Dr. John Piper’s new book A Peculiar Glory (available for free PDF download) sets out to provide a basis for a sure knowledge that the Bible is true, one that can be known without scholarship. He says that while he has spent much of his life dealing with the historical and textual/linguistic evidences for establishing the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible, he has realized that these evidences do not provide certainty to the lay person who cannot understand them, nor devote his life to the study of Greek and Hebrew and the history of eastern antiquity, etc. He feels that such certainty should and must be available to the common Christian, and indeed it must.

As the means of getting this certainty about the Bible, Piper points to the evidence of Christ’s glory within it. He quotes heavily from Jonathan Edwards, who explains it this way:

“The mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory…. Unless men may come to a reasonable solid persuasion and conviction of the truth of the gospel, by the internal evidences of it, in the way that has been spoken, viz. by a sight of its glory; ’tis impossible that those who are illiterate, and unacquainted with history, should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all. (qtd. p. 138)

It is my aim in this essay to demonstrate that the peculiar glory of the gospel of Christ in the Bible is not in itself a sufficient means of knowing the trueness of the Bible, but to propose another means that can provide assurance without scholarship.

To begin, I address an assertion that Piper seems to make about ascertaining the truth of scripture through the glory of the gospel, namely that it is objective. He says, “It is crucial to emphasize here that this glory of Christ in the gospel is an objective reality. The glory is in Christ and in the gospel. It is not in us. It is not subjective, but objective” (p. 141). I respectfully point out that Piper has confused the glory of Christ in the gospel (which entails no knowledge on our part) with the perception of the glory of Christ in the gospel, which is the means by which we can know the glory of God. It is vital to see that the epistemological instrument Piper is seeking is in fact a mental or spiritual illumination, as evinced by Edwards’, John Calvin’s, and his own descriptions of the nature of this proof-by-glory. According to Piper, “Well-grounded faith is not only reasonable faith (based on real evidence and good grounds), but also spiritual faith, that is, it is enabled by the Holy Spirit and mediated through spiritual perception of divine glory in the truth of the gospel” (emphasis mine). In Edwards’ words above, it is not God’s glory per se but “a sight of [the gospel’s] glory” that convinces the believer. Calvin speaks in a crucial quote from Chapter 11:

“How can we be assured that this has sprung from God unless we have recourse to the decree of the church? It is as if someone asked: Whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.” (Institutes, I, vvii, 2)6

Thus, according to Calvin, the assurance of the truth of the Bible is a sensation, like taste or sight. Now, the word “objective” means belonging to the object of thought rather than the thinking subject, and “subjective” means belonging to the thinking subject rather than the object of thought. The glory of God may be objective, but the “spiritual perception of divine glory”, the great dawning of this glory in the mind of the believer, the sight of the glory which confirms the truth of the Bible to us, the taste of its sweetness, is what we are talking about. And the apprehension of beauty or glory is an inherently subjective phenomenon. Calling a believer’s comprehension of the peculiar glory of God objective is like calling the beauty of my one-month-old daughter objective, as if anyone who holds my daughter experiences the glory that I experience when I do. The subjectivity of a religious appeal to something like beauty is easier for us to see when it is put forward by Islam instead of Christianity. One of the most prominent lines of reasoning in Islamic apologetics is that the Qur’an can be known to be true because it is a work of literary beauty and moral sublimity that is unparalleled and impossible to imitate. The Qur’an says in one place (among others), “Oh people, if you doubt the heavenly origin of this Book which We have sent down to Our servant, the Prophet, produce one surah like it” (2:23). Can any writing be put forth that will satisfy this challenge in the eyes of Muslims? I suggest that it is impossible, because the claim is subjective. Muslims adore the Qur’an as holy. How could they see something unholy as equally beautiful? Therefore, it is clear as Piper advances his point about the glory of Christ in the gospel as the evidence for the truth of the Bible, that he is talking about a subjective evidence.

In addition to saying that the glory of Christ in the Bible is “objective,” Piper says that it is “self-authenticating.” (In Calvin’s words above: “Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth”.) In fact this is one of the main claims Piper makes in the book, using the term in the book’s introduction webpage on desiringgod.com, and throughout the text. Now, a truth that is “self-evident” or “self-authenticating” is something that is authenticated by no outside authority, but subjectively, that is, having the proper source of its evidence or authentication in the mind itself. For example, the Founding Fathers held it to be self-evident that all men are created equal, on the basis that any man contemplating the statement has a subjective perception of its truth, based on reason; in other words, it has no other proof but needs no other, since every man’s reason confirms it to him in his mind. By calling the glory of Christ in the scriptures self-authenticating, Piper is saying that one’s mind is the source of the authentication of the Bible. It is important to notice the possible implications of this. If we say that the truth of the Bible is evident to the natural human mind, we make it out to be something ascertainable by the natural mind, in other words, by reason. Now, this reliance on reason is troubling when it comes to the gospel. The comprehension of the divine beauty of the gospel is anything but “natural” in a fallen state of nature, and the glorious paradoxes of the gospel are not “reasonable,” but a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. Dr. Piper would be the first to admit that reason alone cannot bring one this saving vision of the divine glory. To give him the benefit of the doubt, I think that he uses the term “self-authenticating” with unintentional ambiguity, and doesn’t really mean that the way we are certain of the supernatural truth of the Bible is by natural reason. Instead, he means that the Holy Spirit within our minds confirms the truth of the Bible to our minds, and it is in that sense subjective: it is within our minds. However, although it is a subjective truth, it is not a self-authenticating truth, but a truth authenticated by a divine witness. This is in fact where Piper ends up, especially in Chapter 11: he explains the Spirit as the agent of illumination.

