God Has Spoken: Revelation and the Bible (2024)

In this excellent and important book JI Packer lays out perhaps his most detailed exposition of the doctrine of the Bible as God's inspired word, and in doing so has done the church a great service. This is especially the case if you are a reformed and evangelical Anglican like I am, but any Christian with a high view of scripture will be enriched theologically and doxologically by reading this. For any Christians with a non-evangelical view of scripture, you may find yourself persuaded to see things differently!

Packer begins by looking at the discipline of Biblical textual criticism. While acknowledging that critical study has done much to enrich our understanding of the biblical text, a serious problem arises when it drives "a wedge between the living God in His revelation and the written word of the Bible." This tendency leads to several consequent problems. The first is that it undermines preaching as "all one can do then is purvey from the pulpit either church teaching or else one's own private opinions." Other problems are that it undercuts teaching (as church leaders are left unsure what to inculcate as Christian truth), it weakens faith, discourages lay Bible reading, and lastly it hides Christ from view.

He then sets the scene by outlining the main points in a reformational understanding of scripture, as documented in the Protestant formularies and with a particular focus on the 39 Articles, Homilies and Book of Common Prayer. The main headings he highlights are the fact of the inspiration of scripture as the word of God, the authority of scripture as a rule of life and faith, and our dependence upon scripture as a means of grace.

He ends this initial section of the book with a call to action: "We cannot recall the Holy Spirit and revive God's work among us by our own action: to quicken us again is God's prerogative, and His alone. But we can at least take out of the way the stumbling-stones over which we have fallen. We can set ourselves to rethink the doctrines of revelation and inspiration in a way that, while not refusing the light which modern study has thrown on the human aspects of the scriptures, cultural, linguistic, historical, and so forth, will eliminate its scepticism about their divinity and eternal truth. No task, surely, is more urgent."

Packer then goes on to consider God's word as spoken, explaining that revelation is a divine activity; that it is verbal in form; and that it is cumulative. He examines each of these points in turn.

Regarding revelation as a divine activity, Packer points out that it is therefore not a human achievement, discovery or the dawning of insight; that it is not man finding God but God finding man and showing us himself; that God is the agent as well as the object in revelation; and that in the Bible we have a message from God "to which all people in all ages are summoned to listen and to respond." In unpacking this, Packer explains that revelation is both personal and propositional: "To deny that revelation is propositional in order to emphasise its personal character is like trying to safeguard the truth that cricket is played with a bat by denying that it is played with a ball. The denial undercuts the assertion." In short, saying that revelation is non-propositional is to depersonalise it: "To maintain that we may know God without God actually speaking to us in words is really to deny that God is personal, or at any rate that knowing Him is a truly personal relationship...We only truly honour the God who has spoken to us in His Son to us blind sinners by listening humbly, teachably, and without interrupting, to what He has to say, and by believing, on His authority, all that He is pleased to tell us - about revelation, no less than any other subject."

Next, Packer considers the fact that revelation is a verbal activity - 'God spoke.' This is meant literally and is not a metaphor: "The writer means, quite simply, that God has communicated with man by means of significant utterances...spoken either in His own person or on His behalf by His own appointed messengers and instructors." While the psychology of prophetic inspiration is a mystery to us, we can be clear that is not mere natural insight or spiritual enlightenment, but rather "it was a unique process whereby the human messenger was drawn into such complete identification with the message God had given him to deliver that what he said could be, and indeed had to be, treated as wholly divine." As an aside, he also addresses the sense in which the OT law is still binding on Christians today, "It is in this sense - that is, as witnesses to abiding principles and obligations - that these sections of the Old Testament law abide in force." Very helpful! Even in the Gospels, as we see the Word made flesh, the principle of verbal revelation still holds: "This is richer revelation that words alone could ever give, yet the centrality of verbal revelation remains, and it is precisely to the divine words that the Gospel calls us to respond...if there is no verbal revelation, there is no revelation at all, not even in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth." Finally in this section, Packer looks at revelation as cumulative. While we can contrast earlier revelation with its culmination in Jesus Christ, "It is the contrast, not between crude and refined, primitive and evolved, partly false and wholly true, but between promises and their fulfilment, types and the antitype, shadows and substance, incompleteness and perfection."

Packer moves on to consider the 'broad church' or liberal tradition, which he characterises as "Renaissance theology." By this Packers means that it is "characteristically rationalistic, anti-dogmatic, and agnostic in temper, ethical and humanitarian in its interests, and ready to hail almost any kind of religious outlook and belief about God...as having in it the substance of Christian faith, so long as it recognises the absoluteness of Christian moral values." In the years since Packer wrote this book, even that stop has failed in favour of taste, preference, and the concerns of wider society. This will have come as no surprise to Packer, however, who further outlines some characteristics of this way of thinking:

"First, these positions are all subjectivist in character - that is, they all depend on denying at some point the correlation between Scripture and faith, biblical revelation and inward illumination, the Spirit in the Scriptures and the Spirit in the heart, and on appealing to the latter to justify forsaking the former. In other words, one only reaches them by backing at some point one's private view of what the Bible is, or should be, driving against what it actually says, and jettisoning in practice part of that it teaches in order to maintain this private opinion."

