I. Definition of Inspiration.
Inspiration is that influence of the Spirit of God upon the minds of the
Scripture writers which made their writings the record of a progressive
divine revelation, sufficient, when taken together and interpreted by the
same Spirit who inspired them, to lead every honest inquirer to Christ and
to salvation.
Notice the significance of each part of this definition: 1.
Inspiration is an influence of the Spirit of God. It is not a
merely naturalistic phenomenon or psychological vagary, but is
rather the effect of the inworking of the personal divine Spirit.
2. Yet inspiration is an influence upon the mind, and not upon the
body. God secures his end by awakening man’s rational powers, and
not by an external or mechanical communication. 3. The writings of
inspired men are the record of a revelation. They are not
themselves the revelation. 4. The revelation and the record are
both progressive. Neither one is complete at the beginning. 5. The
Scripture writings must be taken together. Each part must be
viewed in connection with what precedes and with what follows. 6.
The same Holy Spirit who made the original revelations must
interpret to us the record of them, if we are to come to the
knowledge of the truth. 7. So used and so interpreted, these
writings are sufficient, both in quantity and in quality, for
their religious purpose. 8. That purpose is, not to furnish us
with a model history or with the facts of science, but to lead us
to Christ and to salvation.
(_a_) Inspiration is therefore to be defined, not by its method, but by
its result. It is a general term including all those kinds and degrees of
the Holy Spirit’s influence which were brought to bear upon the minds of
the Scripture writers, in order to secure the putting into permanent and
written form of the truth best adapted to man’s moral and religious needs.
(_b_) Inspiration may often include revelation, or the direct
communication from God of truth to which man could not attain by his
unaided powers. It may include illumination, or the quickening of man’s
cognitive powers to understand truth already revealed. Inspiration,
however, does not necessarily and always include either revelation or
illumination. It is simply the divine influence which secures a
transmission of needed truth to the future, and, according to the nature
of the truth to be transmitted, it may be only an inspiration of
superintendence, or it may be also and at the same time an inspiration of
illumination or revelation.
(_c_) It is not denied, but affirmed, that inspiration may qualify for
oral utterance of truth, or for wise leadership and daring deeds. Men may
be inspired to render external service to God’s kingdom, as in the cases
of Bezalel and Samson; even though this service is rendered unwillingly or
unconsciously, as in the cases of Balaam and Cyrus. All human
intelligence, indeed, is due to the inbreathing of that same Spirit who
created man at the beginning. We are now concerned with inspiration,
however, only as it pertains to the authorship of Scripture.
_Gen. 2:7—_“And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became
a living soul”; _Ex. 31:2, 3—_“I have called by name Bezalel ...
and I have filled him with the Spirit of God ... in all manner of
workmanship”; _Judges 13:24, 25—_“called his name Samson: and the
child grew, and Jehovah blessed him. And the Spirit of Jehovah
began to move him”; _Num. 23:5—_“And Jehovah put a word in
Balaam’s mouth, and said, Return unto Balak, and thus shalt thou
speak”; _2 Chron. 36:22—_“Jehovah stirred up the spirit of Cyrus”;
_Is. 44:28—_“that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd”; _45:5—_“I
will gird thee, though thou hast not known me”; _Job 32:8—_“there
is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them
understanding.” These passages show the true meaning of 2 Tim.
3:16—“Every scripture inspired of God.” The word θεόπνευστος is to
be understood as alluding, not to the flute-player’s breathing
into his instrument, but to God’s original inbreathing of life.
The flute is passive, but man’s soul is active. The flute gives
out only what it receives, but the inspired man under the divine
influence is a conscious and free originator of thought and
expression. Although the inspiration of which we are to treat is
simply the inspiration of the Scripture writings, we can best
understand this narrower use of the term by remembering that all
real knowledge has in it a divine element, and that we are
possessed of complete consciousness only as we live, move, and
have our being in God. Since Christ, the divine Logos or Reason,
is “the light which lighteth every man”_ (John 1:9)_, a special
influence of “the spirit of Christ which was in them”_ (1 Pet.
1:11)_ rationally accounts for the fact that “men spake from God,
being moved by the Holy Spirit”_ (2 Pet. 1:21)_.
It may help our understanding of terms above employed if we adduce
instances of
(1) Inspiration without revelation, as in Luke or Acts, _Luke
1:1-3_;
(2) Inspiration including revelation, as in the Apocalypse, _Rev.
1:1, 11_;
(3) Inspiration without illumination, as in the prophets, _1 Pet.
1:11_;
(4) Inspiration including illumination, as in the case of Paul, _1
Cor. 2:12_;
(5) Revelation without inspiration, as in God’s words from Sinai,
_Ex. 20:1, 22_;
(6) Illumination without inspiration, as in modern preachers,
_Eph. 2:20_.
Other definitions are those of Park: “Inspiration is such an
influence over the writers of the Bible that all their teachings
which have a religious character are trustworthy”; of Wilkinson:
“Inspiration is help from God to keep the report of divine
revelation free from error. Help to whom? No matter to whom, so
the result is secured. The final result, viz.: the record or
report of revelation, this must be free from error. Inspiration
may affect one or all of the agents employed”; of Hovey:
“Inspiration was an influence of the Spirit of God on those powers
of men which are concerned in the reception, retention and
expression of religious truth—an influence so pervading and
powerful that the teaching of inspired men was according to the
mind of God. Their teaching did not in any instance embrace all
truth in respect to God, or man, or the way of life; but it
comprised just so much of the truth on any particular subject as
could be received in faith by the inspired teacher and made useful
to those whom he addressed. In this sense the teaching of the
original documents composing our Bible may be pronounced free from
error”; of G. B. Foster: “Revelation is the action of God in the
soul of his child, resulting in divine self-expression there:
Inspiration is the action of God in the soul of his child,
resulting in apprehension and appropriation of the divine
expression. Revelation has logical but not chronological
priority”; of Horton, Inspiration and the Bible, 10-13—“We mean by
Inspiration exactly those qualities or characteristics which are
the marks or notes of the Bible.... We call our Bible inspired; by
which we mean that by reading and studying it we find our way to
God, we find his will for us, and we find how we can conform
ourselves to his will.”
Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, 496, while nobly setting
forth the naturalness of revelation, has misconceived the relation
of inspiration to revelation by giving priority to the former:
“The idea of a written revelation may be said to be logically
involved in the notion of a living God. Speech is natural to
spirit; and if God is by nature spirit, it will be to him a matter
of nature to reveal himself. But if he speaks to man, it will be
through men; and those who hear best will be most possessed of
God. This possession is termed ‘inspiration.’ God inspires, man
reveals: revelation is the mode or form—word, character, or
institution—in which man embodies what he has received. The terms,
though not equivalent, are co-extensive, the one denoting the
process on its inner side, the other on its outer.” This
statement, although approved by Sanday, Inspiration, 124, 125,
seems to us almost precisely to reverse the right meaning of the
words. We prefer the view of Evans, Bib. Scholarship and
Inspiration, 54—“God has first revealed himself, and then has
inspired men to interpret, record and apply this revelation. In
redemption, inspiration is the formal factor, as revelation is the
material factor. The men are inspired, as Prof. Stowe said. The
thoughts are inspired, as Prof. Briggs said. The words are
inspired, as Prof. Hodge said. The warp and woof of the Bible is
πνεῦμα: ‘the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit’_ (John
6:63)_. Its fringes run off, as was inevitable, into the secular,
the material, the psychic.” Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:351—“If the
true revelation of God is in Christ, the Bible is not properly a
revelation, but the history of a revelation. This is not only a
fact but a necessity, for a person cannot be revealed in a book,
but must find revelation, if at all, in a person. The centre and
core of the Bible must therefore be the gospels, as the story of
Jesus.”
Some, like Priestley, have held that the gospels are authentic but
not inspired. We therefore add to the proof of the genuineness and
credibility of Scripture, the proof of its inspiration. Chadwick,
Old and New Unitarianism, 11—“Priestley’s belief in supernatural
revelation was intense. He had an absolute distrust of reason as
qualified to furnish an adequate knowledge of religious things,
and at the same time a perfect confidence in reason as qualified
to prove that negative and to determine the contents of the
revelation.” We might claim the historical truth of the gospels,
even if we did not call them inspired. Gore, in Lux Mundi,
341—“Christianity brings with it a doctrine of the inspiration of
the Holy Scriptures, but is not based upon it.” Warfield and
Hodge, Inspiration, 8—“While the inspiration of the Scriptures is
true, and being true is fundamental to the adequate interpretation
of Scripture, it nevertheless is not, in the first instance, a
principle fundamental to the truth of the Christian religion.”
On the idea of Revelation, see Ladd, in Journ. Christ. Philos.,
Jan. 1883:156-178; on Inspiration, _ibid._, Apr. 1883:225-248. See
Henderson on Inspiration (2nd ed.), 58, 205, 249, 303, 310. For
other works on the general subject of Inspiration, see Lee,
Bannerman, Jamieson, Macnaught; Garbett, God’s Word Written; Aids
to Faith, essay on Inspiration. Also, Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
1:205; Westcott, Introd. to Study of the Gospels, 27-65; Bib.
Sac., 1:97; 4:154; 12:217; 15:29, 314; 25:192-198; Dr. Barrows, in
Bib. Sac., 1867:593; 1872:428; Farrar, Science in Theology, 208;
Hodge and Warfield, in Presb. Rev., Apr. 1881:225-261; Manly, The
Bible Doctrine of Inspiration; Watts, Inspiration; Mead,
Supernatural Revelation, 350; Whiton, Gloria Patri, 136; Hastings,
Bible Dict., 1:296-299; Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration.
II. Proof of Inspiration.
1. Since we have shown that God has made a revelation of himself to man,
we may reasonably presume that he will not trust this revelation wholly to
human tradition and misrepresentation, but will also provide a record of
it essentially trustworthy and sufficient; in other words, that the same
Spirit who originally communicated the truth will preside over its
publication, so far as is needed to accomplish its religious purpose.
Since all natural intelligence, as we have seen, presupposes God’s
indwelling, and since in Scripture the all-prevailing atmosphere,
with its constant pressure and effort to enter every cranny and
corner of the world, is used as an illustration of the impulse of
God’s omnipotent Spirit to vivify and energize every human soul
(_Gen. 2:7_; _Job 32:8_), we may infer that, but for sin, all men
would be morally and spiritually inspired (_Num. 11:29—_“Would
that all Jehovah’s people were prophets, that Jehovah would put
his Spirit upon them!” _Is. 59:2—_“your iniquities have separated
between you and your God”). We have also seen that God’s method of
communicating his truth in matters of religion is presumably
analogous to his method of communicating secular truth, such as
that of astronomy or history. There is an original delivery to a
single nation, and to single persons in that nation, that it may
through them be given to mankind. Sanday, Inspiration, 140—“There
is a ‘purpose of God according to selection’_ (Rom. 9:11)_; there
is an ‘election’ or ‘selection of grace’; and the object of that
selection was Israel and those who take their name from Israel’s
Messiah. If a tower is built in ascending tiers, those who stand
upon the lower tiers are yet raised above the ground, and some may
be raised higher than others, but the full and unimpeded view is
reserved for those who mount upward to the top. And that is the
place destined for us if we will take it.”
