Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 26:3 (Fall 2022)
Article: One Witness To The Word: The Self-Attestation Of Scripture
Author: Chris Bolt

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One Witness To The Word: The Self-Attestation Of Scripture

Chris Bolt

Chris Bolt is Pastor-Teacher at Elkton Baptist Church, Elkton, Tennessee, and Professor of Apologetics at Birmingham Theological Seminary, Birmingham, Alabama. He earned his PhD in Christian Philosophy from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Bolt has written for American Reformer and Founders Ministries, and is the author of The World in His Hands: A Christian Account of Scientific Law and its Antithetical Competitors (Wipf and Stock, 2019).

Introduction

Christian apologetics goes woefully wrong when premised upon what is acceptable to fallen human beings rather than what is pleasing to the triune God. These apologetics by accommodation set a creaturely and sinful humanity at the center of theology rather than the righteous Creator God who tasks us with the apologetic endeavor in the first place (1 Pet 3:15; Jude 3). The Bible says, “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself” (Heb 6:13). When God swears, he swears by himself. God is the greatest, and none is greater. God swears by himself in relation to a promise for Abraham, which promise is itself the word of God. Abraham could have disbelieved this word from God because he was a sinner. Instead, “he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). Yet the issue of accepting the word of God as such goes deeper than a potential problem stemming from the noetic effects of sin.1 The issue of receiving the word of God is one of believing God’s word based purely upon his say so. The idea is that nobody and nothing is greater than God.

Not only are apologetics by accommodation a problem because they are

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predicated upon the sole, or primary goal of persuading fallen people rather than pleasing a perfect God, they are a problem because God is the greatest authority of all. Appealing to the would-be authority of finite human beings over God when it comes to identifying Scripture as the word of God rather than appealing to the authority of God is inconsistent with Christian teaching. No mere mortal can stand as judge over God and his word, because no human being is a greater authority than God. God’s word stands as judge over mortals.2 Perhaps no other discussion in Christian apologetics makes these observations pl...