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 THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE- 
 
 BIBLE. 
 
 The doctrine of the Witness of the Holy Spirit to the 
 divine origin of the Bible, as taught by Calvin and by the 
 Reformed and Lutheran theologians of the succeeding 
 century, has fallen into an almost complete neglect. This 
 is partly due to the error of identifying the Witness of the 
 Spirit with the argument from Christian experience which 
 is much used in modern Apologetics, but is also partly due 
 to a mi stak en mystical conception of its nature, and to the 
 influence of the prevalent antisupernaturalism upon 
 modern theological thought. It is worth while, therefore, 
 to consider the nature, object, and apologetic value of the 
 doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit to Scripture. 
 
 It should be noted at the outset that this is not an isolated 
 truth, but a part of the saving work of the Holy Spirit in 
 the application of Redemption, and that therefore it is 
 closely related to the whole organism of Scripture truth. It 
 is one aspect of the question as to the efficient cause and 
 the ground of saving faith. It has, therefore, certain pre¬ 
 suppositions which were clearly recognized and stated, es¬ 
 pecially by Calvin and by most of the great theologians, 
 both Lutheran and Reformed, of the succeeding century. 
 The chief of these presuppositions is that God can be known 
 only by revelation. This is true of our natural knowledge 
 of God. The origin and development of our knowledge of 
 God is not a realization of God’s self-consciousness in man, 
 as pantheism conceives it; but is due to the self-revealing 
 act on God’s part in Creation by which He has made Him¬ 
 self manifest, creating man with a religious nature capable 
 of seeing God in the works of His hands. 
 
 Furthermore, faith is conviction of truth grounded on 
 evidence. In this broad sense it is not distinguished from 
 knowledge. Its distinctive feature is that in faith the evi- 
 
42 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 dence is not that of self-consciousness or reason, but con¬ 
 sists in a testimony external or objective to our conscious¬ 
 ness. Religious faith, therefore, must be grounded in the 
 testimony of God. This is true in reference to the knowl¬ 
 edge of God obtained from general revelation in Nature 
 and man. We must rely on God’s witness to Himself in 
 the heart and in His Creation. This is just as true of a 
 true or saving faith in God’s Word. 
 
 In addition to this, it must be remembered that sin, ob¬ 
 scuring and distorting our natural knowledge of God, and 
 darkening man’s heart or mind, has rendered him incapable 
 of seeing God in His works, and no less incapable of truly 
 seeing Him in the special revelation in Scripture by which 
 He has restored and completed His revelation of Himself. 
 There is need, therefore, of a complete renewal and illumi¬ 
 nation of the sinner in order to the exercise of saving faith 
 in God and in His Word. Saving faith, like all truly re¬ 
 ligious faith, must rest on God’s testimony and presupposes 
 man’s capacity to recognize the testimony as from God. 
 
 It is in accordance with these fundamental truths that the 
 old Protestant theologians asserted that the Bible is its own 
 witness because God speaks in it. This is not reasoning in 
 a circle. It does not mean that we believe the Bible to be 
 of God because God says so in it, and we believe that it is 
 He who says so because the Bible is His word. It means 
 simply that the Bible is self-witnessing; that it bears in 
 itself the marks of its divine origin if we have the eye of 
 faith to see them. This can be seen from the fact that the 
 Bible demands faith from every one to whom it comes with 
 its message. Its demand for faith is not limited to those 
 capable of weighing the external evidence for its divine 
 origin. The ground of such faith, therefore, must be ulti¬ 
 mately the self-evidencing character of the Bible. It follows 
 also from what has been said, and it was fully recognized 
 by the old Protestant theologians, that doubt or unbelief 
 as to the divine origin and authority of Scripture, is not 
 due to any deficiency in or want of objective evidence, but 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 43 
 
 S 
 
 to the condition of heart of sinful man. This is not only 
 the teaching of Scripture, it is proved by the fact that the 
 same evidence for the Bible which convinces one man, fails 
 to convince another, and by the further fact that the same 
 amount of evidence may fail to convince a man at one time 
 and yet later produce a complete conviction. 
 
 All these truths are taught in Scripture as well as by 
 experience. Sin with its obscuration of our religious knowl¬ 
 edge is conceived of as a power of darkness which rules 
 over this sinful world, and the Gospel revelation by con¬ 
 trast is called light. This contrast is always represented 
 as fundamental and ineradicable by natural means so that 
 the transition from darkness to light is only by means of 
 supernatural revelation and supernatural illumination. 
 Darkness, then, in the Old Testament is not only used in 
 a quasi-objective sense to depict the misery, estrangement 
 from God, and want of all true knowledge of God which 
 characterized the world before the advent of Christ and the 
 revelation of God which He made, so that Christ’s coming 
 was a light to the world (Isa. ix. i [2] ; lx. 2), but also 
 expresses the ignorance or spiritual blindness of sinful man 
 apart from inward illumination (Job v. 14; xxxvii. 19). 
 This is not a mere absence of light, nor a merely negative 
 use of the term darkness, as where it represents the essential 
 unknowableness of God (Deut. v. 22; Psa. xcvii. 2), but is a 
 positive condition of the wicked (1 Sam. ii. 9), and a penal 
 infliction (Deut. xxviii. 29; Job. v. 14). 
 
 In the New Testament we find the same quasi-objective 
 use of the term to express the dense ignorance of God which 
 spreads over the earth apart from the revelation of God in 
 Christ and the light of the Gospel, so that Christ is the 
 light of the world, and the Gospel a light which shines in 
 a dark place (Jn. i. 5; 2 Pet. i. 19 etc.), and also the same 
 subjective sense of the term which denotes the spiritual 
 blindness of the sinner. In the teaching of Jesus as re¬ 
 corded in the Synoptists, the term is most frequently used 
 in an eschatological sense to denote the mental and spiritual 
 
44 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 condition of those in the state of future punishment. In 
 the Gospel of John, however, it is a term denoting the 
 dense ignorance which is totally unable to see the divine 
 revelation of light which has always shone and still shines 
 into it from the Logos and from the Incarnate Word 
 (Jn. i. 5). In this sense Christ is come as a light into the 
 darkness of the world (Jn. xii. 46). But the condition of 
 spiritual blindness of the individual apart from the inward 
 spiritual illumination which Jesus gives, is set forth when 
 a walk in darkness is contrasted with possession of the light 
 of life. Here the light is that by which true life is ob¬ 
 tained. It is the life-giving inward light which Jesus gives 
 the darkened soul. And by contrast the darkness is spiritual 
 blindness (Jn. viii. 12). Paul also uses the term darkness 
 to denote the spiritual blindness of the natural man. Be¬ 
 fore God creatively illuminates the mind, this darkness is as 
 dense as that of the outer world at Creation before God said 
 “let there be light” (2 Cor. iv. 6). It is therefore repre¬ 
 sented as a power which has authority to rule over men and 
 from which God must deliver them (Col. i. 13). It affects 
 man’s whole understanding or mind so that the Gentiles 
 are described as darkened in their understanding. In this 
 state they are alienated from God, and this is due to the 
 ignorance and hardness of heart which always accompany 
 this darkness or spiritual blindness (Eph. iv. 17, 18). It 
 is, therefore, a spiritual blindness due to sin, and is so 
 characteristic of the condition of the natural man that Paul 
 describes the former condition of his readers absolutely as 
 darkness (Eph. v. 8). This is a condition of hardness or 
 stubborn resistance of the truth of the Gospel, a condition 
 of blindness wrought by sin (Eph. iv. 18; 2 Cor. iv. 4). 
 According to Peter this is a condition out of which man can 
 come to the light of the Gospel only by an effectual call 
 from God (1 Pet. ii. 9). 
 
 In consequence of this spiritual blindness the natural 
 man i.e. the unregenerate man, is unable to receive the 
 revelation made by the Spirit through the Apostles (1 Cor. 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 45 
 
 ii. i4ff). In this context Paul says that he relied for success 
 in his preaching of the Gospel, not on man’s wisdom, but 
 on the demonstration of the Spirit, in order that the faith 
 of the Corinthians might not rest on the wisdom of man, but 
 on the power of God. The reason for this is because the 
 unregenerate man does not receive the things of the Spirit, 
 and cannot receive them because they are spiritually dis¬ 
 cerned. The regenerate man, on the other hand, does 
 receive these things, and the reason for this is that the 
 former has not and the latter has spiritual insight or dis¬ 
 cernment. Moreover Paul here teaches that this spiritual 
 discernment consists in the apprehension of the religious 
 value, truth, and divine origin of the doctrines dis¬ 
 cerned, and that it is due to the operation of the Spirit 
 of God upon the heart. And in the preceding chapter the 
 Apostle asserts that the very same Gospel with the same 
 amount of external attestation, was an offense to the Jew 
 and foolishness to the Greeks, but to those who were in¬ 
 wardly and effectually called it was the wisdom and the 
 power of God (i Cor. i. 23, 24). Hence, as we have seen, 
 if this Gospel be hid i.e. its truth and saving efficacy un¬ 
 recognized, it is not for lack of evidence, but because men 
 are lost and blinded by sin (2 Cor. iv. 4). 
 
 Consequently one important aspect of the work of Re¬ 
 generation is an illuminating action of God’s Spirit on 
 man’s heart or mind, removing the-spiritual blindness. In 
 the earlier parts of the Old Testament it is the work of 
 God’s Spirit as the source of life in the cosmos and of su¬ 
 pernatural power in the theocratic leaders, that is most 
 prominent. In the Psalms and Isaiah, however, the Spirit 
 of God is represented as dwelling in the individual believer 
 as the source of an ethical change. This is clearly the case 
 in Psa. li. where David prays for the creation of a new 
 heart and the renewal of a right spirit within him, and 
 prays God not to take the Spirit of Holiness from him. 
 The Holy Spirit was present in Israel through Moses so 
 that in their rebelliousness they grieved Him (Isa. Ixiii. 
 
46 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 iof). This inward work and presence of God’s Spirit, 
 I however, is chiefly characteristic of the Messianic times. 
 The new Church is to be a spiritual Church (Isa. xliv. 3; 
 lix. 21; Ezek. xxxix. 29), His continued presence being the 
 great blessing of the coming Messianic age (Isa. lix. 21). 
 He is the source of spiritual life to God’s people (Ezek. 
 xxxvii. 14), and His universal outpouring and influence 
 will mark the Messianic age (Joel ii. 28-32). 1 In all this, 
 however, the illuminating activity of the Spirit in removing 
 the blindness due to sin is not specifically mentioned. But 
 that this is part of the saving work of God in man’s heart 
 is made perfectly clear where the Psalmist prays that. God 
 will illumine his eyes lest he sleep the sleep of death (Psa. 
 xiii. 4 [3]), and especially where he prays that God would 
 open his eyes that he might behold wondrous things out of 
 His law (Psa. cxix. 18) ; so that, though he believed that the 
 entrance of God’s word gives light to the soul (verse 130), 
 this can only be through the opening of the blind eyes. 
 Hence to be “taught of the Lord” (Isa. liv. 13) and to 
 “know the Lord” (Jer. xxxi. 34) refer to this saving knowl¬ 
 edge which results from the illuminating work of God in 
 the soul. It is this same inward work of spiritual enlighten¬ 
 ment which Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would ac¬ 
 complish for His people (Isa. xlii. 7), and which was 
 fulfilled when Jesus came as the Light of the World. 
 
 When we turn to the New Testament we find that this 
 enlightening work of the Spirit is most fully developed, 
 the saving work of the Spirit in the individual being char¬ 
 acteristic of the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
 in contrast to that of the Old Testament. This is not made 
 explicit in the Synoptic Gospels, though they evidently con¬ 
 tain clear intimations of this truth. Jesus’ miracles of heal¬ 
 ing were more than signs of His Messiahship and Deity; 
 they were symbolical of His power to heal the terrible dis¬ 
 ease of sin. The healing of the blind man as recorded in 
 
 1 Oehler, O. T. Theology, pp. 507, 508; B. B. Warfield, “The Spirit of 
 God in the Old Testament,” Pres, and Ref. Review. VI, pp. 665-687. 
 
 \ 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 47 
 
 Mark and Luke teaches the supernatural power of Jesus to 
 open the blind eyes of the soul (Mk. viii. 22-26; Lk. xviii. 
 35-43). In the latter instance (ver. 42) the answer of Jesus 
 to the blind man that his faith had saved him, indicated the 
 deeper than physical healing that the Saviour wrought. An¬ 
 other indication of the truth that mere external evidence 
 will not convince a spiritually blind heart is seen in the fact 
 that Jesus would do no mighty works to convince men of 
 His claims when there was a sinful opposition of the heart 
 to Himself. Moreover He taught in the Parable of the 
 Rich man and Lazarus that unbelief in reference to the Old 
 Testament was not due to any want of evidence, nor could 
 it be removed by any additional external proof (Lk. xvi. 
 31). The knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is not a natural possession of man, but a gift of 
 God (Mt. xiii. 11) ; and the same thing is true in regard to 
 the recognition of Jesus’ Messiahship and Deity, as our 
 Lord’s words to Peter at Caesarea Philippi clearly show 
 (Mt. xvi. 17). The great revealing work of Christ, as, set 
 forth in Mt. xi. 25ff, clearly cannot be limited to the revela¬ 
 tion of God in Jesus’ Person and life and teaching, but 
 must include His lifegiving touch on the sinner’s heart by 
 which alone His objective revelation of God is made 
 effective. 
 