Filtering out the misleading implications that the glory of God is itself a means by which men may ascertain its truth, or that it is evident by man’s natural faculties, we see Piper’s strongest claim, that our certainty comes from the Holy Spirit’s supernatural guidance and illumination of the mind. Piper first introduces this idea of the Holy Spirit’s role via Jonathan Edwards: The “internal evidences” that Edwards mentions are authenticated “by the special influence and enlightenings of the Spirit of God” (qtd. p. 142), which Edwards says accounts for why some otherwise rational men do not seem to notice them in their study of the Bible. The idea is really expounded in Chapter 11, where Piper stakes the heart of his argument on a crucial phrase by Calvin: “We can know the Bible is the word of God by ‘the internal testimony of the Spirit’” (p. 182). Perhaps Calvin recognized the danger of ascribing the illumination that affirms the Bible merely to the human mind. Perhaps he heard the thundering hooves of the Enlightenment coming on the heels of the Reformation. In any case, he ascribes it to the Holy Spirit:

The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his word, the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit therefore who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded . . . because until he illumines their minds, they ever waver among many doubts! (qtd. p. 184)

According to Calvin, it is by the Spirit’s illumination that we transcend our own rational powers to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the trueness of scripture.

Therefore illumined by [the Spirit’s] power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. (qtd. p. 187)

Or, as Piper explains, “beneath a spiritually vital judgment…is a Spirit-given illumination of the majesty of God himself. The sight of God’s glory precedes and grounds the formation of rational judgments about its truth.” Piper is saying that the proof of the Bible by the beauty of Christ is in our minds, yet not merely by the human mind, but by the Holy Spirit who sanctifies our minds through his divine and authoritative light.

Although I too believe that the inward witness of the Holy Spirit affirms to us all that we read in the Bible, this fact, no matter how true, does not provide any more epistemological certainty; rather it merely shifts the question over a bit. Imagine that a man comes to you and says, “I found these scrolls, and they were sent from heaven!” and you ask him, “How do you know they were sent from heaven?” Suppose he were to reply, “Because an angel appeared to me and told me.” Now you are a person who believes that angels and heaven exist. However, even given that, what would your response be? Would it be to say, “Well, since you say that an angel told you they are from God, I suppose they must be”? Isn’t it more likely that you will be inclined to ask, “Well, then how do I know that an angel appeared to you?” And that is the question we must ask of ourselves, suspending for the sake of truth our assumption that we know the truth: How do we know that the Holy Spirit has truly illumined us, and not some lesser power or principality?

Within the greater realm of those who claim Christianity there are some who, in answer to this question, leap off the precipice of absolute subjectivity, saying, “We know it because we know it. There is no explanation, you just know.” But their tautology brings the argument swiftly to an end, and as swiftly their faith, for they have no room for a Christ outside the one in their mind. John Piper–thanks be to God–is not willing to be among them, and so, when he is tacitly faced with this question, he deliberately avoids the precipice, clarifying that the Holy Spirit does not speak to us in just any way, but by and through the words of the Bible.

“The internal testimony of the Spirit is not an added revelation to what we see in Scripture. It is not the voice of the Spirit saying to our mind, ‘What you are now looking at in the Bible is the majesty of God; so start seeing it’” (p. 187).

The Spirit is not an added revelation outside Scripture. Nor does it work apart from Scripture.

God does not hang a lantern on the house of Scripture so that we will know it is his house. He does not certify his masterpiece with a distinguishing, Rembrandt-like signature. He does not give a voice from heaven: “This is my book, listen to it.” That is not what the word  “testimony” or “witness” means in the phrase “testimony [or witness] of the Holy Spirit.” Rather, the testimony of the Spirit is the work of the Spirit to give us new life and, with this life, eyes to see what is really there in the self-attesting divine glories of Scripture—the meaning of Scripture. (p. 190)

We do not know the Spirit’s work by some supernatural sign, but by the fact that he illumines our eyes to the true meaning of Scripture. In other words, Piper’s answer to the question “How do we know the Holy Spirit has truly illumined us?” is “Because it shows us the divine glory in the meaning of scripture.” The means of confirming the work of the Spirit is the Bible.

