De Moor II:31: The Sufficiency of Scripture, Part 5

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The Objections of the Enthusiasts:

1.  They attack the Scripture, which they call a double-dealing, dead letter, appealing to Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:6.

I respond with our AUTHOR, α.  All the blame of the Obscurity of the Scriptures, through which obscurity they may not be able to understand the Scriptures sufficiently for salvation, is to be sought in the blindness and twistedness of men, while otherwise they are in themselves sufficiently perspicuous, as was seen in § 25, 26.  β.  Similarly, that the Scripture is dead and ineffectual, is occasioned by the vice of corrupt man; but otherwise it is living and efficacious in itself, 1 Peter 1:23; Jeremiah 23:29.  γ.  Paul does not speak properly of the Letter, that it is dead, but that it kills, which is not the act of a dead thing, but of a living, τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτείνει, for the letter killeth, of which Letter he says that he is not a minister.  In which manner the Apostle does not reject and despise every Word written in the books of God:  for he himself, who denies himself to be a minister of the letter, left so many volumes written for the Church, and greatly commends the Scripture of the Old Testament also, 2 Timothy 3:15-17.  But by the Letter he understands the Legal ministry of Moses predominating under the Old Testament, to which he opposes the more gracious ministry of the Gospel, called the ministry of the Spirit, either on account of the Spirit promised there, who in the Gospel revealed by Himself not only teaches the spiritual scope/end and use of the Law, but also confers grace for the fulfillment of the Law in Evangelical perfection:  or because by the Evangelical ministry of the New Testament he understands the Spirit of the Law, as opposed to the external Letter of the same, which is the deeper and more hidden Scope/End of the Law according to the intention of God, namely, that Christ is more clearly delivered and more abundantly inculcated unto righteousness to each believer.  Now, that Letter of the Law kills, since it only prescribes and threatens death to transgressors; while at the same time fallen man is unable to fulfill the Law.  Thus by the Law there is no justification, but rather the knowledge of sin, Romans 3:20.  The Law worketh wrath, Romans 4:15; Galatians 3:10:  by the Law sin also abounds, Romans 5:20; 7:9, 11.  The Letter of the Ceremonial Law also kills those that, cleaving to the Letter of those precepts, imagine that this worship is of itself acceptable to God, and seek righteousness by the observation of it, but do not penetrate to the spiritual and Evangelical marrow of it by the help of the Spirit of illumination and faith.  δ.  And so we do not deny the necessary instruction of the Spirit as teacher for true understanding and the right use of the written Word, but in such a way that He teaches from the Scriptures and through them:  but not that He might deliver new Revelations beyond the Scriptures and contrary to them.  Consult the things to be said concerning the sense of this passage below, Chapter V, § 26, on 2 Corinthians 3:17, 18; and WESSELIUS’ Dissertationem on this passage, which is ninth in his Fasciculo Dissertationum.

2.  Their Objections concern the Enthusiastical Spirit, whom they maintain,

              α.  To have been Promised both elsewhere and especially in Joel 2:28, 29.