 It is, however, in our Lord’s teaching as recorded in the 
 Gospel of John that this truth is most fully and richly de¬ 
 veloped. In the earlier chapters the Holy Spirit is repre¬ 
 sented as the source of regeneration and spiritual life. But 
 in the third chapter there is a hint that this involves an 
 enlightening of the mind. Nicodemus says that he knows 
 that Jesus is a teacher come from God, and it was in reply 
 to this statement that Jesus set forth the necessity of the 
 new birth from God’s Spirit, implying that a true recog¬ 
 nition of Himself as a teacher is possible only to one who 
 is born anew by the Spirit (Jn. iii. 3!!). But it is in the 
 fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters that the re¬ 
 vealing and enlightening work of the Spirit is most fully 
 
48 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 expounded. The departure of Jesus to the Father is as 
 momentous in the history of Redemption as was His Advent. 
 His revealing and saving work, He teaches, is to be carried 
 on by the Spirit who is “another Paraclete”, to take Christ’s 
 place and carry on His work; or more accurately Christ is 
 to be present in His Church by the Spirit, especially as the 
 Spirit of truth (Jn. xiv. 26; xv. 26; xvi. I2ff). The 
 Spirit is to glorify Christ by completing His revelation, 
 and by guiding the Church into all truth. These promises 
 include not only the completion of the organism of special 
 revelation through the Apostolic revelation, but also the 
 spiritual illumination of the Christian Church through the 
 ages. It is, moreover, “the things of Christ” and not new 
 truths which are the object of the Spirit’s witness. He does 
 not speak from Himself but is a witness to the truth which 
 is Christ Himself. The work of the Spirit in this respect,' 
 therefore, is a supernatural one, removing the blindness of 
 sin, and its object or objective content is the “things of 
 Christ” or the Gospel. 
 
 Paul develops fully this teaching of Jesus. Jesus by 
 His Resurrection becomes the exalted Lord, the “quicken¬ 
 ing Spirit” (Trvevfjui £ cooiroiovv 1 Cor. xv. 45), and the 
 source of spiritual light as well as life (2 Cor. iii. i6f). 
 According to Paul neither the law of Moses nor even the 
 Gospel of Christ can remove the darkness of mind due to 
 sin (2 Cor. iii. 12 ff). When the Spirit is given as the 
 power of a new supernatural life, then it is light within as 
 well as without. The Spirit removes the veil of blindness 
 on the sinner’s heart. In the fourth chapter this same 
 supernatural power is referred to God. This is to empha¬ 
 size its essentially creative nature. God, who at the Creation 
 when the world was in physical darkness, said “Light shall 
 shine out of darkness”, has shined in the same creative or 
 supernatural way in the hearts of Christians, so that they 
 can recognize God’s glory in Christ (2 Cor. iv. 6) ; which 
 glory shines in the face of Christ far more brightly than on 
 Moses’ face (iii. 7). He who cannot see this light has been 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 49 
 
 blinded by sin (iv. 3f) so that the failure to see the glorious 
 light is not due to defect of light but defect of vision. Here 
 'the reference is probably to Paul’s conversion, but not ex¬ 
 clusively nor to what was peculiar to it; but rather to what 
 is common to all believers (ev tcu<? /capSccus rjpiSiv), In 
 Gal. i. 15f Paul indeed speaks of an inner revelation of 
 Christ to him, but here he refers rather to his authoritative 
 knowledge of the Gospel which he had as an Apostle, as is 
 also the case in i Cor. ii. io. 
 
 The Spirit of the Lord is therefore for Paul the source 
 not only of spiritual life but of saving- knowledge of the 
 truth. The need of this spiritual illumination according to 
 Paul, as we saw, lies in the blindness of the natural man to 
 divine things (i Cor. ii. 6-16), so that Christ crucified is 
 foolishness to him and yet the power of God to those effec¬ 
 tually called (1 Cor. i. 23f). Moreover, the Spirit which 
 discloses the mystery of the Gospel to the Apostles (Eph. 
 iii. 5), is also the Spirit who illumines all Christians. Where 
 the Spirit comes, therefore, Christians are enlightened in 
 the “eyes of their heart”, i.e. spiritually illumined, to know 
 God and comprehend their glorious hope and the greatness 
 of God’s power in them (Eph. i. 18-23). The prayer, 
 moreover, in Eph. iii. 16-19 for strengthening by the 
 Spirit is for the purpose of this spiritual knowledge. The 
 Gospel is a mystery i.e. something which needs to be dis¬ 
 closed, and even when disclosed, man, who is blinded by 
 sin, cannot comprehend it until he has been spiritually en¬ 
 lightened. This great truth which Paul thus fully set forth 
 in the Epistles to the Corinthians and Ephesians, was in the 
 Apostle’s mind from the first, for he refers to the same 
 truth in his earliest Epistle when he writes that his Gospel 
 came to the Thessalonian Christians not only in word but 
 in power and in the Holy Spirit (1 Thess. i. 5). 
 
 The same truth is taught by Peter. It is true that he 
 speaks of our being born again by God’s Word, but this is 
 only a familiar figure in which the instrumental cause is 
 spoken of as if it were the efficient cause of this great 
 change. The change from spiritual darkness to spiritual 
 
50 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 light is clearly affirmed to be due to an efficient call from 
 God (i Pet. ii. 9). And what is true of Peter is true also 
 of John. The anointing with the Holy Spirit gives knowl¬ 
 edge (1 Jn. ii. 20) and the Spirit continues with the Chris¬ 
 tian as a guide to truth (ii. 21). It is by the Spirit that we 
 know that Christ abideth in us (iii. 24; iv. 13). The Spirit, 
 moreover, bears witness to Christ (v. 6ff.), while faith in 
 Jesus’ Messiahship is the consequence of the new birth 
 from God (v. 1). 
 
 It is in accordance with this that true or saving faith, 
 or what the old theologians called fides divina, is a gift of 
 God or divinely wrought. It is not an arbitrary act of the 
 soul which can be performed at will; and such is the state 
 of man’s heart that, though normally it could not be with¬ 
 held upon sufficient evidence, the presence of adequate evi¬ 
 dence does not produce it. This is because unbelief, 
 according to Christ’s teaching, springs from finding in Him¬ 
 self a cause of offence (aicdv 8 a\ov Mt. xiii. 57; xxvi. 31), 
 which in turn springs from a hostility of the heart to Him¬ 
 self, Saving faith, therefore, is impossible without a total 
 change of heart or regeneration. Jesus, therefore, prayed 
 for Peter that his faith should not fail, thereby acknowledg¬ 
 ing that it is a gift of God; the Apostles prayed that the 
 Lord would increase their faith (Lk. xvii. 5); and Jesus 
 told Peter that his faith in His Messiahship and Deity 
 rested on an inward revealing act of the Father. In the 
 Gospel of John this is brought out more fully. Unbelief is 
 a sin because it shows an attitude of hostility to God and 
 Christ, and faith likewise discloses a state of the heart, a 
 “being of the truth” (Jn. xviii. 37), a “hearing and learning 
 of the Father” (Jn. vi. 45). Consequently only he that is 
 drawn by the Father can come to Christ (J11. vi. 44), and 
 this “coming” or faith is the Father’s gift (Jn. vi. 65). 
 Faith is the gift of God’s grace and only follows a complete 
 change of heart. 
 
 Paul also, although he does not in so many words as¬ 
 cribe the producing of faith to the Holy Spirit except per¬ 
 haps in 2 Cor. iv. 13 and Eph. ii. 8, nevertheless speaks of 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 51 
 
 a power of God which works in man before he reaches 
 true faith (Col. ii. 12). The preaching of the Gospel, more¬ 
 over, is the power of God to those effectually called, and 
 foolishness to those without this call (1 Cor. i. 2 T,i) ; and 
 the preaching of the Apostle was in the demonstration and 
 power of the Spirit, so that the faith of his hearers de¬ 
 pended not on human wisdom or arguments but on the 
 power of God (1 Cor. ii. 5). It is by God’s Spirit alone 
 that we can confess Jesus as Lord, and no man can truly 
 call him Lord without the Spirit’s power (1 Cor. xii. 3). 
 Similarly, according to the Apostle John, faith in the 
 Messiahship of Jesus is the result of being “born of God’’ 
 
 (1 Jn. v. 1). 
 
 The Bible, then, teaches that because of the darkness of 
 the world due to sin which has marred God’s image in man / 
 and Nature, God has made a special revelation of Himself 
 in an objective and supernatural manner, which revelation 
 culminates in Jesus Christ and the Apostolic interpretation 
 of His Person and work. This is a light to the world. It 
 is self-evidencing and bears the marks of its divine origin. 
 But sin-blinded man, just because his religious sense is 
 injured and his heart and mind darkened by sin, cannot see 
 God in His Word or come to any experimental knowledge 
 of Him through the revelation it makes. The Holy Spirit 
 in regeneration, therefore, must enlighten the mind, renew 
 man’s whole nature, and give him spiritual light, thus en¬ 
 abling and moving him to recognize the marks of God in 
 His Word. This action of the Spirit is therefore internal, 
 supernatural and hence objective to man’s consciousness. 
 But it communicates no new truth; it simply enables us to 
 exercise saving faith in God, in Christ, and in God’s Word. 
 
 It therefore gives us not only an ability to believe, but also 
 a certitude of faith, not only in our own sonship, as Paul 
 teaches (Rom. viii. 16), but in the deity of Jesus and the 
 divine origin of His Gospel and of God’s Word. 2 
 
 1 On the whole subject of the Scripture doctrine of the enlightening 
 work of the Holy Spirit, besides the general works on Biblical The¬ 
 ology, see the following which discuss the subject briefly: Buchanan, 
 
5 2 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 The Witness of the Holy Spirit to the Bible, then, is 
 not something standing apart and isolated from the life of 
 faith; it is a part of the inward enlightening work of the 
 Spirit which we have briefly set forth, and of precisely the 
 same nature. It is of importance to understand the nature 
 and value of this truth, because it has fallen into neglect, or 
 else has been misunderstood, and so laid open to criticism. 
 
 This particular application of the doctrine of the Spirit’s 
 work was first adequately developed by Calvin, and by him 
 handed on to the theologians of the succeeding century of 
 both the Reformed and Lutheran branches of Protestantism, 
 though in the Lutheran theology it found full treatment 
 only in the seventeenth century. When rightly conceived 
 it will be seen to be a truth of fundamental importance in 
 relation to such great questions as the origin and certitude 
 of faith. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to guard it from misconcep¬ 
 tions. It was no less acute a thinker than Strauss 3 who 
 affirmed that in this doctrine the Protestant system found a 
 standpoint for faith independent of the fallible judgment of 
 the Church and of the unstable judgment of the individual 
 subject of faith. But because Strauss, conceived of the 
 Spirit’s witness in a mystical way as being the communi¬ 
 cation to man of a new truth separate from the Bible, i. e. 
 the proposition that the Bible is God’s word, he thought the 
 doctrine open to criticism and held that in adhering to it 
 the Protestant theology unavoidably abandons its position in 
 regard to the authority of Scripture, and turns aside into 
 Mysticism or Rationalism. If, he says, this Witness of the 
 Spirit to the divine origin of the Bible is the communication 
 
 The Holy Spirit, pp. 88-m; Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit. 
 p. 152; Beversluis, De heilige Geest en zijne Werkingen, pp. 407- 
 411, 470; Gloel, Der heilige Geist in der Heilsverkiindigung des Paulus: 
 pp. 287-300; Nosgen, Wesen und Wirken des heiligen Geistes, II, pp. 
 40-46; Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, pp. I52f, 179, 
 233. Also works on the theology of the Gospel of John, such as 
 B. Weiss, Johann. Lehrbegriff, pp. 28sff; E. F. Scott, The Fourth 
 Gospel, Its Purpose and Theology, pp. 254f, 338, 349. 
 
 “ Strauss, Die Christliche Glaubenslehre, I. i3off. 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 53 
 
 of a truth to man, i.e. that the Bible is God’s word, then this 
 new truth revealed becomes the fundamental thing, and it 
 itself must require support. Who shall certify to us that 
 this truth really is from God? Either another witness of 
 the same kind is necessary, in which case we have the re- 
 ' gressus ad infinitum of Mysticism; or else the human mind 
 is supposed simply to recognize the truth revealed as ap¬ 
 pealing to it, in which case faith depends solely on our¬ 
 selves and we fall ultimately into Rationalism. This criti¬ 
 cism is acute, and is valid against the doctrine of the 
 Witness of the Spirit to the Bible as Strauss conceived it 
 i.e. as giving a “content” of truth apart from the Bible 
 itself. It is necessary, therefore, to understand the nature 
 of this Witness, especially since pretty generally in modern 
 times either Strauss’ misconception has been repeated, or 
 else the Witness of the Spirit has been confounded with the 
 argument from Christian experience. 
 