If we follow the analogy of God’s working in other communications
of knowledge, we shall reasonably presume that he will preserve
the record of his revelations in written and accessible documents,
handed down from those to whom these revelations were first
communicated, and we may expect that these documents will be kept
sufficiently correct and trustworthy to accomplish their religious
purpose, namely, that of furnishing to the honest inquirer a guide
to Christ and to salvation. The physician commits his
prescriptions to writing; the Clerk of Congress records its
proceedings; the State Department of our government instructs our
foreign ambassadors, not orally, but by dispatches. There is yet
greater need that revelation should be recorded, since it is to be
transmitted to distant ages; it contains long discourses; it
embraces mysterious doctrines. Jesus did not write himself; for he
was the subject, not the mere channel, of revelation. His
unconcern about the apostles’ immediately committing to writing
what they saw and heard is inexplicable, if he did not expect that
inspiration would assist them.
We come to the discussion of Inspiration with a presumption quite
unlike that of Kuenen and Wellhausen, who write in the interest of
almost avowed naturalism. Kuenen, in the opening sentences of his
Religion of Israel, does indeed assert the rule of God in the
world. But Sanday, Inspiration, 117, says well that “Kuenen keeps
this idea very much in the background. He expended a whole volume
of 593 large octavo pages (Prophets and Prophecy in Israel,
London, 1877) in proving that the prophets were _not_ moved to
speak by God, but that their utterances were all their own.” The
following extract, says Sanday, indicates the position which Dr.
Kuenen really held: “We do not allow ourselves to be deprived of
God’s presence in history. In the fortunes and development of
nations, and not least clearly in those of Israel, we see Him, the
holy and all-wise Instructor of his human children. But the old
_contrasts_ must be altogether set aside. So long as we derive a
separate part of Israel’s religious life directly from God, and
allow the supernatural or immediate revelation to intervene in
even one single point, so long also our view of the whole
continues to be incorrect, and we see ourselves here and there
necessitated to do violence to the well-authenticated contents of
the historical documents. It is the supposition of a natural
development alone which accounts for all the phenomena” (Kuenen,
Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, 585).
2. Jesus, who has been proved to be not only a credible witness, but a
messenger from God, vouches for the inspiration of the Old Testament, by
quoting it with the formula: “It is written”; by declaring that “one jot
or one tittle” of it “shall in no wise pass away,” and that “the Scripture
cannot be broken.”
Jesus quotes from four out of the five books of Moses, and from
the Psalms, Isaiah, Malachi, and Zechariah, with the formula, “it
is written”; see _Mat. 4:4, 6, 7_; _11:10_; _Mark 14:27_; _Luke
4:4-12_. This formula among the Jews indicated that the quotation
was from a sacred book and was divinely inspired. Jesus certainly
regarded the Old Testament with as much reverence as the Jews of
his day. He declared that “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise
pass away from the law”_ (Mat. 5:18)_. He said that “the scripture
cannot be broken”_ (John 10:35)_ = “the normative and judicial
authority of the Scripture cannot be set aside; notice here [in
the singular, ἡ γραφή] the idea of the unity of Scripture”
(Meyer). And yet our Lord’s use of O. T. Scripture was wholly free
from the superstitious literalism which prevailed among the Jews
of his day. The phrases “word of God”_ (John 10:35; Mark 7:13)_,
“wisdom of God”_ (Luke 11:49)_ and “oracles of God”_ (Rom. 3:2)_
probably designate the original revelations of God and not the
record of these in Scripture; _cf._ _1 Sam. 9:27_; _1 Chron.
17:3_; _Is. 40:8_; _Mat. 13:19_; _Luke 3:2_; _Acts 8:25_. Jesus
refuses assent to the O. T. law respecting the Sabbath (_Mark
2:27_ _sq._), external defilements (_Mark 7:15_), divorce (_Mark
10:2_ _sq._). He “came not to destroy but to fulfil”_ (Mat.
5:17)_; yet he fulfilled the law by bringing out its inner spirit
in his perfect life, rather than by formal and minute obedience to
its precepts; see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:5-35.
The apostles quote the O. T. as the utterance of God (_Eph.
4:8_—διὸ λέγει, _sc._ θεός). Paul’s insistence upon the form of
even a single word, as in _Gal. 3:16_, and his use of the O. T.
for purposes of allegory, as in _Gal 4:21-31_, show that in his
view the O. T. text was sacred. Philo, Josephus and the Talmud, in
their interpretations of the O. T., fall continually into a
“narrow and unhappy literalism.” “The N. T. does not indeed escape
Rabbinical methods, but even where these are most prominent they
seem to affect the form far more than the substance. And through
the temporary and local form the writer constantly penetrates to
the very heart of the O. T. teaching;” see Sanday, Bampton
Lectures on Inspiration, 87; Henderson, Inspiration, 254.
3. Jesus commissioned his apostles as teachers and gave them promises of a
supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit in their teaching, like the promises
made to the Old Testament prophets.
_Mat. 28:19, 20—_“Go ye ... teaching ... and lo, I am with you.”
Compare promises to Moses (_Ex. 3:12_), Jeremiah (_Jer. 1:5-8_),
Ezekiel (_Ezek. 2_ and _3_). See also _Is. 44:3_ and _Joel
2:28—_“I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed”; _Mat. 10:7—_“as ye
go, preach”; _19—_“be not anxious how or what ye shall speak”;
_John 14:26—_“the Holy Spirit ... shall teach you all things”;
_15:26, 27—_“the Spirit of truth ... shall bear witness of me: and
ye also bear witness” = the Spirit shall witness in and through
you; _16:13—_“he shall guide you into all the truth” = (1)
limitation—all _the_ truth of Christ, _i. e._, not of philosophy
or science, but of religion; (2) comprehension—_all_ the truth
within this limited range, _i. e._, sufficiency of Scripture as
rule of faith and practice (Hovey); _17:8—_“the words which thou
gavest me I have given unto them”; _Acts 1:4—_“he charged them ...
to wait for the promise of the Father”; _John 20:22—_“he breathed
on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” Here
was both promise and communication of the personal Holy Spirit.
Compare _Mat. 10:19, 20—_“it shall be given you in that hour what
ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of
your Father that speaketh in you.” See Henderson, Inspiration,
247, 248.
Jesus’ testimony here is the testimony of God. In _Deut. 18:18_,
it is said that God will put his words into the mouth of the great
Prophet. In _John 12:49, 50_, Jesus says: “I spake not from
myself, but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a
commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I
know that his commandment is life eternal; the things therefore
which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak.”
_John 17:7, 8—_“all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from
thee: for the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them.”
_John 8:40—_“a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard
from God.”
4. The apostles claim to have received this promised Spirit, and under his
influence to speak with divine authority, putting their writings upon a
level with the Old Testament Scriptures. We have not only direct
statements that both the matter and the form of their teaching were
supervised by the Holy Spirit, but we have indirect evidence that this was
the case in the tone of authority which pervades their addresses and
epistles.
_Statements_:—_1 Cor. 2:10, 13—_“unto us God revealed them through
the Spirit.... Which things also we speak, not in words which
man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth”; _11:23—_“I
received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you”; _12:8,
28_—_the λόγος σοφίας was apparently a gift peculiar to the
apostles_; _14:37, 38—_“the things which I write unto you ... they
are the commandment of the Lord”; _Gal. 1:12—_“neither did I
receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me
through revelation of Jesus Christ”; _1 Thess. 4:2, 8—_“ye know
what charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus.... Therefore he
that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy
Spirit unto you.” The following passages put the teaching of the
apostles on the same level with O. T. Scripture: _1 Pet. 1:11,
12—_“Spirit of Christ which was in them” [O. T. prophets];—[N. T.
preachers] “preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit”; _2
Pet. 1:21_—O. T. prophets “spake from God, being moved by the Holy
Spirit”; _3:2—_“remember the words which were spoken before by the
holy prophets” [O. T.], “and the commandment of the Lord and
Savior through your apostles” [N. T.]; 16—“wrest [Paul’s
Epistles], _as they do also the_ _other scriptures_, unto their
own destruction.” _Cf._ _Ex. 4:14-16_; _7:1_.
_Implications_:—_2 Tim. 3:16—_“Every scripture inspired of God is
also profitable”—a clear implication of inspiration, though not a
direct statement of it = _there is a divinely inspired Scripture_.
In _1 Cor. 5:3-5_, Paul, commanding the Corinthian church with
regard to the incestuous person, was arrogant if not inspired.
There are more imperatives in the Epistles than in any other
writings of the same extent. Notice the continual asseveration of
authority, as in _Gal. 1:1, 2_, and the declaration that disbelief
of the record is sin, as in _1 John 5:10, 11_. _Jude 3—_“the faith
which was once for all (ἅπαξ) delivered unto the saints.” See
Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:122; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 34,
234; Conant, Genesis, Introd., xiii, note; Charteris, New
Testament Scriptures: They claim truth, unity, authority.
The passages quoted above show that inspired men distinguished
inspiration from their own unaided thinking. These inspired men
claim that their inspiration is the same with that of the
prophets. _Rev. 22:6—_“the Lord, the God of the spirits of the
prophets, sent his angel to show unto his servants the things
which must shortly come to pass” = inspiration gave them
supernatural knowledge of the future. As inspiration in the O. T.
was the work of the pre-incarnate Christ, so inspiration in the N.
T. is the work of the ascended and glorified Christ by his Holy
Spirit. On the Relative Authority of the Gospels, see Gerhardt, in
Am. Journ. Theol., Apl. 1899:275-294, who shows that not the words
of Jesus in the gospels are the final revelation, but rather the
teaching of the risen and glorified Christ in the Acts and the
Epistles. The Epistles are the posthumous works of Christ.
Pattison, Making of the Sermon, 23—“The apostles, believing
themselves to be inspired teachers, often preached without texts;
and the fact that their successors did not follow their example
shows that for themselves they made no such claim. Inspiration
ceased, and henceforth authority was found in the use of the words
of the now complete Scriptures.”
5. The apostolic writers of the New Testament, unlike professedly inspired
heathen sages and poets, gave attestation by miracles or prophecy that
they were inspired by God, and there is reason to believe that the
productions of those who were not apostles, such as Mark, Luke, Hebrews,
James, and Jude, were recommended to the churches as inspired, by
apostolic sanction and authority.
The twelve wrought miracles (_Mat. 10:1_). Paul’s “signs of an
apostle”_ (2 Cor. 13:12)_ = miracles. Internal evidence confirms
the tradition that Mark was the “interpreter of Peter,” and that
Luke’s gospel and the Acts had the sanction of Paul. Since the
purpose of the Spirit’s bestowment was to qualify those who were
to be the teachers and founders of the new religion, it is only
fair to assume that Christ’s promise of the Spirit was valid not
simply to the twelve but to all who stood in their places, and to
these not simply as speakers, but, since in this respect they had
a still greater need of divine guidance, to them as writers also.
The epistle to the Hebrews, with the letters of James and Jude,
appeared in the lifetime of some of the twelve, and passed
unchallenged; and the fact that they all, with the possible
exception of 2 Peter, were very early accepted by the churches
founded and watched over by the apostles, is sufficient evidence
that the apostles regarded them as inspired productions. As
evidences that the writers regarded their writings as of universal
authority, see _1 Cor. 1:2—_“unto the church of God which is at
Corinth ... with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ in every place,” etc.; _7:17—_“so ordain I in all the
churches”; _Col. 4:16—_“And when this epistle hath been read among
you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans”;
_2 Pet. 3:15, 16—_“our beloved brother Paul also, according to the
wisdom given to him, wrote unto you.” See Bartlett, in Princeton
Rev., Jan. 1880:23-57; Bib. Sac., Jan. 1884:204, 205.
