The authority of Scripture 1

Introduction

In answer 21 of the Heidelberg Catechism we find the following state­ment in answer on the question: What is true faith? : "True faith is not only a certain knowledge, by which I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also an assured confidence which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart, that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlast­ing righteousness and salvation are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits."
I highlight the first part of this defini­tion: "True faith is a certain knowledge by which I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his Word." God speaks to us in his Word. The Bible is the Word of God. This is a foundational conviction of the Christian church. The Word of God forms the Christian church. The Word of God is committed to the Christian church. Great parts of the Christian church are in a crisis. Man does not know what to believe. Ministers do not know what to preach. The reason is, that they are not convinced that God speaks to us in his Word. They are not sure that in the Bible, God reveals Himself to us.

With regard to the Bible two positions are possible: we can see the Bible as the Word of God to man or as words and thoughts of men about God. The first position is in agreement with the self-witness of Scrip­ture. The second completely contradicts it. Many people within the churches see the Bible as the thoughts of men about God. They confess it is a unique document. They will say: it is a standard for our thoughts about God, but that only means that we must first listen to the Bible in forming our thoughts about God. It does not mean that our thoughts about God must be completely formed and governed by the Bible.

When we deny the Bible to be the infallible Word of God, the immediate result is that our thoughts about God are formed by other sources: human traditions and reason are the climate of our own time. To proclaim to message of the Word of God faithfully, we must first bow to this, and to accept Word of God as his revel­ation for all ages and all places.

Everyone has a sense of God's being and existence. The apostle Paul speaks about that sense in Romans 1. He stresses that the sense man has of God apart from the biblical revelation never lead to the true knowledge of God. To know who God is, how we can find peace with Him, and how we have to worship him, we need the Bible as our only guide.