I Respond:  a.  With phrases alike selected out of the Old Economy according to the manner of the Prophets, that the abundance of light and knowledge is designed, that would obtain under the New Testament through the instruction of the Spirit, but from the Scripture, according to Isaiah 59:21; and that would be such that the faithful flocks of the New Testament, compared with the faithful flocks of the Old Testament, would excel them by so great an interval as formerly had been between the Prophets and other men of the common people.  b.  But, a certain excellent and extraordinary proof of this matter, and earnest, as it were, God willed to be on record in that effusion of the Spirit, with which the Apostles were magnified, and of which He made certain others sharers in those first times, and in which the words of the prophecy were more literally fulfilled:  so that from those the faithful might gather what they might be warranted to expect for themselves from the divine resources.  c.  For it is evident that those extraordinary gifts of the Spirit do not pertain to all unto whom the prophecy of Joel had regard; inasmuch as Peter extends this promise unto all truly penitent under the New Testament, Acts 2:38, 39, just as Joel had made mention of all flesh, whom nevertheless the event teaches not at all to have been made partakers of that extraordinary prophetic gift.  While the promises of Isaiah 54:13 and Jeremiah 31:34 ought not to be understood absolutely, but rather comparatively, concerning the greater grace of the Spirit and more extensive effusion of knowledge under the New Testament, or concerning the more abundant, future, subjective effusion of the Holy Spirit under the New Testament than under the Old; and concerning the greater and clearer, shining, objective revelation under the New Testament through the execution and fulfillment of the things signified and predicted under the Old:  which things do not at all exclude instruction also mediated out the Scriptures, which are revealed for this purpose, as a perfect rule of faith.  On Isaiah 54:13, consult TRIGLAND’S Antapologiam, chapter XXXIII, pages 447, 448, in comparison with the Apologia Remonstrantium, chapter XVII, page 185b; and WESSELIUS’ Fasciculum Dissertationum, Sermon on this passage, pages 647-653.  The same WESSELIUS, Fasciculo Dissertationum, in the Dissertation on 2 Corinthians 3:6, § VIII, concerning the text of Jeremiah 31:34, writes:  “They shall teach no more every man his friend, and every man his brother, that is, an Israelite, but also the Nations, dwelling through the entire world, unto its bounds, with the dividing wall now removed.”

β.  To prove that the same Enthusiastical Spirit is Bestowed upon believers, they lean upon 1 John 2:20, 27.

Response:  They err, that by χρίσμα/unction/anointing, which believers have ἀπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου, from the Holy One, understand an internal Light of the soul, as another Light opposed to the Light of Scripture, which is more certain and accurate than the Light of the Word, is readier and more universal for use than the written Word, and which makes believers themselves a living Bible, who are thus a norm unto themselves, and do not so need the written Word.  Which, following after other Enthusiasts, are also the delusions of the Hernhutters.[1]  But, a.  τὸ χρίσμα are the saving gifts of the Spirit, frequently and emphatically likened unto a pleasing ointment, Psalm 45:7, among which is also illumination unto understanding, rightly compared to eye-salve, Revelation 3:18:  hence indeed the Light of understanding arises in the mind, but that is not to be opposed to the Light of Scripture, but always depends upon the Light of Scripture, the true use of which the Spirit teaches believers, and by which He makes them wise.[2]  The situation is the same as with the blind, for whom the light of day has no use; but, when his eyes are opened by a Physician, he sees all visible things with the help of the light of day:  but the faculty of seeing never confers its own light, by which it might be able to gaze upon visible objects without the help of the light of the sun, or of the moon, or of a lamp, so that it might be able easily to do without all external light.  Likewise, man, naturally blind in spiritual matters, from the Holy Spirit receives the clear eyes of understanding and the faculty of sight, in such a way that he is able to consider and discern spiritual things; but with the Light of the Word mediating.  b.  By this τὸ χρίσμα/unction believers knew all things, not absolutely, for thus they ought to have been Omniscient, which belongs to God alone; but all things necessary for salvation, which are a great many, even all comparatively.  Neither does it hence follow that the written Word was not thereafter useful to them; but, as all things were contemplated by means of the Word and in the mirror of the Gospel, so they ought to have persevered in the consideration of that mirror, lest they again forget the forms of spiritual things.  And certainly, if the Word written to these, who τὸ χρίσμα ἀπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου ἔχουσι, have the unction from the Holy One, was not at all necessary, John would have vainly written this Epistle to them, in which contrariwise he commends the utility of the Word to them, 1 John 2:21, 24.  Therefore, when the Apostle in verse 27 affirms that those that have an Unction from the Holy One have no need that anyone teach them, he does not exclude the teaching of the divine Word; but rather the ψευδοδιδασκαλίας, false teachings, of Heretics, Antichrists, of whom he makes mention in verses 18, 19, 22, 26.  And he declares that they have imbibed saving doctrine, as far as all the essential parts, from the Gospel preached by the Apostles with the Spirit as Teacher, in such a way that those cleaving to the doctrine delivered were able securely to do without, indeed ought to have rejected, all that were wishing to teach another Gospel besides that which they had already learned.[3]

On the text of Luke 17:21, see below, Chapter XX, § 32; and CROCIUS’[4] Anti-Weigelium, chapter I, question I, pages 46-48.  The remaining things that they offer in objection are resolved with sufficient plainness by our AUTHOR.

