Here is a work of absorbing interest to students of the religion of Colonial America, and especially to those desiring a knowledge of the theology of one of the greatest Puritan divines.Dr. Gerstner actually presents Jonathan Edwards’ doctrines in a form more readily grasped than Edwards himself does in his own sermons and manuscripts. For in no one of these did Edwards systematize his theology; he offered a piecemeal according to the nature of the occasion or the text on which he spoke suggested. Dr. Gerstner has done the systematizing in this book, gathering material for each of Edwards’ subject from many different sources, a number of them hitherto unpublished, identifying each as he goes along and interspersing his work with many direct quotes. The result is a well-organized and highly readable compendium of the heart of this great man’s thought.As an evangelist Edwards’ chief concern was saving souls; as a Puritan, he believed relatively few souls would be saved; and as a Calvinist, he believed God had preordained who those souls would be. In the face of this predestination, just what “step” the individual could take to seek his salvation and possibly escape an eternity in hell is the main theme of this book. But it is not the only theme.Many of Edwards’ other teachings show that he was by no means solely concerned with fire and brimstone. His doctrine of the new birth, his correlation of “faith” with “work,” his denouncement of melancholy, his belief in happiness as a by-product—these and many other teachings will appeal to most readers.

From October 1933 through the spring of 1934, Dietrich Bonhoeffer pastored two churches in London. One of them was the German Evangelical Church in Sydenham. Its building was destroyed by bombs during World War II. The other one was St. Paul’s German Evangelical Reformed Church. These were small Lutheran congregations. Many of those in the congregations had fully assimilated into British life. In fact, most of them spoke English, and their German was actually not that great. Bonhoeffer spoke German and English, but all his sermon manuscripts from this period were in English.

Medieval manuscripts were often highly ornate—decorated with jewels and gold leaf—and prayer books were no exception. On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History, Dr. Stephen Nichols introduces us to the famous “books of hours.”

On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History, Dr. Stephen Nichols walks us through the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its collection of medieval paintings, sculptures, and manuscripts.

Believing in the inerrancy of Scripture can bring difficulties. Often, church members are unable to explain why they believe the Bible is inerrant to questioning non-Christians. Or, a pastor is unsure as to how to deal with a difficult passage. In addition, issues related to canon, manuscripts, and translations can be difficult for people to understand. This moderated session includes answers from several experienced pastors on how they've dealt with difficulties like these over the years.

Note: This Questions and Answers session is made available for historical archival purposes only. Further, answers given reflect the views of the individual speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dr. R.C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. Here is our Statement of Faith.

At the end of the nineteenth century, an intramural debate arose among Christians over which version of the English Bible should be used. This debate was occasioned by the discovery of numerous Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in the mid-nineteenth century and the subsequent translation and publication of new versions of the English Bible after 1880. Proponents of the King James Only movement insist that the King James Version (KJV) is the only legitimate English translation of Scripture and that none others are valid. Proponents of the King James Only movement have belonged to a variety of ecclesiastical fellowships. A distinction should be made between those who believe the King James Version is the only legitimate English translation of the Bible (the King James Only movement) and those who believe that the King James is to be preferred over other English Bible translations but that it is not inherently wrong to choose other English versions. Some churches and individuals, largely for historical and stylistic reasons, believe that the King James Version remains the best English translation of the Bible while not insisting that all other English versions are wholly illegitimate.

would be other writings of Wycliffe that would have the most profound influence. In 1378, Wycliffe wrote On the Truth of Sacred Scripture. Here we see the beginnings of the doctrine so crucial to the Reformation: sola Scriptura (Scripture alone). In this work, Wycliffe makes the case that all Christians have a right to the Word of God in their own language. Wycliffe so believed in this principle that he devoted his later years to translating the Latin Vulgate text into Middle English. He was joined by others, such as Nicholas of Hereford and John Purvey. These labors culminated in what would come to be Wycliffe's crowning achievement—the Wycliffe Bible.

The Wycliffe Bible consisted of hand-copied manuscripts—hundreds of them. They were put into service by Wycliffe’s troupe of pastors, the so-called poor priests. They had very little to their name, and they likely were not all that impressive looking. A friend of Wycliffe once described him as having a “spare, ill, emaciated frame.” His poor priests likely fared no better. But they had copies of the Bible.

Wycliffe’s Legacy

These preachers came to be called Lollards. Soon that term was expanded to apply to those who followed Wycliffe’s teachings. The Lollards grew and grew. “Every second man that you meet,” the saying went, “is a Lollard.”

