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Written by Pastor Jim Lee for “The Domain for Truth” @ https://veritasdomain.wordpress.com
Original post @ https://veritasdomain.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/quick-thoughts-on-the-self-attesting-nature-of-the-bible/
Quick Thoughts on the self-attesting nature of the Bible
May 16, 2020 by SLIMJIM
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Someone asked the following: “How and in what ways is the Bible self-attesting and self-authenticating? I want to understand this doctrine better.”
Here’s my quick thoughts:
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Reading God’s Directly should attests to us immediately it is the Word of God. If you don’t see it’s God’s Word it might be you need to read more of it to see it’s divine character being revealed.
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God’s Word is objectively self-authenticating itself as God’s Word but there’s also the Spirit’s attestation it’s God’s Word through the ministry of conviction (use of its Law), proclaiming the Gospel (Content of Scripture) and regenerating believers to have a heart to see Scripture as it is given the noetic effect of sins, etc. The rest below will focus on the objective self-attestation of Scripture itself.
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Scripture as the highest authority doesn’t appeal to another greater authority to be authoritative; it is authorizing itself as authoritative and authoritative to authenticate it’s the Word of God.
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I think Scripture self-attestation to itself being God’s Word isn’t a flat “it’s just God’s Word because I (believer) say it is.” I think it is self-attesting and there’s evidential value within itself (that is, its self-evidencing) because of its unity of the books in its canon being about Christ from Old to New. It’s incredible how vast the amount of casts that author the Scripture in many places, time and occupation and it’s marvelous unity. It’s not an accidental property of being united but it’s telos is Christ and the Gospel!
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Likewise I think Scripture is self-evidencing in its Messianic prophecies. My approach as a Presuppositionalist here is different than a general evidentialist with all the points above but also because I stress the OT is part of our philosophy of evidence that interpret what Christ was doing in His first advent, etc.
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Knowing the nature of Scripture as self-attesting shapes our apologetics’ methodology. Since the nature of a self-attesting Scripture is that Scripture is self-authorizing, opposing Scripture means opposing it’s because one has another conflicting ultimate authority. The apologist pushes the critic to reveal his or her authority and show the problems with it by way of an internal critique.
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