That the Hernhutters foster Enthusiasm, is able to be demonstrated from those things that they boast of their own Unction, of whom we have already made mention:  see DANIEL GERDES’ Waarschouwend Vertoog tegen de Hernhuthers, rakende de Zalvinge der Gelovigen, pages 14 and following; Herderlijken Brief van Predikanten en Ouderlingen te Amsterdam tegen de Hernhuthers, pages 13, 14; JAN VAN DEN HONERT’S Dissertationem subjoined to his Oration de Bohemorum et Moravorum Ecclesia, pages 45-47; ALBERTUS VOGET’S van de valsche Mystike Godtgeleerheid, § 23, pages 39-41; GERARDUS KULENKAMP’S Enthusiastery der Hernhuthers, part I, chapter I, § I, pages 34-44, where it is specifically shown that according to them internal illumination excels the external preaching of the Word.  In Enthusiastery der Hernhuthers, part I, chapter I, § 2, pages 61-69, it is taught that the Hernhutters with the rest of the Enthusiasts judge that the hearing and reading of the external divine Word is not so necessary, provided that one carefully attends to the internal preaching.  That the internal Unction is set before the Scripture by the Hernhutters after the manner of Enthusiasts, see KULENKAMP’S Enthusiastery der Hernhuthers, part I, chapter I, § 2, pages 77-84, 102.

Julian of Norwich

That extraordinary Revelations are to be preferred to Sacred Scripture, the Mystics also maintain, abusing the name of Pietists; see VOGET’S van de valsche Mystike Godtgeleerheid, § 12, page 14, § 15, page 20; compare PICTET’S Syllabum Controversiarum, book I, chapter XVI, page 113-115.  Concerning the sufficiency of the internal, supernatural Light given to every man, without the external Word, and concerning the contempt of it among the Mystics, see also CREMER’S[5] Evangelische Zedenketen on 2 Peter 1:3, part I, pages 77-82, on verse 6, part II, pages 401, 402, and on verse 8, part III, pages 31-33.  This opinion among them is defended by Poiret,[6] Œconomiæ, tome 4, chapter VII, § 11, page 156, with MILL citing it in his Oratione de Erudita Pietate (which is found after his Miscellanea Sacra), page 79, in which he assails this erroneous opinion of the Mystics, pages 73-85.  The Theological Faculty at Groningen, in Judicio suo given to the petition of the Ecclesiastical Sanhedrin of Groningen, also disapproves as Enthusiastical certain theses concerning Instinct, an internal Impulse, divine Responses, new Prophecies, which are found in the little books circulated by the Most Illustrious Driessen[7] in the year 1743, 1744; see pages 3-8, 19-30, 35-38.

And thus it is not at all difficult to enlarge the series of Enthusiasts, enumerated by our AUTHOR in the beginning of § XXX, with diverse new names; unto which more are also able to be referred from the ample catalogue of Prophets, which VOETIUS constructed in his Disputationum selectarum theologicarum, part II, pages 1055-1086.

[1] That is, the Moravians.

[2] See 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Psalm 119.

[3] See Galatians 1:6-9.

[4] Johannes Crocius (1590-1659) was a Reformed theologian.  He was appointed as Professor of Theology at Marburg (1618), at Kassel (1629), and then again at Marburg (1653).

[5] Bernard Sebastian Cremer (1683-1750) was a Reformed theologian.  He served as Professor of Theology at Harderwijk (1717-1750).

[6] Pierre Poiret (1646-1719) was a French mystic, and disciple of Antoinette Bourignon, publishing her works (as well as those of other mystics, ancient and modern).

[7] Antonius Driessen (1648-1748) was a Dutch Reformed theologian.  He served as Professor of Theology at Groningen (1714-1748).