Lollard is a Dutch word meaning “to mumble“ or “to murmur.“ Since Wycliffe’s followers were preaching and reading the Bible in English, not in Latin, they were derided as mumblers and murmurers. But they weren’t mumbling. They were speaking the truth. The Lollards even had their Wittenberg Door moment, nailing a petition to the doors of Parliament’s Westminster Hall in 1395. The Lollards extended Wycliffe's influence well beyond his lifetime, and even on into the British Reformation of the sixteenth century.

While attending church on December 28, 1384, Wycliffe suffered a severe stroke, his second. He died two days later. Post tenebras lux—“after darkness, light”—is the slogan representing the Reformation at Calvin’s Geneva. The sun did rise in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and the light of the gospel chased the darkness away. But we can all be grateful for the pioneering efforts of the fourteenth century Oxford scholar John Wycliffe, the Morning Star of the Reformation.

version for long.

In 1604, King James I convened a conference at Hampton Court, commissioning, among other things, a new translation of the Bible. Seven years later, a team of approximately fifty scholars sent off their work to the printer, resulting in the 1611 King James Version. The Bible was published as a folio Bible, with rather large leafs, and contained the Apocrypha for a total of eighty books. It tended to be bound in two volumes. Pocket-size it certainly wasn’t. Eventually, digest-sized (called “octavo”) editions would roll off the press. At first, the kjv couldn’t overtake its rival the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible remained the favorite of the Puritans. They took the Geneva Bible with them when they set sail for the New World. As for the rest of England, soon the kjv won out and would for centuries reign as the supreme English Bible.

Of course, there were some glitches from time to time in the printing of the kjv. There was the “He Bible,” mistakenly having “he” instead of “she” at Ruth 3:15. And there is the Bible collector’s prized possession, the so-called “Wicked Bible.” This 1631 printing has omitted the “not” in Exodus 20:14, resulting in “Thou shalt commit adultery.” In addition to these obvious printing errors, real errors in translation were continually refined throughout the printing of the King James Version. Centuries later, it continues to hold strong.

The Era since the KJV

Today, English speakers have many choices for a Bible due to the proliferation of translations and paraphrases in the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries. Language changes from generation to generation. Idioms and even grammar rules and grammatical structures change. In addition, the field of biblical scholarship continually expands its understanding of particular Hebrew and Greek words and grammatical constructs, not to mention the discovery of more manuscripts of the biblical books in the last century. All combined, these factors have resulted in the production of many English translations and paraphrases, an almost dizzying array.

One of the milestones of this activity is the English Revised Version of 1881, most commonly referred to as simply the Revised Version, a product of a large team of scholars from a variety of denominations. This version was slightly modified in 1901 as the American Standard Version. After further revisions, the rv was supplanted in 1952 and again in 1971 as the Revised Standard Version. The rsv has undergone yet another transformation under the hands of another team of scholars and has been published in 2001 as the English Standard Version. These versions hold to an “essentially literal” approach to translating the text, retaining both a readable and an eloquent English text. Another milestone is the New International Version, first appearing in 1973. This version’s philosophy stresses readability and advocates a “dynamic equivalence” approach that is more of a thought-for-thought rather than an essentially literal translation.

The history of the English Bible is a long and circuitous one that has resulted in a treasure of riches for us living downstream. Thanks

One who says desperate things—“I’ll never touch Paul again.” One who gets anxious. I don’t know what image you have of Calvin; I hope it’s not the wrongheaded caricature of a dour and mean prophet of gloom. I suspect we tend to think of him as living a somewhat what ivory tower life, immune from the challenges we all face in life. Immune from disappointments and roadblocks, frustrations and anxieties. He was not. Maybe we think of him as a super-Christian, always living out the commands of Christ. No, he wasn’t that, either. Yet, it is precisely in his humanity that we not only need to see him, but we see him as an example for us. I like stories like this because I lose everything. Keys. I misplace my wallet at least three times a week. I don’t like gift cards because, well, I lose them. And I get anxious. We are commanded to be anxious for nothing. But in our frailty, we do. Calvin is part of our company.

If Calvin is known for anything, it’s reminding the church of a bedrock faith that God is sovereign over His universe. God is even sovereign over so-called lost manuscripts. We fret and worry and get anxious. We even say desperate things. All the while, we need to rest in God. To trust Him through the roadblocks. As Paul says in the opening lines of 2 Corinthians, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” (1:3).

Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) heralded the revival of interest in ancient Latin culture; we looked at him in a previous Tabletalk issue on the fourteenth century (July 2014). There was soon a parallel renewal of enthusiasm for ancient Greek culture. This sprang up in the northern Italian city of Florence, especially through a number of Greek scholars who fled from the embattled Byzantine Empire and settled in Florence. Byzantium was the last remnant of the Eastern Greek-speaking Roman Empire, terminally threatened in the fifteenth century by the expanding Islamic empire of the Ottoman Turks. Eventually, Byzantium was extinguished in 1453 when its capital city, Constantinople, fell to the Ottomans.