 Turning then to the nature of this Witness of the Holy 
 Spirit to the Bible, it should be noted first that it is not the 
 direct communication to the Christian by the Holy Spirit 
 of a truth or proposition, as for example that the Bible is 
 the Word of God. This is really a form of Mysticism. 
 Such a view is not implied in the Scripture teaching as it 
 has been set forth, nor is there any such promise in the 
 Scripture concerning the work of the Spirit. This concep¬ 
 tion of the Witness of the Spirit would make it analogous 
 to the idea of Revelation in the case of the Prophets and 
 Apostles who received communications of truth directly 
 from God. It would, then, itself require to be authenticated, 
 and consequently we would have a never-ending chain of 
 revelations, as Strauss pointed out. In addition to this diffi¬ 
 culty, this view by making faith depend upon the new 
 truth revealed, would subordinate the Scriptures to this new 
 revelation, and fail to recognize the self-evidencing char¬ 
 acter of the Bible. It therefore cuts the knot, and fails 
 to untie it. None of the old Protestant theologians con¬ 
 ceived of the Witness of the Spirit in this way. All em- 
 
54 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 phasized the self-evidencing character of the Scripture 
 which they assert is aj/ro7rio-To<?. Calvin especially devotes 
 a whole chapter 4 to criticising the Anabaptists, and points 
 out that the Word is the instrument of the Spirit who uses 
 the Word and confirms it, but reveals no new truth, 5 so that 
 the Witness of the Spirit confirms the Scriptures and does 
 not supercede them. 
 
 Neither is this Witness of the Spirit an influence which 
 causes to emerge in our consciousness a blind or ungrounded 
 conviction that the Bible is the Word of God. Faith is a 
 conviction which is grounded on evidence. If the evidence 
 be lacking—i.e. evidence which at least is valid for the 
 subject of the faith—the conviction will not emerge. The 
 opening of the blind eyes of the soul is in order to an act 
 of vision which terminates on an object viz. the Bible with 
 its marks of divine origin. It is not a blind or vague feeling 
 that the Bible is from God; it is rather an intuitive or im¬ 
 mediate perception of the marks of God’s authorship which 
 are upon the face of the Scripture. The view of the Wit¬ 
 ness of the Spirit which we are criticising, moreover, fails 
 entirely to take account of the fact that the Bible is its own 
 witness, that it bears upon itself the marks of its divine 
 origin, and that the ultimate reason or ground of faith is 
 this fact that God speaks to us through the Scripture. All 
 that is required is that the veil shall be removed from our 
 eyes in order that we may see God in the Scripture, and it 
 is this removal of the blinding effects of sin which takes 
 place in regeneration, which constitutes the Witness of the 
 
 * Calvin, Institutes, I, 9. 
 
 * Ibid . I, 9:3. Cf. also I, 9:1 “The Office of the Spirit which is prom¬ 
 ised to us is not to feign new and unheard of revelations, or to coin 
 a new system of doctrine, which would draw us away from the re¬ 
 ceived doctrine of the Gospel, but to seal to our minds the same 
 doctrine which the Gospel delivers”. In I, 7:5 Calvin, it is true, speaks 
 of a “sense” which can be produced by “nothing short of a revelation 
 from heaven”. But this, as Dr. Warfield says, is only to describe its 
 “heavenly source”; not its mode or nature. Cf. B. B. Warfield, “Cal¬ 
 vin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God”, Princeton Theological 
 Review, VII, pp. 219-324. It confirms the Scriptures according to 
 Calvin, it does not supercede them. Cf. also, I, 9:3. 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 55 
 
 Holy Spirit. This agrees with what we have seen to be the 
 teaching of Scripture which uniformly represents the en¬ 
 lightening work of the Spirit as an opening of the eyes of 
 the soul for an act of objective vision, and not a mere sub¬ 
 jective impression. 
 
 This, moreover, is the uniform teaching of the old Protes¬ 
 tant theologians. All alike emphasized the fact that the 
 Bible is self-evidencing or auroVto-To? as they called it. 
 Calvin laid the greatest emphasis upon this point. He 
 taught that the Scripture bears on its face the marks of its 
 divine origin so that when our eyes are opened we recognize 
 this clear evidence as we would immediately distinguish be¬ 
 tween white and black or a sweet and bitter taste. 6 In pre¬ 
 cisely the same sense all the Reformed and Lutheran the¬ 
 ologians taught that the Scripture bears the marks of its 
 own credibility and is avroinaro 9. 7 
 
 * Calvin, Institutes I, 7 :2—’“But if any one should inquire ‘How shall 
 we be persuaded of its divine origin, unless we have recourse to the 
 decree of the Church?’ this is just as if anyone should inquire, ‘How 
 shall we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, 
 sweet from bitter?’. For the Scripture exhibits as clear evidence of its 
 truth, as white and black things do of their colour; or sweet and 
 bitter things of their taste.” 
 
 7 Cf. Polanus, Syntagma Theol. I, 14. Piscator, Aph. Doct. Christ. 
 p. 16 asserts that it is the result of the Witness of the Spirit that the 
 Scripture shows itself as self-evidencing or avroTno-Tos. Ursinus, Loci, 
 pp. 436ff regards the Witness as enabling us to recognize the marks 
 of God in the Scripture. Zanchius, Op. VIII, 332-334 says that the 
 deity of the Scripture shines from its pages like the sun even though 
 we are so spiritually blind that we cannot see it. Maresius, Systema, 
 pp. 11, 12, lays emphasis on the fact that the testimony of the Spirit 
 is not a blind one apart from the marks of God in the Scripture. 
 Maccovius, Loci Com. pp. 27, 28 asserts the same thing; and Heidegger, 
 Corp. Theol. II, 14, expressly says that the Witness is not a “bare 
 persuasion” without any grounds—“Testimonium illud Spiritus S. non 
 est nuda persuasio animi, quae fallaciae obnoxia esse queat, vel motus 
 cordis irrationabilis, qualem enthusiastae pro divino venditant: sed 
 est fulgor et splendor eius in tenebrosis cordibus nostris, ministrans 
 nobis illuminationem cognitionis gloriae Dei in facie Jesu Christi (2 
 Cor. IV 6), ut ita remotis naturalibus obstaculis omnem excellentiam 
 et divitias verbi divini introspicere valeamus.” Likewise the Lutheran 
 theologians, although they conceived of the nature of the Witness of 
 the Spirit somewhat differently from the Reformed theologians, agreed 
 
56 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 The Witness of the Spirit, therefore, is not mystical 
 either in the sense that it consists in the immediate revela¬ 
 tion of a truth or proposition to the mind concerning the 
 Scripture, or in the sense that it causes the emergence of a 
 blind, irrational, or ungrounded conviction. The marks of 
 God are in the Bible, and the want of faith is due to the 
 effects of sin on the mind, blinding it to these marks; it is 
 not due to any want of evidence. Consequently when spiri¬ 
 tual blindness is removed, the marks or criteria constitute 
 valid grounds of faith. 
 
 But if the Witness of the Spirit is not mystical in either 
 of the above senses, it is nevertheless objective to the sub¬ 
 ject of faith, and is not to* be confused or identified with the 
 argument from Christian experience, or the witness of ex¬ 
 perience to the divine origin of Christianity and the Bible. 
 The Spirit of God by means of the Word of God does pro¬ 
 duce in the Christian an experience of salvation through 
 Christ, which experience is inexplicable apart from the 
 Word, is congruous with the Word, and so testifies to the 
 Bible that it is of divine origin, the very word of God. By 
 many theologians, especially in modern times, the Witness 
 of the Spirit to the Bible has been identified with this argu¬ 
 ment from Christian experience. This argument has as¬ 
 sumed several forms, but in every case the argument is of 
 the nature of an inference from Christian experience to its 
 cause. In its lowest form it eliminates the supernatural 
 work of the Holy Spirit altogether, and simply argues for 
 the divine origin of Christianity from its effects in bettering 
 man ethically. This was the view taken by the old Ration¬ 
 alists. Semler argued for the divine origin of Scripture 
 simply because it improves man, and the view of Less was 
 practically the same. 8 Not unlike this position of the old 
 
 that it does not produce a blind conviction, and that the Scripture is 
 self-evidencing; Gerhard, Loci Theol. II speaks of the Scripture as 
 avTOTTLCTTtt and “winning faith by virtue of their own excellence”. 
 Cf. also Baier, Compend. Theol. Pos. 80. Quenstedt, Theol. Didact. 
 Polem. I, 140, also teaches the same thing. 
 
 ‘Less, Ueber die Religion, ihre Geschichte und Bestdtigung a Bd. ii. 
 pp. 117 f. Less says that everyone who tests or tries Christianity will 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 57 
 
 Rationalists is that of those members of the Ritschlian 
 school who deny all immediate and supernatural influence 
 of the exalted Christ or of the Spirit upon the heart, and 
 having thus eliminated every transcendent element in the 
 genesis of faith, seek to explain it simply from the influence 
 of the historical Jesus. Thus Herrmann asserts that the 
 personal power of goodness works upon us through Jesus 
 as He lived on earth, and through Him we believe in God. 
 The certitude of our faith in God is thus due to the moral 
 influence upon us of the historical Jesus. Herrmann’s view 
 was also advocated by Gottschick and Rade. 9 
 
 This argument for Christianity and this account of the 
 genesis of faith is a denial of the truth of the Witness of 
 the Holy Spirit. It substitutes for the supernatural power 
 of the Spirit, the ethical and religious effect of the truths 
 of Christianity, as in the old Rationalism, or of the so-called 
 historical Jesus, as in the left wing of the Ritschlian school. 
 It rests upon a Pelagian view of sin and man’s condition, 
 and leaves wholly unexplained the fact that Jesus and the 
 Gospel is foolishness to one man and the power of God unto 
 salvation to another. Since it totally neglects the blinding 
 power of sin, it is wholly inadequate as an explanation of 
 the genesis of faith. 
 
 There is, however, a higher form of the argument from 
 Christian experience, which has often been identified with 
 the Witness of the Spirit. It admits the supernatural in¬ 
 fluence of the Holy Spirit upon the heart in producing 
 
 find an improvement and peace and happiness. Less calls this a wit¬ 
 ness of the Spirit, but prefers to call it an argument from experience. 
 Consequently many Rationalists like Wegscheider rejected the doctrine 
 altogether. On the Rationalists cf. Klaiber, “Die Lehre der altpro- 
 testantischen Dogmatiker von dem Testimonium Spiritus Sancti, und 
 ihre dogmatische Bedeutung, Jahrbuecher fur deutsche Theol. ii. 1857, 
 p. 22. 
 
 ’Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott; also Gewissheit des 
 Glaubens 2 , 59; Gottschick, Die Kirchlichkeit der sog. Kircklichen The- 
 ologie; Rade, “Der rechte Christliche Glaube,” Christl. Welt. 1892, 
 Nr. 1. For an account and criticism of the Ritschlian Theologians 
 vid. Kostlin, Die iBegrundung unserer sittlich-religibsen Ueberzeugung. 
 pp. 97 ff. 
 
58 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 Christian experience, and finds in this experience what it 
 terms a Witness of the Spirit to the divine origin of God’s 
 Word. The Spirit by means of the Word produces in the 
 Christian an experience of salvation, which experience is 
 due to the hearing of the Word, is congruous with the 
 Word, and which therefore witnesses to the truth, and so 
 to the divine origin of the Bible. This is a valid argument, 
 but quite distinct from the Witness of the Holy Spirit. 
 Some of the modern theologians who have developed this 
 argument have not fallen into the mistake of identifying it 
 with the Witness of the Spirit, as for example Kostlin. 10 
 By many, however, the doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit 
 has been reduced to this argument from Christian experi¬ 
 ence. This was done in the eighteenth century by the 
 Supra-naturalists and the Rationalists. Thus Baumgarten 11 
 says that there is a twofold experience from which we infer 
 the divine origin of Scripture; first an experience of the 
 truth of the main content of Scripture by means of the 
 agreement of the Scripture descriptions of states of the soul 
 with our own, and by means of our attaining to an end not 
 otherwise attainable when we accept the Bible way of sal¬ 
 vation ; and secondly an immediate experience of the power 
 of the Bible on our souls. We argue from this by infer¬ 
 ence that the Bible is true and so must be divine in origin 
 since no human book has any such witness to it. This 
 argument from experience which has been developed in 
 modern times by such theologians as Frank, Kostlin, and 
 Ihmels, has by a number of theologians been identified with 
 the Witness of the Holy Spirit. 12 
 
 x# Kostlin, op. cit., pp. 100 ff. 
 
