In Defense of Something Close to Biblicism:

Reflections on Sola Scriptura and History in Theological

Method
by John M. Frame
Over the years I have sometimes engaged in playful banter with colleagues concerning
the relative importance of church history and systematic theology. In these arguments, I was, of
course, on the side of systematics, mocking the tendency of many of us academics to magnify
the importance of our own fields of specialization. That was, of course, all in the spirit of good
fun. I think that fair readers of my Doctrine of the Knowledge of God will grant that I have a high
regard for church historians and for the contributions they can make toward our understanding of
God's Word. Indeed, I tend rather to stand in awe of scholars in that field. My impression, which
I have, of course, never tried to verify, is that writers in that discipline have typically mastered
far more data and organized it more impressively than most of those (including myself) in the
fields of systematics and apologetics.
Nevertheless, I do believe that the present situation in Evangelical and Reformed
theology demands a more careful look at the relationships between the disciplines of history and
systematic theology. The need is such that the playful banter will now have to give way, for a
moment, to a more serious consideration of the issues.
I am here writing primarily to the orthodox Reformed community of theological
scholarship, that community which I inhabit. For that reason I will give little attention to some
options that are important to the general theological community but not specifically to those
addressed here. I recognize, of course, the importance for orthodox Reformed scholars to address
the broader society, and I hope this essay will, among other things, enable us to do that better..
But sometimes we must huddle together to think about what we should be saying to the larger
world, before we actually say it.
My overall purpose here is to reiterate the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura, the
doctrine that Scripture alone gives us ultimate norms for doctrine and life, and to apply that
doctrine to the work of theology itself, including both historical and systematic disciplines. That
point may seem obvious to many of us, but I am convinced that there are applications of this
doctrine that need to be re-emphasized in the present situation.
History
The term "history" can be used in both objective and subjective senses. Objectively, it
refers to the actual facts of past time, or to that portion of them which is significant for human
beings. Subjectively, it refers to human recollections, descriptions, interpretations, and

reconstructions of those facts. In that subjective category, this article will consider especially the
historical disciplines which contribute to the work of theology: history of the ancient near east,
church history, history of doctrine, and history of doctrine.
"Systematic theology" is that discipline which "seeks to apply Scripture as a whole." In
my understanding, it is perspectivally related to exegetical theology (which focuses on individual
passages) and biblical theology (which focuses on the historical-narrative aspects of the biblical
text, on Scripture as a history of redemption). By "perspectivally," I mean that these three
disciplines examine the same subject matter with different foci or emphasis, rather than
examining three different subject matters. All three examine the totality of the biblical revelation,
and all three aim to make significant applications of that revelation to our doctrine and life. The
question before us concerns the relation between systematic theology, so defined, and "historical
theology," which in my definition "applies the Word to the church's past for the sake of the
church's present edification."
Since Scripture, and the biblical way of salvation, are profoundly historical, theology
must always be interested in history. Hence the important discipline of redemptive history
(biblical theology). Other forms of historical study are also important: the history of the ancient
near east, the history of the church, the general history of mankind. The history of the biblical
period enables us far better to understand the Scriptures, and the post-biblical history helps us far
better to apply the Word to our own times. The latter helps us both to avoid the mistakes of the
past and to build on the foundations laid by those who have gone before.
Nevertheless, history-oriented theologies have sometimes been snares and delusions for
the Church. This has happened whenever theologians have adopted an autonomous historical
method and have replaced biblical authority with history in the subjective sense as the ultimate
theological norm. This happened in the late nineteenth century when, on the one hand, the
Ritschlians, and on the other the History of Religions School, sought through historical study to
overcome Lessing's "big ugly ditch" between history and faith. Ritschl sought to return to the
historical Jesus by way of Luther and the Reformation (a twofold use of historical science). But
Van Til says of his effort:
Ritschl therefore cannot be said to have overcome the mysticism and the rationalism that he
sought to overcome by his appeal to the historic Jesus. His "historic Jesus" is an utterly
ambiguous figure. To the extent that he is said to be known, he is nothing more than another
human personality. To the extent that he is more than human personality, that is to the extent that
he is God, he is nothing but the projected ideal of would-be autonomous man, and is therefore
wholly unknown.
Ritschl's historical method is the method of secular historiography, which begins with the
assumption that Scripture is a merely human book and that its truth is subject to the assessment
of merely human criteria. The result is an account in which Jesus is a mere man. Ritschl does, of
course, go on to say that Jesus is divine in a sense, because as we encounter this man in history
we come to value him as God. But to do this, says Van Til, is to make Jesus subject to our
standards of evaluation and thus to deny his deity altogether.

The History of Religions School, of which Ernst Troeltsch was the systematic theologian,
adopted historical relativism as its central concept, so that they denied the uniqueness of
Christianity among the religions of the world. As with Ritschl, these thinkers evaluated the
biblical history according to the standards of one kind of secular historical science.
The influential currents of twentieth-century theology have tried to restore some positive
significance to the idea of revelation in history. The chief concept of Karl Barth's theology was
Geschichte, history in its fullest revelational meaning. But Barth failed to locate Geschichte in
calendar time and concrete historical space, creating more confusion than ever about "what
actually happened" and how those happenings were related to human salvation.
Oskar Cullmann, C. H. Dodd, G. Ernest Wright, and others seized upon J. A. Bengel's
concept of Heilsgeschichte and sought to present Scripture as "the book of the acts of God." For
them, revelation was in event, rather than word, and therefore, importantly, "historical." Unlike
Barth, Cullmann emphasized this history taking place along a timeline. Revelation occurred
when a historical event was perceived by faith. But the declaration that only event, never word,
could function as revelation, was plainly unbiblical, as demonstrated by many, such as the liberal
scholar James Barr. And that proposition is incapable of any other defense except one which
presupposes rational autonomy, the disease of the older liberalism which these thinkers sought to
overcome.
Nevertheless, many influential recent theologians, such as Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart
Pannenberg, and the theologians of liberation have sought to make "history" the unique locus of
revelation: history, again, as opposed to word. For Pannenberg especially, revelatory history is
discovered by the criteria of secular rationality, by autonomous reflection not itself subject to the
revelation.
Now I presume that these particular history-centered approaches are not live options for
orthodox Reformed theologians; hence my relatively brief treatment of them. It should at least be
plain from our survey that an emphasis on "history" is not sufficient to justify a theological
method. It is important also to ask what history means to the theologians in question, whether
they are right about the relation of history to revelation, and how they justify their descriptions,
interpretations, and evaluations of history. And we should answer those questions in ways that
are consistent with Scripture itself. Therefore Scripture, not a concept of history developed
independently of Scripture, must be the ultimate standard in theology generally and, indeed, in
the formulation of a theological method.
Biblicism
The term "biblicism" is usually derogatory. It is commonly applied to (1) someone who
has no appreciation for the importance of extrabiblical truth in theology, who denies the value of
general or natural revelation, (2) those suspected of believing that Scripture is a "textbook" of
science, or philosophy, politics, ethics, economics, aesthetics, church government, etc., (3) those
who have no respect for confessions, creeds, and past theologians, who insist on ignoring these
and going back to the Bible to build up their doctrinal formulations from scratch, (4) those who