These exiled Greek scholars from the East brought with them precious Greek manuscripts and a living knowledge of the Greek language. The most outstanding was Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355–1415), who lectured at Florence University, inspiring a new generation of Italian humanists. Also important was Gemistos Plethon (c. 1355–1450), who lectured in Florence on the philosophy of Plato.

The popularity of Greek studies in general, and of Plato in particular, reached its height in 1462 in the founding of Florence’s Platonic Academy, dedicated to discussing and spreading Platonism. Plethon dreamed up the idea of the academy; its director was Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), a priest whose theology was a potent blend of Christianity and neo-Platonism. Ficino translated into Latin the complete writings of Plato and the neo-Platonists, while his own influential treatises argued that Platonic philosophy was the divinely inspired partner of the Christian faith.

Lorenzo Valla

It was also in Renaissance Italy that the revival of interest in the early church first flowered. Important figures here were Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439), a Florentine monk and one of the pioneer Renaissance students of Hebrew; John Bessarion (1403–72), a Byzantine archbishop who became a cardinal of the Roman church; Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444), a Florentine politician, historian, and enthusiast for Plato; and, towering above them all, Lorenzo Valla (1406–57).

Valla was a native of Rome who was ordained to the priesthood in 1431 and thereafter engaged in a life of lecturing, study, and writing financed by Pope Nicholas V and King Alphonso I of Naples. Valla combined a zeal for the early church father Augustine, a ground-breaking study of the Greek text of the New Testament, and a highly critical attitude to some ancient Roman Catholic traditions. His two greatest works were Concerning the False Credit and Eminence of the Donation of Constantine (1440) and Annotations on the New Testament (1505). In the first of these works, Valla exposed as a forgery the so-called Donation of Constantine, which popes had used for seven hundred years to back up their exalted political claims. Valla argued that the papacy should renounce all political power and become a purely spiritual institution. Annotations on the New Testament, published by Erasmus in 1505, consisted of a critical comparison of the Greek New Testament and the Vulgate, pointing out the latter’s many errors.

The Renaissance in Art

Florence was the chief center of the Italian Renaissance,

The book of Revelation is a visionary tapestry woven from threads drawn from all of Scripture, giving us a unique view into the Lord's grand purpose for us: to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. Before we turn to the New Jerusalem passage in Revelation 21:9–22:5, we need to look at two foundational issues.

The first thing to recognize is that Revelation is prophecy (Rev. 1:3; 22:7, 10, 18–19). This means that visions and dreams are to be expected here because symbolic visions are the normal mode of communication through a prophet (see Num. 12:6–8; Ezek. 7:26; Zech. 13:4). This means that John sees visions concerning real things but not the real things themselves. There were no gaunt cows eating fat cows in Joseph's time (Gen. 41), yet Pharaoh's dream did represent real, historical matters. So also the visions of Revelation symbolize real things, although their details can be enigmatic even to John (see Rev. 7:13–14).

Second, the phrase "to enjoy Him forever" expresses the covenant bond between our gracious Lord and His people. This bond is expressed over and over in Scripture with the formula "I will be your God, and you will be my people" and its variations (Gen. 17:7–8; Ex. 6:7; Lev. 26:12; Jer. 30:22; 31:1, 33). Sometimes, this bond is simply communicated when the Lord identifies Himself as our God. For example, count how many times "the Lord your God" appears in the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:1–17). The law comes to us from our God, and we are bound to obey Him because He is our God.

This formula of the covenant bond is a vital element in John's vision of the new creation in Revelation 21, where we read: "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God'·" (v. 3). However, the phrase "they will be his people" in the earliest and best manuscripts actually reads "they will be his peoples" (plural). This phrasing is remarkable and unique, expressing the ultimate fulfillment of God's covenant promise to Abraham that he will be the father of a multitude of nations (Gen. 17:4–6). These nations appear in Revelation as the Lamb's people entering the new creation with palm branches as those redeemed by His blood "from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" (Rev. 7:9; see 5:9).

We turn now to John's vision of the New Jerusalem. It descends from God translucently radiant in jewel-encrusted, golden splendor (21:2, 10–11, 18–21). Yet its most striking feature is its sheer size (v. 16). This "city" measures nearly 1,400 miles long on each side with a footprint of nearly two million square miles. Placed in the center of the United States, such a city would fill about twenty-two states, with borders running from Montana to Wisconsin to Mississippi to Arizona and back to Montana. And the New Jerusalem is also a

The situation with the students of Scripture is not analogous. He does have authoritative statements made under divine inspiration, and, provided that he be right in assessing their true meaning and that the deductions which he draws from them be correctly inferred, he need not fear that he will reach erroneous results on account of a faulty methodology.

