Hans Rookmaaker, looking back on his “dogmatic struggle,” describes the necessity of accepting the Bible as God’s word:
“I do not think it is possible that someone can come to know God and his Son through the Bible and then end up as a liberal. If one is confronted with the biblical truth, as I was in those days, then it is a question of accepting or rejecting it. The Bible is either true or not true: there is no alternative. Of course, nobody who is going to read the Bible in this way, even if he or she does not accept it, will deny that there are beautiful words in it, wisdom and insight, but such a person will also see in the end that this is not the issue. The Bible comes to us, and came to me, with the demand to accept the gospel as a joyful message, God as Father and hence also his Son as Savior. That is not to say that a person, such as I was at that time, pondering everything the Bible was telling me and trying to understand the biblical world picture…did not see any problems. On the contrary, I still find it rather striking that at that time I personally experienced a dogmatic struggle, similar to the struggle of the early church, and finally came to an insight that turned out to be called ‘orthodox biblical Protestant.'”[i]
[i] Gasque, Laurel. Art and the Christian Mind: The Life and Work of H.R. Rookmaaker (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2005), 56.
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