employ a "proof texting" method, rather than trying to see Scripture texts in their historical,
cultural, logical, and literary contexts.
I wish to disavow biblicism in these senses. Nevertheless, I also want to indicate how
difficult it is to draw the line between these biblicisms and an authentic Reformation doctrine of
sola Scriptura. Consider, first, (1): Sola Scriptura is the doctrine that Scripture, and only
Scripture, has the final word on everything, all our doctrine, and all our life. Thus it has the final
word even on our interpretation of Scripture, even in our theological method.
It is common to draw a sharp line between the interpretation of Scripture and the use of
Scripture to guide us in matters of philosophy, politics, economics, etc. This is sometimes
described as a line between finding "meaning" and making "application." I have elsewhere given
reasons for questioning the sharpness of this distinction. For now let me simply point out that
neither interpretation nor application is a mere reading of Scripture. In both cases, the scholar
asks questions of the text and answers them using some scriptural and some extra-scriptural data.
This activity takes place even at the most fundamental levels of Bible interpretation: the study of
words and syntax, the work of translation, the attempt to paraphrase. So what we call
"interpretation" is a species of application: in it, scholars ask their own questions of the text and
apply the text to those questions. Questions of Bible interpretation and questions of, say,
Christian political theory, are, of course, different in their subject matter, though there is some
overlap. And the questions of interpretation certainly precede the questions of, e.g., application to
contemporary politics in any well-ordered study. Even so, sometimes our conclusions about
politics present analogies applicable to other fields and therefore of broader hermeneutical
significance. Thus conclusions about politics can in some ways be "prior to" hermeneutics as
well as the other way around, illustrating further the broad circularity of the theological
enterprise. But my main point here is that both types of study involve asking contemporary
questions of the text, and thus they are usefully grouped together under the general category of
application. In both types of cases we apply Scripture to extra-scriptural questions and data.
There is, therefore, an epistemological unity among all the different forms of Christian
reflection. In all cases, we address extra-scriptural data, and in all cases we consider that data
under the sola Scriptura principle. That principle applies to Christian politics as much as to the
doctrine of justification. In both cases, Scripture, and Scripture alone, provides the ultimate
norms for our analysis and evaluation of the problematic data before us.
It is important both to distinguish and to recognize the important relations between
Scripture itself and the extrascriptural data to which we seek to apply biblical principles.
Scripture is something different from extrabiblical data. But what we know of the extrabiblical
data, we know by scriptural principles, scriptural norms, the permission of Scripture. In one
sense, then, all of our knowledge is scriptural knowledge. In everything we know, we know
scripture. To confess anything as true is to acknowledge a biblical requirement upon us. In that
sense, although there is extrabiblical data, there is no extrabiblical knowledge. All knowledge is
knowledge of what Scripture requires of us.

At this point, we may well be suspected of biblicism, for the biblicist, as we have seen,
also disparages extrabiblical knowledge. But unlike the biblicist we have recognized the
importance of extrabiblical data in the work of theology and in all Christian reflection.
Which brings us to (2) among the distinctives of biblicism: From a viewpoint governed
by sola Scriptura, the "scope" of Scripture, the range of subject matter to which it may be
applied, is unlimited. As Van Til says, there is a sense in which Scripture "speaks of everything:"
We do not mean that it speaks of football games, or atoms, etc., directly, but we do mean that it
speaks of everything either directly or indirectly. It tells us not only of the Christ and his work
but it also tells us who God is and whence the universe has come. It gives us a philosophy of
history as well as history. Moreover, the information on these subjects is woven into an
inextricable whole. It is only if you reject the Bible as the Word of God that you can separate its
so-called religious and moral instruction from what it says, e.g., about the physical universe.
Here we hear Kuyper's claim that all areas human thought and life must bow before the Word of
God. We also begin to smell the odor of biblicism: Scripture speaks of football games, atoms,
cosmology, philosophy. But there is a difference. Van Til is not saying that Scripture is a
"textbook" of all these matters. Hence his distinction between "direct" and "indirect." Nor did
Van Til deny, as biblicists have sometimes been accused of doing, that Scripture is a "centered"
book. As a faithful disciple of Geerhardus Vos, he understood that Scripture is concerned to tell a
particular "story," the story of God's redemption of his people through Jesus. The direct/indirect
distinction should be taken to make this point as well: that Christ is central to the biblical
message in a way that football games and atoms are not. But like the biblicist, Van Til believed
that every human thought must be answerable to God's Word in Scripture. To many, this
affirmation will sound biblicistic in the present context of theological discussion.
Distinctive (3) of biblicism raises the question of the relation between Scripture and the
traditions of the church. Sola Scriptura historically has been a powerful housecleaning tool. By
this principle the Reformers gained the freedom to question the deliverances of popes, synods,
and councils, as well as those of learned and respected past theologians. They did respect
tradition, particularly the early fathers and Augustine. But what was distinctive about the
Reformation were its differences, rather than its continuities, with the past.
Certainly the Reformers did not, however, try to rebuild the faith from the ground up.
They saw themselves as reforming, not rejecting, the teachings of their church. They saw the
Protestant churches, not as new churches, but as the old Church purified of works righteousness,
sacerdotalism, papal tyranny, and the idolatry of the Mass. So they were not biblicists in sense
(3). But they came close to it. In present day Romtura, we are reminded of how close
Protestantism does come to biblicism on this score.
Sola Scriptura actually provides support to theology against (4), the last kind of
biblicism. For it places the whole Bible as authority over any specific exegetical proposal. Hence
Scriptura ipsius interpres. This demands attention to contexts, narrow and remote. For an
interpretation falsified by a relevant context is not an interpretation of Scriptura. Interpretations
must also be consistent with what we know about the literary genres and historical backgrounds