The approach advocated here is not only that which characterizes theological doctrine in general but which has been specifically applied to the biblical doctrine of Scripture by such theologians as Herman Bavinck (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, section 112, third edition, vol I, p. 447) or by B. B. Warfield (see particularly the section, “Facts Versus Doctrine,” in “The Real Problem of Inspiration,” The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, pp. 201-208).

Let us now attempt to apply this methodology specifically to the subject of inerrancy of Scripture. The doctrine of inerrancy appears in the first place as a corollary (or an implicate) of the doctrine of the divine authorship of the Scripture. Furthermore, this implicate has received some direct support from statements of Scripture such as Psalm 119:160, “The sum of thy word is truth” (cf. also 142), and John 10:35, “The scripture cannot be broken.”

Now in our assessment of the precise range of this inerrancy we might be inclined to reach erroneous conclusions if we were confined to our speculative reasoning on this point. The actual phenomena of Scripture, however, do permit us to achieve a more accurate grasp of what is involved in the biblical concept and to correct what would have been erroneous deductions on our part. We may proceed in this wise along a kind of spiral which provides an increasing precision of approximation.

1. We might have been inclined to argue that if God deemed it important to produce inerrant autographs He would safeguard in an absolute way the process of transmission. The plain fact is, however, that there are variants in the manuscripts and, therefore, the facts make it mandatory that we should acknowledge the possible difference between the autographs and any particular copy. This point is reflected in the way in which evangelicals are prone to express their precise position on inspiration. In these formulations the mention of the autographs is not intended as a way of escape to avoid the pressure of apparent difficulties, but rather as a realistic recognition of the actual, though minor, diversity of our available manuscripts.

2. We might have been inclined to argue from inerrancy to strict conformity to certain grammatical or orthographical standards. We do find, however, that the text of Scripture frequently does not conform to a rigid pattern in this respect. We are, therefore, led to conclude that while grammar is important for the apprehension of meaning, any particular standard of grammar cannot be thought to have been vital in God’s eye for the communication of His truth.

3. We might think it proper to argue that inerrancy demands conformity to modern standards or methods of expression. Here again the facts of Scripture

it should not be surprising that some will see Edwards as neither inconsistent, nor as choosing for one side or another, but as a “predestinarian evangelist” who “was himself a covenant theologian and saw in it no compromise whatever with Arminianism.”

: Dutch Calvinism tends to view the Puritan doctrine of the covenant as the hole in the dike through which the Arminian flood poured. Jan Ridderbos, De Theologie van Jonathan Edwards (The Hague, 1907), 316, has much praise for Edwards but says his theology is not a pure Reformed system. Ymen Pieter De Jong, De Leer der Verzoening in de Amerikaansche Theologie (Grand Rapids, 1913), p. 17, is more explicit when he writes that Edwards was not only unfaithful to the historic Calvinism, but his revival theology was itself the cause of Edwardean theology later passing into Arminianism. Perry Miller is the preeminent example of one who presupposes divine sovereignty to be inconsistent with human responsibility, and since Edwards clearly taught sovereignty, he could not have taught the covenant of grace. Cf. Miller, Jonathan Edwards (Cleveland, 1964), pp. 30, 115, and Miller, “The Marrow of Puritan Divinity,” Errand into the Wilderness (New York, 1964), p. 98, where he says: “He threw over the whole covenant scheme: and became ... the first consistent and authentic Calvinist in New England.” To make the covenant of grace and Calvinism mutually exclusive is fair neither to Edwards nor to Reformed theology. Yet the error is frequently propounded from both directions. : Jonathan Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman, 2 vols. (London, 1879, hereafter cited as Works), I, 652. Edwards himself thus draws the parallel between the covenant of works and justification by works on the one hand, and the covenant of grace and justification by faith alone on the other. Salvation is from God. God is sovereign in justification, and the faith which justifies is a trusting in that sovereign salvation and is designated as itself a gift of God. Yet faith is an act of the believing individual, and human responsibility is thus part and parcel of the divine sovereignty. Nevertheless, Perry Miller can write: “The scandal of Edwards’ discourses on justification . . . was his rejection of the covenant. ...” Jonathan Edwards, pp. 115-116. For a treatment of how the covenant of grace functions for Edwards in relation to the distinctives of Reformed theology see my doctoral dissertation, Jonathan Edwards and the Covenant of Grace, to be published by Mack Publishing Co.

degree of fullness would require an entire volume itself. We must delimit the field. And so we will consider here only the miracles of Jesus Christ. Everyone knows that the Gospel narratives (considered only as good historical sources, not necessarily inspired) tell of a large number of miracles that were performed by Christ. A great many more are alluded to, but not related. This is so generally known that I feel perfectly safe in assuming the readers’ acquaintance with the accounts of Christ’s healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, raising the dead, walking on water, multiplying a boy’s lunch to feed more than five thousand hungry persons, and a host of other such deeds.

