I am now approaching a difficult subject, and I should be sorry to speak
rashly. But at the same time, I must not speak with hesitation, for the
more I have studied the subject the more firmly am I brought to the
deliberate and fixed conviction that the whole book, including words as
well as thoughts, is to be received by the believer as the word of God.
Let me briefly state my reasons.
1. I can draw no other conclusion from the title given to it, viz. ‘The
word of God.’ When I find it especially mentioned as God’s _word_; when
I meet with such a passage as ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,’ I find it hard to
believe that the _words_ are not included in the act of inspiration, and
that the divine inspiration extends no farther than to the thoughts. If
the expression were ‘the truth of God,’ or ‘the will of God,’ I could
understand a reference to His mind without the necessity of applying
inspiration to the language; but I cannot exclude the idea of inspired
words from that book whose title is ‘the _word_ of God.’
2. I find certain quotations, the whole value of which entirely depends
on verbal accuracy. In Gal. iii. 16, St. Paul quotes from Gen. xii. 7,
and his whole argument turns on the distinction between the singular and
plural number in one word contained in the promise made to Abraham: ‘He
saith not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed,
which is Christ.’ So in Matt. xxii. 32, our Lord quotes the words spoken
to Moses in Exod. iii. 6, and rests his whole argument on the present
tense of the substantive verb: ‘I _am_ the God of Abraham, and the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the
living,’ proving by that present tense that Abraham was at that time an
existing person awaiting the resurrection. It may perhaps be said that
both these instances occur in direct divine communications; but we must
remember that we have to consider the inspiration of Moses who recorded
that communication, and surely the quotation proves that the historical
inspiration of the author might be trusted for verbal accuracy.
3. There are many passages in which the words are quoted quite
independently of the thoughts of the context. As an illustration, refer
to our Lord’s quotation of Isa. lvi. 7. The whole of that passage refers
simply to the admission of the sons of the stranger into the covenant.
The emphatic words of the prophecy are ‘for all people,’ and the one idea
of the context is the admission of all people to the covenant. But, in
unfolding this truth, the prophet was led to express the prophecy in the
words, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer;’ and this expression
our Lord extracts from the prophecy, and makes it the groundwork of His
stern rebuke when He cleared the temple.
4. Once more. It seems perfectly clear that the prophets in many cases
did not understand their own writings. We are sometimes told that we
must only understand the prophecies as the prophets themselves did. But
if we were to act on that rule, it must follow that in many cases we
could not understand them at all; for we know, in fact, that Daniel had
to pray for an understanding of the prophecy just conveyed through his
own lips, and we are distinctly taught by St. Peter that the prophets
inquired and searched diligently into the meaning of their own
prophecies. (1 Pet. i. 11.) ‘Searching what, or what manner of time the
Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified
beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.’
This also I have no doubt is the meaning of the expression, ‘No prophecy
is of any private interpretation’ (2 Pet. i. 20), ἰδίας ἐπιλύσεως οὐ
γίνεται, ‘Has not arisen out of private interpretation,’ and is not the
result of the writer’s own thoughts, ‘but holy men of God spake as they
were moved by the Holy Ghost.’ But, if this were the case, the whole
prophecy must depend on verbal accuracy. If they were employed to speak
words which had a certain deep, hidden meaning, unknown to themselves,
and intended by God to remain unknown until their meaning should be made
manifest by fulfilment at the coming of the Lord, surely we must admit
that it was the words and not the thoughts which God inspired. The
thoughts were actually withheld from the prophets, but they were moved to
utter words which required events then unknown to bring out their true
meaning.
5. But it may be said that this applies to the predictive portions of
Scripture only, and not to the historical. It possibly may, and the last
argument clearly does. But have we any thing to lead us to suppose that
there is one kind of inspiration for the predictive, and another for the
historical portions? Are they not all spoken of as one book? Are not
many of these verbal quotations included in the historical portions, as
_e.g._ the promise made to Abraham? Unless, therefore, it can be proved
to me that there is such a distinction drawn by divine authority, I feel
it my privilege to regard the whole as one, to receive the whole with
equal reverence, and to accept the whole, prediction, psalm, history,
facts, thoughts, and words, as the inspired Word of the living God.
But after some measure of careful study, I have been led to the
conviction that the question of verbal inspiration is not the one really
at issue. For no one believes that, if there be any inaccuracy, it took
place in the words only. It must have taken place in the thoughts, in
the matter, in the facts. If, _e.g._, there is a variation between St.
Matthew and St. Luke, no one supposes that they meant to convey the same
thoughts, but made a mistake in accidentally selecting different words.
The real point of the controversy is the infallible accuracy of the
matter. And this leads to my last question.
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