of the texts under consideration. Thus, as we saw under (1), we see that theology requires
consideration of extrabiblical data. This is not so that we can be in line with secular fashions of
thought. Quite the opposite: we do this to learn the true meaning of the Bible and thus to be
accountable to it.
But for all this attention to contexts both scriptural and extrascriptural, sola Scriptura also
demands that theological proposals be accountable to Scripture in a specific way. It is not enough
for theologians to claim that an idea is biblical; they must be prepared to show in Scripture where
that idea can be found. The idea may be based on a general principle rather than a specific text;
but a principle is not general unless it is first particular, unless that principle can be shown to be
exemplified in particular texts. So a theology worth its salt must always be prepared to show
specifically where in Scripture its ideas come from. And showing that always boils down in the
final analysis to citations of particular texts. This is why, for all that can be said about the abuses
of proof-texting, proof texts have played a large role in the history of Protestant thought. And
there is something very right about that.
I conclude that although Protestant theology under the sola Scriptura principle is not
biblicistic, it is not always easy to distinguish it from biblicism. We should expect that those who
hold an authentic view of sola Scriptura will sometimes be confused with biblicists. Indeed, if
we are not occasionally accused of biblicism, we should be concerned about the accuracy of our
teaching in this area.
Sola Scriptura at Westminster
Born out of the fundamentalist/modernist controversy, Westminster Theological
Seminary (both eastern and western campuses) has always sought above all to deliver to its
students "the whole counsel of God." It has remained firm on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy
while other evangelicals have wavered, without falling into hermeneutical naivet. The Seminary
has published four faculty symposia over its history, and all four of them have dealt in some way
with biblical authority, sufficiency, and interpretation.
Not only has the seminary taught an authentic Reformation theology of Scripture, but it
has shown a particular zeal about teaching Scripture to its students. Westminster has emphasized
the teaching of original biblical languages when such an emphasis has fallen into disfavor among
evangelicals. It has provided very thorough instruction in the various parts of Scripture, and in
the disciplines of exegetical, biblical, and systematic theology. In homiletics, it has stressed the
use of biblical theology and in general the responsibility of the preacher to preach not himself but
the Word. In apologetics and Christian philosophy it has continued Van Til's emphasis that
Scripture has the right to rule every area of human thought and life.
But it is John Murray's view of method in systematic theology which I would consider at
greater length. Murray taught at Westminster from 1930 to 1966 and left an indelible imprint
upon the seminary. In his article, "Systematic Theology," Murray reviews the history of
dogmatics, mentioning names such as Athanasius, Augustine, and Calvin. He then comments,

However epochal have been the advances made at certain periods and however great the
contributions of particular men we may not suppose that theological construction ever reaches
definitive finality. There is the danger of a stagnant traditionalism and we must be alert to this
danger, on the one hand, as to that of discarding our historical moorings, on the other.
He cites Calvin's own encounter with "stagnant traditionalism," when the Reformer dared to take
issue with the view of Athanasius and others that the Son of God "derived his deity from the
Father and that the Son was not therefore _o." He continues,
When any generation is content to rely upon its theological heritage and refuses to explore for
itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be
the lot of the succeeding generation.... A theology that does not build on the past ignores our debt
to history and naively overlooks the fact that the present is conditioned by history. A theology
that relies on the past evades the demands of the present.
Murray here recognizes the importance of church history in the work of systematic theology, but
he cautions us not to remain content with even the best formulations of past theologians. For the
rest of the article, Murray drops the subject of historical theology entirely and focuses on the
centrality of exegesis and biblical theology to the work of systematics. Murray's actual
theological writing consists almost entirely of the exegesis of particular texts: the proof texts of
the doctrines under consideration.
There have been Reformed theologians (Berkouwer is the example that comes most
readily to mind) who construct their theological writings as dialogue with past and contemporary
theological texts. In these theologies, Scripture plays an important role, to be sure; but the
exegesis is often somewhat sketchy and often seems like an addendum to the pages of historical
analysis. Murray avoided that model of theology very self-consciously.
I remember many years ago helping to collate the results of a survey of Westminster
alumni about the teaching they had received in seminary. One alumnus regretted that
Westminster did not have any "real systematic theology." In his view, Murray's courses were not
true systematics courses, but mere courses in exegesis. I disagree radically with that alumnus's
evaluation of Murray, but I grant that that alumnus observed a genuine and important difference
between Murray's teaching and other systematic theologians.
My own observation as a student was that Murray's approach was a wonderful breath of
fresh air, despite his often opaque, archaic language and his insistence on the students'
reproducing his lectures nearly verbatim on examinations. My fundamentalist friends at college
criticized Reformed thinkers for relying on their traditions rather than the Bible. Murray showed
me that the Reformed faith was purely and simply the teaching of Scripture. Thus he presented
Reformed doctrine in the way most persuasive to Christian minds and hearts. This is the proper
answer to anyone who considers Murray's method to be biblicistic.
In short, a Westminster education trained students to ask first of all, about any subject
matter whatever, what Scripture had to say about it. And it prepared students to expect Scripture
to address every possible question in one way or another.

