As always happens, you’ll want to listen to this as I don’t stick to the following as a “script.”
Gooooood Saturday to you. Today’s cup of coffee together is going to look at the doctrine of inspiration. What does it mean that the Bible is “inspired?” And why should I care?
Whether you know it or not, this is a big deal to you, in part because it affects a lot of other things you believe, including and especially your “outlook toward God and the Bible.”[1]
And there’s one other good reason we’ll look at this today – I’ve got to get a paper written that includes this topic. So today’s going to be summarizing, in a non-techie way, a chapter from a Matthew Barrett’s book, God’s Word Alone: The Authority of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016) called, God Speaks with Authority: The Inspiration of Scripture. So let’s give credit where credit’s due (I really like the book), and you’ll find links in the show notes at forthehope.org.
The challenge is what you’ve heard me say before on this program – there is a critical dividing line here. We can evaluate Scripture through the lens of culture, scrutinizing and judging it via our enlightened reason (224). Or we can evaluate ourselves in light of Scripture, and if we run into something we don’t understand or don’t like, we assume it’s right and we’re wrong, or maybe we don’t understand it. But we’re still under it, not over it. So what you’ve heard me argue is what Barrett does – that we must allow Scripture to speak for itself. You might call this “faith seeking understanding.”
What is inspiration?
Let’s start with two verses. This won’t be all the verses; we’ll just have to be representative here.
2 Timothy 3:16-17, CSB
16 All Scripture is inspired by God,ba and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. [2]
2 Peter 1:20-21, CSB
20 Above all, you know this: No prophecy of Scripture comes from the prophet’s own interpretation, 21 because no prophecy ever came by the will of man; instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. [3]
Over time there have been many theories, and I want to give these to you in a visual way. Imagine at one end of a continuum is humankind, and at the other end is God. Roughly speaking, the following six theories fall on that continuum from “all man” to “all God.” Let’s start on the “all man” end.
NOTE TO READERS: This is where the podcast has the detail that I am not writing out here.
Intuition theory – Bible writers have no more (or less) religious instinct than any other philosophers
Illumination theory – Goes further; the Holy Spirit increased these humans’ insights
Encounter theory – the Bible is still just a human book, but there is some uniqueness in Christianity in that the Spirit uses it “as a means of revelation within the community of God”
Dynamic theory –“ God left a unique, one-of-a-kind impression” on the human authors
Verbal plenary inspiration theory – dual authorship – humans wrote what they intended, but that was also simultaneously superintended by the Holy Spirit so that their exact words and phrases are also God’s.
Dictation theory – the humans worked mechanically like robots, God wrote it all.
For the sake of time, what did we read in our Scripture verses?
It’s not human excitement, like “that song inspires me.” This doesn’t mean that we – or the Biblical writers – weren’t inspired like that sometimes, but that’s not what it means. This isn’t just having a religious experience.
Problem: Did human writers write something and then just come along and adopt it? That would be counter to the Bible’s claim of itself that God was present and participatory.
The truth is that there is some part of this that is a mystery (to me, like the Trinity – we can say “one essence, three persons” and even identify that reality in the Bible, but we don’t have any human category for it because it’s not, frankly, human).
Here are a couple definitions.
Theologian John Frame calls it a “divine act creating an identity between a divine word and a human word.” I like that. (228)
The author Matthew Barrett explains it this way (I’ll give you his exact quote):
The inspiration of Scripture refers to that act whereby the Holy Spirit came upon the authors of Scripture, causing them to write exactly what God intended, while simultaneously preserving each author’s writing style and personality. This supernatural work of the Holy Spirit upon the human authors means that the author’s words are God’s words and therefore are reliable, trustworthy, and authoritative. (229)
Here's the key: it’s dual authorship. There is both a human author and God as divine author.
This rules out some of those theories that it’s just human and a little Jesus sprinkled on top.
But here’s a biggie: It also rules out the idea that it’s all about the Holy Spirit moving us to interpret it after a bunch a humans wrote it.
Sound familiar?
Here’s an example of why this would be problematic. We know God’s not the author of evil, but he sometimes uses it to his own ends, right? But the evil is still evil.
So if the Bible is human, but God just happens to use it to his own ends after the fact, you are left with the possibility of it – the Bible -- being mistaken, or worse, evil.
