Notes on *Words of Life*
Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God, Timothy Ward (IVP, 2009)
Main Idea/Takeaway
When we read the words of Scripture we encounter God in action to reveal himself and redeem sinners through Jesus Christ.
"The kind of doctrine of Scripture this book will outline is one that aims to demonstrate that its every aspect is shaped from the bottom up by the character and actions of God, and is integrally related to God's being and action, yet without the inert book coming to eclipse the living Savior." (17)
"To encounter the words of Scripture is to encounter God in action." (48)
"Scripture is God in communicative action. Therefore to encounter the words of Scripture is to encounter God in action." (177)
Interaction
To obey/disobey God's words is to obey/disobey God himself. (27)
Central to how we live like Jesus is real is our attentiveness to his word. Our everyday embrace of Jesus's realness is seen in how we relate to His word. (28)
God's actions as an extension of himself. (31)
Trusting God's words is trusting God. (32)
Human language. (34)
See Packer's "Fundamentalism and the Word of God." (41)
The organizing principle. (48)
How to think of 'doctrine' of Scripture. (51)
The covenantal nature of our relationship with God. (52)
Bible as a covenant book. (55)
When we hear the apostolic word. (60)
God is the source of all reliable meaning. (64)
This is not a "canon within a canon," but rather is to say that, because of redemption history, some books are more relevant to the church's life, and the content of the gospel." (85)
What is verbal God-breathedness? Prepositions are breathed out by God in light of the speech act. (86)
Amazing implication for translatability. (90)
Defense of the NIV. (91)
The inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.(93)
While we never shrink back from rational proofs, we are supernaturalists and should never pretend otherwise.(94)
cf. Vanhoozer 'First Theology.' (95)
When we read the words of Scripture, we encounter God in action. (95)
We deny the sufficiency of Scripture when we suppose the Spirit to work apart from the Word. (112)
Primary matters: salvation, life, holiness. Secondary: worship, government, etc. (112)
Word & Spirit. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less. (113)
Foundational to preaching. (121)
On "Preaching in worship and as worship"- This is connected to the bigger question of Who is God?! And his revelation. And what is Scripture? (122)
Sufficiency means that nothing more or less than Word & Spirit is needed to receive God's revelation (& its purpose to save). Clarity means nothing more or less than Word & Spirit is needed to understand God's revelation ( & its purpose to save). (129)
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. God and Scripture: a biblical outline
III. The Trinity and Scripture: a theological outline
IV. The Attributes of Scripture: a doctrinal outline
V. The Bible and Christian life: the doctrine of Scripture applied
VI. Summary
Favorite Quotes by Chapter
I. Introduction
"Throughout Christian history, the overwhelmingly predominant view of the Bible has been that it is itself the living and active Word of God. To say that the Bible is the Word of God is to say, putting it another way, that 'what the Bible says, God says'." (9)
"We do not have to choose between 'believing in the Bible' and 'believing in Christ.' As Christians we are called on to do both. In fact one crucial means by which we demonstrate our faith in Christ is by also believing what the Bible says. Perhaps the most straightforward argument for this begins by observing the fact that Jesus himself treated the Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament, as themselves words from God, and so if we are going to be devoted to him then we must make sure our view of the Scriptures is the same as his." (11)
II. God and Scripture: a biblical outline
"Thus an action of God can be appropriately described both y saying that God's Word has performed an action for which he sent it, and by saying that God himself has performed an action." (25)
"Thus, when Adam and Eve disobey God's spoken command , they fracture their relationship with God himself. From God's side, when the words of his command are set aside by his creatures in favor of their own desires and their own claims of wisdom, then God himself has been set aside." (27)
"Abraham's response to God's words simply is also a response to God himself. His obedience to and trust in God's words are also, at one and the same time, an obedience to and trust in God himself." (28)
"To trust God's covenant promise is not to enter into an agreement with an absentee God; it is to trust the God who has come to you. There is, then, a complex but real relationship between God and his actions, expressed and performed, as they are, through God's words. In philosophical terms, there is an ontological relationship between God and his words. It seems that God's actions, including his verbal actions, are a kind of extension of him." (31)
"Communication from God is therefore communion with God, when met with a response of trust from us." (32)
"God speaks to us human words of promise, such that for us to trust those words is in itself an act of trusting God himself." (32)
"Whatever else may be true of human language, it is quite reasonable to suppose that it has the ability to speak truly of God, both because it was given to us by a God who speaks within himself as eternally three speaking persons, and also because our possession of language, as made in God's image, is analogous to God's communicative capacity. Our language can be made by God to speak truthfully of him because our language has its origin in him and in some way is like his own." (34-35)
