IT would be difficult to invent methods of showing profound reverence for the text of Scripture as the very Word of God, which will not be found to be characteristic of the writers of the New Testament in dealing with the Old. Among the rich variety of the indications of their estimate of the written words of the Old Testament as direct utterances of Jehovah, there are in particular two classes of passages, each of which, when taken separately, throws into the clearest light their habitual appeal to the Old Testament text as to God Himself speaking, while, together, they make an irresistible impression of the absolute identification by their writers of the Scriptures in their hands with the living voice of God. In one of these classes of passages the Scriptures are spoken of as if they were God; in the other, God is spoken of as if He were the Scriptures: in the two together, God and the Scriptures are brought into such conjunction as to show that in point of directness of authority no distinction was made between them.

Examples of the first class of passages are such as these: Gal. iii. 8, “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be blessed” (Gen. xii. 1-3); Rom. ix. 17, “The Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up” (Ex. ix. 16). It was not, however, the Scripture (which did not exist at the time) that, foreseeing God’s purposes of grace in the future, spoke these precious words to Abraham, but God Himself in His own person: it was not the not yet existent Scripture that made this announcement to Pharaoh, but God Himself through the mouth of His prophet Moses. These acts could be attributed to “Scripture” only as the result of such a habitual identification, in the mind of the writer, of the text of Scripture with God as speaking, that it became natural to use the term “Scripture says,” when what was really intended was “God, as recorded in Scripture, said.”

read the rest Warfield – “It Says:” “Scripture Says:” “God Says”.

See more material available online at monergism.com

I often hear Warfield portrayed as a deductive rationalist who starts with “Bible = Word of God” as premise and unfolds implications. That is a crazy way to think of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield’s studies in the Scripture. He went to the sources and studied what the Bible actually taught about the Bible.

I’m willing to see him answered. But so far I only see caricatures. “Young” Evangelicals do to Warfield what alleged “conservatives” do to N. T. Wright or Peter Leithart.