Confessor
Puritan Board Senior
Often Van Til talks about how special revelation is self-attesting, carrying its evidence in itself. I used to take this to mean that the actual words of Scripture are the kind that make people think, "This is God's Word" -- just as a friend might recognize another friend's terminology or style of writing in a letter. But, due to the fact that many believers could not point out a Bible verse from a similar Qur'anic verse, or due to the fact that, even if they could, it would not be due to some aura about the Biblical verse, it is quite obvious that Scripture cannot be self-attesting in this sense. Scripture cannot be self-attesting in the sense that the specific wording makes us think of its divine authorship.
Thus, what I am trying to understand is the nature of Scripture's self-attestation. This has been my train of thought to reach a tentative conclusion: when we were regenerated, we were convinced of a Gospel-system; we were convinced that we are sinners and that God saves us by grace (note: those two propositions define "Gospel-system" as I use it later in this post). And we understand that, historically speaking, this Gospel-system is always associated with the Bible, the Protestant canon. When we hear the Gospel preached, this Gospel-system is seen to be self-attesting, and then, due to the obvious connection between the Bible and the Gospel-system, we accept the Bible as authoritative. And once we've got the Bible as authoritative, presuppositionalism can get off the ground and wreak havoc.
However, during the formation of the canon, there was obviously no completed canon which could be historically understood to be associated with the Gospel-system. How could Scripture be viewed as self-evident, then, during this time? This question, to me, seems crucial to presuppositionalist tenets. For if it is not the case that the specific words of Scripture are what make Scripture self-attesting, and if it is not the case that a blatantly obvious connection exists between the self-attesting Gospel system and a set of texts, then it does not make sense how one could, at the time that the canon was being formed, know in some more immediate sense that God was the author of the canonical texts. Some other way would have to be offered for someone to know that a given text is divinely authored (and therefore that that text should be canonized), and this way must be non-inferential -- or at least close to being non-inferential -- for the other alternative to an immediate belief in a text's divine authorship is historical evidence to show that Scripture's canonization was an honest process. Yet once we have to appeal to historical evidence for honest canonization, the unbeliever's presuppositions can impose unreal standards, and all the problems of evidentialist apologetics set in. If some historical evidence must be offered to make it reasonable to believe that Scripture is self-attesting, then Scripture is not self-attesting -- because in that case it would have to be undergirded by historical evidences -- and therefore presuppositionalism suffers a large hit.
I presume the answer has something to do with the miraculous gifts that are nonexistent today (or at least, those gifts that cessationalists believe are nonexistent today). For in such a case, the specific texts, or the authors of the texts, would have a divine sign to be self-evidently supporting them. In other words, just as God's own voice prior to the NT canon carried its own self-evidence with each word He spoke, so also miraculous gifts would allow NT documents to have a divine authorship that prompted the early church to accept them.
But is this answer acceptable? It seems to me that canonization occurred apart from such signs -- at least, some canonization. Perhaps the saints' identification of the Gospel-system in a text made it canonical...
Yeah, I would appreciate some help.
Thus, what I am trying to understand is the nature of Scripture's self-attestation. This has been my train of thought to reach a tentative conclusion: when we were regenerated, we were convinced of a Gospel-system; we were convinced that we are sinners and that God saves us by grace (note: those two propositions define "Gospel-system" as I use it later in this post). And we understand that, historically speaking, this Gospel-system is always associated with the Bible, the Protestant canon. When we hear the Gospel preached, this Gospel-system is seen to be self-attesting, and then, due to the obvious connection between the Bible and the Gospel-system, we accept the Bible as authoritative. And once we've got the Bible as authoritative, presuppositionalism can get off the ground and wreak havoc.
However, during the formation of the canon, there was obviously no completed canon which could be historically understood to be associated with the Gospel-system. How could Scripture be viewed as self-evident, then, during this time? This question, to me, seems crucial to presuppositionalist tenets. For if it is not the case that the specific words of Scripture are what make Scripture self-attesting, and if it is not the case that a blatantly obvious connection exists between the self-attesting Gospel system and a set of texts, then it does not make sense how one could, at the time that the canon was being formed, know in some more immediate sense that God was the author of the canonical texts. Some other way would have to be offered for someone to know that a given text is divinely authored (and therefore that that text should be canonized), and this way must be non-inferential -- or at least close to being non-inferential -- for the other alternative to an immediate belief in a text's divine authorship is historical evidence to show that Scripture's canonization was an honest process. Yet once we have to appeal to historical evidence for honest canonization, the unbeliever's presuppositions can impose unreal standards, and all the problems of evidentialist apologetics set in. If some historical evidence must be offered to make it reasonable to believe that Scripture is self-attesting, then Scripture is not self-attesting -- because in that case it would have to be undergirded by historical evidences -- and therefore presuppositionalism suffers a large hit.
I presume the answer has something to do with the miraculous gifts that are nonexistent today (or at least, those gifts that cessationalists believe are nonexistent today). For in such a case, the specific texts, or the authors of the texts, would have a divine sign to be self-evidently supporting them. In other words, just as God's own voice prior to the NT canon carried its own self-evidence with each word He spoke, so also miraculous gifts would allow NT documents to have a divine authorship that prompted the early church to accept them.
But is this answer acceptable? It seems to me that canonization occurred apart from such signs -- at least, some canonization. Perhaps the saints' identification of the Gospel-system in a text made it canonical...
Yeah, I would appreciate some help.