The Fundamentals on the Deity of Christ, Inspiration and Resurrection

Apologetics Doctrine Holy Spirit

Volume 2 of The Fundamentals sets out what the Bible claims for itself and what it teaches about God and Christ. Where Volume 1 answered the critics, Volume 2 makes the positive case. Its first half argues that the Bible is inspired by God, in its words and not only its ideas. Its second half defends the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, His bodily resurrection, and the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit. Among its writers are B. B. Warfield of Princeton, James Orr of Glasgow and R. A. Torrey, the editor who finished the series. You can read Volume 2 free in TheWay Library.

The inspiration of the Bible

The volume opens with James M. Gray, dean of the Moody Bible Institute, on The Inspiration of the Bible: Definition, Extent and Proof. Gray treats the Bible's history and authorship as settled, and asks the question that comes next: how far does its authority reach? His answer is that inspiration reaches to the words themselves.

L. W. Munhall's shorter essay, Inspiration, opens without any warm-up:

The Bible is inspired. It is therefore God's Word. This is fundamental to the Christian faith.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter II

Munhall goes through the theories of partial inspiration that were popular in his day and rejects them in favor of verbal inspiration. He admits that hard passages exist and borrows Bishop Ryle's answer to them:

Give me the plenary verbal theory with all its difficulties, rather than the doubt. I accept the difficilties, and humbly wait for their solution; but while I wait I am standing on a rock.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter II

The next four chapters give four lines of proof. William G. Moorehead argues from the moral glory of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. No human mind, he says, could have invented such a portrait:

That the moral glory of Jesus Christ as set forth in the four Gospels cannot be the product of the unaided human intellect, that only the Spirit of God is competent to execute this matchless portrait of the Son of Man.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter III

George S. Bishop writes on the testimony of the Scriptures to themselves. Arthur T. Pierson argues from the organic unity of the Bible: some forty writers over many centuries, in three languages, produced one book with one story. His summary is memorable:

The decalogue demands the Sermon on the Mount. Isaiah's prophecy makes necessary the narrative of the Evangelists. Daniel fits into the Revelation as bone fits socket.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter V

Arno C. Gaebelein closes the set with Fulfilled Prophecy a Potent Argument for the Bible, the case that only God can tell the future:

The Lord can declare the end from the beginning, and make known things that are not yet done.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter VI

Philip Mauro's Life in the Word, the longest essay in the volume, moves from argument to wonder. The Bible, he says, is not a dead record but a living word that gives life.

A side note: you will sometimes read that The Fundamentals taught "five fundamentals." That list came from the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1910, not from these books. Volume 2 does defend several items on that list, including the Bible's inspiration, the virgin birth and the resurrection, but it does so in its own way and at its own length. For more on the difference, see What Are The Fundamentals?

Is there a God?

Before turning to Christ, the volume asks the prior question. Thomas Whitelaw's Is There a God? lays out the answers people give:

The Atheist, for example, asserts that there is no God. The Agnostic professes that he cannot tell whether there is a God or not. The Materialist boasts that he does not need a God, that he can run the universe without one. The (Bible) Fool wishes there was no God. The Christian answers that he cannot do without a God.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter VIII

Robert E. Speer, the Presbyterian missions leader, follows with God in Christ the Only Revelation of the Fatherhood of God. It is not enough, he says, just to believe in a god. "Everything depends on what kind of a god it is in whom he believes." Only in Christ do we know God as Father.

The deity of Christ

B. B. Warfield's The Deity of Christ is short and searching. A writer of the day had said that belief in Christ's deity rests on His impression on the world rather than on Bible texts. Warfield answers that it rests on both. Scripture states it plainly, and the work of Christ in history and in the believer's heart confirms it. He ends with the believer's own experience:

The supreme proof to every Christian of the deity of his Lord is then his own inner experience of the transforming power of his Lord upon the heart and life.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter X

John Stock's The God-Man argues from the way Jesus spoke of Himself, as the Son of God, equal with the Father. It begins: "Jesus of Nazareth was not mere man." John L. Nuelsen's The Person and Work of Jesus Christ shows where the liberal attempt to keep a merely human Jesus had led even its own scholars, and concludes that modern man, like men of every age:

needs and wants exactly the Christ of the Church and the Gospels or no Christ at all.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter XIII

The virgin birth

James Orr wrote a full book on the virgin birth, and his chapter here, The Virgin Birth of Christ, condenses it. He describes the attack on the doctrine that had grown since the 1890s and says the saddest part was that it came from inside the church. He goes through the Old Testament promises, the Gospel accounts, the so-called silence of Mark, John and Paul, and the witness of the early church, and then explains why the doctrine matters:

Doctrinally, it must be repeated that the belief in the Virgin birth of Christ is of the highest value for the right apprehension of Christ's unique and sinless personality.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter XI

If Christ had been born like any other child of Adam, Orr argues, He would have shared Adam's guilt and needed redeeming Himself. Coming from above, He could be the Redeemer.

The bodily resurrection

R. A. Torrey's The Certainty and Importance of the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead is one of the best-known essays in the whole set. He begins by showing how much rests on it:

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the corner-stone of Christian doctrine.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter XIV

While the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the corner-stone of Christian doctrine, it is also the Gibraltar of Christian evidence, and the Waterloo of infidelity and rationalism.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter XIV

Torrey then lays out several independent lines of evidence: the Gospel accounts and their marks of eyewitness testimony, the early church's preaching of the resurrection, the change of the day of rest to the first day of the week, and the change in the disciples themselves. He closes with a story about a New York lawyer who studied the proof and was convinced, but found he was no nearer to faith:

I thought that the difficulty was with my head. I find that it is really with my heart.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter XIV

The Holy Spirit

Two chapters turn to the Holy Spirit. Torrey's The Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit argues from Scripture that the Spirit is a Person, not a force, and he shows why that is more than a fine point:

If we think of the Holy Spirit only as an impersonal power or influence, then our thought will constantly be, how can I get hold of and use the Holy Spirit; but if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a divine Person, infinitely wise, infinitely holy, infinitely tender, then our thought will constantly be, "How can the Holy Spirit get hold of and use me?"
The Fundamentals, Vol. 2, Chapter XV

W. J. Erdman's The Holy Spirit and the Sons of God follows with a study of the Spirit's work in making believers sons of God.

Two closing arguments

The volume ends with two older-style arguments for the truth of Christianity. Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul condenses an eighteenth-century treatise by Lord Lyttelton, an English statesman who had doubted Christianity as a young man. He argued that Paul was neither a deceiver nor self-deceived nor fooled by others, so his conversion must have been real. Whitelaw returns with Christianity No Fable, which tests the faith by its excellence and its fruits.

How to read Volume 2

Volume 2 is the doctrinal center of The Fundamentals. If you only have time for a few chapters, read Torrey on the resurrection, Warfield on the deity of Christ, and Orr on the virgin birth. Together they take less than an evening. The full list of chapters is in The Fundamentals Contents, and the next volume, on sin, grace and the spread of the gospel, is covered in The Fundamentals on Sin, Salvation and Missions.

Volume 2 is free to read in TheWay Library, and more of R. A. Torrey's work is on his author page.