DR. RAMM SETS OFF THE PATTERN of authority from "the abbreviated Protestant principle." The latter is expressed, he says, in Chillingworth’s saying, "The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants.” (p. 29) But Calvin "found his answer to the problem of religious authority in the internal or secret witness of the Holy Spirit" (p. 29). "In the matter of religious authority the Spirit and the Word are insolubly conjoined” (p. 29).
By thus speaking of a pattern rather than of "a single principle of authority” (p. 46) we may avoid, Ramm says, the charge of obscurantism. Reason is then given its rightful place. We then ask men to think of the claim that "God may have spoken" as a "genuine option" (p. 16). “Augustine did not desert reason, but he was pushed on by reason to see the true grounds of religious authority. His stand on authority was not a call for a sacrifice of his intellect; to the contrary, it was the demand of his intellect” (p.20). Similarly Calvin employed "strong rational arguments for the divinity of the Scriptures" (p. 33). "Reason lays bare the grounds of authority" (p. 44).
Again, with the idea of the pattern of authority we do not make the Scriptures speak "as an authority in areas they did not intend to speak” (39). When therefore we ask men to submit to this pattern of authority, we seek no "infringement on the principle of freedom or personal liberty” (42). We do not deny to men "the right to test the truthfulness of various options" (42). We make no appeal to "sheer" authority (19). We only ask men to submit to "a Person—a Person absolutely reliable, absolutely true, and absolutely love" (26). And surely "All genuine scholarship circumscribes itself by the authority of truth" (42) .
Here is authority "which combines the imperial majesty of God, the sovereign right of truth, and the dignity of man" (62).
Ramm speaks of the "duality of the Word and Spirit" which "must always be maintained, for it is in this duality that the Protestant and Christian principle of authority exists" (30). In this connection he refers with approval to Calvin, and to the Westminster, the Belgic and other Confessions. “Authority, and the personal or subjective reception of it, must not be confused, as they are in much of the literature of religious authority" (40). He refers with approval to Professor John Murray. In short, his aim is to advocate the historic Christian view of authority. According to this view the Scriptures are "antecedently and objectively” authoritative. "In Calvin’s view," says Warfield, "therefore the Scriptures are a documentation of God's special revelation of Himself unto Salvation" (Calvin and Calvinism, p. 67) .
But to this objective revelation, documented in Scripture," there must be added a "subjective illumination wrought by the Holy Spirit" in the hearts of men if they are to receive the revelation (Idem p. 121).
There are therefore, according to Calvin as Warfield expounds him, two operations of the Holy Spirit. One of these relates to the work of prophets and apostles, through whom the “objective revelation" was to be brought to men. The other relates to those among the mass of sinful men, utterly powerless and unwilling of themselves to appropriate to themselves the objective revelation of grace in Christ presented in Scriptures, that they might have saving faith, true faith, sound faith. Those ‘whom God intends to unite in a more close and familiar contact with himself,' 'those to whom he determines to make his instructions effectual’ the Spirit enables to accept the "objective revelation" given in Scripture (Warfield, p. 75. His quotations are from Calvin.)
Thus through the testimony of the Spirit "the Scriptures are accredited to us as the revelation of God." Without this testimony the Scriptures "lie before us inert and without effect on our minds, while with it they become not merely the power of God unto salvation, but also the vitalizing source of all our knowledge of God" (Idem p. 115).
Warfield says that Calvin's “doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit is the keystone of his doctrine of the knowledge of God" (p. 113). How important, then, to distinguish this doctrine carefully from the “spurious revival" of this doctrine as it emanates from Schleiermacher (p. 124). For "sentences may be quoted from his writings which, when removed out of the context of his system of thought, almost give expression to it" (124). Unfortunately Ramm quotes such sentences, not, to be sure, from Schleiermacher, but from such men as Herbert H. Farmer (Cf. The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. I, and The Westminster Confession of Faith after 300 Years), John Newton Thomas (Theology Today, Vol. 3, pp. 159 ff.), and G. W. Bromiley (Cf. Evangelical Quarterly, Vol. 19, pp. 127ff.), and others, for whom no less than for Schleiermacher revelation is not complete in any objective form until men have accepted it.
Why should those who, like Ramm, hold to the view of the testimony of the Holy Spirit similar to that of Calvin, seek to avoid the charge of obscurantism from the followers of Schleiermacher, for whom the Holy Spirit and His work result from the power of development which resides in human nature itself? (Cf. The Christian Faith, p. 63). From the point of view of the followers of Schleiermacher, Ritschl, or Barth, there will always be "infringement on the principle of freedom or personal liberty,” so long as one holds to an infallibly inspired Bible. The “sovereignty of Christology" as they hold it demands the rejection of the views on the principle of authority as held by the Reformers.