But Scripture doesn’t make that claim for itself. As Barrett puts it, “Scripture presents Christianity in the exact opposite way, namely, as a revealed religion, one that comes from God to man, not vice versa.”
So what role does the human play?
Another old preacher and theologian BB Warfield points out a key distinction: the role of the human author, then, is that of instrument…they’re receptively active. But they’re not creatively active in the sense of originating the message. They receive revelation; they’re not the creators of it.
By way of analogy, think about Jesus’ incarnation: the incarnation of our Lord proves that the intrusion of the divine does not compromise the human, nor does the adoption of that which is human necessarily profane the divine. (232)
God uses human language, why? Because it’s us he wants to reach, what else would he use? And you’ve heard this argument from me even recently – if God can create and sustain the cosmos, it’s no big deal for him to cause a virgin birth, a resurrection, or use an imperfect human to communicate divine truth in a pure, accurate, and undefiled way.
So, the dictation theory? The writers are robots? One, obviously not true since we see real human differences in the text – there are writers like Luke who use sophisticated Greek and others like John who do not.
Remember: there are some places in the Bible where God said “write this down exactly” like giving Moses the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai.
But it’s mistake to overemphasize either the human contribution or the divine involvement that would make the humans robots.
So those four-dollar theology words, verbal plenary inspiration? That just means that there’s a verbal component – meaning not just ideas, but the very words themselves. And plenary means “all” like a plenary session at a conference is one room with all the conference attendees in it.
So all of the Bible is God’s words.
So a few points so far:
It’s God’s words, but he used human authors, so their personality comes through, too.
“Redemptive history is a unified story of how the triune God has revealed himself through covenantal acts, persons, and words—words not merely spoken but intentionally written down. God has condescended to our level to manifest his divine character and saving will to his people.” (236)
Something like a writer using poor grammar doesn’t mean the Bible is in err…it demonstrates how far God will go to accommodate himself to the common language of the people. (236)
As argued before, why couldn’t a sovereign God use human authors yet guarantee his Word remain flawless? That’s a rhetorical question, friends.
So now I’m going to sum up half a chapter in a few lines:
God’s purpose was to enter into and maintain his covenantal relationship with his chosen people. (239)
Jesus believed even the Old Testament was inspired by God. He attributed OT writings to the Holy Spirit, referred to those writings as Scripture, used “Scripture” and “God” interchangeably, believed it was fulfilled because God was the author, and he submitted himself to the authority of it, too.
And here’s a fun fact: When Jesus’ enemies questioned him, what did they get in his business about? Loyalty to the Sabbath? Yup. Loyalty to the temple? Yup. Loyalty to the Torah, the first books of the Bible, inviolable by any “true” Jew? Nope. Never.
The NT authors also believed the OT was inspired by God. Probably a big “duh” there since they were obviously Jesus followers.
So Jesus believed his own teaching was from God, and the NT authors believed their own writings were inspired and authoritative, not seeing the revelation they’d received as somehow subordinate to the OT, but was actually equal in authority and, because the new covenant superseded the old (like we’ll be reading about in Hebrews in the coming days), there’s a sense in which the apostles could speak with even greater authority.” (261)
So what happens, you ask, if someone rejects the inspiration of the Bible?
You tell me.
Inspiration is the Bible’s own testimony concerning itself. (261)
So if we reject inspiration, what are we doing to the authority of Christ and the apostles when they themselves taught this doctrine?
Yup.
Pay attention here.
Some people are “tempted to think they can retain biblical authority without affirming verbal, plenary inspiration.” Remember, that means every word. They may claim that Jesus is the authority or the church is the authority and arbiter or their own reason or experience.
But what did God intend?
His authority is preserved and communicated to us how? How do we know authoritatively who Jesus was or what he said or didn’t say?
You can see how we end up making Jesus into our own image.
And right now, in your church, you are facing someone – though hopefully not in your pulpit – who wants to say the gospel is truncated, that all those people got it wrong but now we’ve got it right, that that’s just your interpretation, or…
I pray that we all will, by the power of the Spirit, remember that sometimes the most loving thing we can do, with gentleness and respect, is to engage them and ask a question:
If something you say contradicts the Bible, which one should I believe?
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
[1] Matthew Barrett, God’s Word Alone: The Authority of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 224, Kindle.
[2] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 2 Ti 3:16–17.
[3] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 2 Pe 1:20–21.