"This philosophical assertion continues, sometimes unconsciously and therefore unquestioned, to shape much contemporary rejection of the orthodox doctrine of Scripture. At root, the rejection of Scripture as divine special revelation is often a side effect of the greater rejection of the particularity of Christ as God's ultimate self-revelation in the world. Here should be noted a feature that underlies many discussions about Scripture: people's view of Scripture is often largely determined by their view of Jesus Christ. That is one practical reason why the doctrine of Scripture must be articulated in a way that makes explicit its dependance on the doctrine of Christ." (41)
"Therefore everyone who never met the Word incarnate directly, bit who hears the words of Christ from the disciples, nevertheless encounters the words of the Father and of Christ, who in those words present themselves to us as a covenant-making God." (42)
"Thus to reject the disciples' words, which come from Christ and are about Christ, is to reject God, and so to be liable for condemnation." (42)
"God has identified himself both with Jesus Christ in person and with the passing on by his disciples of the words Jesus brought from the Father, with the result that to reject those human words spoken by the disciples is to reject God." (42)
III. The Trinity and Scripture: a theological outline
"Perfection, necessity, sufficiency, clarity, inspiration and authority. Analysis of the Bible under these headings, as the primary way in which Scripture is described theologically, does indeed sometimes pass too quickly over the complexity of scriptural testimony and teaching on the nature and function of the Bible in relation to God and his purposes." (50)
"Here we are still very much engaged in the vital task of describing Scripture explicitly at every point in the light of the character and actions of God, as revealed and witnessed to in Scripture." (51)
"In the overarching narrative of Scripture the two great actions of the Father, following the glory of his creative act and the tragedy of the fall of humankind, are to redeem and to reveal." (52)
"Commandments declare the stipulations of the covenant. Prophecy and epistles, in particular, expound and apply those stipulations in specific contexts; they are, in effect, the covenant preached in different situations. Narrative relates the unfolding events in which God's people have successfully trusted and rejected him, and through which God has faithfully enacted the consequences of his promises , whether in blessing or judgment." (55)
"Psalms give exemplary forms in which a believer can address God in many situations in life while remaining faithfully within the covenant, whether one is full of praise for experience of blessing, or confused and despairing over God's apparent failure to keep his promises. And apocalyptic writing demonstrates graphically the full reality of the present and ultimate consequences of either blessing or cursing that follows from obedience or disobedience to the covenant." (55)
"Yet to see the Bible as 'the book of the covenant' is not simplistic or reductionist. It is rather to recognize Scripture's profound role in the relationship between humanity and God that God wants to establish." (56)
"A very high claim for Scripture is of course being made here: Scripture is an aspect of the action of the sovereign, faithful, self-revealing God in the world, and specifically it is the action by which this God declares his ongoing covenant with his people, climaxed in Christ." (56)
"The strong bonds between ourselves, our actions and the words by which we perform many of our actions is evident in the normal course of life. This is particularly so when we think about the responses that can be made to a promise. For you to say 'I trust you to keep your promise' or 'I trust your promise' or 'I trust your words' is in effect to say the same thing in regard to me. For you to distrust the words of my promise is simply to distrust me. Persons and actions are so intimately identified in interpersonal relationships that actions begin to look like an extension of our personhood in our relationships with others." (59)
"Those who rejected the apostolic proclamation of the gospel of Christ thereby made themselves liable to God's condemnation, because in rejecting those words they had rejected God. Similarly, to hear the words of Christ was directly to hear the speech of God. It follows that to speak of Scripture as the book of the covenant, the ongoing form in which God repeats his covenant promise in the world, ought to lead us to speak of Scripture as in some sense a mode of God's presence in the world." (60)
"As we have seen, we as persons who act in relation to one another are so invested in our words that, by speaking, we act upon both ourselves and one another (e.g. in making you a promise I acquire for myself the responsibility to keep my promise and ascribe to you the obligation to take me at my word, other things being equal). It follows that what you do to my words (to my actions as performed by my words) you do to me." (63)
"A speech act can be as short as a single word ('Go!'), or as long as a unified collection of books (the Bible as God's covenant promise in writing). Therefore when we speak of Scripture as a mode of God's presence, we are asserting that it is in the speech acts of Scripture that God reveals himself by being semantically present to us, as he promises, warns, rebukes, reassures and so on. And this revelation is happening when the words of Scripture are read: when God is performing again, through the reading of Scripture, the same action he performed through those words when they were first written." (66)