Johnson, Systematic Theology, 40—“Miraculous gifts were bestowed
at Pentecost on many besides apostles. Prophecy was not an
uncommon gift during the apostolic period.” There is no antecedent
improbability that inspiration should extend to others than to the
principal leaders of the church, and since we have express
instances of such inspiration in oral utterances (_Acts 11:28_;
_21:9, 10_) it seems natural that there should have been instances
of inspiration in written utterances also. In some cases this
appears to have been only an inspiration of superintendence.
Clement of Alexandria says only that Peter neither forbade nor
encouraged Mark in his plan of writing the gospel. Irenæus tells
us that Mark’s gospel was written after the death of Peter. Papias
says that Mark wrote down what he remembered to have heard from
Peter. Luke does not seem to have been aware of any miraculous aid
in his writing, and his methods appear to have been those of the
ordinary historian.
6. The chief proof of inspiration, however, must always be found in the
internal characteristics of the Scriptures themselves, as these are
disclosed to the sincere inquirer by the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the
Holy Spirit combines with the teaching of the Bible to convince the
earnest reader that this teaching is as a whole and in all essentials
beyond the power of man to communicate, and that it must therefore have
been put into permanent and written form by special inspiration of God.
Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 105—“The testimony of the
Spirit is an argument from identity of effects—the doctrines of
experience and the doctrines of the Bible—to identity of cause....
God-wrought experience proves a God-wrought Bible.... This covers
the Bible as a whole, if not the whole of the Bible. It is true so
far as I can test it. It is to be believed still further if there
is no other evidence.” Lyman Abbott, in his Theology of an
Evolutionist, 105, calls the Bible “a record of man’s laboratory
work in the spiritual realm, a history of the dawning of the
consciousness of God and of the divine life in the soul of man.”
This seems to us unduly subjective. We prefer to say that the
Bible is also God’s witness to us of his presence and working in
human hearts and in human history—a witness which proves its
divine origin by awakening in us experiences similar to those
which it describes, and which are beyond the power of man to
originate.
G. P. Fisher, in Mag. of Christ. Lit., Dec. 1892:239—“Is the Bible
infallible? Not in the sense that all its statements extending
even to minutiæ in matters of history and science are strictly
accurate. Not in the sense that every doctrinal and ethical
statement in all these books is incapable of amendment. The whole
must sit in judgment on the parts. Revelation is progressive.
There is a human factor as well as a divine. The treasure is in
earthen vessels. But the Bible is infallible in the sense that
whoever surrenders himself in a docile spirit to its teaching will
fall into no hurtful error in matters of faith and charity. Best
of all, he will find in it the secret of a new, holy and blessed
life, ‘hidden with Christ in God’_ (Col. 3:3)_. The Scriptures are
the witness to Christ.... Through the Scriptures he is truly and
adequately made known to us.” Denney, Death of Christ, 314—“The
unity of the Bible and its inspiration are correlative terms. If
we can discern a real unity in it—and I believe we can when we see
that it converges upon and culminates in a divine love bearing the
sin of the world—then that unity and its inspiration are one and
the same thing. And it is not only inspired as a whole, it is the
only book that is inspired. It is the only book in the world to
which God sets his seal in our hearts when we read in search of an
answer to the question, How shall a sinful man be righteous with
God?... The conclusion of our study of Inspiration should be the
conviction that the Bible gives us a body of doctrine—a ‘faith
which was once for all delivered unto the saints’_ (Jude 3)_.”
III. Theories of Inspiration.
1. The Intuition-theory.
This holds that inspiration is but a higher development of that natural
insight into truth which all men possess to some degree; a mode of
intelligence in matters of morals and religion which gives rise to sacred
books, as a corresponding mode of intelligence in matters of secular truth
gives rise to great works of philosophy or art. This mode of intelligence
is regarded as the product of man’s own powers, either without special
divine influence or with only the inworking of an impersonal God.
This theory naturally connects itself with Pelagian and
rationalistic views of man’s independence of God, or with
pantheistic conceptions of man as being himself the highest
manifestation of an all-pervading but unconscious intelligence.
Morell and F. W. Newman in England, and Theodore Parker in
America, are representatives of this theory. See Morell, Philos.
of Religion, 127-179—“Inspiration is only a higher potency of what
every man possesses in some degree.” See also Francis W. Newman
(brother of John Henry Newman), Phases of Faith (= phases of
unbelief); Theodore Parker, Discourses of Religion, and
Experiences as a Minister: “God is infinite; therefore he is
immanent in nature, yet transcending it; immanent in spirit, yet
transcending that. He must fill each point of spirit, as of space;
matter must unconsciously obey; man, conscious and free, has power
to a certain extent to disobey, but obeying, the immanent God acts
in man as much as in nature”—quoted in Chadwick, Theodore Parker,
271. Hence Parker’s view of Inspiration: If the conditions are
fulfilled, inspiration comes in proportion to man’s gifts and to
his use of those gifts. Chadwick himself, in his Old and New
Unitarianism, 68, says that “the Scriptures are inspired just so
far as they are inspiring, and no more.”
W. C. Gannett, Life of Ezra Stiles Gannett, 196—“Parker’s
spiritualism affirmed, as the grand truth of religion, the
immanence of an infinitely perfect God in matter and mind, and his
activity in both spheres.” Martineau, Study of Religion,
2:178-180—“Theodore Parker treats the regular results of the human
faculties as an immediate working of God, and regards the
Principia of Newton as inspired.... What then becomes of the human
personality? He calls God not only omnipresent, but omniactive. Is
then Shakespeare only by courtesy author of Macbeth?... If this
were more than rhetorical, it would be unconditional pantheism.”
Both nature and man are other names for God. Martineau is willing
to grant that our intuitions and ideals are expressions of the
Deity in us, but our personal reasoning and striving, he thinks,
cannot be attributed to God. The word νοῦς has no plural:
intellect, in whatever subject manifested, being all one, just as
a truth is one and the same, in however many persons’
consciousness it may present itself; see Martineau, Seat of
Authority, 403. Palmer, Studies in Theological Definition, 27—“We
can draw no sharp distinction between the human mind discovering
truth, and the divine mind imparting revelation.” Kuenen belongs
to this school.
With regard to this theory we remark:
(_a_) Man has, indeed, a certain natural insight into truth, and we grant
that inspiration uses this, so far as it will go, and makes it an
instrument in discovering and recording facts of nature or history.
In the investigation, for example, of purely historical matters,
such as Luke records, merely natural insight may at times have
been sufficient. When this was the case, Luke may have been left
to the exercise of his own faculties, inspiration only inciting
and supervising the work. George Harris, Moral Evolution, 413—“God
could not reveal himself _to_ man, unless he first revealed
himself _in_ man. If it should be written in letters on the sky:
‘God is good,’—the words would have no meaning, unless goodness
had been made known already in human volitions. Revelation is not
by an occasional stroke, but by a continuous process. It is not
superimposed, but inherent.... Genius is inspired; for the mind
which perceives truth must be responsive to the Mind that made
things the vehicles of thought.” Sanday, Bampton Lectures on
Inspiration: “In claiming for the Bible inspiration, we do not
exclude the possibility of other lower or more partial degrees of
inspiration in other literatures. The Spirit of God has doubtless
touched other hearts and other minds ... in such a way as to give
insight into truth, besides those which could claim descent from
Abraham.” Philo thought the LXX translators, the Greek
philosophers, and at times even himself, to be inspired. Plato he
regards as “most sacred” (ἱερωτατος), but all good men are in
various degrees inspired. Yet Philo never quotes as authoritative
any but the Canonical Books. He attributes to them an authority
unique in its kind.
(_b_) In all matters of morals and religion, however, man’s insight into
truth is vitiated by wrong affections, and, unless a supernatural wisdom
can guide him, he is certain to err himself, and to lead others into
error.
_1 Cor. 2:14—_“Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot
know them, because they are spiritually judged”; _10—_“But unto us
God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all
things, yea, the deep things of God.” See quotation from
Coleridge, in Shairp, Culture and Religion, 114—“Water cannot rise
higher than its source; neither can human reasoning”; Emerson,
Prose Works, 1:474; 2:468—“’Tis curious we only believe as deep as
we live”; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 183, 184. For this reason
we hold to a communication of religious truth, at least at times,
more direct and objective than is granted by George Adam Smith,
Com. on Isaiah, 1:372—“To Isaiah inspiration was nothing more nor
less than the possession of certain strong moral and religious
convictions, which he felt he owed to the communication of the
Spirit of God, and according to which he interpreted, and even
dared to foretell, the history of his people and of the world. Our
study completely dispels, on the evidence of the Bible itself,
that view of inspiration and prediction so long held in the
church.” If this is meant as a denial of any communication of
truth other than the internal and subjective, we set over against
it. _Num. 12:6-8—_“if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord
will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him
in a dream. My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in all my
house: with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and
not in dark speeches; and the form of Jehovah shall he behold.”
(_c_) The theory in question, holding as it does that natural insight is
the only source of religious truth, involves a self-contradiction;—if the
theory be true, then one man is inspired to utter what a second is
inspired to pronounce false. The Vedas, the Koran and the Bible cannot be
inspired to contradict each other.
The Vedas permit thieving, and the Koran teaches salvation by
works; these cannot be inspired and the Bible also. Paul cannot be
inspired to write his epistles, and Swedenborg also inspired to
reject them. The Bible does not admit that pagan teachings have
the same divine endorsement with its own. Among the Spartans to
steal was praiseworthy; only to be caught stealing was criminal.
On the religious consciousness with regard to the personality of
God, the divine goodness, the future life, the utility of prayer,
in all of which Miss Cobbe, Mr. Greg and Mr. Parker disagree with
each other, see Bruce, Apologetics, 143, 144. With Matheson we may
grant that the leading idea of inspiration is “the growth of the
divine through the capacities of the human,” while yet we deny
that inspiration confines itself to this subjective enlightenment
of the human faculties, and also we exclude from the divine
working all those perverse and erroneous utterances which are the
results of human sin.
(_d_) It makes moral and religious truth to be a purely subjective thing—a
matter of private opinion—having no objective reality independently of
men’s opinions regarding it.
On this system truth is what men “trow”; things are what men
“think”—words representing only the subjective. “Better the Greek
ἀλήθεια = ‘the unconcealed’ (objective truth)”—Harris, Philos.
Basis of Theism, 182. If there be no absolute truth, Lessing’s
“search for truth” is the only thing left to us. But who will
search, if there is no truth to be found? Even a wise cat will not
eternally chase its own tail. The exercise within certain limits
is doubtless useful, but the cat gives it up so soon as it becomes
convinced that the tail cannot be caught. Sir Richard Burton
became a Roman Catholic, a Brahmin, and a Mohammedan,
successively, apparently holding with Hamlet that “there is
nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” This same
scepticism as to the existence of objective truth appears in the
sayings: “Your religion is good for you, and mine for me”; “One
man is born an Augustinian, and another a Pelagian.” See Dix,
Pantheism, Introd., 12. Richter: “It is not the goal, but the
course, that makes us happy.”
(_e_) It logically involves the denial of a personal God who is truth and
reveals truth, and so makes man to be the highest intelligence in the
universe. This is to explain inspiration by denying its existence; since,
if there be no personal God, inspiration is but a figure of speech for a
purely natural fact.
