Last time, we saw from verse 19 that God has given us his sure prophetic Word as we wait for the rising of the morning star—the objective return of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Verse 20: Scripture Interprets Scripture

Until then, however, we are to pay attention to holy Scripture because it is God’s final, authoritative, Spirit-inspired Word. We live in a time when people are desperate for a word from the Lord. The Pentecostals and other continuationists misconstrue whatever natural insights they have, in the kind providence of God, as special, continuing revelation. Some tie themselves into knots trying to explain how it is possible to affirm Scripture as the Word of God—the sufficient, final special revelation of God’s salvation and his will for us—and to say that God continues to reveal himself, without jeopardizing Scripture as the final Word. Some of them resort to an imagined kind of prophecy that is at once Spirit-inspired and fallible, as if the Holy Spirit might make a mistake.¹ Others, who make no bones about their rejection of the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura, following the (Anabaptist) Radical Zwickau prophets and the Montanists before them, disparage anyone who says that Scripture is the sole, final, authoritative special revelation of God’s salvation and will.

Peter says that “every prophecy of Scripture comes not from one’s own interpretation.”² This language, as Peter replies to heretics raising doubts about the faith, is similar to language used by Philo, who countered “the charge that the prophets spoke of their own accord.”³

We may fairly apply this verse to apologists for the Roman Catholic church who argue that, in the Roman communion, they have a fixed, objective interpretation of Scripture, and that the Reformation plunged us into radical subjectivism and skepticism. This, of course, is utterly false and reveals a lack of awareness of the history of patristic and medieval theology, and of the contradictory decrees issued by popes and counsels in the medieval period. In contrast, the Reformation held that Scripture is objectively true and sufficiently clear (a truth Rome denies), and, ultimately, its own interpreter. Verse 20 is one of the grounds for the Reformation view.

We have always recognized, as the Westminster Divines said, that all “things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all” (Westminster Confession of Faith [WCF] 1.7). Certainly there are difficult passages and believers do struggle with some passages of Scripture. Nevertheless, what we must know for salvation is revealed with sufficient clarity: “Yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them” (WCF 1.7) So, Roman apologists persistently set up and attack a straw man.

What is at issue here is the perspicuity or sufficient clarity of holy Scripture. The apostle Peter says that what we must know we can know from Scripture, which is its own interpreter. God the Spirit certainly used human authors, but Scripture is not a merely human product. It is especially clear in the original texts—in the original languages—but the stylistic and thematic differences between the various human authors may be perceived. As Peter himself notes in chapter 3, Paul writes one way, and he (Peter) writes another way. They are complementary, not contradictory. Hebrews was written yet another way. It is all God’s Word.

As important as the human authorship of Scripture is, so too is the divine authorship of Scripture. The church is not the mother or author of Scripture as Rome claims. The church did not form the rule (the canon). Were that so, then the church herself would be the rule; but that is not what Scripture says. That is not what history says. At no time did the early church sit down to pick New Testament books and exclude others. The church, as God’s servant, merely received those books given to her through apostles and the apostolic company.

This is why, when the church, in her ministers and in her assemblies, interprets Scripture, she compares one passage with another. There are clearer passages, and we use them to guide us in our understanding of the more difficult passages. Further, the church from the earliest post-apostolic days formed a “rule of faith” (regula fidei), which became the Apostles’ Creed. That rule was the confession of the church as to what the Scriptures taught about the most basic elements of the faith.

The Scriptures and the rule must be explained, and thus, like the apostles, the church confesses her faith. We do this in creeds, catechisms, and confessions, and always as we do so, we compare Scripture with Scripture, allowing God’s Word to set the agenda and to teach us. The church is always and only a servant, a minister—never the master! Christ is the Master.

