Worthy of God

Grotius “proved” the truth of the Bible by saying that “in their stories as well as in the rules they give, nothing is taught that is unworthy of God, nothing that is not conducive to the best conduct of life, whereas poets, philosophers and all those who claim to instruct others teach many things that are unworthy of God, absurd, and at variance with good morals.”

Two comments: One, Grotius’s argument runs against the thrust of much patristic interpretation of Scripture, which appeals to allegory precisely at those points where the Bible makes claims that, in their opinion, are unworthy of God if taken literally. Second, Grotius’s argument is incipiently rationalistic (as is the patristic argument). How, after all, can Grotius conclude that the Bible’s depiction of God is “worthy of God” unless he knows what kind of God God is from some other source. To say “The Bible is worthy (or unworthy) of God” is implicitly to measure the Bible by a standard outside the Bible.