 11 Baumgarten, Dogmatik, pp. 120 ff. 
 
 “ H. Cremer, Realency. f. prot. Theol. u. Kirche, vi. p. 760: “Dies 
 ist das testimonium Spiritus S., die kirchliche und individuelle Erfarung 
 von der Bedeutung der heil. Schrift. Sie bezieht sich auf die Schrift als 
 ganzes”. Precisely the same reduction of the testimony of the Holy 
 Spirit to the argument from experience is found in the Article on this 
 subject by Wiesinger, “Ich Glaube an den heiligen Geist”, Neue 
 Kirchliche Zeitschrift, ix. 1898, pp. 763-787; zhd. especially pp. 778, 779: 
 “Ist es der vom Geiste gewirkte Glaube an Jesum Christum, in dem wir 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 59 
 
 This argument from Christian experience is a valid argu¬ 
 ment for the divine origin of Christianity and the Bible, but 
 is quite distinct from the Witness of the Spirit to the Bible. 
 The identification of the two confuses the question of the 
 grounds of faith with that of the origin of faith. Chris¬ 
 tian experience depends upon or grows out of a saving 
 faith the doctrinal content of which is given by the Christian 
 revelation in the Bible. Christian experience, therefore, 
 presupposes a faith in this revelation and cannot give rise 
 to such faith. The Witness of the Spirit is not one among 
 several grounds of faith. It lies back of all such grounds 
 as the efficient cause of the genesis of faith, enabling us to 
 be convinced by the grounds of faith as we otherwise would 
 not be. Christian experience on the other hand, may be a 
 reason for faith after such faith has arisen; it cannot give 
 rise to it since it presupposes saving faith. The distinctly 
 Christian experiences of the transformation of life, pardon, 
 peace, divine sonship, and sanctification—all these are pro¬ 
 duced in an instrumental sense by God’s Word, and are 
 nourished by the Word, and so witness to the saving power 
 and hence the divine origin of the Word; but these ex¬ 
 periences are all consequences of the faith to which the 
 Witness of the Spirit gives rise. 
 
 Moreover this testimony of Christian experience to the 
 Bible is not an objective witness of God to us; it is the 
 witness of our own hearts to God’s Word. It is not the 
 Spirit bearing witness with our spirit, but the testimony of 
 our renewed heart and experience to the Word which nour¬ 
 ishes it. It rests moreover on an inference from our ex¬ 
 perience to the Bible as its source, and has not, therefore, 
 
 die Gnade Gottes und des ewigen Lebens gewiss geworden sind, so 
 sind wir ebendamit auch der Schrift, sofern sie uns diese Heils- 
 botschaft vermittelt, gewiss”. This also seems to have been the form 
 in which the doctrine was revived in Holland, after its rejection by 
 the Rationalists, by Scholten; vid. Van Oostersee, Christian Dog¬ 
 matics, i, p. 152. In America a view similar to that of Cremer and 
 Wiesinger has been given in the Article by Dr. John De Witt, “The 
 Testimony of the Holy Spirit to the Bible”, Presb. and Reformed Rev. 
 189S. PP- 69 - 8 5 . 
 
6 o 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 the immediate character of the recognition of the divine 
 origin of God’s Word which results from the Witness of 
 the Spirit. Although the soul may seem to possess an im¬ 
 mediate certitude of the divine origin of the Bible, if we 
 look only to the argument from Christian experience a 
 syllogism will be seen to underly it, viz. the Christian is 
 certain that his new life is from God, and he is certain that 
 it is from the Scripture, so that he is therefore certain that 
 the Scripture is from God. And since this witness of ex¬ 
 perience is thus subjective in character, faith is made to rest 
 upon the experiences of the soul rather than upon the marks 
 of divine origin in God’s Word and this objective testimony 
 of God Himself which is the ultimate ground of true faith 
 and Christian certitude. 
 
 There is still another view of the Witness of the Spirit 
 to the Bible which, though it endeavors to hold to the ob¬ 
 jective character of this witness as from the Holy Ghost, 
 and not from man’s experience, nevertheless resembles the 
 argument from Christian experience in many respects. This 
 is the view of the old Lutheran theologians. In the 
 Lutheran theology of the seventeenth century a conception 
 of the relation of the Holy Spirit to God’s Word as a 
 means of grace emerged which influenced the idea of the 
 Witness of the Spirit to the Word. The power of the 
 Spirit was conceived as being wholly in and through the 
 
 * 
 
 Word, and not directly upon the heart as the action of a 
 Personal Being. The Word itself, therefore, was conceived 
 as having a supernatural power which always operates and 
 is effective when not resisted. The Witness of the Spirit, 
 therefore, as conceived by Quenstedt, Baier, and Hollaz, 13 
 
 13 The peculiar form of the doctrine in the Lutheran Church is due 
 to the fact that it was not fully developed until the seventeenth century 
 when the doctrine of the purely immanent relation of the Holy Spirit 
 to the Word arose. Luther believed that the subjective appropriation 
 of the Gospel is due to the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit 
 “seals” the Word in our experience as a saving word, but Luther did V 
 
 not develop the inference that thus the divine origin of the Word is 
 witnessed to, vid. Klaiber, op. cit. pp. 2, 3; also Martius, Locus Dog- 
 maticus De Testimonio Spiritus Sancti Historice et Systematice Expli- 
 
 l 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 6l 
 
 is really the saving efficacy of God’s Word, which efficacy, 
 however, is a supernatural one from God’s Spirit in the 
 Word. Hence these theologians said that the Spirit bears 
 witness to the divine origin of the Word by means of the 
 efficacy of the Word. This conception of the Testimony of 
 
 catur, p. 9. Melanchthon touches briefly upon the doctrine in the 
 Preface to his Loci where he sets the “method of philosophy” over 
 against the “doctrine of the Church”, the former being by “demon¬ 
 stration”, the latter resting on divine revelation. This latter, though 
 witnessed to by miracles, has also the Witness of the Spirit which 
 aids the mind to faith. Speaking of Christian truths he says—“quia 
 res sunt extra judicium humanae mentis poritae, languidior est assen- 
 sio, quae fit, quia mens movetur illis testimoniis et miraculis et juvatur 
 a Spiritu S. ad assentiendum”. The doctrine is found stated in Hutter, 
 Q. I Prop. Ill; Hunnius, Op. Ed. 1607, i. 10; and fully developed by 
 Quenstedt, Baier, and Hollaz. The idea is that the Spirit’s influence 
 and witness is solely through the saving power of the Word. Quen¬ 
 stedt, Theol. Didact. Polem. I, Cap. 4, Q. 9, p. 140, says that the 
 “criteria” of the divinity of Scripture produce only fides Humana; that 
 fides divina is due to the Witness of the Spirit; and that this is found 
 in the supernatural efficacy of the Word of God—“Quanquam multa 
 sint KpLTrjpux et motiva fidei seu credibilitatis, ut vocant, quae potenter 
 suadent S. Scripturae autoritatem, et originem coelestem, sive in- 
 ducunt hominem infidelem docilem, et non malitiose repugnantem, ut 
 credat, hoc verbum, quod Scriptura proponit, esse Oeowevo-Tov et vere 
 Dei verbum: Ilia tamen Kpcrrjpia sive yvoptcryuara, quantacumque sint, 
 fidem tantum humanam et persuasionem efficient; ultima vero ratio, 
 sub qua et propter quam fide divina et infallibili credimus, verbum 
 Dei esse verbum Dei, est ipsa intrinseca vis et efficacia verbi divini et 
 Spiritus S. in Scriptura et per Scripturam loquentis testificatio et ob- 
 signatio”. Baler's doctrine is the same— Compend. Theol. Pos. Proleg. 
 C. II, parag. 22, p. 86—“Divinam fidem, qua Scripturae sacrae ex parte 
 formalis (seu sensus aut doctrinae) divina origo agnoscatur, doctrina 
 ipsa Scripturae omni tempore gignit, quatenus cum attentione lecta, 
 aut voce docentis proposita, explicata et auditu percepta, per se im¬ 
 mediate quidem, sed virtute divina, quam sibi semper et indissolubiliter 
 conjunctam habet: adeoque concurrente, et virtutem hanc exerente 
 Deo, intellectum quidem hominis illuminat, seu excitata cogitatione 
 sancta et objecto congrua in assensum inclinat: voluntatem vero ejus 
 allicit ac movet, ut intellectui assensum, sibi ipsi (Doctrinae in Scrip- 
 turis comprehensae) tanquam a Deo profectae, praebendum imperat; 
 et sic intellectum ipsum ad assentiendum, sub ratione revelationis 
 divinae, determinet.” Also p. 92 “ita etiam in ordine ad nos seu ut 
 fide divina credamus, Scripturae libros, sub eo, quo nobis, idiomate, 
 i.e. verborum in certa lingua, serie et contextu, esse divinitus inspiratos, 
 et sic habere vim illam normativam, seu dignitatem Canonicam, non 
 sufficit solum Ecclesiae testimonium; verum et hie internum Spiritus 
 
62 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 the Holy Spirit, Klaiber claims, is quite different from the 
 argument from experience since it is a testimony of the 
 Spirit of God and not of our religious states of mind, 14 
 and Klaiber and Martius 15 adopt this view themselves. 
 
 This idea of the Testimony of the Holy Spirit is inade¬ 
 quate. We pass over the objection that it rests upon a 
 wrong view of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Word, 
 and over the fact that neither Scripture nor experience 
 
 S. testimonium, seu operationem efficacem per ipsam Scripturam, con- 
 currere oportet.” Thus the power of the Holy Spirit is through the 
 Word solely. Precisely similar is the doctrine in Hollaz, Exam. Theol. 
 Acroamat. p. 125—“Per internum spiritus sancti testimonium heic 
 intellegitur actus supernaturalis spiritus sancti per verbum Dei attente 
 lectum vel auditu perceptum, virtute sua divina scripturae sacrae com- 
 municata cor hominis pulsantis, aperientis, illuminantis, et ad ob- 
 sequium fidei flectentis, ut homo illuminatus ex internis motibus spir- 
 itualibus vere sentiat, verbum sibi propositum a Deo ipso esse pro- 
 feetum, atque immotum ipsi assensum praebeat.” Here the object 
 testified to is the divine origin of Scripture; the nature of the witness¬ 
 ing is an internal action of the Spirit through the Word, the power 
 being identified with the efficacy of the Word. This latter point is 
 made clearer in the following passage where the power of the Spirit 
 and of the Word are identified—p. 125—'“Internum spiritus sancti 
 testimonium de authentia sacrae scripturae coincidit quoad rem cum 
 efficacia sacrae scripturae in actu secundo spectata . . . Etenim zhs 
 effectiva, quam verbo Dei in producendo effectu. illuminationis, con- 
 versionis, renovationis, et confirmationis, tribuimus, vere divina est, 
 Rom. 1 :i6, nec differt quoad rem a virtute, quae spiritus sancti 
 operantis in cordibus hominum est, quanquam disparitas sit in modo 
 habendi hanc vim, ut pote quae spiritui sancto ex se et a se ceu causae 
 principiali verbo autem participative causae organicae competit.” Ger¬ 
 hard, Loci I. Cap. II Parag. 22, pp. 9, 10, touches on the doctrine only 
 briefly and not in such a way as to bring out the peculiar features of 
 the Lutheran view as seen in Baier, Quenstedt and Hollaz. After 
 speaking of the “criteria” of the divine origin of Scripture, both in¬ 
 ternal and external, he says—“Turn demum sequitur, ut Spiritus S. 
 in cords ipsius ferat testimonium, et suorum verborum veritatem ob- 
 signet etc.” The same view is held by those of the modern Lutheran 
 theologians who have treated of this doctrine, for example Philippi, 
 who discusses the doctrine at some length, Kirchliche Glaubenslehre a , 
 
 i. pp. I2gff. 
 
 14 Klaiber, op. cit. pp. 2off. 
 
 15 Martius, Locus Dogmaticus De Testimonio Spiritus Sancti His- 
 torice et Systematice Explicatur, pp. 38ft; Klaiber, op. cit. pp. i7ff, 
 30 ff. 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 6.3 
 
 warrant the attribution of any such power to the Bible, but 
 show the truth to be quite the contrary. Looking- at this 
 view of the Witness of the Spirit in itself, we see that while 
 it aims at the recognition of the divine source of the Wit¬ 
 ness, it really conceives of its result as a feeling of the saving 
 power of the Bible, and not as an objective or intuitive be¬ 
 holding of the marks of God in the Bible. It not only, 
 therefore, tends to reduce the Witness to an inference from 
 Christian experience, it also limits the criteria of the divine 
 origin of Scripture to its saving efficacy, whereas the Bible 
 has many other marks of divine origin which the renewed 
 mind can behold or recognize. Like the argument from 
 Christian experience, it gives after all an inferential rather 
 than an immediate certitude, and can be put in the form of 
 the same syllogism, as Klaiber himself recognizes. The 
 Christian feels the saving power of the Bible, he knows his 
 new life is from God, and therefore that the Bible is from 
 God. He does not, therefore, so much see and acquiesce in 
 the self-evidencing divine character of the Scripture, as 
 experience its power and hence infer its origin from God. 
 The difference between this mode of conceiving of the 
 Witness of the Spirit and that of Calvin and all the Re¬ 
 formed theologians may be illustrated from the case of a 
 painting of a great master. How are we to recognize the 
 painter? According to one view the masterpiece arouses 
 feelings of artistic pleasure or wonder and from them we 
 know it must be from the hand of a master. According to 
 the other view the painting bears a number of marks of its 
 being from the hand of such and such a master; these 
 marks we immediately recognize if we have the artistic 
 sense. Just so when the eyes of our heart are opened, or 
 our religious sense restored by God’s Spirit, we immediately 
 see the marks of His hand in the Scripture. 
 
