The Authority of Scripture Answering Unbelievers: Calvin's View

When believers speak to unbelievers about the truths of the Christian faith one of the key foundational issues of disagreement is the authority of Scripture. After a recent conversation I wanted to develop a more well defined answer to the basic question "Why should I believe the Bible is true?"

I read the chapters in John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion on the authority of Scripture (Book 1 Chapters 7 & 8) and this is what I got out of it.

One of Calvin's major points is that in order for people to be fully convinced of the truth of the Scripture the Holy Spirit must make it known to them. It has to be a work of God authenticating his word. Those who God has called by his Spirit will believe his word. Jesus says the same about the authority of his words, "Jesus answered them, 'My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority." (John 7:16-17) Paul also says as much, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Cor 2:14) The natual man must be transformed to be able to believe.

This is true, and proper to acknowledge from the outset in a discussion on the authority of Scripture. Stating this is also a way of pointing a non believer to their need for God. When talking to an unbeliever it is good to keep in mind that the issue is not merely a misunderstanding or a lack of information. Without the work of the Holy Spirit they do not have the ability to believe the truth.

Calvin does not stop here though (and neither should we). He does not say that since men won’t be fully convinced without the Spirit that reason has no place. He goes on to show evidences of the Scripture’s truth while admitting that these evidences alone without the Spirit’s work will not convince the unregenerate.

One evidence is the profound impact Scripture has on men who read it beyond any human writings. Calvin wrote “How peculiarly this property belongs to Scripture appears from this, that no human writings, however skilfully composed, are at all capable of affecting us in a similar way. Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the Sacred Volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man.”

Another evidence is the integrity of the human writers of Scripture who faithfully record what God reveals about themselves and their families even to their own dishonor. For instance Moses, who we affirm wrote Genesis, records the words of Jacob shaming Levi (his own ancestor) (Gen 49:6-7). Paul and Peter are not mentioned by Calvin in the same section, but the same could be said of them. Paul confesses his own shameful behavior before his conversion and says of himself: “I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (1 Cor 15:9). Peter a leader in the early church and likely a contributor to the Gospel accounts does not deny his cowardly behavior on the night Christ was betrayed.
This should clearly demonstrate that the Scriptures were not written with an aim to bring honor to their human authors.

Calvin also mentions a few examples of fulfilled prophecy. There are certainly many more that he does not mention. He points to Genesis 49:10 which states that Judah will rule and that the nations will honor him. This was many centuries before there was any King from the tribe of Judah, and over a millennium before the Gentiles would come into the church and give their obedience to Christ the King. He also mentions Isaiah’s prophecy of the Babylonian captivity (Is 39:6-7) and even more the release from that captivity by Cyrus (Is 45:1). Jeremiah’s prediction that the Babylonian captivity would be 70 years (Jer 25:11-12 & 29:10) is another evidence.

The transformation in the lives of the apostles demonstrates that a divine power worked in them. Calvin wrote: “But one circumstance, sufficient of itself to exalt their doctrine above the world, is, that Matthew, who was formerly fixed down to his money-table, Peter and John, who were employed with their little boats, being all rude and illiterate, had never learned in any human school that which they delivered to others. Paul, more over, who had not only been an avowed but a cruel and bloody foe, being changed into a new man, shows, by the sudden and unhoped-for change, that a heavenly power had compelled him to preach the doctrine which once he destroyed. Let those dogs deny that the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, or, if not, let them refuse credit to the history, still the very circumstances proclaim that the Holy Spirit must have been the teacher of those who, formerly contemptible among the people, all of a sudden began to discourse so magnificently of heavenly mysteries.”

Calvin also notes that the truth of Scripture has been so often attacked in History. Many men have sought to discredit and destroy its message, and yet God’s truth has prevailed. This demonstrates that the Scripture is of divine origin.

These aren’t all of Calvin’s arguments, and more that he does not mention could be made. These are his arguments that I thought were the strongest. It isn't exhaustive, but I think it is helpful. It should be enough to demonstrate that the believer in Scripture is not foolish, and that the the one who doubts Scripture is on shaky ground. We must pray for the Spirit to open the eyes of unbelievers while on our part presenting a challenging defense of the Bible's authority.