Biblical Inerrancy: What Kuyper Really Believed

Inerrancy and The Reformed Faith of Today and Yesterday

Many semi-liberal, Reformed thinkers who are anti-conservative-evangelical  (i.e. Dordt College profs, Calvin College profs, Thinknet, Roy Clouser and his cronies, etc.) have often tried to separate Old Princeton’s rigorous work on the doctrine of inspiration from Neo-Calvinists’ (Bavinck and Kuyper) doctrine of Scripture. That is, they try to divide Dutch Reformed Theology from American Reformed Theology on the grounds that each side had different views of biblical inerrancy. Jack Rogers and Donald McKim in The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible even assert that Bavinck and Kuyper were right in reacting to post-Reformation scholasticism instead of getting duped into the Scottish Common Sense mindset of Old Princeton. They also assert that Princeton was right in signing the Auburn Confession during the 1929 split – the same document that led Machen and Van Til to leave and start Westminster Seminary – revealing the underlying attitude of Rogers and McKim.

This assertion, of course, along with the claim that today’s doctrine of inerrancy is itself an unreasonable invention of both post-Scholastic Reformed thought (Rogers and McKim) and American dispensationalist fundamentalism (Marsden), has been refuted over and over, essay by essay, book by book ever since the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy came out in 1978 (see the works on this page on the RealApologetics.org Recommended Reading, for just a few references). We are left wondering, then, why any Reformed Christian should be chided for believing in a conservative view of biblical inerrancy (i.e. Chicago statement), since the doctrine is, in fact, the common belief of historical Reformed and Neo-Calvinist theologians. Indeed, today’s doctrine of inerrancy is not the product of mistaken ideologies; it is the result of centuries of consistent thinking, God-honoring attitudes, and the ministry-tested lives of Reformed pastors, theologians, and apologists. Inerrancy may be a loaded term, and the doctrine of inerrancy may be extremely unpopular in the masses of today’s theological circles. But I firmly believe (and would argue) that the doctrine of inerrancy rightly finds a home in Reformed theology.

To put it in layman’s terms, some liberal-leaning scholars have been trying to re-write 20th century, Reformed history to escape the historical and legitimate popularity of the doctrine of inerrancy in Reformed theology. They wish their Reformed tradition was more liberal so that their liberalism seemed more reasonable. They wish Bavinck wasn’t so anti-evolutionist since theistic evolution is popular in the biology and astronomy departments of most of today’s Reformed seminaries and colleges. Likewise, they wish that Bavinck and Kuyper didn’t have a conservative view on the authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures. Why? Because they want to keep the “Reformed” label without being conservative at the same time. They refuse to endorse the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy, albeit for political reasons, career reasons, reputational reasons, or because they misunderstand it to be a litmus test for “fundamentalism,” or just because they have actually read it and outright disbelieve it. Ironically, they have the guts to claim Kuyper and Bavinck’s view of Scripture is totally different (i.e. organic vs. mechanical, functional infallibility vs. inerrancy, infallibility of content and not of form, etc.) than that of Warfield and the classical Westminster standards, one that does not actually resolve in what we would today call “the doctrine of inerrancy.” This simply is not true.

In short, semi-liberal Reformed Christians are trying to revise history so as to recruit historical support for their poor view of Scripture. Warfield, Hodge, Machen and the others would surely sign on to today’s Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy, but not Kuyper, we’re chided. In researching for my paper presentation at the 2010 “Calvinism for the 21st Century” Conference, I’ve realized (among other things) that this assertion is misleading.

Below is a list of quotations on Scripture from Abraham Kuyper, author of Lectures on Calvinism, The Work of the Holy Spirit, as well as the founder of Free University in Amsterdam and its theology department chair, and former Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

Abraham Kuyper and the Inerrancy of Scripture

“Without a trace of doubt or hesitation, we should acknowledge the entire Holy Scripture…as infallible in what it communicates to us.” Dictaten Dogmatiek, 1.66

“Parallel with the mystery of the incarnation runs the mystery of inscripturation. In both cases the Word of God comes to us, in the manger as Emmanuel in the world where we live, in H. Scripture as Emmanuel in the world of our thoughts and ideas. Both revelations of the Word belong together, just as our living and the consciousness of that living belong together. Thus both mysteries must either be rejected together or confessed together and, if confessed, on then on the same ground…There is a primary author and a secondary author…Everything depends here on the right insight that the Word has become flesh in Christ and is stereotyped in Scripture. Thus Scripture must be…truly human and truly divine.” Dictaten Dogmatiek, 1.75

“If God himself had come and had dictated the Bible to stenographers, it would not look differently than it now does.” 1.77

Scripture expresses content “in a divinely errorless fashion” (1.86), “goddelijk feilloos”

The form of Scripture, Kuyper says, is “infallibilis” (1.73).

“Holy Scripture retains its divine authority only in those circles where at the same time its formal infallibility is confessed.” (2.128)

Kuyper also points out in 2.183 that “forgetting, lying and unintentional falsifying corrupt all oral tradition,” but not in the written tradition of the Holy Scriptures. Thus, says Gaffin, “Scripture is necessary and as such is free from all error, unintentional mistakes as well as deception.” 273, Richard Gaffin, “Old Amsterdam and Inerrancy?”