 The Witness of the Holy Spirit to the Bible, then, is 
 not objective in the sense of being the mystical communica¬ 
 tion to the mind of a truth or proposition, nor is it a subjec¬ 
 tive inference from Christian experience. It is simply the 
 
64 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 saving work of the Holy Spirit on the heart removing the 
 spiritual blindness produced by sin, so that the marks of 
 God’s hand in the Bible can be clearly seen and appreciated. 
 God testifies to the Bible by prophecy and miracle, by the 
 greatness of the truths which it contains, by their suitability 
 to our needs. But unrenewed man, while he may attain to a 
 merely intellectual or “speculative” faith on the basis of ra¬ 
 tional arguments or the testimony of the Church, cannot sav¬ 
 ingly apprehend God nor see God as He is revealed as the 
 author of the Scripture. Those who are born of the Spirit 
 have their minds and hearts enlightened so that they are en¬ 
 abled and persuaded to accept the objective testimony which 
 God gives to the Bible, and to recognize immediately or be¬ 
 hold intuitively the marks of God’s hand in the Scripture. 
 Nothing intervenes between the human soul and the Word of 
 God, but the soul is given the ability to see God as the 
 Author of the Bible and to rest on its truths with a saving 
 faith, or what the old theologians called fides divina because 
 it rests on God’s testimony, as distinguished from fides 
 humana which rests simply on human testimony or rational 
 arguments. The evidence for the divine origin of the Bible 
 is not lacking, but the unrenewed man cannot be convinced 
 by it. Hence while saving faith does not arise apart from 
 evidence, and while normally, i.e. apart from the binding 
 effects of sin, it could not be withheld when the evidence 
 is present, it does not follow that it will arise when adequate 
 evidence is present, because the heart and mind are blinded 
 by sin so that they are not open to conviction. It was for 
 this reason, as we saw, that Jesus traced unbelief to a con¬ 
 dition of the heart, and that Paul represented the illumina¬ 
 tion of the Spirit as absolutely necessary to the apprehension 
 of the truths of the Gospel. The Witness of the Spirit to 
 the Bible, therefore, is not isolated, but a part of His sav¬ 
 ing work in the soul. He witnesses with our spirits that 
 we are the sons of God; He enables us to recognize the 
 glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; but He also takes 
 away our spiritual blindness so that we see the glory of 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 65 
 
 God in His written Word as well as in His Incarnate Word. 
 Just as an aesthetic sense is necessary for the appreciation 
 of a work of art, so the restored religious sense is necessary 
 for a saving apprehension of God and divine things, and so 
 it is that, though the external attestation and the internal 
 marks of divine authorship are not wanting to the Bible, 
 until men are born again they will not be convinced, but 
 when their spiritual sight is restored they see, not with a 
 blind irrational feeling, but see and behold the divinity of 
 the Bible. The Christian, therefore, believes the Bible ulti¬ 
 mately on the testimony of God in His Word recognized by 
 means of the testimony of God in his heart. 
 
 This doctrine was first adequately developed by Calvin. 
 Following him it was taken up in Holland, France, England 
 and Scotland. It received full recognition in the form in 
 which Calvin developed it by Ursinus, Piscator, Zanchius, 
 Wollebius, Wendelin, Maresius, Maccovius, and Heideg- 
 
 18 Calvin, Institutes. I. Cap. 7. Calvin devotes an entire chapter to the 
 Witness of the Spirit to the Bible. He was the first to give the 
 doctrine its full significance as the one absolutely indispensable con¬ 
 dition of any adequate knowledge of God and divine things for sinful 
 man. He taught that the ground of belief in the truth of Scripture 
 is that God is its author (i. 7:4). But our sure persuasion of this is 
 due to the inward Witness of the Spirit in the heart. The necessity 
 for this Witness does not lie in any inadequacy or want of valid reasons 
 for belief in the divine origin of the Bible. “It is true,” he says, 
 “that if we were inclined to argue this point, many things might be 
 adduced which certainly evince, if there be any God in heaven, that 
 He is the Author of the Law and the Prophecies and the Gospel. 
 Even though men of learning and deep judgment rise up in opposition, 
 and assert and display all the power of their minds in the dispute, yet 
 unless they are wholly lost to all sense of shame, this confession will 
 be extorted from them, that the Scripture exhibits the plainest evi¬ 
 dences that it is God who speaks in it, which manifests its doctrine 
 to be divine” (i. 7:4). The necessity for the Witness of the Spirit^ is 
 subjective, and lies in the fact that our minds are blinded by sin 
 and that it is true or saving faith, not mere intellectual assent, that is 
 in question. Calvin says that in spite of the validity of the reasons 
 for belief in Scripture “yet it is acting a preposterous part, to en¬ 
 deavor to produce sound faith in the Scripture by disputations”; and 
 he adds that though he could refute all cavils, this would not “fix in 
 their hearts that assurance which is essential to true piety” (i. 7:4). 
 
66 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 It is taught in the same form and spirit by such modern 
 Reformed theologians as Van Oostersee, Kuyper, and 
 
 As to the nature of this Witness, Calvin taught that it was an “internal 
 witness” “fixing assurance in the heart”, so that those “inwardly taught 
 by the Spirit feel an entire acquiescence in Scripture, and that it is 
 self-authenticated, carrying with it its own evidence, and ought not 
 to be made the subject of demonstration and argument from reason, 
 but obtains the credit which it deserves with us by the testimony 
 of the Spirit” (i. 7:5). He also calls it a divine illumination of the 
 mind which results in an immediate intuitive perception of God in 
 the Scripture, and is therefore not through any process of inference 
 (i. 7:5). He speaks of it once as a “revelation from heaven” (i. 7:5), 
 but does not mean the revelation of a proposition or truth, as is 
 clear from his attacks on the mystics. He is here referring simply 
 to the supernatural or heavenly origin of this witness which the Chris¬ 
 tian has. Neither did Calvin conceive it as dispensing with the neces¬ 
 sity for grounds or reasons of faith; he unfolds these in an entire 
 Chapter,—i. 8. The Witness of the Spirit lies back of all grounds 
 and is necessary in order that the objective evidence may have any 
 effect on the sin-darkened mind. On Calvin’s doctrine of the Witness 
 of the Spirit, vid. B. B. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge 
 of God.” Princeton Theol. Review, viii, pp. 2i9ff, especially pp. 
 262ff; also Pannier, Le Temoignage Du Saint-Esprit, pp. 63-116. For 
 the history of the doctrine in France after the time of Calvin vid. 
 Pannier, op. cit. pp. 136I 
 
 The Reformed theologians of the age following Calvin expounded 
 this doctrine in the same profound way that Calvin conceived it. They 
 taught that the Bible is self-evidencing, bearing its own marks of 
 divine origin; that man is blinded by sin and cannot attain true or 
 saving faith by means of arguments or the “criteria” of divine 
 authorship in the Bible; that true faith and full certitude are due to the 
 regenerating and illuminating work of the Holy Spirit on the sinful 
 heart. The Testimony of the Spirit for these theologians, then, is 
 this work of the Spirit, and its effect is not a blind conviction without 
 grounds, nor a mystical revelation of truth, but a well-grounded as¬ 
 surance of faith. Thus, for example, Ursinus, Loci. pp. 437ff, “Uni- 
 cum testimonium est, solis Christi spiritu renatis proprium et his solis 
 cognitum, cuius ea vis est, ut non modo veritatem doctrinae propheticae 
 et apostolicae abunde in animis nostris testetur et obsignet, sed corda 
 etiam ad amplectandam earn et sequendam efficaciter flectat et permo- 
 ve’at”. Arguments are to be used to confirm faith but this Testimony 
 of the Spirit alone makes us “acquiesce” in God’s Word—“Quamvis 
 enim hoc solum efficit, ut in verbo -Dei acquiescamus, et solum etiam 
 nobis abunde satisfacere debet: videbimus tamen ipsam quoque Scrip- 
 turam postquam in isto summa certitudinis et consolationis nostrae con- 
 stituit, etiam relique in medium affere, idque non sine ratione.” Also 
 Zanchius, Op. viii, 332-334, says that the testimony of no man can 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 6 J 
 
 Bavinck in Holland, and Charles Hodge in America . 17 In 
 Britain it was fully stated by such writers as Owen, Whit- 
 
 render us certain of the divine origin of Scripture. Neither can the 
 Church give the Spirit who is the author of true faith. Not even the 
 Scripture can do this, for though its divinity shines like the sun, the 
 spiritually blind cannot discern it. This is done only by the work of 
 the Spirit illuminating the mind. “Si Scriptura S. hoc ex se sola posset 
 praestare, omnes qui illam aut audiunt, aut legunt, etiam agnoscerent, 
 esse verbum Dei, cum revera sit verbum Dei. Non omnes hoc novunt, 
 etsi legunt et audiunt . . . Etsi igitur Scriptura in se lumen est 
 lucernaque; accensa imo Sol splendidissimus: tamen sicut Sol non potest 
 sese caeco homini quis et qualis sit patefacere, nisi caecus aliunde 
 illuminetur: Ita Scriptura non potest sese agnoscendam re ipsa prae- 
 bere cuipiam homini, nisi Spiritu S. mens hominis ad videndam 
 Scripturae dignitatem illustretur; ac aures ad auriendum Deum in 
 illis loquentem, aperiantur. Quare neque Scriptura sua sola dignitate et 
 auctoritate quam habet sine Spiritu sancto sufficit ad hoc, ut quis earn 
 agnoscat certum esse Dei verbum”. Zanchius does not undervalue 
 arguments such as the testimony of the Church; he simply asserts 
 the necessity of the work of the Spirit on the heart before it can be 
 convinced by evidence. One important point to notice is that Zanchius 
 does not, like the Lutherans, identify the Testimony of the Spirit with 
 the saving efficacy of the Scripture, but expressly distinguishes this 
 latter as one of the marks of the divine origin of the Scripture, from 
 the Testimony of the Spirit which gives effect to all the evidence— 
 “Multas variasque Scripturae ipsius demonstrationes, turn ab ipsius in 
 nobis vi et efficacia, turn a multis aliis rebus et effectis extra nos 
 desumptas: quibus tanquam sigillis veritas in nobis per Spiritum S. 
 obsignatur, ac nos in ilia magis ac magis quotidie confirmamur, hanc 
 sacram Scripturam verum ac vivum esse sermonem Dei.” This 
 testimony is an internal illuminating power of the Spirit of God in 
 the heart—“Testimonium Spiritus S. intus in corde nobis testificantis 
 et persuadentis, hoc esse verbum Dei: et simul mentem illuminantis, 
 et coelestem veritatem atque excellentiam verbi ostendentis; atque ita 
 efficientis, ut nos non solum certo credamus, sed etiam vere agnos- 
 camus, Deum esse eum, qui in Scripturis loquitur”. Similarly vid. 
 Wollebius, Compend. Theol. Christ, pp. 3 and 4—In answer to the 
 question how the “divinity of Scripture” is recognized by us, he says that 
 the witness to this is twofold—“principial” and “instrumental” or “min¬ 
 isterial”. The latter is the testimony of the Church, the former is the 
 testimony of the Spirit externally in the Scripture which He inspired. 
 But this external Witness is efficacious only by the internal Witness of 
 the Spirit in the heart—“Testimonium autem hoc duplex principiale et 
 ministrale. Principiale est testimonium Spiritus sancti; foris in ipsa 
 Scriptura; intus vero in corde ac mente hominis fidelis ab ipso illumi- 
 nati, loquentis, eique Scripturae divinitatem persuadentis. Ministrale 
 vero testimonium est testimonium Ecclesiae.” The same truths are 
 
