One of the great battles among twentieth-century Protestants has been the inspiration and authority of Scripture. However, debates regarding inspiration and authority had been engaged for many years prior. Even in the eighteenth century, prominent figures questioned the reliability of the biblical text as Enlightenment principles led some to question the miracles recorded in Scripture and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Even revered figures from the American founding era such as Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and Thomas Paine (1737–1809) questioned the inspiration and authority of Scripture, Paine much more openly than Jefferson.
Baptists were not immune to this development. In the late nineteenth century, the English Baptist Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) was forced to defend the Bible against the critiques of John Clifford (1836–1923). In the American context, some of the earliest proponents of higher criticism were Baptists. Figures such as Shirley Jackson Case (1872–1947) and Shailer Matthews (1863–1941), both of whom denied the inspiration and authority of Scripture, were Baptists. Both taught at the University of Chicago, which was founded by the American Baptist Education Society. In 1879, Crawford Howell Toy (1836–1919) resigned from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, having embraced higher criticism. By the 1970s, many faculty at Southern Seminary, the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, rejected the inspiration and authority of Scripture.
In 1980, L. Russ Bush and Tom J. Nettles published Baptists and the Bible to defend historic Baptist beliefs about the Bible. “Historically, Baptists have built their theology from a solid foundation,” they wrote. “Holy Scripture was taken to be God’s infallible revelation in words. What God said, Baptists have believed.” Bush and Nettles went on to affirm that Baptists throughout the centuries have been guided and governed by various confessions of faith and church covenants. Yet all the while, “Scripture has been the cornerstone, the common ground, the point of unity.”[1]
Bush and Nettles were right. Baptists have historically affirmed the inspiration, authority, and inerrancy of Scripture, though some prominent Baptist theologians and pastors have denied these doctrines in the past two centuries. In this essay, I focus on the defense of the inspiration and authority of Scripture in the writings of an early English General Baptist, John Murton (1585–c. 1626). Murton is well known for his defense of religious liberty, which I have addressed elsewhere. But his robust, clear defense of religious toleration rests on his defense of the doctrine of Scripture.
Murton’s Context
John Murton’s context was wholly unlike that of Baptists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who were living with the sweeping effects of the Enlightenment and biblical higher criticism. Such was not the case for Murton, writing nearly a century prior to the Enlightenment. He was not defending the inspiration of Scripture against those who rejected the doctrine in principle. Instead, Murton was defending individuals’ rights to dissent from the teachings of the Church of England when those teachings were at odds with Scripture.
In 1612, a Baptist congregation led by Thomas Helwys (c. 1575–c. 1615) returned to England from Holland. They had initially left England because of religious persecution but returned for the purpose of planting a Baptist church in Spitalfields and ministering to fellow Englishmen. Helwys was soon imprisoned for his Baptist beliefs and publications critiquing James I and the Church of England. Helwys died in prison. Murton eventually became the pastor of the Spitalfields congregation, though he too was imprisoned for his Baptist beliefs. In fact, some have speculated that Murton wrote some of his most well-known works from prison with milk as his ink. The writings were then copied and printed.[2]
Murton’s Defense
Murton’s most thorough treatment of the inspiration and authority of Scripture appears in A Most Humble Supplication (1621). Murton was writing during a time of great persecution for Baptists and other dissenters from the Church of England. For this reason, the primary focus of Most Humble Supplication is defending religious liberty for those who oppose the teachings of the Church of England when those teachings are at odds with Scripture. Murton does not appeal to the inherent rights of men as the primary basis for religious liberty. Instead, his defense of religious liberty focuses on the necessity of permitting Dissenters, such as the Baptists, to interpret Scripture by Scripture and under the power and authority of the Holy Spirit. Murton called these “the two witnesses,” which are essential to biblical interpretation and available to every believer—even simple people like the Baptists of his day.[3] Murton made matters plain when he argued that Scripture is the final arbiter of truth, “not any Church, Counsel, Prince, or Potentate; nor any mortal man whatsoever.”[4]
However, we must not conclude that Murton disregarded the Christian tradition altogether. He did not. This point is apparent throughout Murton’s published works as he often appealed to the Church Fathers to confirm his arguments from Scripture. Yet he denied that the Fathers, Church councils, or the well-educated of any age are infallible. Scripture alone is “the rule of faith” and the final authority in matters of doctrine and practice.[5] Murton believed this teaching to be the consistent application of the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura.