No one disputes the fact that the Gospel accounts tell of Jesus Christ’s performing miracles. There have been attempted naturalistic explanations, to be sure, but so far as we know no one has attempted the job of showing that all accounts of the apparently miraculous are merely accounts of natural events which were misconstrued by the writer or reader. For example, who would care to show that John’s report of Thomas’ placing his fingers in the side of the resurrected Christ to feel his former wounds was not meant to present an essentially supernatural event, namely, physical resurrection? Persons may or may not believe what John says, but how can they doubt that John presents them as happening? As even naturalistic New Testament critics usually say, there is no doubt that the early Christians believed these supernatural things did occur.

If it is granted that the biographers of Christ say He wrought miracles, the only questions remaining are: can these writers be believed (please note again we are not, in a circular fashion, assuming their Inspiration but the well-established historical value of their manuscripts), and, if so, what do the miracles prove?

Can these writers be believed when they relate that Christ wrought supernatural deeds or miracles? Well, why not? People are assumed to be reliable in their relating of events unless there is some reason for thinking that they are not so. What reason is there for thinking that these writers are not reliable? So far as they are known, they have the reputation of honesty. Was there some bias present which would have tended to corrupt their honesty in the case of these miracles? There is no evidence of bribery by money or position. Their reporting of miracles as vindications of Jesus did not bring them into good standing with the powers in their own community. It caused Peter and John to be imprisoned and all the apostles to be brought into disfavor with most of the Jewish community. It stands to reason that a person cannot advance his own worldly interests by championing a person condemned by law and executed as a criminal.

But what about their other-worldly interests? Is it possible that these men believed that by shading the truth and relating what did not occur they would thereby gain an interest

Charles Hodge stands as one of the most influential giants of American Reformed theology. In his fifty-five years at Princeton Theological Seminary (1822–1878), he taught over three thousand students. Through his magnum opus, his three-volume Systematic Theology, he has taught countless thousands more. Many of today’s leading Reformed theologians count Hodge as one of their major influences. It is surprising therefore, that Paul Gutjahr’s biography is the first modern critical biography of Hodge to appear in print. A work of this kind is long overdue.

Gutjahr wryly comments that one of the things he learned while writing this book was that “if you are going to undertake a biography, pick a subject who dies young.” Hodge lived to the age of eighty. Gutjahr has chosen therefore to divide the major sections of his biography according to decades of the nineteenth century in which Hodge lived. Following three chapters that provide background on the Hodge family, the book begins with Hodge’s student years in the 1810s and then continues through the 1870s. The chapters in each section are relatively brief making this a highly readable book.

The strength of Gutjahr’s work, like that of any good biography, is that it allows us to see Hodge as more than just the author of theological works. We begin to see him as a human being, a product of his times. Hodge was not merely the author of the Systematic Theology. He was a devoted son, a loving husband and father, a faithful friend, and a loyal churchman. In this biography, we are also given great insight into certain aspects of nineteenth-century church history as we view them through the lens of one man’s life during that time.

As thankful as we should be for this work, there are a few weaknesses. In the first place, because Hodge lived such a long life, a biography of only four hundred pages must of necessity deal with many aspects of his life in a rather cursory manner. This necessity is, however, a weakness of the book. The brief chapters, while making for a very readable work, often leave one wanting more detail about specific events, conflicts, and relationships in Hodge’s life. Second, and related to the first issue, is the lack of citation of Hodge’s own writings. In a biography like this, citations from Hodge’s personal letters, for example, would shed invaluable insight into the character of the man.

A third issue I would like to bring to the reader’s attention is Gutjahr’s misleading claim regarding Hodge’s view of inerrancy. On page 275, Gutjahr writes: “It is important to note that while Hodge held the words of scripture to be infallible, he never personally advocated that they were without error in the original manuscripts.” Gutjahr says that the doctrine of inerrancy is something that Hodge “implied but never formally taught.” Gutjahr here seems to be attempting to draw a distinction between the view of Hodge and that of later writers such as B.B. Warfield, but his claim is inaccurate. For

be adapted in the West in both the Romanesque and Gothic styles, the Byzantine churches were also filled with visual splendor. The interior of the high-vaulting domes might be adorned with pure gold. The floors might be mosaics with thousands of pieces laid in breathtakingly complex designs. And on the walls and the altar and nearly everywhere one would look would be icons.

Icons are stylized, nearly abstract, with thick lines sketching the figures, which are filled in with bright colors or gold. The eyes, though, are eerily deep, as if they are staring straight into yours.

Some of the greatest artistic achievements of the seventh century, however, were not among the Byzantines but among the beleaguered West. As monks copied out the Scriptures by hand, they adorned the Word of God with illuminations of astonishing beauty. (The greatest example of seventh-century illuminated manuscripts is probably the Lindisfarne Gospels, made in an English monastery.)

Even iconoclasts can appreciate the art of the illuminated Bibles, much of which is non-representational: intricately interlocking lines and labyrinthine shapes, orchestrations of colors and designs, fantasy figures and whimsical gargoyles that are images of nothing on heaven or on earth. But above all, the art of the illuminated manuscripts is simply calligraphy, a riff on the visual depiction of sounds and letters that is written language, a recognition that the greatest icon is the written Word of God, which consists of visual images of letters in all of their jots and tittles.

The seventh century was also important in the history of music. Gregorian chants are attributed to Pope Gregory, who lived in the sixth century, though this is probably incorrect, since the Gregorian chants we have date from the ninth century. But chant forms certainly developed through the seventh century.

Chanting is simply a way to sing prose. The single melodic line is free of strict rhythmic and metrical requirements and can thus accompany any text. In the seventh century, this art form, again, arose in the church, whose worship, both in the West and in the East, included singing passages from the Bible.

I myself appreciate those Reformed congregations that only sing the Psalms in worship. Those Psalms, though, have been paraphrased into a metrical form, with a regular rhythm and rhyme, so as to fit the strict structures of our more modern music. If they would use chant forms, they could sing the Psalms right out of the Bible. There is nothing intrinsically “Catholic” about chanting. Lutherans, as well as Anglicans, have been chanting the Psalms and other biblical texts ever since the Reformation.

The seventh century also marks the beginning of English literature. In 672, a monk named Caedmon composed and wrote down the first poem ever recorded in the language of the Angles; that is, Anglish. Again, it was a Christian poem, a hymn on the creation. Here, in a modern translation, is how English literature begins:

Now shall we praise the heavenly kingdom’s Guardian, The Creator’s ability and His wisdom, Work of the glorious

One of the great insights of the Reformation was the recovery of the biblical concept of “covenant.” This recovery was fueled by the “new learning” of the Renaissance humanism, the return ad fontes, “to the sources,” of theology in the original texts of the New and Old Testaments and in the writings of the church fathers. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Muslim Turks brought a flood of Greek and Hebrew scholars with their manuscripts into Western Europe. For the first time in a thousand years in the West the Bible was being studied in the original languages, and in particular, the Old Testament was being given close attention. The expression, “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched,” is well known and refers to his publication in 1516 of the first critical edition of the Greek New Testament, barely a year before the posting of the 95 Theses. Less well known is the fact that Luther was one of a handful of tri-linguists (Greek, Hebrew, Latin) on the whole continent of Europe. No longer would the church’s theologians be content to study the Bible in the Latin of the Vulgate.

The biblical covenants were given careful study by Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin, and Bullinger, often in relation to sacramental theology. What they came to understand was that the Lord’s Supper is a supper, that is, a covenantal meal. It should not be understood as a sacrifice offered upon an altar by a priest, but a supper offered upon a table by a pastor. The Lord’s Supper is the Christian Passover in which, as with many covenantal meals before it, the agreement between the two participating parties is ratified or confirmed (Ex. 12:24; see also Gen. 14:17–20; 18:1–13; 27; Prov. 9:1–6). Jesus announced, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25; see Matt. 26:28). By participating in the meal, the covenant with Christ is ratified and confirmed, the Reformers argued. God confirms His promise to redeem those who come to Him through the cross of Christ. Communicants in turn promise to be faithful servants of the Christ whom they trust.

The practical implications of a covenantal understanding of the Eucharist were soon obvious: the communion service was to look like a meal. The language of sacrifice, as well as gestures and furnishings that implied sacrifice, were removed from the service: “Let us, therefore, repudiate everything that smacks of sacrifice,” Luther wrote in 1523 in his Formula Missae.

The pastoral implications were enormous as well. The communion table became the point at which commitment to Christ was either refused or ratified, and the people came to understand that if they were to do business with God it would be at the table. If you were a non-believer, Christ was beckoning you to His table. The Supper was a poignant reminder that one was outside of God’s covenant family and thus not a recipient of His saving provisions. If you were a baptized but non-communing child of the church, confirmation would

attributes authorship to God and the human writers. Thus the entire Bible, not just parts, was the product of God’s divine activity yet in such a way as to diminish neither the mind-set, vocabulary, and individual gifts of the human writers nor the characteristics associated with divinity. Each works together harmoniously with the other without diminishing the role of the other. Warfield summarizes: The whole Bible is recognized as human, the free product of human effort in every part and word. And at the same time, the whole Bible is recognized as divine, the Word of God, his utterances, of which he is in the truest sense the Author.

