William McLellanCovenant Theology 1

Dr. Williams27 October 2004

Inside the Story: Lesslie Newbigin on Christian Certainty and Biblical Inerrancy

How does Scripture bring people to know the truth? Any answer to this question will

always fall within one’s answer to the question of how people come to know truth in general. In

other words, our doctrine of Scripture presupposes our epistemology. In his book Proper

Confidence, Lesslie Newbigin seeks to replace Enlightenment rationalism with a more Christian

view of knowledge, and in doing so, he challenges both liberal higher criticism as well as the

fundamentalist doctrine of inerrancy. He wants to free believers to proclaim the truth of Scripture

without feeling that we must first prove it objectively. Although he always treats Scripture as

truthful, Newbigin doesn’t see that the Bible needs to be inerrant because for him, it doesn’t

function as a foundation for indubitable certainty. Rationalists may need an inerrant foundation

for their belief systems, but Newbigin thinks that followers of Christ only need Scripture to be

generally truthful and full of saving power. He may dismiss inerrancy prematurely, but those

who want to hold onto this important doctrine must take his criticisms to heart and seriously

consider his perspective on the function of Scripture in Christian epistemology.

Newbigin begins and ends Proper Confidence with a crucial emphasis on faith. For

Christians, in knowing anything and especially in knowing God, we walk by faith. As Newbigin

puts it at the end of his first chapter, “If the place where we look for ultimate truth is in a story

and if (as is the case) we are still in the middle of the story, then it follows that we walk by faith

and not by sight.”1 Again at the conclusion of his argument, Newbigin returns to this theme:

“The universe is not provided with a spectator’s gallery in which we can survey the total scene

without being personally involved.”2 Descartes and the Enlightenment thinkers after him sought

after a form of certainty that the human mind was not created to obtain. They required that

1 Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt & Certainty in Christian Discipleship, 14.2 Newbigin, 105.

knowers detach themselves from other knowers and from the objects of their study and then build

all of their knowledge only upon the foundation of indubitable axioms. Newbigin criticizes both

liberalism and fundamentalism for accepting the Enlightenment’s false criteria for knowledge. In

contrast, he sees faith as the way humans were created to know: inside the story, undetached from

the world of our objects or from the communities and traditions in which we think and exist.3

After dismantling the foundationalist nature of Enlightenment epistemology, Newbigin

goes on to attack its unbiblical elevation of the freedom of human thought. As fallen creatures,

we are not just ignorant of the truth; we are also alienated from truth and enslaved in our minds

by our rebellion against it. Newbigin points out that Jesus angered his religious opponents the

most when he told them that they were not free to know the truth but that they needed the truth to

set them free. Therefore, we know truth by God’s grace, having been transformed and liberated

by the death and resurrection of Christ. Saving faith is not disinterested intellectual assent to

indubitable axioms; rather, it is an active and obedient response to truth that is only possible for

those who have been freed by God’s grace.4

Scripture is God’s instrument for bringing about this transformation. Newbigin says that

Jesus did not come to give us a set of inerrant propositions concerning God, upon which any

rational person could ground his belief system. Jesus came to draw a people to himself and to

reconcile them to God and to the truth. By his Word, Jesus brought rebels into fellowship with

his Father. Under the direction of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ disciples then wrote down the Word he

proclaimed, and those Scriptures function for us just like Jesus’ Word functioned in his earthly

ministry: they actively bring us into fellowship with the truth. Therefore, Newbigin says that

more important than what we believe about Scripture is what we do with it and what we allow it

to do to us.5

3 Newbigin, 1-15.4 Newbigin, 65-70.5 Newbigin, 79-92.

Newbigin understands the doctrine of inerrancy as standing contrary to the way Scripture

actually functions in bringing sinners to know the truth. “I am referring to a kind of

Fundamentalism which seeks to affirm the factual, objective truth of every statement in the Bible

and which thinks that if any single factual error were to be admitted, biblical authority would

collapse.”6 If by the term foundationalism we mean the rationalist attempt to ground all

knowledge upon indubitable axioms, then we can say that Newbigin is reacting, not against

inerrancy per se, but against a kind of biblical foundationalism that simply uses the Bible as the

necessary set of indubitable axioms. In such an epistemology, the Bible absolutely must be

inerrant, or else the entire belief system it upholds would fall apart. Without an indubitable

foundation, nothing else can be certain. Newbigin, on the other hand, has no problem with the

hypothetical possibility that the human authors of Scripture contaminated it with their own

fallible opinions or perspectives. He doesn’t need an indubitable foundation, just a faithful,

powerful Word from God that effectively catches sinners up into the true story of salvation.7

Despite his rejection of inerrancy, Newbigin actually honors Scripture more than we do

when we act as if Scripture must first be accepted as entirely truthful before it can do the work of

bringing people to know the truth. So often in our evangelism and apologetics, we feel that we

must convince people to believe the Bible before we start explaining what it actually teaches.

Newbigin wisely entreats us to confront unbelief by addressing the truth of Scripture to every

aspect of human existence.8

All of this being said, however, it is unnecessary for Newbigin to dismisses inerrancy

along with fundamentalist rationalism; for, the best and most biblical expressions of this doctrine

do not set Scripture up as an indubitable foundation for objective certainty. Instead, they honor

Scripture as God’s completely truthful and Spirit-empowered instrument for breaking into the

darkness of human minds and bringing us into the light of his presence. For example, in

6 Newbigin, 85.7 Newbigin, 79-92.8 Newbigin, 93-105.

defending inerrancy, Sinclair Ferguson writes, “It is by reading Scripture under the Spirit’s

influence, rather than by skill in logic, that trust in God’s Word is born.”9 Ferguson argues that

the original framers of the doctrine of inerrancy, B.B. Warfield and A.A. Hodge, followed the

Bible’s own self-testimony in viewing Scripture as completely reliable because it is inspired by a

completely reliable God. We don’t need to explain exactly how God worked through the human

authors or how he prevented them from writing anything false or misleading; it is enough to say

that because it is the Word of God, Scripture as a finished product should be trusted without

reservation. Nevertheless, like Newbigin, Ferguson also insists that the role of Scripture, inerrant

as it may be, is not to ground human rationalism but to bring whole persons darkened by sin into

the knowledge of God. “We subscribe to biblical infallibility not on the grounds of our ability to

prove it but because of the persuasiveness of its testimony to be the Word of God. . . . Its

[Scripture’s] function is, in the fullest sense, evangelistic.”10

Christians should understand the doctrine of inerrancy to teach that God is completely

truthful in his covenantal dealings with his people. We don’t need to hold the Bible to modern

standards of historical exactness that the writers of scripture did not intend to convey. At the

same time, we must submit ourselves humbly before everything that the Scriptures teach us to

believe or to do.

Lesslie Newbigin balks at inerrancy because he doesn’t want it to stand as a barrier to

evangelism. If we accept Newbigin’s own epistemology, then it doesn’t have to. Newbigin

clearly believes that when Scripture speaks today, God is speaking. He gives no hint of any

reason that should prevent him from taking the next step, a step that the Scriptures themselves

take, and holding that God’s Word today is just as truthful and reliable as he is.

9 Sinclair Ferguson, “How Does the Bible Look at Itself,” 50.10 Ferguson, 64-65, 54-63.