Article I.1
- In what three areas do the Scriptures serve as a sufficient, certain, and infallible rule? Also, list three ways the goodness, wisdom, and power of God are manifested.
- Name the four different kinds of revelation.
- Why is general revelation not sufficient for salvation?
- In what sense is the written Word necessary?
Article I.2
- How many books are in the Old Testament canon of Scripture? How many in the New Testament?
- Have you memorized the books of the Bible? Why is it important to do so?
Article I.3
- Why should the Apocrypha not be part of the canon of Scriptures?
- Do you know of any other books that some people have tried to add to the canon?
- Why it is important to believe that the Scriptures contain a complete revelation of God’s words to men.
- How does a historic belief in progressive revelation factor into the concept of a completed canon of Scripture?
Article I. 4
- Who is the true Author of the Bible?
- What does “verbal, plenary inspiration” mean?
- What issues face the church concerning differing opinions about inspiration? And why are these issues important?
Article I.5
- List eight reasons why the Bible can be trusted to be the Word of God.
- Do you believe the Bible is inerrant, infallible, and inspired?
Article I.6
- List four areas in which the whole counsel of God is revealed.
- What are some things that “the sufficiency of Scripture” does not mean?
- To what does the phrase “or necessarily contained in the Holy Scriptures” refer?
- What does “sole sufficiency” mean?
- What new revelation of the Spirit or traditions of men can be added to the Scriptures?
- What is the role of the Holy Spirit associated with understanding the Scriptures?
- What biblical text is the classic biblical assertion of the sufficiency of Scriptures?
- How must the sufficiency of Scripture be qualified?
Article I.7
- What is the one subject crystal clear in Scriptures?
- The Confession affirms the clarity of Scripture, but it also affirms that not all Scriptures are equally clear in all its parts and the Bible is not equally clear to all. How does 2 Peter 3:16 and 2 Timothy 3:15-17 shed light on these issues?
- What practical implications do these issues raise concerning modern individualism?
- If the Bible is perfectly sufficient and clear then what is the source of error in matters of faith and sin?
Article I.8
- Does this chapter teach the unlimited inerrancy of the Scriptures?
- What does this chapter teach about the preservation of the Scriptures throughout the ages?
Article I.9
- What is the one infallible rule that must guide Scriptural interpretation?
Article I.10
- When the Word of God is proven to be in conflict with historic writings of great men and church councils, which writings should prevail?
- What should our response be to those who believe in continual revelation through dreams, visions, voices, or private revelations?
Tweet
Jason Robertson is a husband and a father and a pastor. He is dedicated to leading and equipping his the Church with God’s word and biblical theology for life ministry, using a combination of pastoral, church planting and evangelism experience. He holds a Master of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is experienced in church planting, evangelism, missions, and the training of pastors and Bible teachers.
Jason has been preaching the gospel since 1985, serving the first ten years of ministry as a Southern Baptist itinerant evangelist out of Milldale Baptist Church in Zachary, LA which ordained him in 1993. He has preached in hundreds of churches in over 30 States and 4 countries. He planted churches in Siberia, Russia in the summers of 1993 and 1994. He founded Murrieta Valley Church in California, which he planted in cooperation with the SBC NAMB in 2001. He also teaches ministry students at California Baptist University.
You can hear his sermons and read his manuscripts on sermonaudio.com. Just follow the link to "sermons" at the top of this page.
These are some very thought provoking questions which stimulate my hunger for learning what God’s Word’s answers are. Excited to be reading Article 1 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith!
Thanks, Phil. I am truly looking forward to this study with the men of MVC. I think we will see real spiritual fruit in the life of our whole church in direct proportion to the efforts of this study, such as: spiritual steadfastness, the development of a biblical worldview, increased knowledge that will aid in evangelism and discipleship, a higher view of God causing a greater sense of exultation to Him, etc.
Pastor Jason, in our study last Saturday, I believe it was stated that elements of the gospel are present in general revealation…. can you please provide an example…. for my sake, please keep it on the “Forrest Gump” level….:) thanks.
Al, thanks for the follow-up question! Here is my Forrest Gump answer: The natural man’s interpretations of General Revelation is like a box of chocolates… you never know what you’re going to get. But one thing’s for sure, you know you are not going to get the gospel… but that is not because General Revelation does not reveal God and elements of the Gospel. Paul says, in fact, in Romans 1:18-32 says that through General Revelation God has revealed His wrath, revealed himself, revealed his attributes, revealed his eternal power and His Godhead. In Romans 2:14-15 Paul says that God’s moral law is written on men’s hearts. Therefore General Revelation reveals elements of the Gospel such as sin, death, God’s goodness, God’s holiness, God’s sovereignty, etc. But he natural man has rejected and suppressed that revelation. General Revelation is called general because all people are exposed to this revelation.