Westminster's Theological Creativity

The notion that Scripture addresses, to some extent, every important human question,
produced at Westminster a high quality of theological creativity. We often associate orthodoxy
with stagnancy and traditionalism. But at Westminster, the commitment to sola Scriptura
propelled it in the opposite direction.
I have mentioned the independence of Murray's theology. He self-consciously followed
the example of Calvin's struggle for the _o: "A theology that relies on the past evades the
demands of the present." And so Murray's theology impresses the reader both with its
faithfulness to Scripture and with the independence and creativity of its formulations.
The same is even more obviously true with the thought of Cornelius Van Til: strongly
insistent upon biblical authority and sufficiency, boldly innovative in epistemology, apologetics,
and even in some theological formulations. Other examples, too, are not difficult to find, such as
the redemptive-historical emphasis of Kuiper, Stonehouse, Clowney, Kline, and Gaffin, building
on the work of Geerhardus Vos. I should mention also the nouthetic counseling of Jay Adams,
building on the insight that Scripture has much to say about human problems, and that indeed it
contains all of the ultimate norms for resolving them.
Even Westminster's teaching of church history has been creative. I remember Paul
Woolley as a brilliant and urbane teacher, more like a Princeton professor than were any of his
Westminster colleagues. We joked that Woolley was living proof that one need not need to have a
Ph. D. to know everything. His independence of mind was legendary: in faculty meetings and
church courts, he was often a minority of one, and it was rare that anybody could guess in
advance on which side Woolley would come down. As a teacher, he had a rare ability (very much
like that of J. Gresham Machen) to get inside the skins of historical figures whose ideas were
very different from his own. Most of us emerged from his classes convinced that the Reformed
way was best. But if we paid attention, we could not avoid a genuine sympathy for those in other
traditions.
At times the creativity of Westminster has been problematic. Theonomy, for example, is
certainly an child of Westminster. Its founder, Rousas J. Rushdoony, has seen himself as applying
Van Til's insights to the areas of politics, economics, and social ethics. Both Gary North and the
late Greg Bahnsen studied at Westminster. The two Westminster Seminaries have not been
hospitable to theonomy, but the movement has certainly introduced some new approaches in the
use of Scripture and has challenged Reformed scholars to take more seriously the legal elements
of God's Word.
I will not speak of Norman Shepherd's rethinking of the doctrine of justification, or of the
"multi-perspectivalism" of Frame and Poythress, concerning which different readers will have
different opinions, except to say that in these cases as well, students of the early Westminster
faculty were moved to reconsider traditional ideas by going back to Scripture. The important
thing is that this creativity has not been at the expense of sola Scriptura; it has not been a
movement away from Scripture to accommodate secular modes of thought, even though that is

what "creativity" usually means in a theological context. Rather, as was the case with the first
Protestant Reformers, it has been a creativity motivated by Scripture itself.
One might also raise questions concerning the relative absence at Westminster (again, I
think mainly of the early '60s when I was a student) of a confessional or traditional focus. I must
be careful here in my formulation. But I felt as a student that we were being stimulated to
originality more than we were being indoctrinated into a tradition. That may be a surprising
comment, and I must immediately qualify it. All professors subscribed ex animo to the
Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and the subscription formula was more detailed and
forceful than most ordination vows in Presbyterian denominations. Our professors loved the
great teachers of past ages: Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and the many others since their time. But
Westminster was independent of denominational control, and students came from many
denominational backgrounds, Reformed and non-Reformed. Students were not expected to
subscribe to Reformed doctrine in order to matriculate or to graduate. There was, in my
experience, an atmosphere of openness. We were encouraged to ask hard questions, and our
professors generally sympathized with the questions, if not with our answers.
During my student years, I was never asked to read any of the Reformed confessions, or
Calvin's Institutes, except in small bits. I never read any official standards of church government
or discipline, not to mention Robert's Rules of Order. We used Hodge and Berkhof in our
systematics classes, but for the most part we were graded not on our reading but on our
knowledge of Murray's lectures. After graduation I became ordained in the Orthodox
Presbyterian Church, and I confess I was rather surprised at the seriousness with which my
fellow ministers took the Confessional Standards and Presbyterian traditions. Eventually I
became more like my fellow Orthodox Presbyterian (and later Presbyterian Church in America)
elders, but not without some nostalgia for the openness of theological discussion during my
seminary years.
It is legitimate to criticize this openness in some respects. In my own theology courses, I
always assign relevant portions of the confessions, and I try to make sure that every student
understands the traditional formulations, even when I seek to improve upon them. Surely one
important function of a seminary is to perpetuate and recommend the confessional traditions.
Students seeking to be ordained in Reformed churches must understand fully what they are being
asked to subscribe to. The Westminster of the early 1960s did not do a thorough enough job in
that aspect of its teaching; I do believe it has improved since that time.
But as an academic theological community, seeking to encourage students how to do
careful and hard thinking about theological issues, Westminster of the early 1960s was superb. I
was not entirely ready for the Orthodox Presbyterian Churchtudy at Yale. Some students, I think,
responded to this combination of freedom and orthodoxy in the wrong way: by taking the
original insights of, say, Van Til, Kline, or Adams and trying to make them tests of orthodoxy.
But that was, I think, more the fault of the students than of the professors. Clearly, at any rate,
Westminster's particular understanding of sola Scriptura did not lead to a stagnant traditionalism,
but to a flourishing of original and impressive theological thought.
Some Epistemological Observations

Westminster's use of sola Scriptura in theology is quite inescapable if we understand

correctly the relationship between norm and fact in human knowledge. A description of church
historical facts does not in itself tell us what we ought to believe. In and of itself, description
does not determine prescription; "is" does not imply "ought." To suppose that it does has been
called the "naturalistic fallacy." To assume that the historical genesis of an idea determines the
proper evaluation of it is called the "genetic fallacy." To avoid these fallacies, our formulations of
doctrines must always appeal to something beyond church history, to the biblical norm.
It is this insistence that distinguishes the Protestant sola Scriptura from the Roman
Catholic view of tradition. And indeed, this principle itself is ultimately based on scriptural
warrant. For Scripture itself condemns any appeal to tradition which places that tradition on the
same level of authority as itself (Isa. 29:13, Matt. 15:8-9, Mark 7:6-7, Col. 2:22).
Sola Scriptura and Evangelical Intellectualism
Protestantism at its best has typically avoided opposing sola Scriptura to human reason
as such. Reason is that God-given faculty which applies the norms of Scripture to the data of
experience. Therefore, the Reformers saw no conflict between sola Scriptura and high standards
of scholarship. Luther and Calvin were scholars, and their theological distinctives were the result
of careful scholarly exegesis. Indeed, in Protestantism to some extent even worship emulated the
model of academic teaching. Ulrich Zwingli excluded music entirely from the worship of the
church in Zurich, Switzerland and made the church service into a teaching meeting. For this he
has been accused of rationalism. His policy was not followed by other reformers, but there was
among leaders of the Reformed churches, a very cautious attitude about music. Following Book
Three of Plato's Republic, they recognized a great emotional power in music which could, if not
tightly controlled, elicit unruly emotions and lead the worshipers away from the pure teaching of
the Word. The early Reformed churches excluded musical instruments, and many excluded most
hymns other than Psalm settings. There were theological reasons for these decisions, but the net
effect of them was to make worship much more an intellectual than an aesthetic experience.
Some Reformed scholars argued for the "primacy of the intellect," the doctrine that the
intellect does or should rule unilaterally the will, emotions, and other aspects of human
personality. I reject this concept as well as the academic model of worship, and therefore I
believe that Protestants have carried their intellectualism rather too far.
More serious, however, was the later modernist appeal to academic standards as a
justification for the virtual abandonment of biblical authority. The theological modernists thought
that a consistent respect for the intellect required them to accept the conclusions of the
fashionable university scholarship. Protestantism affirms reason; why should it not accept the
conclusions of recognized scholarship?
A proper answer to that question requires a distinction between the intellect itself and the
norms which the intellect must follow in reaching its conclusions. Calvin affirmed the intellect,
but he believed that the intellect should operate subject to the norms of God's Word. The
modernists substituted for those norms the norms of secular scholarship, particularly the
historical disciplines. As Van Til emphasized, the intellect, like a buzz saw, can function very