Verse 21: Scripture Comes from the Spirit

There were ancient critics of Christianity in the third century who denied that Scripture is of divine origin. In the modern period, under the influence of the European Enlightenment movements, it is an article of faith that Scripture is a purely human product. The apostle Peter begs to differ. He was in a position to know, since he walked with and heard the Word of God incarnate (John 1:1–3). He was filled with the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). Supernaturally he spoke (and was heard) in known, natural languages that he did not know naturally. He was present for the beginning of the reversal of Babel (Gen 11:1–9). He himself had been given a vision three times about the end of the old covenant (Mosaic) food laws and was even, as an apostle and like an Old Testament prophet, taken into heaven (Acts 10:9–16).

So it is significant that he wrote, “Because not by the will of man was a prophecy ever brought but carried by the Holy Spirit men spoke from God.” This is perhaps an overly literal rendering, but it is useful to be confronted by this verse in a fresh way. Scripture was given by the same Holy Spirit who hovered over the face of the deep (Gen 1:2), who led the Israelites through the wilderness in a cloudy pillar by day and in a pillar of fire by night (Exod 13:21), who filled the Tabernacle (Exod 40:34) and who now hovers over the new covenant church as the holy temple of Christ (1 Peter 4:14). That same Holy Spirit inspired the prophets (Num 11:29; Zech 7:12). Even though Peter is speaking of the Old Testament prophets, the same is true of the New Testament writers. They too only wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit.

How did the Spirit work through the prophets? They were borne or carried along, as it were, by or even under (ὑπὸ) the Holy Spirit. Again, as noted above, there is a discernible difference in style between the work of the prophets who wrote the historical books (e.g., Kings as distinct from Chronicles) as there is a difference between Jeremiah and Isaiah or between the former prophets and the latter prophets. Yet, all of them only wrote Scripture as it was given to them by the Spirit. The imagery of “carried along” (borne) is apt and important.

During the “Battle for the Bible” over the inerrancy of Scripture in the 1970s and 80s, it became commonplace to deny the so-called “dictation theory” of inspiration. That denial was probably correct, but Peter (and through him the Holy Spirit) wants us to have the utmost confidence in the reliability and truthfulness of Scripture such that, under the inspiration of the Spirit, he uses a metaphor that is in certain ways not so far from the dread dictation theory. If we asked the canonical prophets and apostles whether they would be offended by the thought that they were mere vehicles for the Holy Spirit, we may be sure that they would not be offended.

After all, in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 325; 381), all orthodox Christians confess that the Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life (τὸ κύριον, [καὶ] τὸ ζωοποιόν), that he proceeds eternally from the Father (and the Son, according to the Filioque added by the Third Council of Toledo, AD 589 and affirmed by all the Reformed churches), that he is “together worshipped and glorified” (προσκυνούμενον καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον) with the Father and the Son, and that, and he “spoke through the prophets” (τὸ λαλῆσαν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν). The canonical words of the prophets are his words—they are God’s Word. In the Athanasian Creed (not written by Athanasius himself) we confess that the “Deity of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.” Just as the Father and Son are uncreated (increatus), incomprehensible, and immense, so too, the Holy Spirit is uncreated, incomprehensible, and immense. Like the Father and the Son, the Spirit is “omnipotent” and Lord, “neither made nor created but proceeding.”

In speaking this way, the church was following the pattern set by the apostle Peter. One’s view of Scripture is inseparable from one’s view of the person and work of the Spirit. This exalted view of Scripture is the ecumenical (i.e., universal) view of Scripture. It is not the invention of nineteenth-century “fundamentalists.” It is what Christians have always said and it flows from our exalted view of the Spirit.

Notes

1. I discuss all of this in great detail in the podcast series, Feathers And All: The Scriptures Are Enough.”
2. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations are mine.
3. Gene L. Green, Jude and 2 Peter, Baker Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 231. Green is quoting Richard Bauckham here.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

RESOURCES

• Subscribe To The Heidelblog!
• As It Was In The Days Of Noah: A Commentary On 1 and 2 Peter
• The Heidelblog Resource Page
• Heidelmedia Resources
• The Ecumenical Creeds
• The Reformed Confessions
• The Heidelberg Catechism
• Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008)
• Why I Am A Christian
• What Must A Christian Believe?
• Heidelblog Contributors
• Support Heidelmedia: use the donate button or send a check to

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

  More by R. Scott Clark ›