“And yet in both prophet and apostle inspiration is the wholly extraordinary operation of the Holy Spirit whereby, in a manner for us incomprehensible and to them not always conscious, they were kept from the possibility of error.” 1.208 (italics in Dutch original)

“As by education the Lord frequently prepares a maiden for her still unknown, future husband, so did the Holy Spirit prepare Paul, John, and Peter for their work. He directed their lives, circumstances, and conditions; He caused such thoughts, meditations, and even words to arise in their hearts as the writing of the New Testament required. And while they were writing these portions of the Holy Scripture, that one day would be the treasure of the universal Church in all ages, a fact not understood by them, but by the Holy Spirit, He so directed their thoughts as to guard them against mistakes and lead them into the truth. He foreknew what the complete New Testament Scripture ought to be, and what parts would belong to it. As an architect, by his mechanics, prepares the various parts of the building, afterward to fit them in their places, so did the Holy Spirit by different workers prepare the different parts of the New Testament, which afterward He united in a whole.” The Work of the Holy Spirit, 172

“Whether Moses and those earlier writers were conscious of their inspiration is immaterial; the Holy Spirit directed them, brought to their knowledge what they were to know, sharpened their judgment in the choice of documents and records, so that they should decide aright, and gave them a superior maturity of mind that enabled them always to choose the right word…whether He dictates directly, as in the Revelation of St. John, or governs the writing indirectly, as with historians and evangelists, the result is the same: the product is such in form and content as the Holy Spirit designed, an infallible document for the Church of God.” The Work of the Holy Spirit, 77 (emphasis mine)

“The distinguishing mark of inspiration, however, above everything else is that it guarantees absolute accuracy. The singular character of the writers of the Old and New Testament lies in the fact that the stamp of truth and certainty is impressed upon their writings. The Holy Spirit so leads their spirit that in them the results of sin are cut off and prevented. The distinguishing mark is not relative, but absolute.” (Dictaten 2.76)

“Not as though critical and historical examination were prohibited. Such endeavor for the glory of God is highly commendable. But as the physiologist’s search for the genesis of human life becomes sinful if immodest or dangerous to unborn life, so does every criticism of Holy Scripture become sinful and culpable if irreverent or seeking to destroy the life of God’s Word in the consciousness of the church.” Holy Spirit, 64

There is no doubt about it. Kuyper’s view on the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture is far closer to something like G.K. Beale’s perspective in The Erosion of Inerrancy and The Chicago Statement of Inerrancy, than, say, that of Peter Enns, Jack Rogers, Donald McKim, etc. Inspiration and inerrancy goes to the very level of words, as Kuyper explicitly asserts numerous times. Why? Because the Spirit’s activity involves working at the level of words. It’s not as if only the “message” of the Bible is inspired and inerrant, while the material text and words are not. Furthermore, Kuyper, like Bavinck and Calvin, has no problem with accommodation and the principle of condescension – when it does not imply that errors are present in the text.

Divine accommodation simply says that God stoops down in Scripture. God accommodates Himself to human language and human contexts, as Calvin so boldly stated:

“The Holy Spirit had no intention to teach astronomy; and, in proposing instruction meant to be common to the simplest and most uneducated persons, he made use by Moses and the other Prophets of popular language, that none might shelter himself under the pretext of obscurity, as we will see men sometimes very readily pretended an incapacity to understand, when anything deep or recondite is submitted to their notice.” Commentary on the Psalms (136:7)

This idea of accommodation is present in the writings of Christians in nearly every age of church history. And in Reformed theology, it is certainly common. However, accommodation simply does not entail errancy, at least for Calvin, Kuyper, Bavinck, Warfield, Van Til, Sproul, and virtually every other major authoritative Reformed thinker and apologist. Indeed, it is a grave mistake to even associate the proper doctrine of divine accommodation of the Reformation and post-Reformation with one that requires the presence of error.

“The Reformers and their scholastic followers all recognized that God must in some way condescend or accommodate himself to human ways of knowing in order to reveal himself. This accomodatio occurs specifically in the use of human words and concepts for the communication of the law and the gospel, but it in no way implies the loss of truth or the lessening of scriptural authority. The accomodatio or condencensio refers to the manner or mode of revelation, the gift of the wisdom of infinite God in infinite form, not to the quality of the revelation or to the matter revealed. A parallel idea occurs in the orthodox Protestant distinction between theologia archetypa (q.v.) and theologia ectypa (q.v). note that the sense of accomodatio that implies not only a divine condescension, but also a use of time-bound and even erroneous statements as a medium for revelation, arose in the eighteenth century in the thought of Johann Semler and his contemporaries and has no relation either to the position of the Reformers or to that of the Protestant scholastics, either Lutheran or reformed.” Richard Muller. Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), s.v. accomodatio, 19.

In conclusion, the burden of proof, both historically and Scripturally, is on the Reformed Christian who denies the doctrine of inerrancy, not on the Christian who adheres to it.  Inerrancy is the default, not the corruption, for Reformed theology. Indeed, if the Bible is completely truthful, then the Bible is, inevitably, completely inerrant.