well while pointing in the wrong direction. To make the right cut, the saw must not only turn
efficiently; it must also be governed by a norm which points it the right way.
American evangelicalism inherited many of the ideas of the Reformers, but also many
Anabaptist, Pietist, and Arminian influences. At times it produced notable scholarship, but it also
went through some periods in which anti-intellectualism was dominant, particularly in the period
following the infamous Scopes trial. Following the Second World War, however, Carl F. H.
Henry, Harold John Ockenga, J. Howard Pew, Billy Graham, and others sought to lay
foundations for a "new" evangelicalism more hospitable to serious scholarship and
compassionate social action. The new evangelical intellectuals, however, repeated the mistake of
earlier Protestants by failing to face squarely the question of intellectual norms. They rejected the
apologetic of Van Til who insisted on the rule of Scripture in all human thought, and sought in
various ways and degrees to find common ground with unbelief. I believe this uncritical
intellectualism paved the way for the rejection of biblical inerrancy by many evangelicals in the
1960s. For many evangelicals in the 1960s, a serious commitment to rationality demanded
acceptance of the norms of critical biblical scholarship. Few even asked the question whether
Scripture itself contained its own norms for scholarship, different from and opposed to those of
the negative critics. So the sometimes sharp difference between evangelical and liberal
scholarship has since the 1960s become a blur.
One breath of fresh air, however, during this period, came from Francis Schaeffer and his
followers, such as Os Guinness, Udo Middelmann, Ranald Macaulay, Jerram Barrs, and David
Wells. They affirmed biblical inerrancy and insisted, like Schaeffer's teacher Van Til, that there
was a sharp antithesis between those who believed in the biblical God and those who thought the
universe was merely matter, motion, time, and chance. The latter position, they argued, destroyed
all meaning and intelligibility. These writers argued their position learnedly and graciously,
earning a wide readership and a position of respect, though not dominance, within
evangelicalism.
These writers present a theology with real backbone, standing up courageously against
secular thought and the secularizing movements witties remain. I cannot find in this literature
any clear affirmation that Scripture contains its own distinctive epistemological norms, different
from those of secular thought. Schaeffer, indeed, gave the impression that the secular
philosophers of Greece affirmed an adequate concept of truth-- "true truth" or "objective truth"-which was lost only in the wake of Hegel's dialecticism. And the Schaeffer apologetic focused to
some extent upon "objective truth" as an abstraction, rather than that distinctive kind of truth,
that divine Word, which is identical with Jesus himself. To that extent, the Schaeffer movement
also has not been fully consistent with the Reformation sola Scriptura.
Evangelical Critique of Culture
David Wells has expressed his debt to Francis Schaeffer, and the title of his No Place For
Truth reminds us of Schaeffer's emphasis on "true truth." He reminds us of Schaeffer also in his
conviction that the "modern" era is very different from previous times and therefore presents
unique temptations to the church. Evangelicals, he thinks, have fallen prey to those temptations,
to such an extent that God's truth no longer rules in the churches.

In Wells's analysis, modernity has fostered a new way of thinking, which he characterizes
in various ways, including:
1. Subjectivism: basing one's life upon human experience rather than upon objective
truth.
2. Psychological therapy as the way to deal with human needs.
3. A preoccupation with "professionalism," especially business management and
marketing techniques as the model for achieving any kind of common enterprise.
4. Consumerism: the notion that we must always give people what they want or what they
can be induced to buy.
5. Pragmatism: the view that results are the ultimate justification for any idea or action.
The effects of this mentality on the church, according to Wells, have been entirely
detrimental. ("This book is insistently antimodern," he says. ) Because of the influence of
modernity, theology no longer rules in the church. Therefore God himself becomes unimportant,
"weightless," in Wells's memorable term. Although the church believes in God's existence, his
existence makes no difference to the church's practical decision-making. God becomes "user
friendly," not the holy, transcendent, awesome God of Scripture.
Therefore, says Wells, theology no longer governs the church in any meaningful way.
Sermons don't seek to set forth God's Word, but baptized equivalents of the latest cultural
preoccupations ("felt needs"): psychic well-being, success in marriage, etc. Theories of church
growth and the practice of "mega-churches" substitute management and marketing theory for
biblical principle, viewing congregations the same way businesses regard consumers of their
products. So churches cater to the wants of people rather than to their true spiritual needs.
Seminaries aspire to become professional schools, training ministers in these worldly values and
skills.
Wells's books are wonderfully erudite and eloquently written. And there is much truth,
certainly, in his indictment of evangelicals as individuals and as churches. Some, however, have
criticized his position as one-sided. Marva Dawn says,
Wells's passion for truth needs to be balanced with an equally immense passion for love. He does
indeed caution us appropriately to avoid an overly simplistic acceptance of technology that does
not recognize the values of the attendant milieu. Moreover, he rightly bemoans the loss of
biblical fidelity, which reduces the gospel's subversive power. However, his remarks do not seem
to contain enough concern for how that truth can be communicated to the modern generation,
which has no context for receiving it. The Church needs careful creativity to find the best means
for promulgating the truth and educative processes by which we can train the uninitiated in
habits for cherishing it.
Unfortunately, many books that emphasize the pole of love within the dialectic discuss reaching
the world outside the Church only in terms of marketing strategy.

Dawn's comments raise the important question of how we can achieve such a balance in our
critique of culture and of the church.
There is a remarkable irony about Wells's two books. On the one hand, his main theme is
that theology should play a much larger role in the church's thinking, practice, evangelism, and
worship. On the other hand, there is very little theology in either No Place For Truth or God in
the Wasteland. There are a few theological observations, mostly about the transcendence of God,
the importance of history, revelation, and eschatology. But Wells's primary tools in these books
are the disciplines of history and sociology. Through them, he discerns a process of change in
American life over the last two hundred years, and he is able to trace changes in the church over
the same period. Thus he is able to define the "modern" mentality and show how the church has
capitulated to it.
What is the alternative? Here Wells does not go much beyond the negative point that we
must reject the modern mentality. Although he does not quite say this, the structure of his
argument strongly suggests that we ought to go back to the traditions of the church as they
existed before the modern mentality took over. No Place begins with a very long discussion of
the history of Wenham, Massachusetts: how it changed over two hundred years. He titles the
chapter, nostalgically, "A Delicious Paradise Lost." Doubtless he would not advocate that we
merely turn back the clock. But the only guidance he gives us is that the old was better. Thus he
gives aid and comfort to the most immovable traditionalists, and no help at all to the "reformers."
Or perhaps what he really wants us to do is to develop a strategy for present-day ministry
by a "way of negation:" everything the modern marketers do, we will do the opposite. So the
Wellsian church becomes a kind of mirror image of the marketer-consumer church: an exact
reversal. But what is the opposite of consumerism? Giving no thought at all to the nature of the
community to which one seeks to minister? Surely that is not what Wells would have us do. So
mere negation is not much help. And as we know, mirror images retain many of the
characteristics of the realities they reflect. That should at least give us pause.
As Dawn says, there is imbalance in Wells's books. But the more fundamental problem is
that of his method. A plea for the primacy of theology must itself, surely, be theologically
grounded, not grounded merely in history or sociology. And surely our methods of evangelism
and principles of worship must be based on Scripture, indeed sola Scriptura. Now of course
scriptural principles must be applied to situations, and to understand the situation it is legitimate
to consider data from history, sociology, and other sciences. But Scripture alone provides the
ultimate norms for evaluating these data. So far as I can see, Wells never actually tries to
formulate biblical principles of evangelism, church planting, or worship, nor does he call our
attention to other writings in which this work has been done. Rather, he rather oddly tries to
derive these principles from his historical-sociological analysis itself, together with some broad
concepts of divine transcendence and the like. Thus the reader is pushed toward either a blind
traditionalism or a mirror-image reconstruction.
Simply opposing the modern model at every point is an entirely inadequate approach. I
say that for theological reasons. I certainly wish to be counted among those whose thoughts and
actions are based on principle, not pragmatism. But I confess I find myself, on the basis of

biblical principle itself, very often siding with those who are considered pragmatists rather than
with those who are regarded as the most principled among us. The fact is that when we seriously
turn to Scripture for guidance, that guidance usually turns out to be more complex, more
nuanced, than anything we would come up with ourselves. Scriptural principle, typically, also
leaves more room for freedom than man-made principles do, and, as we saw earlier, it gives
more encouragement to our creativity. Certainly scriptural principle is more complex than any
mere negation of existing cultural trends.
For one thing, Scripture itself does not merely negate the cultural trends of its time. It is
true to say that in the Bible there is an antithesis between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of
the world (1 Cor. 1-3), and between the church and the world (John 17:9-25, James 1:27, 4:4, 1
John 2:15-19). But Scripture never derives from this antithesis the conclusion that all our beliefs
and actions must be opposite to those of the world. Unbelievers do know truth, although they
suppress it (Rom. 1); so they can sometimes even teach God's truth with some accuracy (Matt.
23:1-4). And the church's missionaries must adopt at least some elements of the cultures which
they seek to reach with the Gospel. Says the Apostle Paul,
Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as
possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like
one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so as to win those under the law. To
those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's
law but am under Christ's law) so as to win those not having the law. To the weak, I became
weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might
save some. (1 Cor. 9:19-22)
There are, in other words, some areas in which Christians may and should be like those to whom
they preach, so their witness may be more effective. Obvious instances are speaking the language
of one's community and observing to some extent the local customs in food and clothing. The
same principle, according to the above passage, applies to some kinds of moral scruples. For
example, Paul may have observed the Mosaic dietary laws when in the company of Jews, but not
when in the company of Gentiles.
This flexibility is not religious compromise. Paul did not disobey God when he behaved,
sometimes as a Jew, sometimes as a Gentile. It was God's own Word, indeed, which gave him the
freedom to behave either way. This is not relativism. There were many areas where Paul did not
have such freedom, many forms of worldly behavior which he plainly condemned (as Gal. 5:1921). But there were also significant areas of freedom. And Paul's judgments as to where he was
free and where bound were based, not on any autonomous analysis of culture, but on the Word of
God.
So let us think about our own time. Does Scripture condemn all "marketing" techniques
in setting forth the gospel? Well, that depends on what you mean by marketing techniques.
Certainly there are similarities between selling and preaching. (To say that is, of course, to say
very little: everything is similar to everything else in one respect or other!) Both activities
convey information. Both seek to elicit a commitment. Both require a speaker to attract the
attention of his audience. If "marketing techniques" are simply rules for clear communication,

