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230 How Are the Christian Scriptures Confirmed by the Peculiar Glory of God?
the things it exhibits.” 1 In other words, the simplest and least educated
persons, as well as scholars, come to a well-grounded faith when “the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Cor. 4:6) touches that
innate awareness of God that every human being has (Rom. 1:21). This
happens through the Scriptures. In this way, God confirms not only the
gospel, but the inspired Scriptures that bring it to us.
The Scriptures are confirmed in this way by the pervasive and innumerable
ways God’s glory shines through them. The Scriptures are
like a diamond with countless facets that can send the rays of God’s
glory into the human heart in more ways than any of us have dreamed.
Parts of Scripture that puzzle us may truly break forth with irresistible
glory and truth among those of different cultures. Therefore, it is risky
to attempt, as I did in the previous chapter, to dig into the Scriptures
looking for the heart or the essence of the glory of God that makes it
compelling to the human soul.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that the Scriptures encourage us to do
this. The Scriptures do not just speak in broad, general terms about the
glory of God. They point us to the specific glories of God’s glory. They
want us to see the ways God is glorious. They lead us to the peculiar
glory of God that sets him off from all gods (Isa. 64:4) and from all
human ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8). That is what we began to see in
the previous chapter. And that is what we continue to do here.
The aim of the next three chapters is to see how the Scripture puts the
glory of God on display through the fulfillment of prophecy, the miracles
of Jesus, and the fruit of love in the lives of his disciples. In other words, we
continue digging into how “the Scriptures manifest themselves to be the
word of God, by the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God.”
The Scriptures do not just say God acts for his glory. They show us how.
The Sheer Fact of Fulfilled Prophecy Is Glorious
We turn in this chapter to the astonishing way that the Scriptures of the
New Testament reveal the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies from
hundreds of years earlier. I put the stress on the way the New Testament
fulfills the Old Testament. That’s what this chapter focuses on. There is
1
Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, vol. 2, The Works of Jonathan Edwards,
ed. John Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957), 299.