"Turretin's response was that 'Christ is our only teacher, in such a sense as that the ministry of the word is not thereby excluded, but necessarily included because now in it only he addresses us ad by it he instructs us." (71)
"Scripture's words are 'Word' not just because he sent them and speaks through them, but also because its words are his actions, the present word-actions of the Word." (71)
"We should read, listen to and hear it preached, in order to find ourselves presented again with Christ and addressed by him. As we encounter the words of Scripture, we are encountering the Son in action, presenting himself to us in his call on us to take up our cross and follow him." (72)
"God's aim in Scripture is to lead us to true devotion to Christ, and obedience to him and love for him, impinging on every area of life and thought." (73)
"To speak of Scripture as in itself divine is therefore to speak of the divine origin of the speech acts of Scripture, a characteristic that follows from their identity as God's speech acts." (78)
"Because of the unity of the Father and the Son in revelation and redemption, Scripture is at the same time the word by which the incarnate and ascended Word, the one in whom all God's covenant promises are fulfilled, continues to act and to present himself semantically so that he may be known in the world over which he has all authority." (78)
"Because the whole of Scripture is breathed-out by God, every part needs to be interpreted in the light of its place in the history of salvation that Scripture unfolds, and in its literary context." (85)
"Verbal inspiration claims that the Bible says exactly what God wants to say because the Holy Spirit was responsible for every word written in Scripture. He is the divine Author behind the human authors." (86)
"It is the speech acts of Scripture (its units of meaning: sentences, paragraphs and books) that have their origin in divine authorship, because authors primarily author speech acts. The individual words are inspired (spoken out by God) to the extent that they come together to express these speech acts." (86)
"Crucial to the Reformers' view of this action of the Spirit is that his illuminating work took place not through the church but through Scripture." (93)
"Whenever we encounter the speech acts of Scripture, we encounter God himself in action. The Father presents himself to us as a God who makes and keeps his Covenant promises. The Son comes to us as the Word of God, knowable to us through his words. The Spirit ministers these words to us, illuminating our minds and hearts, so that in receiving, understanding and trusting them, we receive, know and trust God himself." (95)
IV. The Attributes of Scripture: a doctrinal outline
"Thus a verbal revelation is absolutely necessary if humanity is to know God as he truly is, and to be able to enter into a saving knowledge of God." (101)
"If Scripture alone is claimed to be the supreme authority in Christian thinking and living, that is because both its content (the verbal revelation) and its form (the written Scriptures) are indispensable." (102)
"The whole pattern of God's self-revelation is that he establishes a covenant relationship between himself and his people, and this is a relationship in which he makes himself known. He does not reveal himself exhaustively, but the God he shows himself to be in his covenant relationship is the God he really is." (104)
"The reality of the Trinity, and the purpose of the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension are sufficiently complex that they cannot be mimed or communicated through a religious impulse or sensation; they need to be spoken." (104)
"In the light of this, I would define the sufficiency of Scripture in this way: because of the ways in which God has chosen to relate himself to Scripture, Scripture is sufficient as the means by which God continues to present himself to us such that we can know him, repeating through Scripture the covenant promise he has brought to fulfillment in Jesus Christ." (113)
"Human finitude, and particularly sin, are the reasons for our lack of understanding of Scripture, rather than the cause being in some lack of clarity attributable to Scripture itself." (116)
"Expository biblical preaching in fact assumes rather than denies the clarity of Scripture. An expository preacher takes it that his sermon can be judged as either a faithful or an unfaithful exposition of Scripture by his hearers, as they discern for themselves whether his teaching is or is not warranted by his biblical text. His appeal is not 'My teaching is true because I'm an officially appointed preacher' nor is it as heart 'My teaching is true because I am a Spirit-filled and Spirit-anointed preacher.' Those two factors may give added weight to his teaching, but at heart the implied claim of the expository preacher is instead 'My teaching is true because it can be openly seen that what I am saying is in line with the meaning of Scripture'." (121)
"The preacher is not doing something with Scripture that the hearer by definition cannot do, which would be the case if the preacher were appealing primarily to special spiritual anointing or to his holding of an office in the church." (122)
"The authority of Scripture is dependent entirely on the authority of God, and comes about only because of what God has chosen to do in the way he authored Scripture, and because of what he continues to do in presenting himself to us through Scripture as a God we can know and trust."
