Our basic starting point for talking about God’s Word as it is present in its inspired and written form in the Bible is the recognition that as creatures we exist and suffer the address of a speaking God (Deus loquens, Deus dicit). Insofar as we are God’s creatures we are addressed by God in His act of creation and receive our being from that same address (Genesis 1; John 1). Since we are being addressed by God already in our creation, the dogmatic question relating to Sacred Scripture ultimately will be “How are we being addressed by God?” and not “Are we being addressed by God?” To answer this question we must first examine the ontological structure of God as a speaker from all eternity and creation as His created speech in time.
The Godhead speaks from all eternity. Jesus Christ is the eternal Word of God (John 1). This is the truth with which any confessional Lutheran account of Sacred Scripture must begin, just as the Book of Concord and the Augustana begin with this affirmation in the ecumenical creeds.1 The Word of God is not something created but rather is eternal. In that God is eternal and unchanging (Nm 23:19; Mal 3:6; Heb 13:8), in all eternity He is never a speechless or inactive God (Deus mutus, Deus otiosus). From all eternity the Father speaks forth a linguistic image of Himself in the person of His Son (Jn 1:1–3; Heb 1:3; Col 1:15). Though the Father is the source of divinity (fons totius divinitas), He nevertheless knows and addresses Himself from all eternity in the person of His Son (Mt 11:27; Lk 10:22).
1. See Concordia Triglotta: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, German-Latin-English, trans. and ed. F. Bente, W. H. T. Dau, and The Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 31–35 (hereafter cited as Bente). Unaltered Augsburg Confession I (hereafter cited as CA; Bente, 42–43).
From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 1-2.