68 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 aker, Gillespie and others . 18 The doctrine was not only not 
 made use of by the Arminian theologians, but its validity was 
 
 taught by Piscator, Explicatio Aphor. Doct. Christ. Aph. vi. p. 94— 
 True faith in the “authority” of Scripture is due to the Witness of the 
 Spirit, because, though the Scripture is avroiruTTOs, man is blinded by 
 sin—“Et si autem haec scriptura fidem apud omnes meretur, tanquam 
 0€O7rvevcrTOs et avTomcrro '>: tamen testimonio Spiritus sancti sanciri 
 earn in cordibus nostris oportet, ut nobis certa eius constet authoritas, 
 ac proinde ut plenam ei fidem habeamus.” Piscator illustrates this 
 from the inability of the blind to see the sun—“Etsi sol clarissime 
 lucet, tamen lumen ejus videre non potest caecus; ut autem videat, 
 necesse est illuminari oculos ejus luce interiore. Ita nos natura sumus 
 caeci in videndis rebus divinis clarissime in Scriptura propositis; ut 
 autem eas videamus, necesse est illuminari oculos mentis nostrae per 
 Spiritum sanctum.” Maresius, Systema Breve Universae Theol. p. 11, 
 brings out the following points—1. the Witness is both objective and 
 internal; 2. it does not produce a “blind” faith, but is through the 
 marks of God’s hand in Scripture; 3. it is an illumination of the mind 
 to see the divinity of Scripture; 4. it produces full certitude and true 
 faith; 5. it witnesses to the divine origin of Scripture—“Sed quamvis 
 haec et similia argumenta sive motiva, impiis redarguendis et con- 
 vincendis apprime inserviant, tamen ut quis certitudine fidei persuadea- 
 tur Scripturam esse a Deo, . . . opus habet testimonio interno Sp. 
 Sancti per illam ipsam Scripturam efficacis, in quod fides sua ultimo 
 resolvatur, tanquam in sui causam efficientem principialem . . . Hac 
 autem persuasione nihil certius; cum lumen fidei ita se menti insinuet; 
 ut per illud fidelis non solum credat, sed etiam se bene et vere credere 
 certo sentiat.” Maccovius, Loci Communes. Cap. 4, pp. 27, 28, teaches 
 that the arguments for the divine authority of Scripture are not 
 efficient without the Witness of the Spirit which is of the nature of 
 an illuminating of the mind—“Verum enim vero haec argumenta omnia 
 parum momenti adferunt ad credendum, nisi accesserit illuminatio 
 mentis nostrae facta per Spiritum Sanctum, quam vocamus testimonium 
 Sp. Sancti. Testimonium autem Sp. S. est lux quaedam ita mentem 
 perfundens, ut earn leniter afficiat, ostendatque rationes ipsi rei, quae 
 credenda proponitur, insitas, sed antea occultas”. Wendelin teaches 
 precisely the same doctrine,— Christianae Theol. Libri, i. p. 23—“Quaeri- 
 tur inter nos et Pontificos; Unde pendeant Scripturae autoritas quoad 
 nos? Seu, unde constet Scripturam esse divinam, vel a Deo inspiratam? 
 Nos statuimus principialiter id constare: (1) Ex persuasione Spiritus 
 sancti, qui de divinitate sacrae Scripturae nos certos facit.” Precisely 
 the same is the view of Heidegger, Corp. Theol. Loc. ii. Secs. 12, 13, 
 14, 15, p. 28. The Spirit of truth opens the eyes of our hearts which 
 are spiritually blind, so that we see the divinity manifest in God’s 
 Word—“Hie oculos nostros illuminat, ut videant in verbo ab ipsomet 
 inspirato Divinitatis et 0eo7T/oc7reias omnis radios. Ille, ceu sigillum 
 Dei, quo obsignati sumus, 2 Cor. 1:22, nos turn per argumenta Divini- 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 69 
 
 denied . 19 This was only the natural consequence of their 
 naturalistic minimizing of the saving work of the Holy 
 Spirit on the heart. And the same thing was true of the 
 Socinians . 20 In the eighteenth century it was reduced to 
 
 tatis in verbo Dei splendentia turn supra ea, turn contra argumenta, quae 
 caro et sanguis eidem opponit, certos reddit, quod verbum Scripturae 
 a Deo et Deo dignum sit”. No full historical sketch of the doctrine 
 of these theologians has been given. Some material will be found in 
 Heppe, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche, pp. 20-22. 
 The doctrine also found expression in the Reformed Symbols such as 
 the Gallican Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Anglican Confes¬ 
 sion, and the first and second Helvetic Confessions; also in the Nether¬ 
 lands Confession, vid. Muller, Die Bekenntnisschriften der Reformirten 
 Kirche; and also Pannier, op. cit., pp. 124-136. Probably its best and 
 most adequate confessional statement is that in the Westminster Con¬ 
 fession i. S—“We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the 
 Church to a high and reverent esteem for the Holy Scriptures; and 
 the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty 
 of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which 
 is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only 
 way of man’s salvation, the many and incomparable excellencies, and 
 the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly 
 evidence itself to be the word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full 
 persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority 
 thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness 
 by and with the word, in our hearts”. 
 
 17 Van Oostersee, Christian Dogmatics, i. pp. 149-154. Kuyper, 
 Encyclopaedic Der Heilige Godgeleerdheid, ii, pp. 501-511. H. Bavinck, 
 Gereformeerde Dogmatiek 2 , i, pp. 621-647. Charles Hodge, Systematic 
 Theology, iii, p. 69; also Way of Life, pp. 13-28. 
 
 “John Owen, The Reason of Faith, Works, vol. iv. pp. 1-100, espec¬ 
 ially pp. 82ff. William Whitaker, A Disputation on Holy Scripture, pp. 
 332-358. George Gillespie, Works, vol. ii, pp. iosff. John Ball, A 
 Treatise of Faith, pp. 13, 14. John Arrowsmith, Chain of Principles, 
 pp. 103, 104. W. Lyford, Principles of Faith and Good Conscience, 
 p. 2; The Plain Man’s Senses Exercised, p. 38. John White, A Way to 
 the Tree of Life, pp. 44, 45. Edward Reynolds, Works, vol v. pp. 154, 
 155. Cf. B. B. Warfield, “The Westminster Doctrine of Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture,” in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, iv. pp. 626ff. 
 
 “Episcopius, Instit. Theol. iv.'i cap. 5; Parag. 2. Limborch, Theol. 
 Christiana, i. 4: parags. 15-17. In the case of these Remonstrant the¬ 
 ologians fides humana and rational arguments are substituted for the 
 fides divina and the Witness of the Spirit. This was the natural result 
 of their semi-Pelagian ideas. 
 
 20 The Socinians also rejected the doctrine of the Witness of the 
 Holy Spirit, holding that everything must be proved by reason, vid. 
 Fock, Der Socinianismus, p. 336. 
 
70 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 the argument from experience by some of the Supra- 
 naturalists and Rationalists, as for example Baumgarten; 
 and denied by others, such as Wegscheider . 21 The at¬ 
 tempted revival of the doctrine by Schleiermacher 22 in 
 reaction from Rationalism was only a spurious one, being 
 wholly vitiated by the identification of the Holy Spirit with 
 the spirit of man, and the reduction of the Witness to an 
 argument from experience; while its attempted revival in 
 Holland by Scholten did not rise in its conception above the 
 argument from experience . 23 
 
 In the second place it is necessary to determine as briefly 
 as possible the “content” or “object” of this Witness of the 
 Holy Spirit to the Bible. To what in regard to the Bible 
 is this testimony given? This witnessing, of course, is a 
 part of the entire saving work of the Holy Spirit in the 
 heart of the sinner. It is not something separate from the 
 
 21 Baumgarten, Dogmatik, pp. i2off. reduced the Witness of the Spirit 
 to the argument from experience. This is true also of Less, Beweis 
 der Wahrheit der christl. Relig. pp. 141, 143; and also of Reinhard, 
 Dogmatik, p. 65. Having been reduced thus by the Supra-naturalists 
 to the argument from experience, it was rejected altogether by the 
 Rationalists, vid. Brettschneider, Handbuch der Dogmatik, i. p. 206; 
 Wegscheider, Inst. Theol. For an account of the treatment of the 
 doctrine in the eighteenth century Rationalism cf. Martius, op. cit., pp. 
 26 ff. 
 
 22 Schleiermacher, Der christl. Glaube, parag. 142:2. The Testimony 
 of the Spirit is, according tp Schleiermacher, given through the media-, 
 tion of Christians in the Church. The Witness is, therefore, the testi¬ 
 mony of the collective experience of Christians to the Scripture, and 
 though it gains thus a certain amount of objectivity in reference to the 
 individual Christian, it does not go beyond the argument from ex¬ 
 perience. Moreover the identification of the Holy Spirit with the 
 collective consciousness of Christians, does away with the very foun¬ 
 dation of the doctrine of the Reformers. It is characteristic of the 
 doctrine of the Reformers, and in this they followed the Scriptures 
 closely, always to insist on the essential distinction between the Spirit 
 of God and the finite spirit, and to maintain the personality and 
 transcendence of the Holy Spirit. Schleiermacher’s attempted revival 
 of the doctrine was a spurious one. • 
 
 23 Scholten reduces the Witness of the Holy Spirit to the argument 
 from experience and describes it as the “testimony of the heart and 
 conscience” which are “purified by communion with Christ”. Cf. Van 
 Oostersee, op. cit., i. p. 152. 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 71 
 
 whole of the Christian life. The Spirit does guide into all 
 truth; brings us to confess Christ as Lord; testifies to the 
 glory of Christ; makes believers know all things which have 
 been given them by God; assures them of Divine Sonship. 
 But the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the Bible, though 
 closely connected with all this, is additional to this, and is 
 not to be identified with the gift to the believer of assurance 
 of faith. The conception which has been stated of the na¬ 
 ture of this Witness determines its object. If it were a 
 blind and groundless testimony, or the mystical communi¬ 
 cation of a proposition, then it might be supposed to in¬ 
 clude questions the determination of which must rest solely 
 upon historical and critical and exegetical grounds. If we 
 are to conceive of the Spirit as giving to the soul a truth 
 such as—“The Bible is God’s Word”, why might He not 
 say to us such and such a book is canonical or is not can¬ 
 onical, or that the Bible is plenarily inspired? But the 
 Witness is not the mystical communication of a truth, nor 
 the causing to emerge in consciousness of a blind and un¬ 
 founded faith. Hence it does not witness to ques¬ 
 tions which are to be determined by exegetical and historical 
 considerations. The Spirit, then, does not testify to the 
 nature or extent of the Bible’s inspiration. These are ques¬ 
 tions to be exegetically determined, and which can be de¬ 
 termined in no other way. Of course after we have de¬ 
 termined what is the Bible’s doctrine of inspiration, we 
 must ask whether it is true. And here the evidences for 
 the truth of the Bible/must be brought in. And the efficacy 
 of these on the heart will depend on the work of the Holy 
 Spirit Nevertheless the Witness of the Spirit is not to 
 the nature of the inspiration of the Bible. An examination 
 of the passages already cited from the old Reformed the¬ 
 ologians will show that they did not conceive of the testi¬ 
 mony of the Spirit as being to the doctrine of the Inspiration 
 of Scripture. Piscator , 24 it is true, used the term deoTrvev- 
 
 21 Cf . passages cited from the Reformed Theologians in note No. 16. 
 By using the term “inspiration,” in this connection, to denote the divine 
 origin of Scripture, the Reformed Theologians did not make the mistake 
 
72 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 <rro9 in speaking of that to which the Spirit bears witness, 
 but the passage shows that he did not intend any particular 
 doctrine of Inspiration, but rather the divine origin of the 
 Scripture. In this he agreed with the other theologians 
 cited who constantly spoke of the “divinity of Scripture” 
 and said that this shone forth from it like the rays of the 
 sun. 
 
 of supposing that the question of the nature of the Bible’s inspiration 
 could be determined otherwise than by the exegesis of the statements 
 of the Scripture writers concerning the subject. 
 