The _animus_ of this theory is denial of the supernatural. Like
the denial of miracles, it can be maintained only upon grounds of
atheism or pantheism. The view in question, as Hutton in his
Essays remarks, would permit us to say that the word of the Lord
came to Gibbon, amid the ruins of the Coliseum, saying: “Go, write
the history of the Decline and Fall!” But, replies Hutton: Such a
view is pantheistic. Inspiration is the voice of a living friend,
in distinction from the voice of a dead friend, _i. e._, the
influence of his memory. The inward impulse of genius,
Shakespeare’s for example, is not properly denominated
inspiration. See Row, Bampton Lectures for 1877:428-474; Rogers,
Eclipse of Faith, 73 _sq._ and 283 _sq._; Henderson, Inspiration
(2nd ed.), 443-469, 481-490. The view of Martineau, Seat of
Authority, 302, is substantially this. See criticism of Martineau,
by Rainy, in Critical Rev., 1:5-20.
2. The Illumination Theory.
This regards inspiration as merely an intensifying and elevating of the
religious perceptions of the Christian, the same in kind, though greater
in degree, with the illumination of every believer by the Holy Spirit. It
holds, not that the Bible is, but that it contains, the word of God, and
that not the writings, but only the writers, were inspired. The
illumination given by the Holy Spirit, however, puts the inspired writer
only in full possession of his normal powers, but does not communicate
objective truth beyond his ability to discover or understand.
This theory naturally connects itself with Arminian views of mere
coöperation with God. It differs from the Intuition-theory by
containing several distinctively Christian elements: (1) the
influence of a personal God; (2) an extraordinary work of the Holy
Spirit; (3) the Christological character of the Scriptures,
putting into form a revelation of which Christ is the centre
(_Rev. 19:10_). But while it grants that the Scripture writers
were “moved by the Holy Spirit” (φερόμενοι—_2 Pet. 1:21_), it
ignores the complementary fact that the Scripture itself is
“inspired of God” (θεόπνευστος—_2 Tim. 3:16_). Luther’s view
resembles this; see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 236, 237.
Schleiermacher, with the more orthodox Neander, Tholuck and
Cremer, holds it; see Essays by Tholuck, in Herzog, Encyclopädie,
and in Noyes, Theological Essays; Cremer, Lexicon N.T.,
θεόπνευστος, and in Herzog and Hauck, Realencyc., 9:183-203. In
France, Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 90, remarks: “Prophetic
inspiration is piety raised to the second power”—it differs from
the piety of common men only in intensity and energy. See also
Godet, in Revue Chrétienne, Jan. 1878.
In England Coleridge propounded this view in his Confessions of an
Inquiring Spirit (Works, 5:669)—“Whatever _finds me_ bears witness
that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit; in the Bible there is
more that _finds me_ than I have experienced in all other books
put together.” [Shall we then call Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest”
inspired, while the Books of Chronicles are not?] See also F. W.
Robertson, Sermon I; Life and Letters, letter 53, vol. 1:270;
2:143-150—“The _other_ way, some twenty or thirty men in the
world’s history have had special communication, miraculous and
from God; in _this_ way, all may have it, and by devout and
earnest cultivation of the mind and heart may have it illimitably
increased.” Frederick W. H. Myers, Catholic Thoughts on the Bible
and Theology, 10-20, emphasizes the idea that the Scriptures are,
in their earlier parts, not merely inadequate, but partially
untrue, and subsequently superseded by fuller revelations. The
leading thought is that of _accommodation_; the record of
revelation is not necessarily infallible. Allen, Religious
Progress, 44, quotes Bishop Thirlwall: “If that Spirit by which
every man spoke of old is a living and present Spirit, its later
lessons may well transcend its earlier”;—Pascal’s “colossal man”
is the race; the first men represented only infancy; _we_ are “the
ancients”, and we are wiser than our fathers. See also Farrar,
Critical History of Free Thought, 473, note 50; Martineau, Studies
in Christianity: “One Gospel in Many Dialects.”
Of American writers who favor this view, see J. F. Clarke,
Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors, 74; Curtis, Human Element in
Inspiration; Whiton, in N. Eng., Jan. 1882:63-72; Ladd, in Andover
Review, July, 1885, in What is the Bible? and in Doctrine of
Sacred Scripture, 1:759—“a large proportion of its writings
inspired”; 2:178, 275, 497—“that fundamental misconception which
identifies the Bible and the word of God”; 2:488—“Inspiration, as
the subjective condition of Biblical revelation and the predicate
of the word of God, is _specifically_ the same illumining,
quickening, elevating and purifying work of the Holy Spirit as
that which goes on in the persons of the entire believing
community.” Professor Ladd therefore pares down all predictive
prophecy, and regards _Isaiah 53_, not as directly and solely, but
only as typically, Messianic. Clarke, Christian Theology,
35-44—“Inspiration is exaltation, quickening of ability,
stimulation of spiritual power; it is uplifting and enlargement of
capacity for perception, comprehension and utterance; and all
under the influence of a thought, a truth, or an ideal that has
taken possession of the soul.... Inspiration to write was not
different in kind from the common influence of God upon his
people.... Inequality in the Scriptures is plain.... Even if we
were convinced that some book would better have been omitted from
the Canon, our confidence in the Scriptures would not thereby be
shaken. The Canon did not make Scripture, but Scripture made the
Canon. The inspiration of the Bible does not prove its excellence,
but its excellence proves its inspiration. The Spirit brought the
Scriptures to help Christ’s work, but not to take his place.
Scripture says with Paul: ‘Not that we have lordship over your
faith, but are helpers of your joy: for in faith ye stand fast’_
(2 Cor. 1:24)_.”
E. G. Robinson: “The office of the Spirit in inspiration is not
different from that which he performed for Christians at the time
the gospels were written.... When the prophets say: ‘Thus saith
the Lord,’ they mean simply that they have divine authority for
what they utter.” Calvin E. Stowe, History of Books of Bible,
19—“It is not the words of the Bible that were inspired. It is not
the thoughts of the Bible that were inspired. It was the men who
wrote the Bible who were inspired.” Thayer, Changed Attitude
toward the Bible, 63—“It was not before the polemic spirit became
rife in the controversies which followed the Reformation that the
fundamental distinction between the word of God and the record of
that word became obliterated, and the pestilent tenet gained
currency that the Bible is absolutely free from every error of
every sort.” Principal Cave, in Homiletical Review, Feb. 1892,
admitting errors but none serious in the Bible, proposes a
mediating statement for the present controversy, namely, that
Revelation implies inerrancy, but that Inspiration does not.
Whatever God reveals must be true, but many have become inspired
without being rendered infallible. See also Mead, Supernatural
Revelation, 291 _sq._
With regard to this theory we remark:
(_a_) There is unquestionably an illumination of the mind of every
believer by the Holy Spirit, and we grant that there may have been
instances in which the influence of the Spirit, in inspiration, amounted
only to illumination.
Certain applications and interpretations of Old Testament
Scripture, as for example, John the Baptist’s application to Jesus
of Isaiah’s prophecy (_John 1:29—_“Behold, the Lamb of God, that
taketh away [marg. “beareth”] the sin of the world”), and Peter’s
interpretation of David’s words (_Acts 2:27—_“thou wilt not leave
my soul unto Hades, Neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see
corruption”), may have required only the illuminating influence of
the Holy Spirit. There is a sense in which we may say that the
Scriptures are inspired only to those who are themselves inspired.
The Holy Spirit must show us Christ before we recognize the work
of the Spirit in Scripture. The doctrines of atonement and of
justification perhaps did not need to be newly revealed to the N.
T. writers; illumination as to earlier revelations may have
sufficed. But that Christ existed before his incarnation, and that
there are personal distinctions in the Godhead, probably required
revelation. Edison says that “inspiration is simply perspiration.”
Genius has been defined as “unlimited power to take pains.” But it
is more—the power to do spontaneously and without effort what the
ordinary man does by the hardest. Every great genius recognizes
that this power is due to the inflowing into him of a Spirit
greater than his own—the Spirit of divine wisdom and energy. The
Scripture writers attribute their understanding of divine things
to the Holy Spirit; see next paragraph. On genius, as due to
“subliminal uprush,” see F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality,
1:70-120.
(_b_) But we deny that this was the constant method of inspiration, or
that such an influence can account for the revelation of new truth to the
prophets and apostles. The illumination of the Holy Spirit gives no new
truth, but only a vivid apprehension of the truth already revealed. Any
original communication of truth must have required a work of the Spirit
different, not in degree, but in kind.
The Scriptures clearly distinguish between revelation, or the
communication of new truth, and illumination, or the quickening of
man’s cognitive powers to perceive truth already revealed. No
increase in the power of the eye or the telescope will do more
than to bring into clear view what is already within its range.
Illumination will not lift the veil that hides what is beyond.
Revelation, on the other hand, is an “unveiling”—the raising of a
curtain, or the bringing within our range of what was hidden
before. Such a special operation of God is described in _2 Sam.
23:2, 3—_“The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, And his word was upon
my tongue. The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to
me”; _Mat. 10:20—_“For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of
your Father that speaketh in you”; _1 Cor. 2:9-13—_“Things which
eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the
heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love
him. But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the
Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who
among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man,
which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the
Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but
the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that
were freely given to us of God.”
Clairvoyance and second sight, of which along with many cases of
imposition and exaggeration there seems to be a small residuum of
proved fact, show that there may be extraordinary operations of
our natural powers. But, as in the case of miracle, the
inspiration of Scripture necessitated an exaltation of these
natural powers such as only the special influence of the Holy
Spirit can explain. That the product is inexplicable as due to
mere illumination seems plain when we remember that revelation
sometimes _excluded_ illumination as to the meaning of that which
was communicated, for the prophets are represented in _1 Pet.
1:11_ as “searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of
Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified
beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should
follow them.” Since no degree of illumination can account for the
prediction of “things that are to come” (_John 16:13_), this
theory tends to the denial of any immediate revelation in prophecy
so-called, and the denial easily extends to any immediate
revelation of doctrine.
(_c_) Mere illumination could not secure the Scripture writers from
frequent and grievous error. The spiritual perception of the Christian is
always rendered to some extent imperfect and deceptive by remaining
depravity. The subjective element so predominates in this theory, that no
certainty remains even with regard to the trustworthiness of the
Scriptures as a whole.
While we admit imperfections of detail in matters not essential to
the moral and religious teaching of Scripture, we claim that the
Bible furnishes a sufficient guide to Christ and to salvation. The
theory we are considering, however, by making the measure of
holiness to be the measure of inspiration, renders even the
collective testimony of the Scripture writers an uncertain guide
to truth. We point out therefore that inspiration is not
absolutely limited by the moral condition of those who are
inspired. Knowledge, in the Christian, may go beyond conduct.
Balaam and Caiaphas were not holy men, yet they were inspired
(_Num. 23:5; John 11:49-52_). The promise of Christ assured at
least the essential trustworthiness of his witnesses (_Mat. 10:7,
19, 20; John 14:26; 15:26, 27; 16:13; 17:8_). This theory that
inspiration is a wholly subjective communication of truth leads to
the practical rejection of important parts of Scripture, in fact
to the rejection of all Scripture that professes to convey truth
beyond the power of man to discover or to understand. Notice the
progress from Thomas Arnold (Sermons, 2:185) to Matthew Arnold
(Literature and Dogma, 134, 137). Notice also Swedenborg’s
rejection of nearly one half the Bible (Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra,
Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon,
and the whole of the N. T. except the Gospels and the Apocalypse),
connected with the claim of divine authority for his new
revelation. “His interlocutors all Swedenborgize” (R. W. Emerson).
