the pneumatikos) v.15, the born-again believer, who, in dependence on the Spirit, can discern and evaluate things and make proper sense of them. In this way, in submission to the Scriptures, the spiritual man can bring their authority to bear on ‘all things’, assessing and discerning truth and error, right and wrong in all spheres without regard to the artificial boundaries or limits falsely imposed by special interest groups, since nothing is off limits to or segregated from God. God is intrusive in the whole of life and
we need to take note that He makes his will known through the intervention, active agency and involvement of his people (v.15-16).
 
This fact does not guarantee our omniscience, or our infallibility, but it does grant us the right to be heard, insofar as we accurately interpret and apply scripture to each given situation – scientific, political, philosophical, social and moral, and thus bring to bear ‘the mind of Christ’ on that issue. The issue of Spiritual Authority for the believer then, lies in a coalition of the objective and subjective work of eth Holy Spirit in relation to Scripture. The objective Word, the written, inspired Scripture, together with the subjective word, the inner illumination and conviction of the Holy Spirit, constitute the authority for the Christian.
 
2. II Timothy 3:10 – 4:2
 
It is fascinating to see clearly here the evidence for what we call the sufficiency of scripture. Alongside all attempts of fallen and sinful man to deny or denigrate the inspiration, infallibility and authority of scripture, sin finds its greatest anger poured out in reaction to this issue in particular.
 
Wayne Grudem defines the sufficiency of Scripture in this way,
 
‘The sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contained all the words God intended for his people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that it now contains everything we need God to tell us for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly.’ (‘Systematic Theology ’ p.127) Only in scripture are we authorized to find the words God has spoken to us, and those words are enough for us. All other beneficial words are but the explication and reflection of those words.
 
In 2 Tim. 3:15 Scripture is said to be able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, so that in Scripture alone is to be found the words we need to hear in order to be saved. And similarly, we need nothing more than scripture to equip us for living the Christian life wisely and ethically pleasing to God, which is only another way of saying the living of all of our life. For here alone is the source of the tools to achieve the goal that the man or woman of God may be equipped for every good work. It is that important. Scripture is not inadequate but sufficient at every point. If there is any good work God has intended us to do, then God has made provision for our training to do it, here in his word. These ‘good works’ are not just religious activities performed in congregational life, they are everyday activities performed in all of life.
 
 
This is vitally important, because for several generations there has been, for the most part amongst evangelicals an abject failure to think broadly and holistically about life in a radically biblical way. We have accepted that what ‘is’ is equivalent to what ‘ought’ to be. We too readily accept the status quo, and marry the spirit of the age. Sometimes it shows up in a lively pietism that makes much of worship and charismatic life but seems either compromised with the world or ghettoised and cut off from that world. Other times it manifests in a ‘dead orthodoxy’ that is strong on doctrine but has little or no impact on life in the world, so that it considers itself irrelevant to its media, social activities or parliamentary legislation. Here Paul wants us to be both. Paul saw no such dualism between thought and action. Here he refers to their relationship. He wants us to be aware of two aspects of his ministry:
 
1) ‘My teaching’ (v.10) – and so become Radical Thinkers, and
 
2) ‘My way of life’ (v.10) -and so become Radical Livers as well, because both are to be derived from scripture in its wide scope of authority over the whole of life. God’s word affects the whole of life and society for the better. Historically this has always been the aim of our forefathers in the Reformed faith, from Calvin’s Geneva, to the Scotland of Knox; from the Puritan revolution under Cromwell in the 17th Century, to the founding principles of America in the 18th Century; from the work of Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle in London to the mighty influence of Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper in Holland, at the end of the 19th Century. Kuyper is particularly interesting. Abraham Kuyper (19th C. theologian, university founder, college principal, founder of national newspaper and eventually Prime Minister of Holland’ “It is sad to see how even the theology of the Reformed churches has in so many a country come under the sway of wholly foreign systems. But at all events, theology is only one of the many sciences that demand biblical treatment. Philosophy, Psychology, Aesthetics, Law, the Social Sciences, Literature and even the medical and natural sciences, each and all of these…go back to principles, and of necessity the question must be put with more penetrating seriousness than hitherto, whether the …principles that reign in the present method of each of the sciences are in agreement with the principles of the Bible, or are at variance with there very essence.” (‘Lectures on Calvinism’ p. 194)
 
Of course to become invasive and intrusive in this way will not be easy (v. 11-13). It will invite criticism and physical persecution.
 