Protestants, like those in the Church of England, in contrast to “the Papists” (Roman Catholics), said they believed the principle of sola Scriptura. They even encouraged believers to read Scripture for themselves and to discern its teachings. They claimed that Scripture, not any Pope or “mortal man,” was the standard of our faith. Yet when Baptists dissented from the doctrine of the Church of England because they believed its teaching to be at odds with Scripture, they were persecuted. Murton argued that this sort of persecution by the Church of England undermined the sola Scriptura principle. [6]
Therefore, to lay the groundwork for his argument against religious persecution, Murton believed it was necessary to first defend the inspiration of Scripture, its perspicuity (clarity), and the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit in helping the believer understand Scripture. Murton gave twelve reasons for affirming the inspiration of Scripture. They are as follows:
- First, in regard of the majesty, wisdom, and Grace of them, from all other writings. For there is as great glory in these Scriptures, as in the making of this wonderful world, which may evidently be seen:
- Secondly, by their teachings, which excelleth all human teachings, leading us from Satan, from this world, and our selves; to God, in holiness, faith, love, fear, humility:
- Thirdly, the true events of them, or fulfilling of the Prophesies contained in them:
- Fourthly, the consent and agreement of all the parts of them; the like whereof cannot be shewed of so many several Writers since the world began:
- Fifthly, the admirable preservation thereof against time, and tyrants, all which could not extinguish them:
- Sixthly, the devil and his instruments rage, against those that practice the doctrines contained in them:
- Seventhly, the conversion of thousands to God, by the power of the doctrine of them:
- Eighthly, the vengeance of God upon such as have not obeyed them:
- Ninthly, the acknowledgement of them by the very professed adversaries thereof:
- Tenthly, the miracles from heaven confirming them:
- Eleventhly, the sight of a Saviour to man is only from them:
- And lastly, the simplicity of the Writers, and plainness of the writings. For God hath chosen the mean, contemptible and despised to publish the mysteries of his will.[7]
Regarding the perspicuity (or clarity) of Scripture and the illuminating work of the Spirit, Murton maintained that even though some parts of Scripture are difficult to understand, God has revealed Himself in an understandable way. Even the average believer, Murton argued, can interpret difficult passages by those that are plain (Scripture interpreting Scripture).[8] Furthermore, every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who inspired Scripture. And the Spirit aids even the simplest believer in understanding the Word. Murton put it this way: “that the Scriptures being the rule of Faith, perfect and absolute, and that the plainness of them is such, as that by the Spirit of God they may be easily of those who fear God . . . and that such are, most commonly, the poor and despised.”[9] Therefore, the Word of God, inspired by the Spirit of God, though not always easy to understand, can be understood by the aid of passages that are plain and through the illuminating work of the Spirit.[10]
Conclusion
In contrast to some post-Enlightenment figures who embraced higher criticism, John Murton wholly affirmed the inspiration and authority of the Bible. He believed this teaching to be the consistent teaching of the Church throughout history, despite Roman Catholicism’s deviation and some Protestants’ inconsistent practice of religious persecution. It is striking to find such a thorough treatment of the doctrine in an early seventeenth-century Baptist.
But Murton’s affirmation of these doctrines was not solely because he lived before the rise of higher criticism. As Bush and Nettles point out in Baptists and the Bible, many Baptists after the rise of higher criticism affirmed the inspiration and authority of the Bible (as well as inerrancy) because the Bible itself taught these doctrines. An interesting line of thought in Murton’s writings, however, is that the inspiration and authority of Scripture, alongside the illumination of the Spirit, requires the possibility of religious dissent.
[1] L. Russ Bush and Tom J. Nettles, Baptists and the Bible: Baptists’ Views of the Inspiration and Inerrancy: Historical Roots and Present Controversies (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 18.
[2] Roger Williams seemed to believe this was the case as he referenced it just a couple of decades later in his Bloudy Tenent. Williams wrote: “The Author of these Arguments (against persecution) (as I have been informed) being committed by some then in power, close prisoner to Newgate, for the witnesse of some truths of Jesus, and having not use of Pen and Inke, wrote these Arguments in Milke, in sheets of Paper, brought to him by the Woman his Keeper, from a friend in London, as the stopples of his Milk bottle. In such Paper written with Milk nothing will appeare, but the way of reading it by fire being knowne to this friend who received the Papers, he transcribed and kept together the Papers, although the Author himself could not correct, nor view what himself had written.” Williams goes on to add a bit of rhetorical flourish about how such great things were written in milk. See Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent (1644), 61–62.
[3] Murton, A Most Humble Supplication of Many the Kings Majesties Loyal Subjects (1621), 8.
[4] Murton, Most Humble Supplication, 5. For all quotations from Murton, I have updated most of the spelling except for occasions where the original is clear to modern readers. I have also retained capital letters.
[5] Murton, Most Humble Supplication, 5.
[6] Murton, Most Humble Supplication, 7, 8. Some modern readers might not be thoroughly convinced by Murton’s line of argumentation here. However, this sort of argument can also be found in Helwys and later defenders of religious liberty. The broad point is that Scripture instructs believers to search Scripture for themselves. Whereas Roman Catholics had not given people the Bible in their own language, Protestants had attempted to translate and distribute the Bible for people to read freely. Yet Murton and others argued that even though they had been permitted to read the Bible they were not permitted to interpret the Bible. For that, they were wholly dependent upon the authoritative teaching of the Church of England even when they believed the Church’s teaching to be at odds with the Bible. Murton surmised that this undermined the sola Scriptura principle, creating a sort of Protestant magisterium.
[7] Murton, Most Humble Supplication, 5, 6.
[8] Murton, Most Humble Supplication, 8.
[9] Murton, Most Humble Supplication, 12.
[10] Bush and Nettles summarize Murton’s beliefs this way: “Murton’s view of Scripture is simple. The words of the Bible are the words of God set down by the Spirit. They are perfect and absolute in truth because they are thus inspired. Scripture is our sole authority in all matters of faith, conduct, worship, and doctrine because Scripture is incontrovertibly true. A sufficient number of external factors serve to verity the inspiration of Scripture. Finally, Scripture serves as Its own interpreter because of its consistency. Scripture may be understood by believers because the Spirit opens their minds to its clarity” (Bush and Nettles, Baptists and the Bible, 34).
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