Why We Believe
11. The Authority and Inspiration of Scripture (Page 2)
11. The Authority and Inspiration of Scripture (Page 2)
Verbal Inspiration of Scripture
A definition: The Bible is in the whole and in its parts inspired and therefore inerrant even to its very words.” Inspiration is therefore, propositional.5 When we speak of inspiration we focus on the communication from God as expressed in the original writing.
Testimony of Scripture
2 Timothy 3:16:: All scripture (all means all and that’s all all means!) is given by inspiration (theopneutos-- God-breathed).6 This means that all scripture is the product of His creative breath. He, as the author, “breathed out” the scriptures. The implication is that because of its divine origination, Scripture takes supreme authority over all our interests and purposes. When scripture speaks we must listen and conform.
2 Peter 1:21: Scripture as God’s spokesman (prophecy) was the product of the Holy Spirit who moved (pheromenai-- borne/carried along) holy men of God. Scripture came not by the will of man. This does not mean that God dictated His Word, as the mark of the personality of each human instrument can be found in each book of scripture.7
Other Views of Inspiration
Naturalistic: The Bible is merely a human product devoid of any supernatural elements. Therefore, it is about as inspired as Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Neo-Orthodox: Only certain parts of the Bible are inspired and therefore inerrant, particularly those having to do with our faith and practice. The Bible “contains” the Word of God or “becomes” the Word of God. This is also called dialectical inspiration because the Bible becomes inspired only as the reader has “an encounter” with it. This is what evangelicals would call a rhēma (cf. Matthew 26:75) or maybe an epiphany, a sudden and special revelation.
The main problem with the neoorthodox position comes in determining what from the Bible could be the Word of God. Even when you determine that “only the words of Jesus are inspired,” you run into a snag because Jesus never wrote anything down.8 His words come to us second hand through the man who wrote them down. If these writers can be trusted to be accurate with the words of Jesus, why can’t they be trusted with the rest of scripture? In this view, men are entrusted with determining inspiration from their predetermined beliefs and morality and rejecting those portions that conflict with those beliefs and prejudices.9
Concept Inspiration
The declaration of writers who knew the facts was that they were responsible for words rather than concepts: Moses: Exodus 34:27; David: 2 Samuel 23:2; Psalm 45:1; Isaiah: Isaiah 6:5-8; Jeremiah: Jeremiah 1:7, 36:1,2; Christ: John 14:10, 12:48, 17:8; Matthew: Matthew 8:17; Paul: 1 Corinthian 2:4.
Plenary Inspiration
A definition: “The Bible, made up of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is complete in revelation and therefore inspired in its entirety as one unit.” This does not mean that God does not communicate to man apart from the scriptures, but simply that the sixty-six books are a standard upon which to judge whether or not additional communication is truly from God (Galatians 1:8).