But Paul knows that such ‘salty’ and ‘light bearing’ witness, both arresting the progress of decay in the world and positively expelling and supplanting the darkness is exactly what the Scriptures themselves mandate us to do. Paul then makes three vital assertions concerning Scripture, which should for us become three vital assumptions. With the Apostle Paul himself, we believe and therefore assume in all of our thinking three vital convictions.
 
1. v.16a Confidence in the Bible’s Inspiration and Inerrancy – it’s ORIGIN
2. v.16b Confidence in the Bible’s Authority – It’s PURPOSE
3. v.17 Confidence in the Bible’s Sufficiency – It’s APPLICATION
 

Inspiration -These verses do not discuss the question of the inspiration of the Bible directly, they mention it in passing, en route as it were to another goal, namely, the use of the scriptures in ministerial life. This makes Paul’s comments all the more powerful. He simply assumes their authority without debate or further discussion.
 
The scriptures are useful because God breathed them (Gk. ‘Theopneustos’). This term denotes the fact that they are ex-pired, or ‘breathed out’ and spoken forth by God, as much his Word as if God had physically spoken them audibly in our presence. What Scripture says, God says. As such they are ‘holy’ (v.15) – the Greek term hieros means ‘that which is peculiarly associated with God’, therefore utterly unique, possessing a peculiar origin and a special power. They thus have the power to do four things which we now consider under the heading, ‘Their authority’.
 
Authority – Since the scriptures are God’s revelation to man they carry clout, or the ability to command belief and obedience from him. Specifically they equip the minister to teach, reprove, correct and train or disciple God’s people in the way of righteousness. (1) To teach (didaskalian) – means to set the norms for faith and life (2) To rebuke (elegmon) – means to challenge erring Christians effectively and bring about conviction of wrong; (3) To correct, – means ‘to set up straight again (epanorthosin), to put is back on our feet ready for a steady and progressive walk (4) To train (paideian) – or discipline the believer’s life in structured an progressive development in righteousness, like training a child.
 
As such then, the scriptures judge us, setting forth the God-given norms by which God intends us to live especially over controversial issues like homosexuality, marriage and divorce, etc. They convict us, bringing about a profound exposure of false refuges, lies and excuses so that deep metanoia or repentance is possible. They change us, issuing in a radical metamorphosis from the inside out, breaking life dominating strongholds and ending harmful habits, then replacing them with a new life and new lifestyle. They coach us – forcefully developing new disciplines and concrete change in us. These are all extremely authoritative functions. And that authority is over the whole of our life, not some compartment of it.
 
Sufficiency – The phrase ‘thoroughly equipped’ was used of furnishing a ship for a voyage, so that nothing was missing for every exigency encountered on the voyage, all the necessary equipment was there. God has anticipated ahead of time in Scripture, every problem we will encounter in assisting our own and others’ sanctification. His word does not need supplementation in any area that affects proper belief and behaviour in our lives. There is no need for help from other sources on how to think right or behave well. The scriptures are given to both save (v.15) and sanctify (v.16-17).
 
If we approach the Bible humanistically, we will either reject it or else we will see it as a life or fire insurance document – there hidden in a file somewhere, only in the background for what it can offer us in emergencies or when we really need it. But its’ purposes for ‘salvation’ and ‘sanctification’ assure us of its necessity for the whole of life, its beginning, middle and end, as well as every activity in it. These goals are so broad that they carry implications for all of life, since it is all of life that God wants to be sanctified, and there is no neutrality:
 
• The work of the entrepreneur or corporation president in maximising profit and considering the welfare of both his staff and his customers
• The president or politician at his desk or in his debating chamber deciding the welfare of his constituency or nation
• The teacher outlining the pre-suppositions and details of their intellectual discipline, since all presuppositions are based on a prior religious commitment it is not a question of whether or not religion is taught in that school, only the question of ‘Which religion?’
• The surgeon, doctor or medical researcher deciding on the ethics of euthanasia, transplant surgery, the human genome project, abortion or the validity of sex-change operations
• The cosmologist speculation on the origins of the universe, the evidence for intelligent design within it and the meaning or purpose of its existence
• The biologist, geologist and palaeontologist facing the question of the interpretation of the data before him in deciding the question of the age of the earth and the origins and development of life upon it
• The psychiatrist or psychotherapist in analysing the nature, causes and treatment of mental illness of bizarre behaviour, and above all what counsel is to offered in order to remedy the plight of that patient
• The artist, writer, actor, sports star, film maker or musician giving expression to her creativity in a way that either glorifies God or dishonours Him
• The Churchman or Movement Leader in deciding the contours of a corporate ecclesiastical life together in terms of our leadership, worship-style and content, ministry, liturgy, decision making,

preaching content, mission strategy and ethical standards to be expected of church members and the discipline that follows serious disorder.
 
The scriptures are totally and finally authoritative in deciding policy and conduct in any and all of these issues. The authority and sufficiency of the Bible is at stake in all of them. It is that important. Critical choices face us on every hand in the wilderness of this world with all of its temptations to depart from God and refuse to allow him to be the centre of our thinking, but our Lord told us, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Mt. 4:4)’.
 
John Calvin said that “It is evident that the talents we possess are not from ourselves, and that our very existence is nothing but a subsistence in God alone.” (Institutes Bk I, Ch,1, Sec. 1). If that is so, then our every thought, word and action should finally be governed by reference to the framework and details provided by God’s word. Indeed, the only sufficient source for that government is God’s word alone, which is to be found in the Bible.
 
‘Has God really said?’ was the first insinuated lie that pulled the foundation from under man’s feet in the beginning. It is still being whispered in ears today. It’s ultimate defeat and neutralisation begins by knowing clearly in our minds the answer to that question. It has to be nothing less than a resounding ‘YES! God has spoken!’ followed by the subsequent submission of the whole of our lives to the implications of that conviction.
 
The ‘Battle for the Bible’ is not only about the issue of its standing in the Christian community at the theoretical level alone. It is about its influence in Christian praxis at every level of our existence, in theory and in practical, ethical and moral behaviour. Sinclair Ferguson “There is another ‘Battle for the Bible’ being fought. This other battle is fought out day by day in the life of every Christian. It is the battle to read, understand and put into practice the message of the Bible.” (‘Handle with Care’, preface) This means that the kind of unity and spiritual vitality we want to help foster in both other Christians and in the wider ecclesiastical scene can only be advanced by a loyalty to certain conditions or ‘givens’ in the present climate. These include;
 

1. Our acceptance of the full authority of Scripture – Historically and right to the present day, most of the big divisions and tensions arise in the Church between truly reformed and non-reformed convictions on the authority of Scripture. For our part, we are determined to submit to its authority in all areas, and see no need to supplement any of its supposed inadequacies as a guide for faith and practice, since to us it has none. The deficiencies lie in our grasp and understanding.
 
2. We recognise that the chief purpose of Scripture is to bear witness to Christ -This is the primary and essential truth, and on these matters the Scriptures are plain and indisputable. On secondary, or even non-essential issues there is room for debate and humility. We can allow for differences of interpretation with brethren where there is full submission to Scripture.
 
3. To help foster desired unity rather than mere uniformity we must continue to develop sound principles of interpretation –

refusing to take the easy route in the solving of knotty problems, namely, that of relativising the teaching of scripture and treating its requirements as purely culturally conditioned and dated in the light of more recent developments and the evolution of thought.
 
4. We need to acknowledge and implement our conviction that we are interdependent on the rest of the Body of Christ in our study of the Scriptures – It is only ‘together with all the saints’ (Eph. 3:18) that full comprehension of God’s truth becomes possible. We must therefore keep the channels for fellowship and dialogue wide open with other scholars and teachers, maintaining the confidence that one of our Puritan forefathers expressed when he said, ‘The Lord has yet more light to break forth form his Word.’
 
5. We must continually submit to the truth and authority of the text – asking God to override our cultural prejudices and blind spots, lowering our defences as often as we can out of fear that we may miss something, if indeed we have not already done so. Never come to the Scriptures with a closed mind, for if we do we may only ever

hear from it the dull soporific confirmation of our own presuppositions and prejudices rather than the disturbing thunderclap of God speaking to us by his Word.
 