 Quite different from this, however, is the view of W. Robertson 
 Smith, followed by T. Lindsay, James Denney, J. P. Lilley, M. Dods, 
 C. A. Briggs and others. These writers suppose that the term “in¬ 
 spiration” as applied to Scripture denotes simply the fact that the 
 Bible is a means of grace through the influence of the Holy Spirit on 
 the heart. This, according to them, constitutes its “inspiration.” On 
 this view we recognize the divine origin and truth of the Scripture by 
 the Spirit’s Witness through its saving power, and it is this saving 
 power which gives the Scripture its authority, and which constitutes 
 its “inspiration.” In this way the idea of inspiration is lowered by the 
 attempt to determine its nature, not by exegesis, but by asking what 
 we find the Bible to be. Hence our idea of Scripture is substituted for 
 that of the Bible concerning its own nature, and Scripture is regarded 
 as a rule of faith only in so far as it is a means of grace. The 
 Witness of the Spirit, therefore, instead of confirming the authority 
 of Scripture, as it did in the Reformed Theology, becomes a means 
 of. erecting a subjective norm above the Bible, thus doing away with 
 its authority as a rule of faith. Moreover the Witness of the Spirit, 
 being thus reduced to the experience of the saving power of the 
 Scripture, is supposed to be given directly or immediately to so 
 much of the historical element in the Bible as our Christian con¬ 
 sciousness finds essential. This essential part, it is supposed, will be 
 left untouched by historical criticism which may do as it pleases with 
 the supposedly non-essential parts of Scripture. In this way Chris¬ 
 tianity is supposed to be rendered independent of the results of his¬ 
 torical criticism, in very much the same manner as the Ritschlian 
 theologians believe it to be. A false subjectivism is thus introduced 
 through the mistake of seeking to determine in a subjective way 
 questions which can be settled only by an objective investigation of 
 historical evidence. This entire view rests upon the mistake of sup¬ 
 posing that, because saving faith is personal trust and not a mere 
 intellectual assent, therefore its content cannot be given by an ob¬ 
 jective communication of truth by God. Hence Ritschl and his fol¬ 
 lowers maintained that the Reformation idea of faith rendered neces¬ 
 sary a new idea of revelation and inspiration, and they also claimed 
 that they were the true successors of Calvin and Luther. In this they 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 73 
 
 Neither is the Witness of the Spirit to the Canonicity of 
 any or all of the Biblical books. The Witness, not being 
 the communication of any new knowledge or matter of fact, 
 does not inform the Christian what books the Apostles im¬ 
 posed on the infant Church to be its rule of faith and prac¬ 
 tice. This is a question which requires historical investi¬ 
 gation and which must be determined upon historical 
 grounds. The appeal, from objective scientific consider¬ 
 ations to the internal life of the Christian for the settlement 
 of such questions, is not only vain; it has been used in the 
 interests of an attempt to elevate the human mind and the 
 Christian consciousness above the Scripture in a rationalistic 
 spirit which accepts only what appeals to us. It is true that 
 the old Protestant theologians did sometimes speak as if 
 the Holy Spirit bore witness to the Canonicity of the books 
 of Scripture, but in regard to this two remarks should be 
 made. First, this is not their prevalent way of putting the 
 matter. They almost invariably conceive of the Witness 
 
 were followed by W. Robertson Smith and the writers above men¬ 
 tioned, all of whom suppose that the seventeenth century theologians 
 departed from the religious view of the first Reformers. They are 
 mistaken in this. Calvin, as we have seen, believed that the Witness 
 of the Spirit is to the divine origin of the Bible. The nature of in¬ 
 spiration is to be determined objectively by exegesis, and the Canon 
 also objectively by historical investigation. We believe the Bible ulti¬ 
 mately because the Spirit enables us to see that it is from God, but 
 that does not in the least affect the truth that we are to seek to deter¬ 
 mine by exegesis what it says as to its inspiration. It is true that a 
 mechanical view of inspiration was held by some of the Protestant 
 theologians of the 17th and 18th centuries, but the majority of 
 them taught the same high view held by Calvin and all of the 
 early Reformers. 
 
 On the view which we have been criticising, see W. Robertson Smith, 
 What History Teaches Us to Seek in the Bible, Lectures and Essays, 
 Ed. by J. S. Black and G. W. Chrystal, pp. 207ff.; and especially Answer 
 to the Form of Libel, pp. i8ff; T. M. Lindsay, “Professor W. Robertson 
 Smith’s Doctrine of Scripture,” Expositor, Series iv. vol. 10, pp. 241 ff; 
 also the Doctrine of Scripture, ibid. Series v. vol. 1, pp. 278fF. J. 
 Denney, Studies in Theology, pp. 2041!; M, Dods, The Bible. Its 
 Origin and Nature, pp. I23ff, I35ff ; J. P. Lilley, Commentary on the 
 Pastoral Epistles, Appendix, p. 104; C. A. Briggs, Introduction to the 
 Study of Holy Scripture, pp. i65ff. 
 
74 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 of the Spirit as being to the “divinity” i.e. to the divine 
 origin of the Scripture; and secondly, when they use the 
 term Canon and Canonicity, they use it in a twofold sense 
 to denote at once the idea of the extent of the canon of 
 Scripture and the idea of the divine origin- and authority 
 of Scripture. And when they speak of Canonicity as being 
 the object of the Witness of the Holy Spirit, it is the latter 
 idea to which they usually refer. This is true for example 
 in the case of Quenstedt, 25 and it is true also of the Re¬ 
 formed theologians. Calvin has been supposed to have 
 held that the Spirit testified concerning what books are 
 canonical, but this rests upon misapprehension. 26 Calvin’s 
 
 25 B. B. Warfield, Princeton Theol. Rev., vol. viii, p. 291. 
 
 28 Cf. B. B. Warfield, ibid., pp. 283ft. Reuss, History of the Canon, etc. 
 Chap. 16, and Pannier, op. cit., p. 252, both seem to suppose that 
 Calvin sought to determine the Canon of Scripture by means of the 
 Witness of the Spirit. This rests, as Dr. Warfield has shown, on the 
 misapprehension of two passages from Calvin. In Inst. i. 7:1, repelling 
 the Romish idea that the Scripture has only such weight as the 
 Church gives it, Calvin says, “For thus dealing with the Holy Spirit 
 as a mere laughing stock, they ask, Who shall give us confidence that 
 these (Scriptures) have come from God,—who assure us that they 
 have reached our time safe and intact,—who persuade us that one 
 book should be received reverently, another expunged from the num¬ 
 ber,—if the Church should not prescribe a certain rule for all these 
 things. It depends, therefore, they say, on the Church, both what 
 reverence is due Scripture, and what books should be inscribed in her 
 catalogue.” This quotation shows that the Romanists argued that the 
 Church assures us of the contents and even the integrity of Scripture. 
 But Calvin does not say that we are assured of the Canon by the 
 Spirit. He says that the Romish view is wrong, but does not imply 
 that the Witness of the Spirit assures us of all these things which 
 the Church pretends to settle. 
 
 The other passage is in the Confession of La Rochelle, and does 
 apparently attribute the determination of what books are Canonical 
 to the Witness of the Spirit. But this Article was not by Calvin, 
 but was added to a draft submitted by Calvin by the Synod of Paris. 
 Calvin’s own article did not contain this idea. Pannier, op. cit., p. 141 
 cites Lespine, a Protestant disputant with two Doctors of the Sor- 
 bonne, as teaching that the Witness of the Spirit determines the 
 Canon, but only indirectly by inference from the divine authorship of 
 the books. All of the Reformed Theologians which we have cited in 
 note 16, taught that it is to the divine origin of Scripture that the 
 Witness of the Spirit is given, and though sometimes the word 
 “canonical” is used, it seems to denote the idea of being authoritative 
 and from God. 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 75 
 
 whole discussion shows clearly that he takes the Scriptures 
 as a whole, conceives this as given on historical and critical 
 grounds, and conceives of the Testimony of the Spirit as 
 being to the divine origin of the Scripture. 
 
 If, however, an erroneous mystical view of the nature 
 of the Witness of the Spirit to the Bible is mistaken in con¬ 
 ceiving of this Witness as extending to exegetical and his- 
 torico-critical questions, the view of the nature of the 
 Spirit’s Witness which confounds it with the argument 
 from experience errs in limiting the object, to which the 
 Witness is given, to the saving truths of the Bible or to the 
 truth and divine origin of the revelation or the Gospel 
 which the Bible records. If the Witness of the Spirit is 
 identified with the testimony of Christian experience, it 
 must of course be conceived of in this way. For Christian 
 experience testifies not so much to the Bible, as to the saving 
 truths of the Gospel, and from these truths it may extend 
 or spread till it covers the Bible which contains these truths. 
 But if the Witness of the Spirit is simply the experience of 
 the saving power of the Gospel, it obviously can extend 
 only indirectly to the Bible as a whole, and only indirectly 
 also to any fundamental Christian truths which transcend 
 experience. There is no immediate Witness to the nature 
 of the future life of the Christian, any more than there is 
 to the Virgin Birth of Christ. This is the view of the 
 modern Lutherans and of all who identify the Witness of 
 the Spirit with the argument from Christian experience, as 
 well as of some who do not fall into this mistake. 27 But 
 
 27 In the case of Quenstedt op. cit. p. 140, it is not so clearly stated 
 that it is the “saving truths of Scripture” as distinct from the Scrip¬ 
 ture, to which the testimony is given. Baier op. cit., p. 86, in the 
 passage already cited regards the testimony of the Spirit as being 
 given to the “doctrines comprehended in the Scriptures”. Hollaz says 
 that it is the “written word” which we “read from” these Scripture 
 books, cf. op. cit., 125. It cannot be said, however, that the old 
 Lutheran theologians carried out the logic of their view of the nature 
 of the Witness of the Spirit, so as to make a sharp distinction be¬ 
 tween the saving truths which the Scripture contains and the Scripture 
 itself. This has been done by Klaiber, op. cit., pp. I7f, 3of, Martius 
 op: cit. p. 43, Philippi, op. cit. i. pp. 135B This also is the view of 
 
y 6 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 this idea of the object of the Spirit’s Witness results from 
 a wrong view of its nature. There is a witness of our ex¬ 
 perience to the saving truths of the Gospel, such as Justifi¬ 
 cation, Divine Sonship, the power of Christ to save. The 
 divine origin of these great truths may be inferred from 
 the experience of their saving power, as may also the divine 
 origin of the Bible which contains them. But since this is 
 after all the witness, not of God to us, but of our experience 
 to the Word of God, it can bear direct witness only to that 
 which it feels to be divine. 
 
 The Witness of the Spirit is the Witness of God to us. 
 It therefore proceeds in the opposite way from the argu¬ 
 ment from experience. It is a witness to the Bible itself 
 as such and as a whole, and hence by inference we may pro¬ 
 ceed to infer the divine and revelatory character of the 
 contents of the Scripture. When our eyes have been opened 
 and our spiritual blindness has been removed, we can see 
 in the Bible itself all the marks of its divine authorship. 
 The saving power of some of these truths is only one of 
 these marks. It is the Book itself which we are enabled by 
 the Spirit to perceive could have its origin only from God. 
 When with unclouded spiritual eyes we look upon the Bible 
 as a whole, we immediately see the evident marks of its 
 divine authorship, just as one with aesthetic sense sees the 
 marks of the master in the masterpiece. The Witness of 
 the Spirit, therefore, is not to the revelation contained in 
 Scripture which “finds us” and thence to the Scripture as a 
 whole, but directly to the divine origin of the Scripture as a 
 whole, spreading from this to its contents. It does not, 
 therefore, assure us immediately of the Virgin Birth or of 
 the Resurrection of Christ, any more than it does of the 
 truth of the Old Testament history or the doctrine of 
 
 such Reformed theologians as Van Oostersee, op. cit. i. p. 151, and H. 
 Bavinck, op. cit., pp. 639ff. Bavinck conceives the Testimony of the 
 Spirit as given directly to the doctrines of Scripture, and as spreading 
 from them to the historical parts of Scripture with which they are 
 inseparably connected. John De Witt, op. cit. p. 81, also conceives the 
 Testimony of the Spirit as being given to the saving truths of the 
 Gospel contained in the Scripture. 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 77 
 
 eternal punishment. But it does assure us that this Book 
 is of divine origin and authority so that it supports these 
 great facts and truths mediately and by way of inference. 
 It is, in a word, simply this>—God has left the marks of His 
 authorship on the Bible, and the Spirit of God opens our 
 eyes to behold in Scripture the marks of its divine author¬ 
 ship or origin. 
 
