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:
