Toplady on the Unerring Word

There is great debate in parts of the Evangelical world at present over biblical authority,
and especially over biblical inerrancy. This was, of course, a matter
of controversy several decades ago in the so-called “Battle for the
Bible.”  One might be forgiven for thinking, therefore, that the
doctrine of the Bible’s utter trustworthiness had been adequately
defined and defended already. Yet scholars unhappy at the traditional
teaching, such as Peter Enns with his recent controversial book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament and another book by Andrew McGowan called The Divine Spiration of Scripture: Challenging Evangelical Perspectives have brought the subject back onto the agenda.

I
was thinking about this recently in terms of how our evangelical
forebears might see it. I know some on this blog like to talk about “the
top men”, but I am more interested in Toplady, whose birthday it was
yesterday. Augustus Montague Toplady
(1740-1778), one of my heroes, held to the traditional view of God’s
word. In his day, the word ‘unerring’ was a far more common term than
‘inerrancy’ or ‘inerrant’ which, while not entirely unknown from as
early as the 1650s, only seem to have entered common theological use
among Protestants in the nineteenth century. Toplady often spoke warmly
of “God’s unerring oracles”, asserting plainly that “the Bible is the
unerring word of God.”  For him it was the rock of faith, “an authority
which cannot err,” and “that unerring standard” by which all doctrines
and practices were to be judged.

Moreover, Toplady did not
downplay or ignore the human aspect of the word, as advocates of
inerrancy are often accused of doing.  Instead, he recognized that God
worked through the human writers of scripture. At one point he speaks
of, “The Holy Spirit, making the apostle’s pen the channel of unerring
inspiration,” adding that the epistles and the Gospels were “written
under the unerring influence of the same Holy Spirit.” He also used the
word “infallible”, which is supposedly more common in British
Evangelical circles.

Where did Toplady learn this allegedly
rationalistic and supposedly much later doctrine? He was certainly not
the only Reformed Evangelical Anglican of the eighteenth century to hold
to such a view of the Bible. George Whitefield, who everybody loves, speaks in one of his
sermons of “the unerring rule of God’s most holy word.”  James Hervey in
his ‘Contemplation on the Starry Heavens’ speaks of the Word of God as
‘this unerring directory,’ and of its ‘infallible guidance.’  John
Newton writes in his letters of ‘the unerring word of God’ e.g. Letters
20 and 32 in Letters, Sermons, and a Review of Ecclesiastical History (1780).

While researching Toplady for my book The True Profession of the Gospel: Augustus Toplady and Reclaiming our Reformed Foundations, I discovered another possible source of his view on the Bible.  It turns out that some editions of the Book of Common Prayer,
including those published in Dublin in 1750, 1753, and 1757 (while
Toplady was a student at Trinity College), spoke of God’s “unerring
word” in their version of the Psalms, e.g. at Psalm 119:81, 114, and
144:

My Soul with long Expectance faints,
To see thy saving Grace;
Yet still on thy unerring Word
My confidence I place.

My hiding Place, my Refuge Tower,
And Shield art thou, O Lord;
I firmly anchor all my Hopes
On thy unerring Word.

Eternal and unerring Rules
Thy Testimonies give:
Teach me the Wisdom, that will make
My Soul for ever live.

Did
young Augustus Toplady pick up this phrase, and this confidence in the
unerring word of God, from singing Psalms in church on a Sunday?

Since
we are an alliance of confessing evangelicals, we should also turn to
the confessions. One of the earliest Reformed confessions is of course The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion,
the doctrinal basis of the Church of England. The Articles themselves
indicate the confidence we can have in God’s trustworthy word. Article
21, for example, reminds us of the non-inerrant nature of church
authorities:

General Councils may not be gathered together
without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered
together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not
governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometimes
have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things
ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor
authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy
Scripture.

The last line of the Article is most interesting
here, as it appears to simply assume that alongside erring and errant
General Councils, the holy Scripture itself is alone to be considered as
finally trustworthy.  Naturally this is because it is “God’s word
written” as Article 20 so straightforwardly puts it, and yet the
implication is that the word itself is, by contrast to human authority,
without error and cannot lead us astray. This view is also shared by the
Homilies of the Church of England; see for example Homily 22 which
describes the Bible as “his infallible word.”

So Toplady may have
learned from other Evangelicals, from Anglican tradition and Anglican
formularies to speak of God’s word as “unerring.”  But ultimately, we
must acknowledge that this is in line with the Bible’s own presentation
of itself. “Every word of God is flawless,” says Proverbs 30:5, “he is a
shield to those who trust in him”.  The flawless, tested, genuine,
refined word of God is utterly trustworthy. What Scripture says, God
says (as Augustine famously put it), and when we believe and trust in
the word, God himself will be our shield, and vindicate that trust.

This
no doubt was why, when he wrote in his Journal that he “burnt with
zeal, for the glory of God, and for the spiritual welfare of my flock,”
Toplady declared, “I wished to spend and be spent in the ministry of the
word, and had some gracious assurances from on high that God would make
use of me to diffuse his gospel, and call in some of his chosen that
are yet unconverted.”

Many seem to have dropped this vital
adjective, “unerring,” in recent years, perhaps embarrassed by
allegations of ‘fundamentalism’ or obscurantism in the debates over
inerrancy. Have we also lost confidence in the dependability of the word
of God to bring spiritual life and growth to God’s people? May we
recover once again the joy and delight of the writer of Proverbs 30, the
Reformers of the Church of England, and the Evangelicals of the
Eighteenth Century in the unerring word of our unerring God.