On Swedenborg, see Hours with the Mystics, 2:230; Moehler,
Symbolism, 436-466; New Englander, Jan. 1874:195; Baptist Review,
1883:143-157; Pond, Swedenborgianism; Ireland, The Blot on the
Brain, 1-129.
(_d_) The theory is logically indefensible, as intimating that
illumination with regard to truth can be imparted without imparting truth
itself, whereas God must first furnish objective truth to be perceived
before he can illuminate the mind to perceive the meaning of that truth.
The theory is analogous to the views that preservation is a
continued creation; knowledge is recognition; regeneration is
increase of light. In order to preservation, something must first
be created which can be preserved; in order to recognition,
something must be known which can be recognized or known again; in
order to make increase of light of any use, there must first be
the power to see. In like manner, inspiration cannot be mere
illumination, because the external necessarily precedes the
internal, the objective precedes the subjective, the truth
revealed precedes the apprehension of that truth. In the case of
all truth that surpasses the normal powers of man to perceive or
evolve, there must be special communication from God; revelation
must go before inspiration; inspiration alone is not revelation.
It matters not whether this communication of truth be from without
or from within. As in creation, God can work from within, yet the
new result is not explicable as mere reproduction of the past. The
eye can see only as it receives and uses the external light
furnished by the sun, even though it be equally true that without
the eye the light of the sun would be nothing worth.
Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 17-19, says that to Schleiermacher
revelation is the original appearance of a proper religious life,
which life is derived neither from external communication nor from
invention and reflection, but from a divine impartation, which
impartation can be regarded, not merely as an instructive
influence upon man as an intellectual being, but as an endowment
determining his whole personal existence—an endowment analogous to
the higher conditions of poetic and heroic exaltation. Pfleiderer
himself would give the name “revelation” to “every original
experience in which man becomes aware of, and is seized by,
supersensible truth, truth which does not come from external
impartation nor from purposed reflection, but from the unconscious
and undivided transcendental ground of the soul, and so is
received as an impartation from God through the medium of the
soul’s human activity.” Kaftan, Dogmatik, 51 _sq._—“We must put
the conception of revelation in place of inspiration. Scripture is
the record of divine revelation. We do not propose a new doctrine
or inspiration, in place of the old. We need only revelation, and,
here and there, providence. The testimony of the Holy Spirit is
given, not to inspiration, but to revelation—the truths that touch
the human spirit and have been historically revealed.”
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 182—Edwards held that spiritual life in
the soul is given by God only to his favorites and dear children,
while inspiration may be thrown out, as it were, to dogs and
swine—a Balaam, Saul, and Judas. The greatest privilege of
apostles and prophets was, not their inspiration, but their
holiness. Better to have grace in the heart, than to be the mother
of Christ (_Luke 11:27, 28_). Maltbie D. Babcock, in S. S. Times,
1901:590—“The man who mourns because infallibility cannot be had
in a church, or a guide, or a set of standards, does not know when
he is well off. How could God develop our minds, our power of
moral judgment, if there were no ‘spirit to be tried’ (_1 John
4:1_), no necessity for discrimination, no discipline of search
and challenge and choice? To give the right answer to a problem is
to put him on the side of infallibility so far as that answer is
concerned, but it is to do him an ineffable wrong touching his
real education. The blessing of life’s schooling is not in knowing
the right answer in advance, but in developing power through
struggle.”
Why did John Henry Newman surrender to the Church of Rome? Because
he assumed that an external authority is absolutely essential to
religion, and, when such an assumption is followed, Rome is the
only logical terminus. “Dogma was,” he says, “the fundamental
principle of my religion.” Modern ritualism is a return to this
mediæval notion. “Dogmatic Christianity,” says Harnack, “is
Catholic. It needs an inerrant Bible, and an infallible church to
interpret that Bible. The dogmatic Protestant is of the same camp
with the sacramental and infallible Catholic.” Lyman Abbott: “The
new Reformation denies the infallibility of the Bible, as the
Protestant Reformation denied the infallibility of the Church.
There is no infallible authority. Infallible authority is
undesirable.... God has given us something far better,—life....
The Bible is the record of the gradual manifestation of God to man
in human experience, in moral laws and their applications, and in
the life of Him who was God manifest in the flesh.”
Leighton Williams: “There is no inspiration apart from experience.
Baptists are not sacramental, nor creedal, but experimental
Christians”—not Romanists, nor Protestants, but believers in an
inner light. “Life, as it develops, awakens into
self-consciousness. That self-consciousness becomes the most
reliable witness as to the nature of the life of which it is the
development. Within the limits of its own sphere, its authority is
supreme. Prophecy is the utterance of the soul in moments of deep
religious experience. The inspiration of Scripture writers is not
a peculiar thing,—it was given that the same inspiration might be
perfected in those who read their writings.” Christ is the only
ultimate authority, and he reveals himself in three ways, through
Scripture, the Reason, and the Church. Only Life saves, and the
Way leads through the Truth to the Life. Baptists stand nearer to
the Episcopal system of life than to the Presbyterian system of
creed. Whiton, Gloria Patri, 136—“The mistake is in looking to the
Father above the world, rather than to the Son and the Spirit
within the world, as the immediate source of revelation....
Revelation is the unfolding of the life and thought of God within
the world. One should not be troubled by finding errors in the
Scriptures, any more than by finding imperfections in any physical
work of God, as in the human eye.”
3. The Dictation-theory.
This theory holds that inspiration consisted in such a possession of the
minds and bodies of the Scripture writers by the Holy Spirit, that they
became passive instruments or amanuenses—pens, not penmen, of God.
This theory naturally connects itself with that view of miracles
which regards them as suspensions or violations of natural law.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:624 (transl. 2:186-189), calls it a
“docetic view of inspiration. It holds to the abolition of second
causes, and to the perfect passivity of the human instrument;
denies any inspiration of persons, and maintains inspiration of
writings only. This exaggeration of the divine element led to the
hypothesis of a multiform divine sense in Scripture, and, in
assigning the spiritual meaning, a rationalizing spirit led the
way.” Representatives of this view are Quenstedt, Theol. Didact.,
1:76—“The Holy Ghost inspired his amanuenses with those
expressions which they would have employed, had they been left to
themselves”; Hooker, Works, 2:383—“They neither spake nor wrote
any word of their own, but uttered syllable by syllable as the
Spirit put it into their mouths”; Gaussen, Theopneusty, 61—“The
Bible is not a book which God charged men already enlightened to
make under his protection; it is a book which God dictated to
them”; Cunningham, Theol. Lectures, 349—“The verbal inspiration of
the Scriptures [which he advocates] implies in general that the
words of Scripture were suggested or dictated by the Holy Spirit,
as well as the substance of the matter, and this, not only in some
portion of the Scriptures, but through the whole.” This reminds us
of the old theory that God created fossils in the rocks, as they
would be had ancient seas existed.
Sanday, Bamp. Lect. on Inspiration, 74, quotes Philo as saying: “A
prophet gives forth nothing at all of his own, but acts as
interpreter at the prompting of another in all his utterances, and
as long as he is under inspiration he is in ignorance, his reason
departing from its place and yielding up the citadel of the soul,
when the divine Spirit enters into it and dwells in it and strikes
at the mechanism of the voice, sounding through it to the clear
declaration of that which he prophesieth”; in _Gen. 15:12—_“About
the setting of the sun a trance came upon Abram”—the sun is the
light of human reason which sets and gives place to the Spirit of
God. Sanday, 78, says also: “Josephus holds that even historical
narratives, such as those at the beginning of the Pentateuch which
were not written down by contemporary prophets, were obtained by
direct inspiration from God. The Jews from their birth regard
their Scripture as ‘the decrees of God,’ which they strictly
observe, and for which if need be they are ready to die.” The
Rabbis said that “Moses did not write one word out of his own
knowledge.”
The Reformers held to a much freer view than this. Luther said:
“What does not carry Christ with it, is not apostolic, even though
St. Peter or St. Paul taught it. If our adversaries fall back on
the Scripture against Christ, we fall back on Christ against the
Scripture.” Luther refused canonical authority to books not
actually written by apostles or composed, like Mark and Luke,
under their direction. So he rejected from the rank of canonical
authority Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter and Revelation. Even
Calvin doubted the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, excluded the
book of Revelation from the Scripture on which he wrote
Commentaries, and also thus ignored the second and third epistles
of John; see Prof. R. E. Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 3,
1898:803, 804. The dictation-theory is post-Reformation. H. P.
Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 85—“After the Council of
Trent, the Roman Catholic polemic became sharper. It became the
endeavor of that party to show the necessity of tradition and the
untrustworthiness of Scripture alone. This led the Protestants to
defend the Bible more tenaciously than before.” The Swiss Formula
of Consensus in 1675 not only called the Scriptures “the very word
of God,” but declared the Hebrew vowel-points to be inspired, and
some theologians traced them back to Adam. John Owen held to the
inspiration of the vowel-points; see Horton, Inspiration and
Bible, 8. Of the age which produced the Protestant dogmatic
theology, Charles Beard, in the Hibbert Lectures for 1883, says:
“I know no epoch of Christianity to which I could more confidently
point in illustration of the fact that where there is most
theology, there is often least religion.”
Of this view we may remark:
(_a_) We grant that there are instances when God’s communications were
uttered in an audible voice and took a definite form of words, and that
this was sometimes accompanied with the command to commit the words to
writing.
For examples, see _Ex. 3:4—_“God called unto him out of the midst
of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses”; _20:22—_“Ye yourselves have
seen that I have talked with you from heaven”; _cf._ _Heb.
12:19—_“the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated
that no word more should be spoken unto them”; _Numbers 7:89—_“And
when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with him, then
he heard the Voice speaking unto him from above the mercy-seat
that was upon the ark of the testimony, from between the two
cherubim: and he spake unto him”; _8:1—_“And Jehovah spake unto
Moses, saying,” etc.; _Dan. 4:31—_“While the word was in the
king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king
Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken: The kingdom is departed from
thee”; _Acts 9:5—_“And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I
am Jesus whom thou persecutest”; _Rev. 19:9—_“And he saith unto
me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper
of the Lamb”; _21:5—_“And he that sitteth on the throne said,
Behold, I make all things new”; _cf._ _1:10, 11—_“and I heard
behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet saying, What thou seest,
write in a book and send it to the seven churches.” So the voice
from heaven at the baptism, and at the transfiguration, of Jesus
(_Mat. 3:17_, and _17:5_; see Broadus, Amer. Com., on these
passages).
(_b_) The theory in question, however, rests upon a partial induction of
Scripture facts,—unwarrantably assuming that such occasional instances of
direct dictation reveal the invariable method of God’s communications of
truth to the writers of the Bible.
Scripture nowhere declares that this immediate communication of
the words was universal. On _1 Cor. 2:13—οὐκ ἐν διδακτοίς
ανθρωπίνης σοφίας, λόγοις, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν διδακτοîς πνεύματος_, the text
usually cited as proof of invariable dictation—Meyer says: “There
is no dictation here; διδακτοîς excludes everything mechanical.”
Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 333, 349—“As human wisdom did
not dictate word for word, so the Spirit did not.” Paul claims for
Scripture simply a general style of plainness which is due to the
influence of the Spirit. Manly: “Dictation to an amanuensis is not
_teaching_.” Our Revised Version properly translates the remainder
of the verse, _1 Cor. 2:13—_“combining spiritual things with
spiritual words.”
(_c_) It cannot account for the manifestly human element in the
Scriptures. There are peculiarities of style which distinguish the
productions of each writer from those of every other, and there are
variations in accounts of the same transaction which are inconsistent with
the theory of a solely divine authorship.
Notice Paul’s anacoloutha and his bursts of grief and indignation
(_Rom. 5:12 __sq._, _2 Cor. 11:1_ _sq._), and his ignorance of the
precise number whom he had baptized (_1 Cor. 1:16_). One beggar or
two (_Mat. 20:30_; _cf._ _Luke 18:35_); “about five and twenty or
thirty furlongs”_ (John 6:19)_; “shed for many” (_Mat. 26:28_ has
περί, _Mark 14:24_ and _Luke 22:20_ have ὑπέρ). Dictation of words
which were immediately to be lost by imperfect transcription?
Clarke, Christian Theology, 33-37—“We are under no obligation to
maintain the complete inerrancy of the Scriptures. In them we have
the freedom of life, rather than extraordinary precision of
statement or accuracy of detail. We have become Christians in
spite of differences between the evangelists. The Scriptures are
various, progressive, free. There is no authority in Scripture for
applying the word ’inspired’ to our present Bible as a whole, and
theology is not bound to employ this word in defining the
Scriptures. Christianity is founded in history, and will stand
whether the Scriptures are inspired or not. If special inspiration
were wholly disproved, Christ would still be the Savior of the
world. But the divine element in the Scriptures will never be
disproved.”
(_d_) It is inconsistent with a wise economy of means, to suppose that the
Scripture writers should have had dictated to them what they knew already,
or what they could inform themselves of by the use of their natural
powers.
Why employ eye-witnesses at all? Why not dictate the gospels to
Gentiles living a thousand years before? God respects the
instruments he has called into being, and he uses them according
to their constitutional gifts. George Eliot represents
Stradivarius as saying:—“If my hand slacked, I should rob
God—since he is fullest good—Leaving a blank instead of violins.
God cannot make Antonio Stradivari’s violins, Without Antonio.”
_Mark 11:3—_“The Lord hath need of him,” may apply to man as well
as beast.
(_e_) It contradicts what we know of the law of God’s working in the soul.
The higher and nobler God’s communications, the more fully is man in
possession and use of his own faculties. We cannot suppose that this
highest work of man under the influence of the Spirit was purely
mechanical.
Joseph receives communication by vision (_Mat. 1:20_); Mary, by
words of an angel spoken in her waking moments (_Luke 1:28_). The
more advanced the recipient, the more conscious the communication.
These four theories might almost be called the Pelagian, the
Arminian, the Docetic, and the Dynamical. Sabatier, Philos.
Religion, 41, 42, 87—“In the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Father
says at the baptism to Jesus: ‘My Son, in all the prophets I was
waiting for thee, that thou mightest come, and that I might rest
in thee. For thou art my Rest.’ Inspiration becomes more and more
internal, until in Christ it is continuous and complete. Upon the
opposite Docetic view, the most perfect inspiration should have
been that of Balaam’s ass.” Semler represents the Pelagian or
Ebionitic view, as Quenstedt represents this Docetic view. Semler
localizes and temporalizes the contents of Scripture. Yet, though
he carried this to the extreme of excluding any divine authorship,
he did good service in leading the way to the historical study of
the Bible.
4. The Dynamical Theory.
The true view holds, in opposition to the first of these theories, that
inspiration is not simply a natural but also a supernatural fact, and that
it is the immediate work of a personal God in the soul of man.
It holds, in opposition to the second, that inspiration belongs, not only
to the men who wrote the Scriptures, but to the Scriptures which they
wrote, so that these Scriptures, when taken together, constitute a
trustworthy and sufficient record of divine revelation.
It holds, in opposition to the third theory, that the Scriptures contain a
human as well as a divine element, so that while they present a body of
divinely revealed truth, this truth is shaped in human moulds and adapted
to ordinary human intelligence.
In short, inspiration is characteristically neither natural, partial, nor
mechanical, but supernatural, plenary, and dynamical. Further explanations
will be grouped under the head of The Union of the Divine and Human
Elements in Inspiration, in the section which immediately follows.
If the small circle be taken as symbol of the human element in
inspiration, and the large circle as symbol of the divine, then
the Intuition-theory would be represented by the small circle
alone; the Dictation-theory by the large circle alone; the
Illumination-theory by the small circle external to the large, and
touching it at only a single point; the Dynamical-theory by two
concentric circles, the small included in the large. Even when
inspiration is but the exaltation and intensification of man’s
natural powers, it must be considered the work of God as well as
of man. God can work from within as well as from without. As
creation and regeneration are works of the immanent rather than of
the transcendent God, so inspiration is in general a work within
man’s soul, rather than a communication to him from without.
Prophecy may be natural to perfect humanity. Revelation is an
unveiling, and the Röntgen rays enable us to see through a veil.
But the insight of the Scripture writers into truth so far beyond
their mental and moral powers is inexplicable except by a
supernatural influence upon their minds; in other words, except as
they were lifted up into the divine Reason and endowed with the
wisdom of God.
Although we propose this Dynamical-theory as one which best
explains the Scripture facts, we do not regard this or any other
theory as of essential importance. No theory of inspiration is
necessary to Christian faith. Revelation precedes inspiration.
There was religion before the Old Testament, and an oral gospel
before the New Testament. God might reveal without recording;
might permit record without inspiration; might inspire without
vouching for anything more than religious teaching and for the
history, only so far as was necessary to that religious teaching.
Whatever theory of inspiration we frame, should be the result of a
strict induction of the Scripture facts, and not an a priori
scheme to which Scripture must be conformed. The fault of many
past discussions of the subject is the assumption that God must
adopt some particular method of inspiration, or secure an absolute
perfection of detail in matters not essential to the religious
teaching of Scripture. Perhaps the best theory of inspiration is
to have no theory.
Warfield and Hodge, Inspiration, 8—“Very many religious and
historical truths must be established before we come to the
question of inspiration, as for instance the being and moral
government of God, the fallen condition of man, the fact of a
redemptive scheme, the general historical truth of the Scriptures,
and the validity and authority of the revelation of God’s will
which they contain, i. e., the general truth of Christianity and
of its doctrines. Hence it follows that while the inspiration of
the Scriptures is true, and being true is a principle fundamental
to the adequate interpretation of Scripture, it nevertheless is
not, in the first instance, a principle fundamental to the truth
of the Christian religion.” Warfield, in Presb. and Ref. Rev.,
April, 1893:208—“We do not found the whole Christian system on the
doctrine of inspiration.... Were there no such thing as
inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential
doctrines would be credibly witnessed to us”—in the gospels and in
the living church. F. L. Patton, Inspiration, 22—“I must take
exception to the disposition of some to stake the fortunes of
Christianity on the doctrine of inspiration. Not that I yield to
any one in profound conviction of the truth and importance of the
doctrine. But it is proper for us to bear in mind the immense
argumentative advantage which Christianity has, aside altogether
from the inspiration of the documents on which it rests.” So argue
also Sanday, Oracles of God, and Dale, The Living Christ.
IV. The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration.
1. The Scriptures are the production equally of God and of man, and are
therefore never to be regarded as merely human or merely divine.
The mystery of inspiration consists in neither of these terms separately,
but in the union of the two. Of this, however, there are analogies in the
interpenetration of human powers by the divine efficiency in regeneration
and sanctification, and in the union of the divine and human natures in
the person of Jesus Christ.
According to “Dalton’s law,” each gas is as a vacuum to every
other: “Gases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as
into vacua.” Each interpenetrates the other. But this does not
furnish a perfect illustration of our subject. The atom of oxygen
and the atom of nitrogen, in common air, remain side by side but
they do not unite. In inspiration the human and the divine
elements do unite. The Lutheran maxim, “Mens humana capax divinæ,”
is one of the most important principles of a true theology. “The
Lutherans think of humanity as a thing made by God for himself and
to receive himself. The Reformed think of the Deity as ever
preserving himself from any confusion with the creature. They fear
pantheism and idolatry” (Bp. of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our
Lord’s Knowledge, xx).
Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 66—“That initial mystery, the relation
in our consciousness between the individual and the universal
element, between the finite and the infinite, between God and
man,—how can we comprehend their coëxistence and their union, and
yet how can we doubt it? Where is the thoughtful man to-day who
has not broken the thin crust of his daily life, and caught a
glimpse of those profound and obscure waters on which floats our
consciousness? Who has not felt within himself a veiled presence,
and a force much greater than his own? What worker in a lofty
cause has not perceived within his own personal activity, and
saluted with a feeling of veneration, the mysterious activity of a
universal and eternal Power? ‘In Deo vivimus, movemur, et
sumus.’... This mystery cannot be dissipated, for without it
religion itself would no longer exist.” Quackenbos, in Harper’s
Magazine, July, 1900:264, says that “hypnotic suggestion is but
inspiration.” The analogy of human influence thus communicated may
at least help us to some understanding of the divine.
2. This union of the divine and human agencies in inspiration is not to be
conceived of as one of external impartation and reception.
On the other hand, those whom God raised up and providentially qualified
to do this work, spoke and wrote the words of God, when inspired, not as
from without, but as from within, and that not passively, but in the most
conscious possession and the most exalted exercise of their own powers of
intellect, emotion, and will.
The Holy Spirit does not dwell in man as water in a vessel. We may
rather illustrate the experience of the Scripture writers by the
experience of the preacher who under the influence of God’s Spirit
is carried beyond himself, and is conscious of a clearer
apprehension of truth and of a greater ability to utter it than
belong to his unaided nature, yet knows himself to be no passive
vehicle of a divine communication, but to be as never before in
possession and exercise of his own powers. The inspiration of the
Scripture writers, however, goes far beyond the illumination
granted to the preacher, in that it qualifies them to put the
truth, without error, into permanent and written form. This
inspiration, moreover, is more than providential preparation. Like
miracles, inspiration may use man’s natural powers, but man’s
natural powers do not explain it. Moses, David, Paul, and John
were providentially endowed and educated for their work of writing
Scripture, but this endowment and education were not inspiration
itself, but only the preparation for it.
Beyschlag: “With John, remembrance and exposition had become
inseparable.” E. G. Robinson; “Novelists do not _create_
characters,—they reproduce with modifications material presented
to their memories. So the apostles reproduced their impressions of
Christ.” Hutton, Essays, 2:231—“The Psalmists vacillate between
the first person and the third, when they deliver the purposes of
God. As they warm with their spiritual inspiration, they lose
themselves in the person of Him who inspires them, and then they
are again recalled to themselves.” Stanley, Life and Letters,
1:380—“Revelation is not resolved into a mere human process
because we are able to distinguish the natural agencies through
which it was communicated”; 2:102—“You seem to me to transfer too
much to these ancient prophets and writers and chiefs our modern
notions of _divine origin_.... Our notion, or rather, the modern
Puritanical notion of divine origin, is of a preternatural force
or voice, putting aside secondary agencies, and separated from
those agencies by an impassable gulf. The ancient, Oriental,
Biblical notion was of a supreme Will acting through those
agencies, or rather, being inseparable from them. _Our_ notions of
inspiration and divine communications insist on absolute
perfection of fact, morals, doctrine. The Biblical notion was that
inspiration was compatible with weakness, infirmity,
contradiction.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 182—“In inspiration the
thoughts, feelings, purposes are organized into another One than
the self in which they were themselves born. That other One is _in
themselves_. They enter into communication with Him. Yet this may
be supernatural, even though natural psychological means are used.
