The Inspiration of Scripture

When an archaeologist speaks of the Bible as the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, he is at least somewhat familiar with over 9,000 years of urban civilization. And he has spent a great deal of time reading the thoughts of men as expressed in writing for something like 5,000 years. In all that time there has been only one absolutely unique personality, namely Jesus the Christ, and only one absolutely unique book, the Bible.

While sincere Christians will frankly admit the uniqueness of Jesus the Christ, some of them question the uniqueness of the Bible. This is rather strange scholarship, since the only authentic original information we have on Christ is the Bible. We can have secondary and partially confirming information in our Christian experience, but since one never finds a Christian obeying Christ in all his gospel commands, that secondary information is only scanty and partial, for Christ insisted that only after we had obeyed would we have the knowledge.

The uniqueness of the Bible is above all else due to its being the work of the Holy Spirit. To be sure, he does have collaborators in the persons of Moses, David, Isaiah, John, Paul, and others, but the uniqueness of the Bible is not a product of the human authors. What about the work of Moses that was never canonized and the songs of David that were never preserved? Note also that John insists “there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” The place of human authorship must be dealt with in any good doctrine of inspiration, but it will always be a minor point.

The study of the inspiration of Scripture is one of the most necessary and fascinating fields of theology today. The basis of that study is the fact that in the center of all history stands the Bible—an unbelievably unique book. Archaeology has shown that the last book of the Bible was written before A.D. 100. That leaves almost 1,900 years since that date for human authorship, unaided by the Holy Spirit, to improve on Scripture and to present someone comparable to the unique person of Jesus the Christ. But what has human authorship added to the Bible’s concept of sin, salvation, the resurrection, the Godhead? Despite all our vaunted modern scholarship, the human mind working without divine inspiration has produced absolutely nothing of an improvement on Christ and his Scripture in the same length of time as that which passed between Abraham and the Book of the Revelation. In all the fields of scholarly research, nothing is as unique as Christ and his Bible, with its message to all mankind everywhere.

Unfortunately, most present-day studies on inspiration bypass this basic fact and deal only with minor features. Scholars (1) emphasize the human element rather than the divine, (2) stress only some features from the manuscripts and usually omit translations, (3) accentuate the application of Scripture to the immediate circumstances of an episode to the neglect of its universal message to all men at all times and in all places, (4) apply modern philosophical techniques totally unrelated to the Bible and thereby arrive at false conclusions.

Let us consider first of all the divine element in inspiration. Not only does Scripture state this over and over; it is also seen in Christ’s use of the Old Testament. When Christ was quoting Scripture to Satan at the temptation, he was certainly emphasizing not the human wisdom of a Moses (or a Deuteronomist) but the very word of God itself. At the other end of his ministry, Christ was crucified for identifying himself with the God of Scripture.

Notice also that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are a unit of Scripture with no clue to human authorship (except that which a modern critic invented); yet here are some of the most essential doctrines of Scripture. After these verses we learn nothing more about the Creator until we get to the New Testament, and then it is the doctrine of the Trinity as Creator. The doctrine of the Sabbath is actually further advanced in Genesis than in Exodus. God’s people before Moses had only one holy day—the Sabbath; and in the New Testament, Christ returns to the Sabbath day as the exclusive holy day for the church. Human wisdom does not account for any of these concepts of the Sabbath, though from Genesis to Revelation the Sabbath is a major feature; and ultimately heaven is the Sabbath.

A second factor of the divine element that the experienced historian notices is that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and his revelation of himself is the same. Abraham had the faith to appreciate and appropriate the doctrine of justification by faith about 2,000 years before Paul did. To be sure, Paul understood that doctrine intellectually better than Abraham did, and his writings have made it easier for us to understand the doctrine. But both Abraham and Paul accepted the doctrine as God’s revelation and not their own “creative thinking.” Note also that Paul’s detailed intellectual explanation of this doctrine did not convert all his hearers. Something else beside the human element was entering in, to the salvation of Paul’s converts.