Although Warfield utilized the technical term concursus, he defended the Bible using language that inspired confidence that its content being divine carried the highest authority. Without explicitly mentioning propositional revelation, he provided a rationale for accepting the veracity of the Bible’s teaching as the revelation of God through the vehicle of human language.

Finally, Warfield gave precision to the church’s view of the full trustworthiness of the Bible by affirming its inerrancy. His opponents frequently misrepresented this teaching in the late nineteenth century and again in the 1970s when the struggle to define the evangelical view of the Bible resurfaced. In both instances, critics declared inerrancy a contemporary innovation in church history, a last-ditch tightening of terms to meet the onslaught of biblical criticism. They particularly charged the term a “diversion” from the Westminster Confession mentioned in the Plan of the Seminary.

Warfield responded in two ways. He argued that although Westminster did not use the word inerrancy, it is implicit in Westminster’s affirmation of the Bible’s divine inspiration and its infallibility. If Scripture originated from God, it must inherently bear such qualities as perfection, perspicuity, and trustworthiness consistent with God as its author. While Warfield granted that discrepancies crept into translations, we must affirm inerrancy of the autographs (the original documents).

He admitted that “inerrant in the original autographs” is an awkward construction. But he deemed that a small price to pay for opposing those who claim faith in the Bible yet contend it errs when it speaks historically. The liberal position does nothing less than undermine the Bible’s authority as the revelation of God’s redemptive activity.

Moreover, Warfield substantiated beyond doubt that the term inerrancy was no latecomer to church history as critics alleged. He cited examples from early church fathers such as Augustine to Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin to Puritans like Richard Baxter. They either used the term inerrant as characterizing the Bible or stated that while corruptions existed in extant manuscripts, the autographs contained no such problems. Far from this distinction being unknown among the Westminster divines, Warfield characterized it in “The Inerrancy of the Original Autographs” as “the burning question” of the day among Puritan divines.

Warfield’s defense of the Bible’s inspiration, authority, and inerrancy remain among the most lucid and persuasive in the modern era. They testify to the wisdom of the founders of Princeton Seminary and continue

villages of southern Poland, but also by the wider church. In the years that followed, he entertained invitations to teach and live in the cities of London, Boston, Stockholm, Paris, Amsterdam, Wittenberg, and Geneva. He was called on to devise universal Christian curricula, to reform educational systems, to administer colleges, to oversee theological projects, and to supervise publishing efforts. He corresponded with the infamous Cardinal Richelieu as well as with René Descartes, Cotton Mather, Oliver Cromwell, Charles X of Sweden, and the industrialist Louis de Geer. He was among the most influential and sought after men of his day.

Following yet another tragedy in 1656, forcing him to leave his home, Comenius set his hand to a host of new projects. Though he had lost a dozen unpublished manuscripts, his printing press, and all of his worldly goods, he was unshaken in his confidence in the Gospel to change the course of both men and nations. He had set his ultimate hope on the day that Christ would make manifest His new heavens and earth. But he was also steadfast in the certainty that a deposit of that future glory would be made in the tired domains of the old heavens and earth. To his dying day, he lived in accordance with that notion, planning for the evangelization of the Muslims and Gypsies, undertaking the first complete translation of the Bible into the Turkish language, and refining his vision for a “pansophic college.”

When he died at the age of seventy-eight, he left behind a glorious legacy, not of this world, that would inspire the likes of Whitefield, Wesley, Zinzendorf, Chalmers, and Kuyper, providing a powerful reminder that success in the kingdom rarely looks like success in the world.

Henry was an ornery agnostic. His wife, Eunice, was a devout Christian. They lived in a farming community, where a yearlong drought was devastating the local economy. At the request of many of the farmers, the pastor of a local church called the community together to pray for rain. As Eunice was leaving to go to the church, Henry challenged, “Do you really believe that it will rain if you ask for it?”

Eunice opened her Bible and read to Henry: “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit” (James 5:16–18). Eunice continued: “Praying for the drought to end is a big prayer, but I believe there is nothing too hard for God. If I didn’t believe that God can answer our prayer and break the drought, I would not go to this prayer meeting.”

Henry mocked, “If you really believe that God will answer this ‘big prayer’ and give rain, where is your umbrella?”

Eunice picked up her umbrella and went to the prayer meeting. She returned home without having to use the umbrella, but that night it rained and the drought was broken.

