The Real Father of Presuppositional Apologetics: Herman Bavinck II

On the Self-Validation of the Scriptures

In reverse chronological order:

“Scripture is God’s Word, and therefore it is self-attesting.” John Frame in Scott Oliphint and Lane Tipton, Eds. Revelation and Reason (Presbyterian and Reformed, 2007), 124.

“For us to accept the authority of Scripture is to confess that we are obliged to believe what it teaches and to accept those teachings as the criteria for evaluating all other teachings… Christians…presuppose God’s Word as the ultimate standard of truth.” John Frame in Stephen B. Cowan, ed. Five Views on Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 309, 355.

“Only God is adequate to bear witness to Himself or to authorize His own words.” Greg Bahnsen in Van Til’s Apologetic, 199

“The church cannot and did not authenticate the New Testament Scriptures as being the Word of God. The NT as well as the OT is self-attesting. The church merely recognized the Word in its self-attestation.” – Cornelius Van Til in Van Til’s Apologetic, 214

“The first point about a truly Protestant or Reformed doctrine of Scripture is that it must be taken exclusively from Scripture. It is, says Bavinck, exclusively from the Scriptures that we learn about Christ and his work of redemption for man. From the Scriptures alone do we learn about God’s work of redemption for man. On its authority as the Word of God do we know the whole ‘system’ of Christian truth. Therefore also, on its authority alone do we believe what the Scripture says about itself. The Scriptures testifies to itself because in it Christ testifies to himself…” – Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge,  25-26

“Through the gracious work of the Holy Spirit, Scripture is self-authenticating…The authority of Scripture, accepted in Spirit-inspired faith, is a powerful self-asserted authority. We believe it because God said it, and God’s speaking is the final ground of our faith. There is no power in the world comparable to that of Scripture.” – Herman Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, 1895, 563 (2008 publication)

“The authority of Scripture rests in itself and cannot be proven. Holy Scripture is self-attested…and therefore the final ground of faith. No deeper ground can be advanced. To the question “Why do you believe Scripture?” the only answer is: “Because it is the word of God.” But if the next question is “Why do you believe that Holy Scripture is the word of God?” a Christian cannot answer. That Christian will admittingly appeal to the marks and criteria of Scripture, to the majesty of its style, the sublimity of its content, the depth of its ideas, the abundant fruit it has borne, etc. But these are not the grounds of his or her faith; they are merely the attributes and characteristics that the believing mind later discover in Scripture, just as the proofs for God’s existence do not precede and undergird faith but flow from it and are constructed by it….the soul’s bond to Scripture as the word of God lies behind the [believer's] consciousness and underneath the proofs. It is mystical in nature – like the belief in the first principles of the various sciences.” Bavinck, 589