vivid ways of attracting attention and motivating commitment, then they should certainly be
taught to preachers.
Does this analysis neglect divine sovereignty? I think not. Salvation is entirely by divine
grace, and God needs no human help to draw sinners to Jesus. But God has freely chosen to use
human means to accomplish this task, in most cases (Matt. 28:18-20, Rom. 10:14-15, 1 Cor.
1:21). As in other aspects of salvation, there is in evangelism both divine sovereignty and human
responsibility. We must preach and teach.
But to preach and teach requires effort. We must speak clearly and persuasively, in order
to reproduce the clarity and persuasiveness of the Gospel itself. So we must learn rules for gospel
communication just as a seller must learn techniques for communicating the virtues of his
product. Many of those techniques are valid for all forms of communication. So it is not
impossible to imagine that we might learn something of value from secular marketing theorists.
Now of course there are also many respects in which evangelism is different from
marketing. The church's "product" is very different, eternally urgent, the ultimate in divine
blessing. Our approach to communication should reflect the solemnity and holiness of our God.
It should reflect our own willingness to humble ourselves in order to exalt the Lord. In these
respects, we leave the secular marketing world far behind.
Sometimes, then, we would do well to learn from the marketers, sometimes not. When
marketers tell us that it is unwise to fill an auditorium beyond 80% of its capacity, we do well to
listen, though we must never put such advice on a par with God's Word. Scripture never says that
we must fill our buildings to the point of standing room before going to two Sunday morning
services or two assemblies or a larger facility. So there is nothing wrong in taking the marketers'
advice in the absence of more important considerations. But if marketers tell us we must avoid
the subject of sin in order to keep the seekers comfortable, we must at that point disagree in the
sharpest terms, for biblical principle is then at stake.
Is it wrong for preachers to address "felt needs" as an opening to preach the Gospel?
Well, many felt needs today are genuine spiritual needs according to Scripture. People want to
know how to make marriages work; the Bible answers that need (Eph. 5:22-33). People want to
know how to avoid anxiety; Scripture addresses that concern (Phil. 4:6-7). Why should preachers
not address these topics and answer them through the riches of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Of
course, many other felt needs (the "need" for health, wealth, self-esteem, etc.) are either
ambiguous or condemned by Scripture. Nevertheless, even these-- with their scriptural
evaluations-- should be the subjects of preaching.
So biblical worship and evangelism should not be viewed as simple negations of every
element of an unbelieving culture. Rather, there should be a discerning use of the elements of
culture, governed by the values of God's word.
Consider also the content of the church's preaching. Should the church's preaching focus
on the objective rather than the subjective, on God and history rather than our response, on
objective truth rather than human experience, as Wells argues? Here I tend to be more

sympathetic with Wells than I have been in the preceding paragraphs, because I do believe that in
general preaching today needs to place a greater emphasis on the objective.
But again Wells misses nuances. In theory of knowledge it is wrong to force a choice
between object (what one knows) and subject (the knower). All knowledge involves both: you
don't have knowledge unless you have both a subject and an object. Therefore, Scripture records
the objective truth of God and redemption; but it also records the experiences by which the
biblical writers came to know these objective facts. And indeed there is in Scripture much
teaching about believing subjectivity. The Psalms are full of "I" and "we," full of personal
testimonies about how God has entered human experience. We learn much in Scripture about our
emotional life: about joy, fear, anxiety, peace, anger, erotic passion, and so on.
And there is a subjective side to salvation itself. The objective side is that Christ, the Son
of God, lived a perfect human life, died for the sins of his people, rose from the dead and
ascended into heaven. The subjective side is that when he died for sin, we died to sin (Rom. 6:114) and rose with Christ to newness of life. God not only atones, he regenerates. We are new
creatures (2 Cor. 5:17), partakers of Christ's abundant life (John 10:10).
Preaching, in Scripture, does not merely present the objective truths of the history of
redemption. It also responds to those truths in a personal way, giving testimony of what God has
done in the life of the preacher and what He can do in the lives of the hearers. The Psalms are
full of such testimony, as are the letters and sermons of Paul. And biblical preaching calls for its
hearers to respond to it, both inwardly and outwardly. Biblical repentance is a change of heart
that brings change in behavior, and it is a crucial goal of preaching (Acts 2:38-39).
Wells, therefore, loses credibility when he bases so much of his case on historical and
sociological analysis, without giving substantial attention to the biblical values which must judge
the culture. For one thing, our time is probably not much better or worse than past ages, contrary
to Wells's Schaefferian rhetoric about the uniqueness of modernity. But in any case, we are to
address culture today in the same way Paul addressed the culture of the first century: by the
Word of God, communicated by all scripturally legitimate means available in the culture.
Confessionalism
The recent Cambridge Declaration of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals seeks to
recommend to the evangelical churches a renewed confessionalism. It is organized around the
great solas of the Protestant Reformation: Scripture, Christ, grace, faith, and glory to God. Many
emphases of this document are welcome and greatly needed. Naturally I am pleased that the first
article reaffirms sola Scriptura and follows the sentence, "These truths we affirm not because of
their role in our traditions, but because we believe that they are central to the Bible."
The document is recognizably Wellsian. In the sola Scriptura section, we read,
"Therapeutic technique, marketing strategies, and the beat of the entertainment world often have
far more to say about what the church wants, how it functions and what it offers, than does the
Word of God." The discussion goes on to say that in these and other areas to which Wells has
given attention, the church should turn to Scripture, rather than the culture, for its message. True

enough. But as in Wells's books, I believe that more needs to be said. The attempt of churches to
learn from therapists, marketers, and consumers is not, in my mind, motivated by unbelief pure
and simple. If lack of faith is one factor, there is also the motive of seeking to reach out to the
world, to apply Scriptural principles in a way that is relevant to the present world and
communicable to the unchurched. The strengths and weaknesses of this document are similar,
then, to the strengths and weaknesses of Wells's own writings.
Positively, the document recommends a return to the attitudes and convictions of an
earlier time:
The faithfulness of the evangelical church in the past contrasts sharply with its unfaithfulness in
the present. Earlier in this century, evangelical churches sustained a remarkable missionary
endeavor, and built many religious institutions to serve the cause of biblical truth and Christ's
kingdom. That was a time when Christian behavior and expectations were markedly different
from those in the culture. Today they often are not. The evangelical world today is losing its
biblical fidelity, moral compass and missionary zeal.
The last sentence is surely true, but the rest of the paragraph seems rather naive in its assessment
of evangelical Christianity in the early twentieth century. The missionary movement of those
days was a wonderful thing in many ways, but as it was aided and abetted by the imperialism of
the western nations, it was not entirely counter-cultural, nor unambiguously righteous. The
document, like Wells's books, calls us back to a nostalgia for a past age. That, in my view, is a
frail reed. It also calls us back to a greater fidelity to Scripture. That is a strong element in the
document. But it needs to be spelled out in detail: what does Scripture say about missions,
church growth, marketing, as opposed to the notions prevalent in our culture today? We need a
document that gives us positive guidance, rather than merely negating present trends.
I certainly favor a renewed confessionalism if it means a better appreciation for the
teaching of the Reformation solas, indeed for the distinctive teachings of the Reformed faith. The
argument of this paper, however, should help us to guard against certain abuses of the
confessionalist position, such as (1) emphasizing Confessions and traditions as if they were equal
to Scripture in authority, (2) equating sola Scriptura with acceptance of confessional traditions,
(3) automatic suspicion of any ideas which come from sources outside the tradition, (4) focusing
on historical polemics rather than the dangers of the present day, (5) emphasizing differences
with other confessional traditions to the virtual exclusion of recognizing commonalities, (6)
failing to encourage self-criticism within our particular denominational, theological, and
confessional communities.
A reaffirmation of confessionalism for our time ought to repudiate the commonly
understood equation between confessionalism and traditionalism. It should rather reiterate a
doctrine of sola Scriptura like that of Westminster at its best: one which will encourage careful
thinking about the movements of our time rather than overstated condemnations and which will
discourage romantic notions about past ages. A doctrine of sola Scriptura must actually,
practically, point us to Scripture itself, rather than generalizations about historical trends, for our
standards.
Conclusions

