Tuesday, May 17, 2022

R.C. Sproul on the Internal Witness of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament and Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

Speaking of 1 Cor 2:4-11 as a “classic text” for the testimonium, R. C. Sproul offers the following commentary:

 

The theme of this passage is the supremacy of the power of God in revelation. The Spirit searches things that go beyond what the senses perceive. Our faith is said to “stand” in the power of God. God reveals the secret things of himself through the Spirit. The Holy Spirit mediates the Word. As the Apostle Paul notes letter: “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:13) Here Paul links the apostolic words with the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is not mentioned merely as being the source of the content but as being the basis of the persuasive power of the words. (R. C. Sproul, “The Internal Testimony of the Spirit,” in Sproul, Scripture Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine [Phillipsburg, Pa.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2005], 116-17, italics in original)

 

Continuing, he writes that:

 

The same emphasis on revelation and persuasion may be seen in 2 Corinthians 3:1-11. The writing of the Spirit on the Christian’s heart is not viewed as a gnostic, esoteric experience, but as a powerful penetration of the heart by the truth of the content of God’s revelation.

 

The internal testimony is not an isolated work of the Spirit ripped loose from the written Word. Rather, as the Trinity works in harmony to effect our redemption, so the Spirit bears witness and testifies to us inwardly of the whole content of divine revelation. (Ibid., 117, emphasis added)

 

In an essay where he commented on the articles in the October 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Sproul wrote the following:

 

ARTICLE XVII: Witness of the Spirit

 

We affirm that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God’s written Word.

 

We deny that this witness of the Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or again Scripture.

 

Article XVII attests to the doctrine of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, our personal conviction of the truth of Scripture rests not on the external evidences to the Scripture’s truthfulness in and of themselves, but those evidences are confirmed in our hearts by the special work of God the Holy Spirit. The Spirit himself bears witness to our human spirit that the Scriptures are indeed the Word of God. Here God himself confirms the truthfulness of his own Word.

 

The denial guards against substituting a reliance upon the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit for the content of Scripture itself. The thought behind the denial is that the Holy Spirit normally works in conjunction with the Scripture and speaks to us through the Scripture not against the Scripture or apart from the Scripture. Word and Spirit are to be viewed together, Word bearing witness to the Spirit and being the means by which we test the spirits to see if they be of God (1 John 4:1), and the Spirit working within our hearts to confirm the Word of God to ourselves. Thus, there is reciprocity between Word and Spirit, and they are never to be set over against each other. (Sproul, “The Word of God and You,” in ibid., 169-70)

 

Further Reading:


Personal Divine Revelation and the Knowledge the Bible is the Word of God and/or one is "Saved" in the Protestant Traditions

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