The Canon: A Protestant Account, pt. 2

In the first post, Forsyth looked at the intention of Christ in “rounding off” his revelation with his election of the apostles. Below I have provided three highly illuminating passages wherein Forsyth further explains his understanding of this apostolic primacy and why it alone is authoritative for the Church. Note especially the last passage.

“As we have God by the miracle of Christ, so we have Christ by the miracle of the apostolic inspiration. (Mat. xi. 27, xvi. 17). If the manifested deed is miraculous, so is the inspired. The apostles’ understanding of the cross is miraculous, like the cross itself. It is there by the direct and specific action of the same Spirit as that by which Christ offered himself to God, though the action took another form. So also the form of our illumination through the apostles is different from theirs by the very fact that they had no apostles to mediate the truth to them. As Christ was the direct mediator of the work itself, having himself no Saviour, so the apostles are the direct mediators of the central truth about it, having therein no human revealers.” (The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. 173)

“As to the authority of the Bible, especially on a matter like the Godhead of Christ, we may note this. The mere historical aspect of the Bible is a matter of learned inquiry. Its evidence for a mere historical fact must stand at what it is historically worth. The difficulty only begins with facts which are more than merely historical, whose value lies not in their occurrence, but in their nature, meaning, and effect. It is not the crucifixion that matters but the cross. So it is not reanimation but resurrection. And here the authority of the Bible speaks not to the critical faculty that handles evidence but to the soul that makes response. The Bible witness of salvation in Christ is felt immediately to have authority by every soul pining for redemption. It is not so much food for the rationally healthy, but it is medicine for the sick, and life for the dead.” (p. 178)

“The authority in the Bible is more than the authority of the Bible; and it is the historic and present Christ as Saviour. The Gospel and not the book is the true region of inspiration or infallibility — the discovery of the one Gospel in Christ and His cross. That is the sphere of inspiration. That is where inspiration is infallible. …The true region of Bible authority is therefore saving certainty in man’s central and final part — his conscience before God. …It is by the Bible that Christ chiefly works on history. All the Church’s preaching and work is based on it, on what we only know through it. As no man could succeed the apostles in their unique position and work, but their book became their true successor, so no book can replace this. The apostles are gone but the book remains, to prolong their supernatural vision, and exercise their authority in the Church. In so far as the Church prolongs the manifestation and is Christ’s body, the Bible prolongs the inspiration and is Christ’s word. The writers were and are the only authentic interpreters of Christ. They said so, under the immediate shadow of Christ’s action on them, whether his historic or his heavenly action. They never contemplate being superseded on the great witness till Christ came. If they are wrong in that, where are they right? And where are we to turn? To a critical construction of what they said — they including the evangelists? But does that not make the critics, the constructors, to be the true Apostolate? …In [the Bible's] substance it is part of the revelation; its penumbra; and it is as authoritative in its way as the manifestation whose vibration it is. It is of eternal moment to the soul whether it take or leave the Christ that this book as a whole preaches to the world.” (pp. 179-181)