Inspiration which is external is not inspiration at all.” This
last sentence, however, seems to us a needless exaggeration of the
true principle. Though God originally inspires from within, he may
also communicate truth from without.
3. Inspiration, therefore, did not remove, but rather pressed into its own
service, all the personal peculiarities of the writers, together with
their defects of culture and literary style.
Every imperfection not inconsistent with truth in a human composition may
exist in inspired Scripture. The Bible is God’s word, in the sense that it
presents to us divine truth in human forms, and is a revelation not for a
select class but for the common mind. Rightly understood, this very
humanity of the Bible is a proof of its divinity.
Locke: “When God made the prophet, he did not unmake the man.”
Prof. Day: “The bush in which God appeared to Moses remained a
bush, while yet burning with the brightness of God and uttering
forth the majesty of the mind of God.” The paragraphs of the Koran
are called _ayat_, or “sign,” from their supposed supernatural
elegance. But elegant literary productions do not touch the heart.
The Bible is not merely the word of God; it is also the word made
flesh. The Holy Spirit hides himself, that he may show forth
Christ (_John 3:8_); he is known only by his effects—a pattern for
preachers, who are ministers of the Spirit (_2 Cor. 3:6_). See
Conant on Genesis, 65.
The Moslem declares that every word of the Koran came by the
agency of Gabriel from the seventh heaven, and that its very
pronunciation is inspired. Better the doctrine of Martineau, Seat
of Authority, 289—“Though the pattern be divine, the web that
bears it must still be human.” Jackson, James Martineau,
255—“Paul’s metaphor of the ‘treasure in earthen vessels’_ (2 Cor.
4:7)_ you cannot allow to give you guidance; you want, not the
treasure only, but the casket too, to come from above, and be of
the crystal of the sky. You want the record to be divine, not only
in its spirit, but also in its letter.” Charles Hodge, Syst.
Theol., 1:157—“When God ordains praise out of the mouths of babes,
they must speak as babes, or the whole power and beauty of the
tribute will be lost.”
Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 16, 25—“The πνεῦμα of a
dead wind is never changed, as the Rabbis of old thought, into the
πνεῦμα of a living spirit. The raven that fed Elijah was nothing
more than a bird. Nor does man, when supernaturally influenced,
cease to be a man. An inspired man is not God, nor a divinely
manipulated automaton”; “In Scripture there may be as much
imperfection as, in the parts of any organism, would be consistent
with the perfect adaptation of that organism to its destined end.
Scripture then, taken together, is a statement of moral and
religious truth sufficient for men’s salvation, or an infallible
and sufficient rule of _faith and practice_.” J. S. Wrightnour:
“Inspire means to breathe in, as a flute-player breathes into his
instrument. As different flutes may have their own shapes,
peculiarities, and what might seem like defects, so here; yet all
are breathed into by one Spirit. The same Spirit who inspired them
selected those instruments which were best for his purpose, as the
Savior selected his apostles. In these writings therefore is given
us, in the precise way that is best for us, the spiritual
instruction and food that we need. Food for the body is not always
given in the most concentrated form, but in the form that is best
adapted for digestion. So God gives gold, not in coin ready
stamped, but in the quartz of the mine whence it has to be dug and
smelted.” Remains of Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his
Friends, 274—“I see that the Bible fits in to every fold of the
human heart. I am a man, and I believe it is God’s book, because
it is man’s book.”
4. In inspiration God may use all right and normal methods of literary
composition.
As we recognize in literature the proper function of history, poetry, and
fiction; of prophecy, parable, and drama; of personification and proverb;
of allegory and dogmatic instruction; and even of myth and legend; we
cannot deny the possibility that God may use any one of these methods of
communicating truth, leaving it to us to determine in any single case
which of these methods he has adopted.
In inspiration, as in regeneration and sanctification, God works
“in divers manners”_ (Heb. 1:1)_. The Scriptures, like the books
of secular literature, must be interpreted in the light of their
purpose. Poetry must not be treated as prose, and parable must not
be made to “go on all fours,” when it was meant to walk erect and
to tell one simple story. Drama is not history, nor is
personification to be regarded as biography. There is a rhetorical
overstatement which is intended only as a vivid emphasizing of
important truth. Allegory is a popular mode of illustration. Even
myth and legend may convey great lessons not otherwise
apprehensible to infantile or untrained minds. A literary sense is
needed in our judgments of Scripture, and much hostile criticism
is lacking in this literary sense.
Denney, Studies in Theology, 218—“There is a stage in which the
whole contents of the mind, as yet incapable of science or
history, may be called mythological. And what criticism shows us,
in its treatment of the early chapters of Genesis, is that God
does not disdain to speak to the mind, nor through it, even when
it is at this lowly stage. Even the myth, in which the beginnings
of human life, lying beyond human research, are represented to
itself by the child-mind of the race, may be made the medium of
revelation.... But that does not make the first chapter of Genesis
science, nor the third chapter history. And what is of authority
in these chapters is not the quasi-scientific or quasi-historical
form, but the message, which through them comes to the heart, of
God’s creative wisdom and power.” Gore, in Lux Mundi, 356—“The
various sorts of mental or literary activity develop in their
different lines out of an earlier condition in which they lie
fused and undifferentiated. This we can vaguely call the mythical
stage of mental evolution. A myth is not a falsehood; it is a
product of mental activity, as instructive and rich as any later
product, but its characteristic is that it is not yet
distinguished into history and poetry and philosophy.” So Grote
calls the Greek myths the whole intellectual stock of the age to
which they belonged—the common root of all the history, poetry,
philosophy, theology, which afterwards diverged and proceeded from
it. So the early part of Genesis may be of the nature of myth in
which we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we do not
deny that it exists. Robert Browning’s Clive and Andrea del Sarto
are essentially correct representations of historical characters,
though the details in each poem are imaginary.
5. The inspiring Spirit has given the Scriptures to the world by a process
of gradual evolution.
As in communicating the truths of natural science, God has communicated
the truths of religion by successive steps, germinally at first, more
fully as men have been able to comprehend them. The education of the race
is analogous to the education of the child. First came pictures,
object-lessons, external rites, predictions; then the key to these in
Christ, and then didactic exposition in the Epistles.
There have been “divers portions,” as well as “divers manners”_
(Heb. 1:1)_. The early prophecies like that of _Gen. 3:15_—the
seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head—were but faint
glimmerings of the dawn. Men had to be raised up who were capable
of receiving and transmitting the divine communications. Moses,
David, Isaiah mark successive advances in recipiency and
transparency to the heavenly light. Inspiration has employed men
of various degrees of ability, culture and religious insight. As
all the truths of the calculus lie germinally in the simplest
mathematical axiom, so all the truths of salvation may be wrapped
up in the statement that God is holiness and love. But not every
scholar can evolve the calculus from the axiom. The teacher may
dictate propositions which the pupil does not understand: he may
demonstrate in such a way that the pupil participates in the
process; or, best of all, he may incite the pupil to work out the
demonstration for himself. God seems to have used all these
methods. But while there are instances of dictation and
illumination, and inspiration sometimes includes these, the
general method seems to have been such a divine quickening of
man’s powers that he discovers and expresses the truth for
himself.
A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 339—“Inspiration is that,
seen from its divine side, which we call discovery when seen from
the human side.... Every addition to knowledge, whether in the
individual or the community, whether scientific, ethical or
theological, is due to a coöperation between the human soul which
assimilates and the divine power which inspires. Neither acts, or
could act, in independent isolation. For ‘unassisted reason’ is a
fiction, and pure receptivity it is impossible to conceive. Even
the emptiest vessel must limit the quantity and determine the
configuration of any liquid with which it may be filled....
Inspiration is limited to no age, to no country, to no people.”
The early Semites had it, and the great Oriental reformers. There
can be no gathering of grapes from thorns, or of figs from
thistles. Whatever of true or of good is found in human history
has come from God. On the Progressiveness of Revelation, see Orr,
Problem of the O. T., 431-478.
6. Inspiration did not guarantee inerrancy in things not essential to the
main purpose of Scripture.
Inspiration went no further than to secure a trustworthy transmission by
the sacred writers of the truth they were commissioned to deliver. It was
not omniscience. It was a bestowal of various kinds and degrees of
knowledge and aid, according to need; sometimes suggesting new truth,
sometimes presiding over the collection of preëxisting material and
guarding from essential error in the final elaboration. As inspiration was
not omniscience, so it was not complete sanctification. It involved
neither personal infallibility, nor entire freedom from sin.
God can use imperfect means. As the imperfection of the eye does
not disprove its divine authorship, and as God reveals himself in
nature and history in spite of their shortcomings, so inspiration
can accomplish its purpose through both writers and writings in
some respects imperfect. God is, in the Bible as he was in Hebrew
history, leading his people onward to Christ, but only by a
progressive unfolding of the truth. The Scripture writers were not
perfect men. Paul at Antioch resisted Peter, “because he stood
condemned”_ (Gal 2:11)_. But Peter differed from Paul, not in
public utterances, nor in written words, but in following his own
teachings (_cf._ _Acts 15:6-11_); _versus_ Norman Fox, in Bap.
Rev., 1885:469-482. Personal defects do not invalidate an
ambassador, though they may hinder the reception of his message.
So with the apostles’ ignorance of the time of Christ’s second
coming. It was only gradually that they came to understand
Christian doctrines; they did not teach the truth all at once;
their final utterances supplemented and completed the earlier; and
all together furnished only that measure of knowledge which God
saw needful for the moral and religious teaching of mankind. Many
things are yet unrevealed, and many things which inspired men
uttered, they did not, when they uttered them, fully understand.
Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 53, 54—“The word is divine-human in the
sense that it has for its contents divine truth in human,
historical, and individually conditioned form. The Holy Scripture
contains the word of God in a way plain, and entirely sufficient
to beget saving faith.” Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 87—“Inspiration
is not a miraculous and therefore incredible thing, but normal and
in accordance with the natural relations of the infinite and
finite spirit, a divine inflowing of _mental_ light precisely
analogous to that _moral_ influence which divines call grace. As
every devout and obedient soul may expect to share in divine
grace, so the devout and obedient souls of all the ages have
shared, as Parker taught, in divine inspiration. And, as the
reception of grace even in large measure does not render us
_impeccable_, so neither does the reception of inspiration render
us _infallible_.” We may concede to Miss Cobbe that inspiration
consists with imperfection, while yet we grant to the Scripture
writers an authority higher than our own.
7. Inspiration did not always, or even generally, involve a direct
communication to the Scripture writers of the words they wrote.
Thought is possible without words, and in the order of nature precedes
words. The Scripture writers appear to have been so influenced by the Holy
Spirit that they perceived and felt even the new truths they were to
publish, as discoveries of their own minds, and were left to the action of
their own minds in the expression of these truths, with the single
exception that they were supernaturally held back from the selection of
wrong words, and when needful were provided with right ones. Inspiration
is therefore not verbal, while yet we claim that no form of words which
taken in its connections would teach essential error has been admitted
into Scripture.
