성경의 신적 확실성에 대한 베자의 이해

Abstract

The skepticism in the 17th century gave birth to doubts about the authority of the Bible which was the foundation of the Reformation. Thus, the divine authority of the Bible as the Word of God became the subject matter for discussion in the 17th century. How to prove the divine authority of the Bible was a main theme of Beza’s epistemology and, at the same time, a litmus test to determine the continuity and discontinuity between Calvin and his later orthodox followers. In this paper, I will explore the question of the continuity and discontinuity between Calvin and those orthodox theologians who owed debts to him, centering on Beza’s argument for biblical divine authority. To solve this question, I firstly looked into the French Reformed Church’s “The French Confession(1559)” which originated from Calvin’s preliminary theological draft. “The French Confession(1559)” was a revision of Calvin’s first draft by Beza and his co-workers. Some scholars even claim that Beza was its main revisionist. Since “the Confession (1559)” is closely related to Calvin and Beza, it is appropriate to investigate it to judge the continuity and discontinuity between Calvin and Beza. Secondly, I examined how Beza demonstrated the divine authority of the Bible in his “A Little Book of Christian Questions and Responses(1570).” I have found out that in that book Beza defended the divine authority of the Bible by means of highlighting three points, that is, the authority of Scripture as a canon, its authority as a written Word, and the objective signs that support the divine authority of Scripture. I also pointed out that while Calvin elevated the divine authority of Scripture by emphasizing God’s personal, intimate relationship with the prophets as a secretary, in addition to that argument, Beza highlighted all the more Scripture’s divine nature and its authority as a canon. However, such additions on the part of Beza is not an evidence for the discontinuity between Calvin and Beza, rather a response of the Church to the contemporary context where reason and faith are drifting apart. I argue that Beza’s theological shift was an desperate attempt to demonstrate the divine authority in times when the authority of the Bible was being challenged and doubted. Therefore, I conclude that Beza maintained the authority of the Bible as much as Calvin did on the same theological ground and Beza has continuity with Calvin on this matter.