It is at this point we realize that Piper’s argument utterly fails, that it is an infinite loop. He commits the logical fallacy of begging the question. For if we ask him, “How do we know the scriptures are true?” the answer comes, “By the revelation of the Holy Spirit,” and if we ask him, “How do we know that a revelation is from the Holy Spirit?” the answer comes, “By the scriptures.”

Piper’s main purpose in the book is to establish a means of knowing for certain that the Bible is true–a means that is available to every man without historical-critical scholarship. We see now that the Bible is not its own authentication, and, although the Spirit of God confirms to us the glorious and holy truth contained in the Bible, the Holy Spirit and the Holy Book share the need for an anchor of well-grounded proof, a defense for the hope that is in them. On what reasonable grounds can we base our belief that the Bible is true, or for that matter, that the Holy Spirit speaks to us? I believe there is such a solid ground.

To find this firm foundation, we have to trace Piper’s argument back to Chapter 7, as Piper is laying the groundwork for his argument in Chapters 8-11. In Chapter 7 he makes some assumptions that doom the following chapters to failure: he claims that the authority that the Twelve Apostles and Paul had as spokesmen for Jesus was not transferable.

Once the Twelve were established for their foundational ministry, there was no plan or provision to be replaced. Paul referred to the new and growing church as “the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:19–20); and John described the church in Revelation as a city coming down from heaven whose wall had “twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:14). The point of Paul and John is that foundations that Christ puts in place are unshakeable and once for all. They are not replaced in every generation. The apostles were once for all. Alfred Plummer clarifies this point on the basis of the intrinsic purpose of the apostolate as Jesus created it: “The absence from Christ’s teaching of any statement respecting the priesthood of the Twelve, or respecting the transmission of the powers of the Twelve to others, is remarkable. As the primary function of the Twelve was to be witnesses of what Christ had taught and done, especially in rising from the dead, no transmission of so exceptional an office was possible.” (p. 122)

Piper says that because the apostles were “foundations,” they could not be “replaced,” which we understand through the quote by Plummer to mean that the transmission of their office was not possible. The implication is that their role as “authorized spokesmen who would teach with [Christ’s] authority” (p. 118)–the authority by which Piper claims the New Testament came into being–ended with The Apostles. But this reasoning is absolutely false. No one lays the foundation of a building and then stops and says, “Well, these bricks are the foundation, therefore I should not put any bricks on top of them.” Indeed, if they are a foundation, then by definition they must be built upon. And God is no foolish builder who leaves his foundations unfinished, but is building on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. As it says in Ephesians 2:19-21, which Piper quotes from, “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” Nor does the transmission of an office imply supplantation, but rather succession. No one at the Continental Congress, upon having elected George Washington as the first president of the United States, said, “Well, since we have recognized him as the greatest man in America, we surely must never elect a man to replace him as president.” It is certainly true that the Twelve Apostles have always been accorded unequalled honor above the saints, but it is all the more fitting that there should be successors to their office. The only argument offered by Piper or Plummer that there could not possibly be successors to their office is essentially that Jesus would surely have said something about it, which is a fallacious argumentum ex silentio, an argument from silence.

And here we begin to see our hope, for if the office of “authorized spokesmen who would teach with [Christ’s] authority” is not ended, but alive and well, then we can base our faith in the Bible on their testimony, a testimony that is not entirely in heaven (as the testimony of the Holy Spirit) nor entirely on earth (as the testimony of human reason), but straddling both, like Jacob’s Ladder, like Christ Himself, fully divine and fully human. Behold, here indeed is such a witness, the “holy temple” of which we are bricks and “in which God lives by his Spirit,” the Church, whose head speaks with divine authority handed down from those first authorized spokesmen by unbroken apostolic succession by the laying on of hands.

How can we know that the Bible is true? We can believe on the testimony of the witness who wrote it, who preserved it, who canonized it, and treasured the gospel of God in her bosom from the earliest days of Christianity until today. The Church is with us as a living and authoritative witness so that we do not have to become scholars to have a grounded basis for our faith. Indeed, Piper admits that even if we were to become masters of historical criticism, “the results of such study would not provide a sure foundation for faith that you could stake your life on” (p. 130). By trusting the authority of the Church, which is led by the Holy Spirit and given a spiritual enlightenment, we do not have to subject our trust to the arguments of mere human critics and rationalist skeptics. Yet the Church is also an earthly institution, standing as a physical and historical tether to the objective truths of Christianity, fiercely insistent and perennially consistent in its dogma, keeping us from the pitfalls to which blind subjectivism would leave us vulnerable. The Holy Catholic Church, the Body of the Spirit of Christ, The Protector of the Bible, is the Bible’s one sure foundation, as Christ is hers. All who love the Bible will be drawn to her.