The issue of proper interpretation is a vital one, for it bears upon the way the Bible is authoritative for us. The Bible tells us authoritatively what God’s will was for certain individuals and groups within the Biblical period. The issue always, concerns the question of what is binding upon us now. Is what is binding upon them also binding upon us?
 
Authority may be distinguished into two types; historical and normative. What God commanded upon people in the biblical situation may no longer be what he expects of us, and that for soundly biblical reasons. What God commanded his people then and what is recorded to have occurred is historically authoritative. The question remains; is it normatively authoritative? Where lies the continuity and discontinuity of Biblical law? We cannot always assume tha we are bound to carry out the same actions as were expected of those people (e.g. the extermination of the Canaanites, or the offering up of our only child s with Abraham). It is vital we determine want is the permanent essence of the Biblical message, and what is only temporary. For that we need to see each of the parts in the context of the whole. What was historically authoritative may not be normatively authoritative. This may be particularly relevant in deciding upon such matters as homosexual practice and divorce and re-marriage.
 
In conclusion then, two clear of the implications of all this are very plain for us as Reformed and Charismatic restorationist churches within NewFrontiers.
 
1. Congregationally – We must seek to ensure that a full-orbed and well-rounded biblical teaching and preaching ministry is a regular feature of the life of our churches. We want to make our people a ‘people of the Book’.
 
2. Individually -both as leaders and followers we want to ensure that there is the ongoing practice of the reading and study of scripture as well as submission to what it says in belief and

daily life. We will encourage the reading of commentaries, theological works and other study aids, so that we see in experience and reality that the only effective antidote to the world’s all pervasive influence is the impartation of a new mind-set and worldview along with its attendant godly lifestyle. In this way our lives will no longer ‘…be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of our minds’ (Rom 12:1-2)
 
John Stott has expressed our conviction admirably “The Word and the Spirit belong together. No Word without the Spirit, and the Spirit’s sword is the Word of God. Let’s never separate what God has united in Spirit and Word.”
 
This belief in the infallibility and authority of scripture is not only the basis of our sure confidence and stability in an increasing unstable world; it is also the foundation of certain hope of victory in the future.
J.H. Bernard “The truth must prevail in the end, and imposture cannot finally deceive.”
 
 
Recommended Reading:
 
‘The Christian Counsellor’s Manual’ Jay Adams (Baker) ‘Foundations of the Christian Faith’ James Montgomery Boice (IVP) ‘Scripture and Truth’ D.A Carson and John Woodbridge (Zondervan) ‘Grasping God’s Word’ J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays (Zondervan 2001, 2005) ‘Nothing But the Truth’ Brian H. Edwards (Evangelical Press) ‘Introducing Christian Doctrine’ Millard J. Erickson (Baker Academic) ‘The Authority of Scripture’ E.M.B. Green (Falcon Booklet)
 
‘Systematic Theology’ Wayne Grudem (IVP)
‘The Christian Faith’ Colin Gunton (Blackwell) ‘Battle for the Bible’ Harold Lindsell (Zondervan) ‘Authority’ Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (IVP) ‘Foundations of the Christian Faith’ James Montgomery Boice (IVP)
‘Think Biblically!’ John MacArthur Jr. -General Editor (Crossway 2003)
 
‘A Faith to Live By’ Donald Macleod (Mentor) ‘Why Trust the Bible’ Amy Orr-Ewing (IVP) ‘Total Truth’ Nancy Pearcey (Crossway 2004) ‘Under God’s Word’ Dr. J.I. Packer (Lakeland) ‘Freedom, Authority and Scripture’ Dr. J.I. Packer (IVP) ‘The Scripture Principle’ Clark H. Pinnock (Hodder and Stoughton)
 
‘Scripture Alone – The Evangelical Doctrine’ R.C. Sproul (P&R Publishing) ‘Studies in I Corinthians 1-4’ Tape Series. John R.W. Stott (Keswick 2000) ‘Evangelical Truth’ John R.W. Stott (IVP) ‘The Inspiration and Authortiy of the Bible’ B.B. Warfield (Presbyterian and Reformed) ‘Christ and the Bible’ John W. Wenham (Tyndale Press) ‘Scripture and the Authority of God’ N.T. Wright (SPCK)