Special Revelation refers to God’s words addressed to specific people. This includes all the words in the Bible, plus many other words that aren’t recorded in the canon of Scripture, such as the words of Jesus not recorded in the Bible. Through Special Revelation God explains General Revelation and reveals the way of salvation. Through general revelation alone man will never understand the Gospel, but through regeneration God awakens a man’s mind to all that God’s Creation and Providence has been declaring and explains it all through special revelation, giving that man faith in Christ.
The problem is not that natural man in the pagan environment has no witness to God’s truth. The whole world is pulsating with the revelation of God (Psalm 19); there is no escaping it. And man, the creature created in God’s image, also has an inner witness to God’s truth (Romans 2:14-16). The problem is not a lack of revelation but natural man’s interpretation of this revelation. Knowledge of the true and living God bombards fallen man, but he “suppresses the truth in unrighteousness” and “exchange(s) the truth of God for the lie” (Romans 1:18,25). Fallen man takes the objective knowledge of general revelation and subjectively filters it through his sin orientation throughout the cognition process. The route from revelation to theology is interpretation, and natural man can only interpret in terms of his radical sin bias.
In spite of general revelation, the pagan world does not know the true and the living God because of the distorting nature of worldly wisdom (1 Corinthians
1:21). Fallen man’s intellectual sin bias is so basic and so complete that even when he is exposed to God’s truth in plain language through the special revelation of Scripture, he still does not know God’s truth in any spiritually significant sense (1 Corinthians 2:14). He knows but he does not know (Isaiah 6:9). The god of this age has blinded his mind (2 Corinthians 4:4). He is like an illiterate man with an open book in his hands (Isaiah 29:12). He sees God’s truth spelled out before him but he cannot grasp its meaning, for to rationally comprehend God’s truth is to be persuaded by it and to submit to it in faith. To know the formal content of God’s special revelation and not to believe is to see without perceiving (cf. Acts 28:24-28).
The way to deal with fallen man is not to cater to his illusions by telling him he has the authority and ability to weigh the truth of God in the scales of autonomous reason. The way to deal with fallen man is to argue against his illusions and to expose Satan’s lie for what it is. For man to reject the true and living God and to seek to be as God is to choose death. And not just physical death but multidimensional death and radical death, death that reaches every area of life and penetrates to the very heart of life.
Man through sin has separated himself from God, but God in common grace continues to uphold life for both the just and the unjust. Fallen man continues to live and function not because of his world view but in spite of it. We must seek to show fallen man that his world view contradicts his own life experience. Man values logic, but apart from God, there is no reason why the mental laws of logic should have any true correspondence to objective reality. Man values science, but apart from God, there is no adequate basis for any real order and design in the universe or any assurance that man is really in touch with objective reality through his senses. Man values ethics, but apart from God, morals are merely changing conventions, and today’s abomination can become tomorrow’s virtue. Man values human personhood, but apart from God, man is but a higher animal or even an advanced machine, and personal existence is a temporary evolutionary fluke in an impersonal universe. Man values purpose and meaning, but apart from God, these have no real basis. If fallen man is right in his world view, then all in the world that is precious dies. The apologist must press home without compromise the point that philosophy and science based not upon Christ but upon the first principles of the world are “empty deceit” (Colossians 1:8) and “foolishness” (1 Corinthians 3:18-19). Even as the skeptic argues against God, he is using logic and language, which exist and have meaning only because of God. As Van Til has said, the skeptic is like the small child who is able to slap his father’s face only because his father is holding him up.
Apart from the regenerating grace of God, fallen man will rebel against these arguments. Apart from the regenerating grace of God, he will continue to cling to his lie. He will argue that finite man and pagan gods really are an adequate foundation for a meaningful world. Or he will sink into intellectual skepticism and arrogantly boast of his ability to live in a meaningless world without resorting to the psychological crutch of Christianity. Or, more commonly, he will find some dialectical mix of false faith and proud despair. All the Christian can do is to argue from the Bible that the man who says there is no Jehovah God is truly a fool and that the forbidden fruit will indeed turn to gravel in his mouth. We plead and argue, but only God can cause the blind to see and the deaf to hear.
in what way is the “TRIUNE GOD” specifically made known through general revelation? i believe that God is revealed in general revelation, but how is God’s triune nature revealed in creation, etc. apart from special revelation?
Mark, great question.
According to Romans 1, the true God is revealed through general revelation. The fact that He is a Trinity may not be necessarily revealed via general revelation but the true God who is a Trinity is revealed.
Thanks for the wonderful discussion this morning about this question and answer. You can tell that these topics are really helping the men in our study to learn about the necessity of Scripture and learn about Scriptures necessary place in apologetics.