In a number of ways we can improve on Wells's analysis by a more consistent application

of sola Scriptura: We can see more fully the ways in which modern culture has strayed from
God's path but also understand how to use certain elements of that culture with God's blessing.
Sola Scriptura, which is often perceived as a narrowing, limiting doctrine, actually opens our
vision to behold a greater complexity in modern culture than we would otherwise recognize. And
it is a liberating doctrine in the sense that it gives us greater freedom than any mere
traditionalism or via negationis could provide. At the same time, it sets forth true restrictions on
the use of culture with greater clarity and gives us direction to avoid the traps of the modernists
and the evangelical accommodationists.
Westminster's emphasis on sola Scriptura, therefore, provides us with a powerful tool for
the critical analysis of culture, one rarely found elsewhere in evangelical scholarship. It guards us
against both secularism and traditionalism. We would be wise to continually stress this principle,
neither compromising it nor forgetting to apply it to every matter of controversy.
Scripture, therefore, must be primary in relation to history, sociology, or any other
science. It is Scripture that supplies the norms of these sciences and which governs their proper
starting points, methods, and conclusions.
.. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987. Hence, DKG.
.. DKG, 212.
.. Ibid., 206-212.
.. Ibid., 310.
.. An autonomous historical method is one which is not itself subject to the ultimate authority of Scripture.
. Cornelius Van Til, The Triumph of Grace (Privately published, 1958), 64.
. Old and New in Interpretation (London: SCM Press, 1966).
.. To do this, of course, is to introduce a kind of circularity into our process of thought: Scripture must judge our way of reading Scripture. But
circularity of a kind is inevitable when we are seeking to justify our ultimate standard of truth and falsity. I have dealt with this question most
recently in my Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1995), 299-309.
. DKG, 81-85, 93-98, 140.
. Or scopus, if you prefer.
.. Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963), 8.
.. Paul Woolley and Ned B. Stonehouse, ed., The Infallible Word (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1946, third revised edition,
1967); John H. Skilton, ed., Scripture and Confession (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1973); Harvie M. Conn, ed., Inerrancy and
Hermeneutic (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988); William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey, ed., Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1990).
.. In Collected Writings of John Murray, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), IV, 1-21.
. Ibid., 5.
. Ibid., 7-8.
. Ibid., 8.
. Ibid., 8-9.
.. Compare B. B. Warfield, who in "The Idea of Systematic Theology," Studies in Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981, reprinted from Oxford
University Press edition of 1932), spoke of the relationship of systematics to historical theology as "far less close" than its relation to
exegetical theology (65). Note also his remarks about tradition on 101.
. See William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey, ed., Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990).

. Cf. my observations on the "movement mentality" among some of Van Til's followers in my Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought
(Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1995), 8-14, 17-18, passim.
. I am not here defining reason, but rather describing one of its important functions in theology.
.. See Klass Runia, "The Reformed Liturgy in the Dutch Tradition," in Donald A. Carson, ed., Worship: Adoration and Action (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1993), 99, and Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against the Idols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
.. Reasons which I have discussed and rejected in Worship in Spirit and Truth Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1996), Chapter 11.
. I have criticized this notion in Clark and Van Til in my Cornelius Van Til, 141-149.
.. Compare Schaeffer's alarms about the "Great Evangelical Disaster," in his book of that title (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1981). To
him, the disaster was particularly the evangelical compromise of biblical inerrancy. The focus of Wells' attention is somewhat different.
.. No Place For Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 118, 142, 172, 174, 264, 268, 278, 280, and many other places. God in the
Wasteland (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 101-111.
.. Wasteland, 61, 77-84, 115, 153, 176, 202.
.. No Place, 218-257.
..Ibid., 60-87.
.. Ibid., 63-87, 100.
.. Ibid., 67.
.. No Place, 11.
.. Ibid., 218-257.
.. Wasteland, 88-117.
.. No Place, 95-136, Wasteland, 186-213.
.. No Place, 250-57. Wasteland, 149-51.
.. No Place, 113-115.
.. Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 60-61.
.. No Place, 270-282, Wasteland, 118-185.
.. No Place, 17-52.
.. We may recall that Jesus himself was considered something of a pragmatist, compared to the Pharisees who proclaimed their allegiance to
divine principle, but who in fact placed their tradition above God's Word. See, for example, Matt. 15:1-9.
.. For a full discussion of "antithesis," see my Cornelius Van Til, Chap. 15.
.. Although this sort of self-abasing servant-attitude deserves to be a model for Christians even in the marketing field!
.. And also, thirdly, a norm or standard. See my Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987).
.. I am working from a photocopied version without publication data.
.. Cambridge Declaration, 5.
.. Actually, as I have argued, it would be more accurate to derive from this principle a critical stance toward traditions.
.. For more observations on this subject, see my Evangelical Reunion (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), now out of print.
.. This paper will serve as my reply to Richard Muller's The Study of Theology Revisited: A Response to John Frame, WTJ 56:2 (Fall, 1994),
409-417. I have not engaged Muller's arguments specifically, but, then, he did not engage mine either. But his response leaves me still with
the impression that his theological method, in order to avoid some aspects of hermeneutical circularity, gives priority to neutral or
autonomous historical study over the methodological principles of Scripture itself.