Holy Scripture (4)

The other approach that Hill notes is one that denies the infallibility of the Bible, and subjects it to textual criticism (Hill, 261-263). What Hill calls the denial of infallibility, he illustrates with examples which may be classified as denials of authority and examples of supposed errors.

Against such a background the emphasis of the Second London Confession may be seen the best. We may isolate one particular group that the writers of the Confession may have had in mind when they affirmed the "Scripture is the only sufficient, certain,and infallible rule of all saving Knowledge, Faith, and Obedience." This group is most likely the Quakers. This is not an arbitrary identification. It s based on an understanding of the events of mid-17th century English church history. Though we will not be able to spell out the full scope of their often stormy relationship (Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, demonstrates how several Baptist confessions were directed specifically at the Quakers), we can discuss some of the doctrinal and practical points at which Baptists and Quakers were engaged in conflict.

Holy Scripture (3)

It must be remembered that the Baptists wrote their confession nearly thirty years after the Westminster Confession was written. Much had happened in England in the intervening years. The Baptists faced doctrinal problems not faced in the mid-1640s. This was especially true concerning the Scriptures. The Baptist emphasis on the sufficiency and infallibility of Scripture was probably written to refute erros about the nature of Scripture circulating in mid-17th century England.

Christopher Hill has summarized the attitude toward the Scriptures by radical groups in England in terms of two main approaches. One approach was to "use its stories as myths to which each could give his own sense, a sense that need not consider the original meaning of the text." (Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1975), 261). Such a use was illustrated in the writings of the Quaker apologist Robert Barclay. Writing in 1675, Barclay described the work of the Scriptures, their service to us, as a mirror in which we see the experiences of the saints of old. Through this we are strengthened and confirmed and given the hope of obtaining the same end. Scripture is something to be fulfilled in us. As Scripture is fulfilled in us, we "discern the stamp of God's spirit and ways upon them." (Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity being an Explanation and Vindication of the Principles and Doctrines of the people called Quakers (Philadelphia: Friends Book Store, n.d.), 88).