Scriptures selfattesting authority question doctrine truthfulness Scriptures

278 How Are the Christian Scriptures Confirmed by the Peculiar Glory of God?
transformed by it. They saw this glory in Paul himself and embraced
him as a true spokesman of the risen Christ. “They glorified God”
because of him.
In other words, the path to this divine illumination and the path to
the valid inference of Paul’s truthfulness are the same path. The final
closure of certainty is not the same. In one case, the heart sees through
the narrative of Paul’s transformation to the glory of Christ reflected
in his change. In the other case, the mind infers that Paul is a true
spokesman for the risen Christ and may or may not see the peculiar
and compelling beauty of the work of God in Paul’s life. The reader
may conclude by inference that this is honey and yet not taste it, that
this is a rose but not see red or smell the fragrance, that this is fire but
not see the light.
Human Agency Necessary
What we have seen in this chapter is that the relationship between
reason and faith is not hostile. The relationship between spiritual sight
and empirical observation is not antagonistic. The relationship between
divine illumination and human agency in the process of knowing are
not at odds. Or, to put it positively, the divine and saving sight of the
glory of God is always mediated by the (humanly preserved and humanly
construed) word of God. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing
through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). “When you read this,
you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3:4).
Since the saving sight of the glory of God (2 Cor. 4:6) always comes
through the word, it is necessarily dependent on human agency—the
agency of others who preserve the word’s presence in our hands, and
the agency of ourselves who construe the word’s meaning in our minds.
If the word is not preserved for us, we have no access to the meaning
where the glory shines. And if the word is not construed correctly, likewise,
we have no access to the meaning where the glory shines.
So while we are not dependent on human observation and reasoning
to provide certainty of the word’s truth, we are dependent on human
effort to bring the book to our hands and its meaning to our minds.
God has ordained that it be this way. Faith comes by hearing. No sending,
no preaching. No preaching, no hearing. No hearing, no believing.