Before expression there must be something to be expressed. Thought
is possible without language. The concept may exist without words.
See experiences of deaf-mutes, in Princeton Rev., Jan.
1881:104-128. The prompter interrupts only when the speaker’s
memory fails. The writing-master guides the pupil’s hand only when
it would otherwise go wrong. The father suffers the child to walk
alone, except when it is in danger of stumbling. If knowledge be
rendered certain, it is as good as direct revelation. But whenever
the mere communication of ideas or the direction to proper
material would not suffice to secure a correct utterance, the
sacred writers were guided in the very selection of their words.
Minute criticism proves more and more conclusively the
suitableness of the verbal dress to the thoughts expressed; all
Biblical exegesis is based, indeed, upon the assumption that
divine wisdom has made the outward form a trustworthy vehicle of
the inward substance of revelation. See Henderson, Inspiration
(2nd ed.), 102, 114; Bib. Sac, 1872:428, 640; William James,
Psychology, 1:266 _sq._
Watts, New Apologetic, 40, 111, holds to a verbal inspiration:
“The bottles are not the wine, but if the bottles perish the wine
is sure to be spilled”; the inspiring Spirit certainly gave
language to Peter and others at Pentecost, for the apostles spoke
with other tongues; holy men of old not only thought, but “spake
from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”_ (2 Pet. 1:21)_. So
Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 171—“Why the minute study of the
_words_ of Scripture, carried on by all expositors, their search
after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to
the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring
of mood and tense and accent?” Liberal scholars, Dr. Gordon
thinks, thus affirm the very doctrine which they deny. Rothe,
Dogmatics, 238, speaks of “a language of the Holy Ghost.”
Oetinger: “It is the style of the heavenly court.” But Broadus, an
almost equally conservative scholar, in his Com. on _Mat. 3:17_,
says that the difference between “This is my beloved Son,” and
_Luke 3:22—_“Thou art my beloved Son,” should make us cautious in
theorizing about verbal inspiration, and he intimates that in some
cases that hypothesis is unwarranted. The theory of verbal
inspiration is refuted by the two facts: 1. that the N. T.
quotations from the O. T., in 99 cases, differ both from the
Hebrew and from the LXX; 2. that Jesus’ own words are reported
with variations by the different evangelists; see Marcus Dods, The
Bible, its Origin and Nature, chapter on Inspiration.
Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that
there was a God, but she had not known his name. Dr. Z. F.
Westervelt, of the Deaf Mute Institute, had under his charge four
children of different mothers. All of these children were dumb,
though there was no defect of hearing and the organs of speech
were perfect. But their mothers had never loved them and had never
talked to them in the loving way that provoked imitation. The
children heard scolding and harshness, but this did not attract.
So the older members of the church in private and in the meetings
for prayer should teach the younger to talk. But harsh and
contentious talk will not accomplish the result,—it must be the
talk of Christian love. William D. Whitney, in his review of Max
Müller’s Science of Language, 26-31, combats the view of Müller
that thought and language are identical. Major Bliss Taylor’s
reply to Santa Anna: “General Taylor never surrenders!” was a
substantially correct, though a diplomatic and euphemistic,
version of the General’s actual profane words. Each Scripture
writer uttered old truth in the new forms with which his own
experience had clothed it. David reached his greatness by leaving
off the mere repetition of Moses, and by speaking out of his own
heart. Paul reached his greatness by giving up the mere teaching
of what he had been taught, and by telling what God’s plan of
mercy was to all. Augustine: “Scriptura est sensus
Scripturæ”—“Scripture _is_ what Scripture _means_.” Among the
theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as
to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching,
are Luther, Calvin, Cocceius, Tholuck, Neander, Lange, Stier, Van
Oosterzee, John Howe, Richard Baxter, Conybeare, Alford, Mead.
8. Yet, notwithstanding the ever-present human element, the all-pervading
inspiration of the Scriptures constitutes these various writings an
organic whole.
Since the Bible is in all its parts the work of God, each part is to be
judged, not by itself alone, but in its connection with every other part.
The Scriptures are not to be interpreted as so many merely human
productions by different authors, but as also the work of one divine mind.
Seemingly trivial things are to be explained from their connection with
the whole. One history is to be built up from the several accounts of the
life of Christ. One doctrine must supplement another. The Old Testament is
part of a progressive system, whose culmination and key are to be found in
the New. The central subject and thought which binds all parts of the
Bible together, and in the light of which they are to be interpreted, is
the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The Bible says: “There is no God”_ (Ps. 14:1)_; but then, this is
to be taken with the context: “The fool hath said in his heart.”
Satan’s “it is written,”_ (Mat. 4:6)_ is supplemented by Christ’s
“It is written again”_ (Mat. 4:7)_. Trivialities are like the hair
and nails of the body—they have their place as parts of a complete
and organic whole; see Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:40. The verse which
mentions Paul’s cloak at Troas (2 Tim. 4:13) is (1) a sign of
genuineness—a forger would not invent it; (2) an evidence of
temporal need endured for the gospel; (3) an indication of the
limits of inspiration,—even Paul must have books and parchments.
_Col. 2:21—_“Handle not, nor taste, nor touch”—is to be
interpreted by the context in _verse 20—_“why ... do ye subject
yourselves to ordinances?” and by _verse 22—_“after the precepts
and doctrines of men.” Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:164—“The difference
between John’s gospel and the book of Chronicles is like that
between man’s brain and the hair of his head; nevertheless the
life of the body is as truly in the hair as in the brain.” Like
railway coupons, Scripture texts are “Not good if detached.”
Crooker, The New Bible and its New Uses, 137-144, utterly denies
the unity of the Bible. Prof. A. B. Davidson of Edinburgh says
that “A theology of the O. T. is really an impossibility, because
the O. T. is not a homogeneous whole.” These denials proceed from
an insufficient recognition of the principle of evolution in O. T.
history and doctrine. Doctrines in early Scripture are like rivers
at their source; they are not yet fully expanded; many affluents
are yet to come. See Bp. Bull’s Sermon, in Works, xv:183; and
Bruce, Apologetics, 323—“The literature of the early stages of
revelation must share the defects of the revelation which it
records and interprets.... The final revelation enables us to see
the defects of the earlier.... We should find Christ in the O. T.
as we find the butterfly in the caterpillar, and man the crown of
the universe in the fiery cloud.” Crane, Religion of To-morrow,
224—Every part is to be modified by every other part. No verse is
true _out of_ the Book, but the whole Book taken together is true.
Gore, in Lux Mundi, 350—“To recognize the inspiration of the
Scriptures is to put ourselves to school in every part of them.”
Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere
lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet
Evolvable from the whole; evolved at last Painfully, held
tenaciously by me.” On the Organic Unity of the O. T., see Orr,
Problem of the O. T., 27-51.
9. When the unity of the Scripture is fully recognized, the Bible, in
spite of imperfections in matters non-essential to its religious purpose,
furnishes a safe and sufficient guide to truth and to salvation.
The recognition of the Holy Spirit’s agency makes it rational and natural
to believe in the organic unity of Scripture. When the earlier parts are
taken in connection with the later, and when each part is interpreted by
the whole, most of the difficulties connected with inspiration disappear.
Taken together, with Christ as its culmination and explanation, the Bible
furnishes the Christian rule of faith and practice.
The Bible answers two questions: What has God done to save me? and
What must I do to be saved? The propositions of Euclid are not
invalidated by the fact that he believed the earth to be flat. The
ethics of Plato would not be disproved by his mistakes with regard
to the solar system. So religious authority is independent of
merely secular knowledge.—Sir Joshua Reynolds was a great painter,
and a great teacher of his art. His lectures on painting laid down
principles which have been accepted as authority for generations.
But Joshua Reynolds illustrates his subject from history and
science. It was a day when both history and science were young. In
some unimportant matters of this sort, which do not in the least
affect his conclusions, Sir Joshua Reynolds makes an occasional
slip; his statements are inaccurate. Does he, therefore, cease to
be an authority in matters of his art?—The Duke of Wellington said
once that no human being knew at what time of day the battle of
Waterloo began. One historian gets his story from one combatant,
and he puts the hour at eleven in the morning. Another historian
gets his information from another combatant, and he puts it at
noon. Shall we say that this discrepancy argues error in the whole
account, and that we have no longer any certainty that the battle
of Waterloo was ever fought at all?
Such slight imperfections are to be freely admitted, while at the
same time we insist that the Bible, taken as a whole, is
incomparably superior to all other books, and is “able to make
thee wise unto salvation”_ (2 Tim. 3:15)_. Hooker, Eccl. Polity:
“Whatsoever is spoken of God or things pertaining to God otherwise
than truth is, though it seem an honor, it is an injury. And as
incredible praises given unto men do often abate and impair the
credit of their deserved commendation, so we must likewise take
great heed lest, in attributing to Scripture more than it can
have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which
it hath more abundantly to be less reverently esteemed.” Baxter,
Works, 21:349—“Those men who think that these human imperfections
of the writers do extend further, and may appear in some passages
of chronologies or history which are no part of the rule of faith
and life, do not hereby destroy the Christian cause. For God might
enable his apostles to an infallible recording and preaching of
the gospel, even all things necessary to salvation, though he had
not made them infallible in every by-passage and circumstance, any
more than they were indefectible in life.”
The Bible, says Beet, “contains possible errors in small details
or allusions, but it gives us with absolute certainty the great
facts of Christianity, and upon these great facts, and upon these
only, our faith is based.” Evans, Bib. Scholarship and
Inspiration, 15, 18, 65—“Teach that the shell is part of the
kernel and men who find that they cannot keep the shell will throw
away shell and kernel together.... This overstatement of
inspiration made Renan, Bradlaugh and Ingersoll sceptics.... If in
creation God can work out a perfect result through imperfection
why cannot he do the like in inspiration? If in Christ God can
appear in human weakness and ignorance, why not in the _written_
word?”
We therefore take exception to the view of Watts, New Apologetic,
71—“Let the theory of historical errors and scientific errors be
adopted, and Christianity must share the fate of Hinduism. If its
inspired writers err when they tell us of earthly things, none
will believe when they tell of heavenly things.” Watts adduces
instances of Spinoza’s giving up the form while claiming to hold
the substance, and in this way reducing revelation to a phenomenon
of naturalistic pantheism. We reply that no _a priori_ theory of
perfection in divine inspiration must blind us to the evidence of
actual imperfection in Scripture. As in creation and in Christ, so
in Scripture, God humbles himself to adopt human and imperfect
methods of self-revelation. See Jonathan Edwards, Diary: “I
observe that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries,
because they are beside the way to which they have been so long
used. _Resolved_, if ever I live to years, that I will be
impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and
receive them if rational, however long soever I have been used to
another way of thinking.”
Bowne, The Immanence of God, 109, 110—“Those who would find the
source of certainty and the seat of authority in the Scriptures
alone, or in the church alone, or reason and conscience alone,
rather than in the complex and indivisible coworking of all these
factors, should be reminded of the history of religious thought.
The stiffest doctrine of Scripture inerrancy has not prevented
warring interpretations; and those who would place the seat of
authority in reason and conscience are forced to admit that
outside illumination may do much for both. In some sense the
religion of the spirit is a very important fact, but when it sets
up in opposition to the religion of a book, the light that is in
it is apt to turn to darkness.”
10. While inspiration constitutes Scripture an authority more trustworthy
than are individual reason or the creeds of the church, the only ultimate
authority is Christ himself.