The inner witness of the Spirit

Since I referred a few times to the inner witness of the Spirit in my latest reply to Prejean, it might be worthwhile to illustrate what I mean. Hodge’s formulation is interesting because it’s a variant of what nowadays we call the argument from religious experience, while Turretin’s formulation addresses the charge of vicious circularity.

“Yet the highest and the most influential faith in the truth and authority of the Scriptures is the direct work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.”

“The Scriptures to the unregenerate man are like light to the blind. They may be felt as the rays of the sun are felt by the blind, but they cannot be fully seen. The Holy Spirit opens the blinded eyes and gives due sensibility to the diseased heart; and thus assurance comes with the evidence of the spiritual experience.”

“When first regenerated, he begins to set the Scriptures to the test of experience; and the more he advances, the more he proves them true, and the more he discovers their limitless breadth and fullness, and their evidently designed adaptation to all human wants under all possible conditions,” A. A. Hodge, The Confession of Faith (Banner of Truth 1983), 36-37.

“Since the circle (according to philosophers) is a sophistical argument (by which the same thing is proved by itself) and is occupied about the same kind of cause in a circuit coming back without end into itself, the circle cannot be charged upon us when we prove the Scriptures by the Spirit, and in turn the Spirit from the Scriptures. For here the question is diverse and the means or kind of cause is different.”

“We prove the Scriptures by the Spirit as the efficient cause by which we believe. But we prove the Spirit from the Scriptures as the object and argument on account of which we believe. In the first, the answer is to the question, ‘Whence or by what power do you believe the Scriptures to be inspired?’ (viz., by the Spirit).”

“But in the second, the answer is to the question, ‘Why or on account of what do you believe that the Spirit in you is the Holy Spirit?’ (viz., on account of the marks of the Holy Spirit which are n the Scriptures).”

“But the papists (who charge the circle upon us) evidently run into it themselves in this question, when they prove the Scriptures by the church and the church by the Scriptures; for this is done by the same means and by the same kind of cause. If we ask why or on account of what they believe the Scriptures to be divine, they answer because the church says so.”

“If we ask again, why they believe the church, they reply because the Scriptures ascribe infallibility to her when they call her the pillar and ground of the truth. If we press upon them whence they know this testimony of Scripture to be credible (autopiston), they add because the church assures us of it. Thus they are rolled back again to the commencement of the dispute and go on to infinity, never stopping in any first credible thing.”

“Nor is the question here diverse. In both instances, the question concerns the reason and argument on account of which I believe; not the faculty or principle by which I believe,” F. Turretin, Institutes (P&R 1992), 1:92-93.