The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy: Article XVII

WE AFFIRM  that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God's written Word.

WE DENY  that this witness of the Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.

In our previous argument on the witness of church history to the inerrancy of Scripture, we noted that men throughout the history of God’s church have affirmed that the Scriptures are God’s truth revealed to men through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Inerrancy is a thoroughly historical doctrine, and the witness of these men should bolster the believer’s confidence in the Scriptures. But is the witness of history or rational argument or Scriptural evidence enough to confirm within an individual the inerrant nature of God’s Word? The writers of the Chicago Statement stand with these men of history to also affirm the necessary action of the Holy Spirit in assuring the individual of the Truth of God’s Word. The Spirit and the Word are ever intertwined, as the authors suggest. The Spirit is the internal witness in the heart and mind of a believer that the Scriptures are God’s truth revealed to us. John Calvin says, “With great insult to the Holy Spirit, it is asked, who can assure us that the Scriptures proceeded from God; who guarantee that they have come down safe and unimpaired to our times; who persuade us that this book is to be received with reverence, and that one expunged from the list, did not the church regulate all these things with certainty?”[1] Later in that same chapter, Calvin says definitively, “Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture; that Scripture carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit.”[2] Calvin spends the whole next chapter on proofs that the Scriptures are the Word of God, so he is not discounting the place of reason and even of Scriptural proofs themselves as evidence for the truth of Scripture, but his point is clear: it is the testimony of the Spirit that brings full conviction of this doctrine. This is of course consistent with the Scripture itself, wherein Paul says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

In the denial, the relationship between the Spirit and the Word is further clarified. The authors declare that the Spirit and the Word operate together. The Spirit uses the Word to bring the conviction of the truthfulness of Scriptures. Whereas the Chicago Statement is preoccupied with the nature and fact of inerrancy, the doctrine they bring forth here extends far beyond inerrancy. It extends to biblical convictions about God’s very nature, with the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Word, cooperating with and sending forth the Spirit, the third person, to accomplish His work within His people. It extends to biblical convictions on the nature of salvation, that men and woman are always brought to saving faith by the Spirit using the Word of God to bring conviction of sin and trust in the atoning work of Jesus. It extends to our ecclesiology, that it is the Spirit of God at work within the gathered people of God to hear the preaching of the Word of God and be further conformed into the image of the Son of God. To state it simply: the Spirit and the Word always go together. How dead is the heart that can read the Word but feel no heat of conviction or the cold soothing balm of comfort, a work which is accomplished by the Spirit. Yet how utterly ridiculous and disastrous is the church which focuses entirely on spontaneous and outrageous “works” of the Holy Spirit yet is devoid of the faithful preaching and exposition of the Word of God. To separate the work of the Spirit from the Word is to make shipwreck of one’s faith. It is always the Word of God that the Holy Spirit uses to accomplish the purposes of God.

Keith Kauffman attended University of Maryland (B.S.) and Capital Bible Seminary(M.Div.). Keith currently works at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, working in the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases studying the immune response to Tuberculosis. Keith serves as an elder at Greenbelt Baptist Church.