"Second, these positions are all unstable, for they recognise no objective criterion of truth, nor method for establishing it, save the more or less speculative reasoning of individual theologians."

"Third, so far as they fail to uphold the authority of the Spirit in the Scriptures over the Spirit in the theologian, and deviate from the task of expounding and applying what the Bible actually says, these positions are really sub-Christian."

Next, Packer points out that we should not view the Bible statically, but dynamically. In other words, it is not merely what God said a long time ago to people in general but what he still says to individuals today. This is also a trinitarian doctrine as God the Father is the giver, God the Son the subject, and God the Holy Spirit the author, authenticator, and interpreter, of the Bible. Further, having this view of Biblical inspiration helps us avoid several problems. The first concerns the nature of Biblical authority, as we are to understand and apply scripture rather than censure or correct it. Second, it helps understand how we are to interpret the Bible and extract its teaching from it. This involves three distinct activities (exegesis, synthesis and application), embodies the principle that Scripture is self-consistent. In a super sentence, typical of Packer, he summarises the central themes of the Bible as "the kingdom, people, and covenant of God, and the person, place, work, and glory, of the Lord Jesus Christ; the achieving, and applying of redemption; the law and the Gospel." The third problem we avoid relates to the sufficiency of Scripture: scripture is our final authority, over and against both tradition and human reason ("The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.")

Finally, Packer turns to consider God's word as heard. He begins by explaining that "Hear, in its full biblical sense, implies attention, assent and application to oneself of the things learned; it means listening with a firm purpose to obey, and then doing as God's Word proves to require." Practically, a life of godliness depends on a life of hearing God's word, and Packer calls us to consider three aspects of it. The first is that "it is a life of faith in God's promises. Faith...is not...a leap in the dark, but rather a step in the light, whereby (to extend the metaphor) one puts one's whole weight on the firm ground of God's unshakeable promises." This links back directly to Packers earlier assertions about the Bible as God's word, as if we cannot be sure that scriptures words are God's words then we cannot be sure that He has actually made any of the promises ascribed to him in scripture.

Second, this life of godliness "involves obedience to God's laws. The Anglican view of the Bible is that it is a supremely practical book, not only leading us to know God through meeting Jesus Christ, but also giving us rules and maxims for bringing the whole of our life into line with God's will...But it is important to be clear as to what sort of rule for life it is. Its moral teaching is not a code of isolated externals, a Pharisaic formalism, but a connected series of principles and ideals, deriving directly from the revealed nature of God as His purpose for mankind, and calling for right motives as well as right types of action. The biblical law of God requires us to be persons of a certain kind, as well as to do things of a certain kind; and the biblical concept of love embraces both sides of the ideal." Thirdly and finally, "genuine godliness is always marked by delight in God's truth."

Packer modestly concludes by saying that his book is offered as a tract rather than a treatise, a mental and spiritual preparation and incentive to study the Bible for ourselves. Questions of the value and dangers of textual criticism, what it means for the Bible to be authoritative and inerrant, and what the practical consequences are for our walk of faith if we hold to these doctrines or not, are all timeless questions that Christians need to grapple with. Dr Packer did the church a great service in writing this book, and I recommend it unreservedly.

This is a well-written book defending the inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture against the pervasive theological liberalism of Packer's youth. It's also a balanced riposte to the onset of evangelical apathy towards the sufficiency and beauty of Scripture. The book can be dry at times, and is not nearly as engaging as his classic "Knowing God", but there are moments where Packer's warmth still comes through. For example, this paragraph about the purpose of God:

The truly staggering answer which the Bible gives to this question is that God's purpose in revelation is to make friends with us. It was to this end that He created us rational beings, bearing his image, able to think and hear and speak and love; He wanted there to be genuine personal affection and friendship, two-sided, between Himself and us—a relation, not like that between a man and his dog, but like that of a father to his son, or a husband to his wife. Loving friendship between two persons has no ulterior motive; it is an end in itself. And this is God's end in revelation. He speaks to us simply to fulfill that purpose for which we were made; that is, to bring to being a relationship in which He is a friend to us, and we to Him, He finding His joy in giving us gifts and we finding ours in giving Him thanks.

He also shows that the canon is not a product of the church, but rather a product of God, to be discovered and witnessed by the church. Overall, though I would not say that this book is for everyone. I think that anyone who is encountering ideas like "historical criticism", or Rob Bell's brand of "Love Wins" theology, or who might be in doubt about whether the words of the Bible are really the very words breathed out by God, will find in this book a helpful defense.