"It commits us to giving the Bible the sovereign place in our lives that must follow from its central place in relation to God and in his actions." (129)
"The idea that the Bible is 'infallible' means that it does not deceive. To say that the Bible is 'inerrant' is to make the additional claim that it does not assert any errors of fact: whether the Bible refers to events in the life of Christ, or to other details of history and geography, what it asserts is true."
V. The Bible and Christian life: the doctrine of Scripture applied
"Preaching goes as tragically astray when it muses and reflects on those matters it should be proclaiming, as it does when it confidently proclaims what the preacher cannot know, because Scripture is silent." (158)
"For example, if as a preacher I am hesitant that the Spirit will come and act supremely through my preaching of the speech acts of Scripture because he once authored them and is alive to speak to them again, then my preaching, if it is to be proclamatory, will probably take one of two forms. I might end up recommending my own spiritual experience as normative, perhaps using some biblical texts to illustrate my experience, by way of historical precedent. Or I might focus on rehearsing the beliefs and practices of my Christian subculture or denomination, which distinguish us from other groups, with the Bible again reduced to serving as a doctrinal sourcebook, or as a handbook of practical illustrations." (158)
"To claim that one's own human speech about Christ crucified really is God speaking, and that the Holy Spirit comes in power through one's apparently weak speech, seems to run dangerously close to blasphemy. Yet that is clearly the pattern for the extension of the gospel after Pentecost that Christ and the apostles established."(159)
"The New Testament precedent is simply that the preacher can preach and must preach, fearful and trembling because he is given the privilege of speaking God's words and has no power to determine the result of his preaching, but not so fearful that he loses his resolves to know and proclaim Christ and him crucified." (159)
"The Spirit's activity through the speech acts of the Bible now is consistent with his activity in their composition at the level of grammar and meanings back then. The Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ, navigates the church into the future by calling it back to the written Word he authored." (161)
"In the light of this, what the faithful biblical preacher does, and what the Holy Spirit does with Scripture through him, is best described as a contemporary re-enactment of the speech act that the Spirit performed in the original authoring of the text. This notion, that the sermon is itself a redemptive act of God in the present, is common in literature on preaching." (162)
"A biblical text written, for example, to instil in its first readers and hearers a confident hope that at the future coming of Christ their perseverance in the faith will be vindicated performs that same action again in the lives of contemporary believers. It does so in a sermon if the preacher is faithful to the purpose of the original text, and fashions his sermon not just as a speech about hope, but as itself a hope-inspiring action." (163)
"The Spirit is again graciously present in the preached message, if what is preached now is faithful in purpose and content to what he once inspired." (163)
"Properly faithful biblical preaching involves the preacher deliberately seeking to fashion every verbal (and indeed physical) aspect of his preaching in such a way that the Spirit may act through his words in the lives of his hearers, ministering the content of Scripture in accordance with the purpose of Scripture." (163)
"The preacher with a Christian congregation is therefore not bringing something fundamentally new in his sermon. Of course he should be teaching aspects of the biblical faith they are still unaware of, but he is only bringing to light for them from Scripture what is already true of them, explaining more of the truth that is already theirs. At heart he is reminding them of the one thing that has been undeniably true of them ever since they first devoted themselves to the apostolic gospel: that by the work of the Spirit of God they are not what they once were." (169)
"Good preaching exercises something of a 'credal' function in the local church, giving people an interpretative structure in which to make sense of individual parts of Scripture when they encounter them for themselves." (172)
"What we expect from Scripture must be determined entirely by what Scripture is, and the purpose for which God has caused it to be written."(174)
"The norms of grammatical and historical interpretation are not avoided. But interpretation is not an end in itself; reading the Bible is not fundamentally a comprehension exercise. Interpretation should serve only to lead us to an encounter with God as he actually presents himself to us in Scripture." (175)
VI. Summary
"He gives us Scripture as our word of life: the trustworthy, clear and sufficient means of knowing him and remaining in covenant relationship with him, in the power of the Holy Spirit, right up until the day we shall no longer need it, because then we shall see face to face." (179)
Notable Content
The Reformers view of the work of the Word and Spirit together was an argument directed in three directions at once: (93)
Against Roman Catholicism, it asserted that the Spirit required the church only as an instrument, not as the actual dynamic, by which people came to faith.
Negatively against the sixteenth-century Radical Reformation, it asserted that the Spirit regularly illuminated minds through the content of the written Word.
Positively, it served to demonstrate the faithfulness and consistency of God in revelation.