What makes a “big” prayer? A multitude of words doesn’t do it. Only prayers that are consistent with God’s character and focus on advancing God’s kingdom can truly be called “big.”

The Bible provides many examples of such prayers. In response to big prayers, God delivered His people from the dreaded Assyrians (2 Kings 19:14–37). The restoration of the people of God from the Babylonian captivity was an answer to big prayers (see Jer. 29:10–14; 50:4–5; Dan. 9; Ezra 8:21; Neh. 1:4–11; 4:4–5; 9:1–38). Samson, in his weakness, received strength to pull down Dagon’s temple through big prayer (Judg. 16:28–30). In answer to big prayers, God gave the greatest outpouring of the Spirit on the church in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Acts 1:14).

Jesus prayed big prayers. Some would say that our Lord’s High Priestly Prayer in John 17 was His biggest prayer. In this prayer, He asked that His people would be kept from the evil one (v. 15), that they might become one (v. 21), and that they might be with Him and behold His glory (v. 24). As the hour drew near when He would die, Jesus prayed that the work of redemption would be accomplished, even at the cost of His life (Matt. 26:39, 42). Now at the right hand of the Father, He lives forever to pray big prayers of intercession, pleading the power of His sacrifice to counter the accusations of the adversary against His people (Heb. 7:25).

God is the high priority in the model prayer given by our Lord. The best Greek manuscripts omit the closing sentence: “ ‘For Yours is the kingdom

The Geneva Bible: Its History and Lasting Influence

Christianity is the religion of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, and of the written Word, the Bible. Wherever Christianity has gone, it has developed translations of Scripture as a necessity. The promise of Pentecost, where people of various origin heard of “the wonders of God in their own tongues” (Acts 2:11), has been fulfilled and continues to be increasingly fulfilled in the process of Bible translation. The whole Bible, or portions thereof, is now available in print in more than two thousand languages.

Geneva Bible and Early English Translations

In the British Isles, turbulent times accompanied the work of translating Scripture, but the first written translation of the whole Bible was made under the influence of John Wycliffe (c. 1330–1384). Even though it had to be copied by hand, and in spite of a prohibition against English translations, there are still some two hundred manuscripts of it extant.

The first published text was William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament (1526), based on the Greek and Hebrew texts, in Worms, Germany. He had completed the translation of the Pentateuch, Jonah, and Joshua-2 Chronicles before being martyred in 1536.

Miles Coverdale, encouraged by Archbishop Cramner and Secretary Thomas Cromwell, undertook to translate the whole Bible from the Vulgate (Latin) with the help of certain other translators in Latin or German and of Tyndale’s own version. This was published in 1535 in Germany. In 1537 it was republished in Southwark, the first complete English Bible to be printed in England.

Mary Tudor’s Reign and Geneva Bible’s Birth

When Mary Tudor ascended the British throne (1553), she did her utmost to restore the Roman Catholic faith. Little did she realize that her anti-Protestant stance would indirectly foster the production of the most important sixteenth-century Bible, the “Geneva Bible,” precipitated by the exile of a number of the influential Protestant leaders to Geneva. Notable among these were John Knox and William Whittingham. After establishing an English church in 1555, the refugees agreed that the most significant work they could do was to prepare and publish a new English translation of the whole Bible made in such a way that it would have a maximum accessibility to the common people of Britain. Whittingham was an excellent scholar in Greek, and Anthony Gilby and Christopher Goodman in Hebrew. Furthermore, there were at that time in Geneva a number of gifted scholars and printers.

The English refugees made ample use of these resources, and Whittingham and his associates labored day and night to perform the task of preparing an English translation of the whole Bible. Earlier editions of the Bible had marginal notes, but the Geneva Bible accommodated them in a much greater proportion. Written in a Puritanic spirit, there was language that angered the royal family and some of the bishops of the Anglican Church who sought to impede the distribution and use of this Bible.

On June 10, 1557, the New Testament appeared as follows: The New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ.

a mystery to us.

We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.

Article VIII We affirm that God in His Work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.

We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.

Article IX We affirm that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.

We deny that the finitude or fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God’s Word.

Article X We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.

Article XI We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.

We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.

Article XII We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.

We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

Article XIII We affirm the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.

We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

Article XIV We affirm the unity and internal consistency of Scripture.

We deny that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the Bible.

Article XV We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.

We deny that Jesus’ teaching about Scripture may be dismissed by appeals to accommodation or to any natural limitation of His humanity.

Article XVI We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy has

On the day of judgment, everything that has been hidden in this life will be revealed. Should this fact bring us relief—or dread? In this sermon, R.C. Sproul continues his series in the gospel of Luke and considers how we should respond to the warnings and promises that Jesus makes about the last day.