 The third question which arises concerns the bearing of 
 this doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit upon the value and 
 necessity of Christian Apologetics which aims at an ob¬ 
 jectively valid and rational defence of the Christian view 
 of the world and the divine and supernatural origin of 
 Christianity and of the Bible. Does the fact that, because 
 of the blindness of the sinful heart, faith is the gift of 
 God’s Spirit, do away with the value or necessity of evi¬ 
 dence for the divine origin of the Bible ? In seeking briefly 
 to answer this question, three things must be kept in mind. 
 First, the Witness of the Spirit is not a ground of faith 
 among other grounds. It cannot, therefore, be substituted 
 for the grounds of faith. The Holy Spirit in Regeneration 
 is the efficient cause of faith. We believe, therefore, by 
 means of this Witness, not on account of it. The Wit¬ 
 ness, therefore, does not dispense with the value or neces¬ 
 sity of the grounds of faith, or in this instance, the marks 
 on account of which we recognize that God is speaking to 
 us in the Scripture. It is true that we must be gifted with 
 an aesthetic sense in order to recognize the masterpiece or 
 painting and to discriminate it from that which has no 
 aesthetic value. But given this aesthetic sense, the marks 
 of the master’s hand must be present in the work of art or 
 there will be no marks for us to see and recognize. Just so 
 God’s Spirit opens the eye of faith, but that eye beholds an 
 object and recognizes the hand of God in the Bible. Second, 
 it must be remembered that the reason why saving faith in 
 Christ, Christianity, and the Bible cannot be produced by 
 evidence or arguments, is not due to any insufficiency of 
 evidence or any want of reasons of universal validity and 
 
yS THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 objective character, but is due to the subjective inability of 
 the sinful heart to be affected by such evidence. If the 
 evidence were insufficient or invalid, what would be needed 
 would be more or better evidence. But such additional 
 evidence the Spirit does not supply. He opens the sin- 
 blinded eyes and prepares the heart, so that the evidence 
 may have its proper effect. Third, it must be borne in mind 
 that saving faith, like all faith, is a grounded conviction. 
 It does not differ from knowledge or from a merely “his¬ 
 toric” or “speculative” faith in that the latter rests on 
 grounds or evidence while saving faith does not. Nor is 
 the distinction that the grounds of knowledge and of 
 “speculative” faith are objective, valid and sufficient, while 
 those of saving faith are not. The distinction lies in the 
 nature of the evidence and in the source of the mental act 
 in each case. In knowledge the conviction of mind is based 
 on the internal testimony of sense perception, self-conscious¬ 
 ness, and reason. In the case of faith, the conviction is 
 based on testimony external to the subject. In religious 
 faith, it is the testimony of God Himself. In reference to 
 the Scripture, God has borne witness in it to His own author¬ 
 ship, and faith in this is grounded in these criteria of its 
 divine origin. The distincton between a merely speculative 
 faith in God’s Word produced by evidence, and saving faith 
 and trust in it, lies further in the fact that the source of the 
 latter consists in the regenerating and illuminating work of 
 the Holy Spirit on the sinner’s heart. Because you cannot 
 make a man a Christian by merely presenting him with 
 arguments addressed to his intellect, it does not by any 
 means follow that he can be made a Christian apart from 
 all evidence of the truth of Christianity. Nor does it follow, 
 because you cannot argue a man into a saving belief in the 
 divine origin of the Bible without the work of God’s Spirit 
 in his heart, that therefore all such evidence is valueless. 
 True faith is God’s gift, but He gives no blind faith and 
 no ready-made faith. He prepares our hearts and minds so 
 that the evidence of the divine origin of the Bible being 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 7 Q 
 
 presented, the prepared heart responds to the evidence be¬ 
 cause its sinful blindness has been removed. It is true, 
 therefore, that saving faith will not arise without the Wit¬ 
 ness of the Spirit, but neither will it arise without some 
 evidence valid for the subject of the faith. Let us em¬ 
 phasize the fact that saving faith cannot be produced by 
 arguments, not even by the revelation of God in Christ, 
 because the soul is dead in sin; but let us remember that 
 there is always evidence of some kind present when saving 
 faith arises, and that objectively there is adequate and 
 sufficient evidence for the divine origin of Christianity and 
 the Bible, and that this is logically the prius of our personal 
 act of faith. The Witness of the Spirit, therefore, is ab¬ 
 solutely necessary to Christian faith and Christian certi¬ 
 tude. Without it all evidence and all arguments are use¬ 
 less to produce any true faith and full certitude of faith. 
 Nevertheless it does not do away with the place and value 
 of the evidence both internal and external for the divine 
 origin of Christianity and the Bible. 
 
 This statement will enable us to see the mistake under¬ 
 lying two chief misconceptions upon this point. The Ritsch- 
 lian theologians with their distinction between religious 
 and theoretic knowledge, their depreciation of Christian 
 Apologetics, and their doctrine of value-judgments, have 
 invariably claimed to be the true successors of Luther and 
 Calvin, and to have rescued Protestantism from a rational¬ 
 istic intellectualism. They thus practically identify their 
 idea that religious knowledge consists in “judgments of 
 value” with the doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit as 
 taught by the Reformers. The two doctrines are totally 
 different. The one is the fruit of a fundamental religious 
 agnosticism; the other of a deep evangelicalism. They 
 differ first in regard to the evidences or grounds of faith. 
 According to the Ritschlian, these are not objectively valid 
 or rationally sufficient. There is, therefore, a deficiency of 
 universally valid evidence. On the other hand, according to 
 the old Protestant theologians, this deficiency is not in the 
 
8o 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 objective evidence but in the spiritual condition of the 
 subject of faith. The evidence fails of effect because the 
 heart is spiritually dead. In the second place, there is a 
 fundamental difference in the conception of the subjective 
 hindrance to a rational faith. According to the Ritschlian 
 position there is a fundamental dualism between the heart 
 and the head apart from the effect of sin, a dualism which 
 is fatal to Christian faith. What the Ritschlian means to 
 say is that theoretic knowledge is limited to phenomena, and 
 therefore faith has free scope in the sphere of the tran¬ 
 scendent objects of religious faith. But this separation of 
 spheres is impossible, and where a rationally grounded faith 
 in God and His supernatural modes of action is given up, 
 one of two positions only remains, each fatal to Christian 
 faith. Either we must say that with the heart we believe in 
 supernatural Christianity although our head tells us it is 
 impossible, in which case faith cannot survive because it 
 cannot be compelled; or else we must reduce our Christianity 
 to the limits of our philosophy and eliminate from it all that 
 Naturalism forbids us to retain. Then we shall have given 
 up supernatural Christianity. We shall not even be able to 
 say that we believe in the Deity of Christ because of His 
 value to the Christian heart, but only that His Deity con¬ 
 sists in His value to the Christian heart. Christianity is 
 thus reduced to the basis of the bare natural religious senti¬ 
 ment. In all this there is a fatal dualism between the head 
 and the heart, between faith and knowledge, which is in¬ 
 curable because rooted in human nature as such, and which 
 does away with the rational basis of all religious faith and 
 tends to reduce the religious consciousness to a merely sub¬ 
 jective feeling without any sure objective reference or 
 validity. 28 
 
 28 In erecting a sharp distinction between religious and theoretic 
 knowledge, such as is found in Ritschl’s Rechtfertigung und Versohn- 
 ung and in Herrmann’s Verkehr des Christen mit Gott and his early- 
 work Die Religion im Verhdltniss sum Welterkennen u. sur Sittlich- 
 keit, it was not intended to assert that we can believe a thing to be 
 true on one set of grounds and know it to be false or impossible on 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 8l 
 
 Totally different from this is the doctrine of the Witness 
 of the Holy Spirit. The subjective hindrance here is super¬ 
 induced by sin. The dualism in man is between the carnal 
 mind which is at enmity with God and the things of God’s 
 Spirit which can only be spiritually discerned. When, 
 therefore, the sinful soul is born again by the almighty and 
 supernatural power of the Spirit, its original capacity for 
 the knowledge of God is restored, and experiencing in the 
 heart the power of God, it is prepared to recognize the divine 
 power as it wrought for man’s salvation from sin objectively 
 in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. 
 
 There is a second view which depresses the value of 
 Christian Apologetics because of the doctrine of the Wit¬ 
 ness of the Holy Spirit. This view is totally removed from 
 the naturalistic and rationalistic presuppositions which un- 
 
 another set of grounds. Such a position has been unfairly attributed 
 to the Ritschlian theologians, but it misrepresents them. What was 
 intended was the assertion that so called “theoretic knowledge” is 
 limited to the sphere of science so that it cannot encroach upon the 
 sphere of the objects of religious faith. But quite apart from the 
 question as to whether knowledge can thus be limited, the Ritschlians 
 were unable to keep faith and knowledge, or religion and philosophy, in 
 these separate spheres. Their phenomenalistic theory of knowledge 
 and their rejection of metaphysics from theology necessarily resulted 
 in a reduction of the content of faith at the demand of their philo¬ 
 sophical position. Hence, since the metaphysical theology reached 
 back into the New Testament, their doctrine of religious knowledge 
 depressed the authority of Scripture after the fashion of Rationalism, 
 and did not exalt the authority of Scripture as did the doctrine of 
 the Witness of the Holy Spirit. The value-judgment is not a witness 
 to Scripture but an instrument for sifting out the truth from the 
 Scripture. Kaftan attempted to vindicate the objective character of 
 religious knowledge and the unity of truth in his Wahrheit der 
 Christl. Religion, but in his distinction between Opinion, Faith, and 
 Knowledge, he brings back the old dualism. Wobbermin, Der Christ- 
 liche Gottesglaube in seinem Verhaltniss zur gegenwdrtigen Philos- 
 ophie, has perhaps done more justice to the task of Christian Apolo¬ 
 getics than any other of the Ritschlian theologians. It has an “indirect 
 use” i.e., the Christian faith objectively may be rationally defended; but 
 directly in the genesis of saving faith reasons are of no value. But 
 Wobbermin’s position is unsatisfactory. The faith which the Holy 
 Spirit gives is not a blind or groundless faith, and while no amount 
 of evidence will make a man a Christian, it does not follow that faith 
 will arise apart from all evidence. 
 
82 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 derlie the Ritschlian position. It is rooted in the deeply 
 evangelical spirit and thorough supernaturalism character¬ 
 istic of Calvin and all the Reformed theologians. It is due to 
 a deep sense of the effects of sin and of the power of God’s 
 grace. We refer to the view of Drs. Kuyper and Bavinck. 
 They argue that, because saving faith is due to the Witness 
 of the Spirit, and because arguments do not produce the 
 conviction of the Christian, therefore rational grounds of 
 faith may be dispensed with. Apologetics has a secondary 
 place, and is the “fruit” of faith. Bavinck 29 seeks to show 
 that Christian certitude is not the result of Christian ex¬ 
 perience which really grows out of it, nor of arguments 
 which cannot give absolute certitude or true faith, but that it 
 simply flows from faith itself which springs up in a renewed 
 heart in contact with Christ. Kuyper 30 has fully worked 
 out these principles in his profound discussion of the effects 
 of sin and of regeneration upon our knowledge and upon 
 science. The unregenerate and the regenerate form two 
 classes, distinct in kind and hence totally removed the one 
 from the other in their intellectual processes and products. 
 The one class is working out a science under the obscuring 
 effects of sin, the other under the illumination of the Spirit 
 in regeneration. No arguments can lead from one sphere 
 to the other, hence no arguments for the science of the 
 regenerate can be regarded as universally valid. Apolo¬ 
 getics is of secondary importance. It is for the benefit of 
 the Christian and for the purpose of defending Christian 
 faith, and not for the purpose of grounding it or serving 
 under the Spirit’s power to produce faith. 
 
 We have seen, however, that the doctrine of the Witness 
 of the Spirit does not imply this attitude to the arguments 
 for the divine origin of Christianity. Saving faith, as was 
 said, cannot be produced by arguments, nor indeed by the 
 revelation of God in Christ, because faith and unbelief de¬ 
 pend on the condition of the heart, and the soul is dead in 
 
 28 Bavinck, Zekerheid des Geloofs 2 , pp 63ft. 
 
 30 Kuyper, Enclyclopaedie der heilige Godgeleerdheid, ii., Afd. 1, 
 Hoofdst. 2 and 3, pp. 52-129. 
 
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE BIBLE 83 
 
 sin. The ultimate source of faith is the power of the 
 Spirit. But faith is not blind, and rational grounds may 
 enter into the grounds of even saving faith, and without 
 some grounds valid for the subject, it cannot arise. In the 
 case of faith in the divine origin of the Bible, no doubt the 
 marks of God’s hand and His self-revelation in the Scripture 
 are the ultimate grounds of faith. But they are neverthe¬ 
 less evidences or reasons for belief, and in fully recognizing 
 these, Drs. Kuyper and Bavinck admit a reason for faith 
 which is after all universally valid, and apart from the 
 effects of sin on the mind would be recognized as such. Con¬ 
 sider for a moment Dr. Kuyper’s two classes of men, the 
 regenerate and the unregenerate. Since the difficulty with 
 the latter and that which discriminates them from the 
 former is subjective, lying in the state of the heart, it follows 
 that the reasons for the faith of the former are universally 
 valid, and under the influence of the Spirit may be instru¬ 
 mental even in the increase of saving faith in the world. 
 If the trouble with the unregenerate is in their own heart, 
 it follows that there is nothing the matter with the grounds 
 of faith. In addition to this, so far as their subjective 
 condition is concerned, the difference is not absolute. In 
 the one class, sin has destroyed no faculty of the soul and 
 some religious sense is kept alive by Common Grace. In 
 the other class, regeneration has not removed all at once 
 the effects of sin on the heart and mind. This is not at all 
 to be understood as implying that the transition from the 
 unregenerate class to the regenerate class can be effected by 
 arguments. This, we repeat, can be brought about only by 
 the Spirit of God and His almighty power. It is only in¬ 
 tended to indicate that in themselves the evidences of Chris¬ 
 tianity are universally valid, and that even in regard to the 
 production of saving faith they play an important part, 
 while as grounds of Christian certitude of the divine origin 
 of Christianity and the Bible they are indispensable, since 
 the Witness of the Spirit is the efficient cause, and not one 
 of the grounds of faith. 
 
8 4 
 
 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 
 
 All this, however, does not in the least minimize the abso¬ 
 lute necessity of the Witness of the Holy Spirit, without 
 whose light in our hearts we would grope in darkness, un¬ 
 able to be convinced by any evidence, and too blind to see 
 the glory of God as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ 
 and in the pages of the Word of God. 
 
 Princeton. C. Wistar Hodge. 
 
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