The Infallible Bible

Obs. 3.  The Bible, then, is our only infallible rule of faith and practice, as many of the Confessions of Faith distinctly declare.  This is also recognized in Catechisms, or elementary books of instruction, all of which profess to be based directly on the Word.  Every man feels that a doctrinal position is only strongly fortified by Scripture testimony; that the injunction, “if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God” (1 Peter 4:11), is to be observed in teaching divine things; that it is proper and necessary to appeal “to the law and the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20).  This feeling is aroused by the conviction that we “are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone” (Ephesians 2:20).  Upon these, what they have declared and done, must our doctrines be erected, and to them appeal must be made in their support.  It is desirable to know how others understood the doctrines of the Bible, how they derived them, what proof sustains them, etc., and it is proper to acknowledge our indebtedness to all such for information and knowledge imparted – but when these human compositions are to become the leading medium through which to view and interpret Scripture, and that Holy Writ must only be accepted and understood and explained by fallible man, without any appeal therefrom on the ground that they are given in the consciousness of the church as a legitimate spiritual outgrowth through pious and enlightened believers – we must decline such a darkening of authority, such a substitution for the Popish system.

From: The Theocratic Kingdom of our Lord Jesus, the Christ, as Covenanted in the Old Testament by George N. H. Peters; 3 volumes; reprint (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1988), 1:125-126.  Originally published in 1884.  The quoted portion is from Proposition 10, Observation 3.

George Nathaniel Henry Peters (1825-1909) was an American Lutheran minister who devoted much of his life to the study of biblical prophecy from the premillennial viewpoint (although not from a dispensational one).  Although he wrote several books on various subjects, including some New Testament commentaries, The Theocratic Kingdom is his magnum opus.  Its three volumes total 2,175 pages and, in them, Peters cites approximately 4,000 authors.

 

On the Old Testament Prophets

What manner of man is the prophet?  A student of philosophy who turns from the discourses of the great metaphysicians to the orations of the prophets may feel as if he were going from the realm of the sublime to an area of trivialities.  Instead of dealing with the timeless issues of being and becoming, or matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, he is thrown into orations about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the marketplace.  Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums.  The world is a proud place, full of beauty, but the prophets are scandalized and rave as if the whole world were a slum.  They make much ado about paltry things, lavishing excessive language upon trifling subjects.  What if, somewhere in ancient Palestine, poor people have not been treated properly by the rich?  So what if some old women found pleasure and edification in worshipping “the Queen of Heaven”?  Why such immoderate excitement?  Why such intense indignation?

The things that horrified the prophets are, even now, daily occurrences all over the world.  There is no society to which Amos’ words would not apply: Hear this, you who trample upon the needy, and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, “When will the new moon be over that we may sell grain?  And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great, and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals, and sell the refuse of the wheat?  (Amos 8:4-6)

Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics.  To us, a single act of injustice – cheating in business, exploitation of the poor – is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.  To us, injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets, it is a deathblow to existence; to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.

Their breathless impatience with injustice may strike us a hysteria.  We, ourselves, witness, continually, acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage, misery, but we, rarely, grow indignant or overly excited.  To the prophets, even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions.

From: The Prophets by Abraham Joshua Heschel; 2 volumes (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), 1:3-4.  Republished: Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007 (2 volumes in 1)

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was a well-known Jewish scholar and author.  He has been described as one of the few Jewish writers whom Christians are familiar with.

 

On Prophecy

Prophecy is very different from history.  It is not intended to give us knowledge of the future analogous to that which history gives us of the past.  This truth is, often, overlooked.  We see interpreters undertaking to give detailed expositions of the prophecies of Isaiah, of Ezekiel, of Daniel, and of the Apocalypse relating to the future with the same confidence with which they record the history of the recent past.  Such interpretations have always been falsified by the event.  But, this does not discourage a certain class of minds, for whom the future has a fascination and who delight in the solution of enigmas, from renewing the attempt. 

In prophecy, instruction is subordinate to moral impression.  The occurrence of important events is so predicated as to produce, in the minds of the people of God, faith that they will certainly come to pass.  Enough is made known of their nature, and of the time and mode of their occurrence, to awaken attention, desire, or apprehension, as the case may be, and to secure proper effort on the part of those concerned to be prepared for what is to come to pass.  Although such predictions may be variously misinterpreted before their fulfillment, yet, when fulfilled, the agreement between the prophecy and the event is seen to be such as to render the divine origin of the prophecy a matter of certainty. 

Thus, with regard to the first advent of Christ, the Old Testament prophecies rendered it certain that a great Redeemer was to appear, that He was to be a prophet, priest, and a king, that He would deliver His people from their sins and from the evils under which they groaned, that He was to establish a kingdom which should, ultimately, absorb all the kingdoms on earth, and that He would render all His people supremely happy and blessed.  These predictions had the effect of turning the minds of the whole Jewish nation to the future, in confident expectation that the deliverer would come, of exciting earnest desire for His advent, and of leading the pious portion of the people to prayerful preparation for that event. 

Nevertheless, of all the hundreds of thousands to whom these predictions of the Hebrew Scriptures were make known, not a single person, so far as appears, interpreted them aright.  Yet, when fulfilled, we can almost construct a history of the events from these misunderstood predictions concerning them.  Christ was, indeed, a king, but no such king as the world had ever seen, and such as no man expected.  He was a priest, but the only priest who ever lived of whose priesthood He was, Himself, the victim.  He did establish a kingdom, but it was not of this world.  It was foretold that Elijah should come first and prepare the way of the Lord.  He did come, but in a way in which no man did or could have anticipated.

From: Systematic Theology by Charles Hodge; 3 volumes (1872-1873), 3:790-791.