It is significant that the Old Testament is full of data infinitely beyond the knowledge of its human authors or anyone else then alive. Most of the “plans and specifications” for the Messiah scattered throughout the Old Testament were beyond the apprehension of their human authors. To be sure, these men recognized that God and God alone could save a lost world, but they little dreamed that the language they used was often later to have a meaning infinitely beyond their apprehension at the time they wrote. When Paul was evangelizing the world, it was these Messianic “plans and specifications” that constituted his Scripture lesson, and his sermon demonstrated that Christ fulfilled all these requirements as well as the other descriptions of the God of Israel. John 3:16 is the essence of all Scripture. Salvation is the work of the Trinity, and the Bible is God’s autographed handbook of redemption. Remember that when the Abraham story was being written into Scripture, it was not only to benefit his children but also to be of genuine spiritual value to all men living today—almost four millennia afterwards.

Although the Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture, the human element of the men who actually penned the words of Scripture is also seen. The modern liberal is correct in emphasizing the human element in Scripture. He is incorrect in overemphasizing it at the expense of the Holy Spirit. Now the next natural question is: How can man’s part in Scripture be truly human in view of the work of the Holy Spirit on that same text? I have never seen an answer to this problem that will satisfy the rationalists; but the scholar who believes in the use of analogies may be helped, for Christ has set the precedent for the use of the analogy in the deeper things of the spirit.

Let us take the field of music and think of God as a composer of music. Let us then take the human author of Scripture as a conductor of God’s music. Each conductor moved by the Spirit instinctively picks out that particular work of God’s grace which he wishes to stress and imprints upon it his own personality as he presents it for his immediate audience and as the Holy Spirit “tapes it” in Scripture for future audiences. This is well seen in the four Gospels: the overall theme of Christ is identical in each, but the author or conductor may choose to bring out a particular melodic line and at times may even compress the music by omitting parts of it that other conductors prefer to use. Since we have the “tapes” of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, however, we not only have the totality of the music that God intended men to have, but the music takes on added harmony when parts of it are presented by each of the four evangelists.

Another analogy is found in science, in the human brain. The brain of man is very similar to the brains of the higher forms of animal life, and the physician can do biological research on animal brains and then relate his findings to the human brain. This has led to phenomenal advances in medicine and surgery for all mankind. But at the same time the human brain is also uniquely different from animal brains, for the human mind can think “God” as truly as it thinks “animal.” Thus the human brain, like the Bible, handles both the human and the divine.

Or to use another example from physiology: not all the doctors in the world put together know all the details of the process by which we digest food and assimilate it into the various organs of the body. Nevertheless the doctors go on eating every day, knowing that nature can do its work whether they know how it occurs or not. The Christian who sincerely studies and practices God’s word knows that it “works,” even if he cannot solve the problem of the relation of human and divine authorship.

While we are dealing with science, it is well to emphasize that the skeptic who seeks to eliminate all mystery from Scripture is ignorant of science, which is the greatest field of thinking in this century. Mystery is as much a part of science as it is of Scripture. Indeed, it is the unknown that keeps science alive. When mystery dies, science will die, and the same is true of theology.

Now let us take another analogy, this time in the field of philosophy—temporal and eternal truth. The temporal truth of Scripture is what the human authors understand and write about; but God knows eternal truth, and this is what he imparts to the human author, who may be totally unaware of the uniqueness of this later truth. Just as the seed planted in the ground may have no apparent characteristics of the plant that grows from it, so the “seed truth” grasped by the human author of Scripture may soon be infinitely beyond his apprehension. Such were the Messianic passages—human to the human author, divine to God.

The second major problem in the doctrine of inspiration is textual criticism and translation. There is a wealth of new material in New Testament criticism that was never available to the older theologians, and it is constantly being increased. In Old Testament criticism, the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls has revolutionized study. But with all these thousands of thousands of variants, not a single major doctrine of Scripture has been jeopardized. Nevertheless, these many variants do compel us to take a new look at this problem. And there is also the related problem of translating the Bible, which is culminating now in the magnificent work of the world Bible societies.

Indeed, the translation problem of the New Testament is earlier than the variant readings of the copyists. The Gospels we have were written in Greek, but Christ’s preaching was done in Aramaic and Hebrew. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that Hebrew was a more common language in Christ’s time than formerly thought. Truth, therefore, must leap the linguistic barrier even before the gospel story is given in written form. Furthermore, the New Testament itself sometimes quotes the Old Testament from a Hebrew text and sometimes from a Greek text. This shows that the New Testament writers did not use or need an infallibly standardized text. Both the writer and the Christian reader have the Holy Spirit to handle all these problems.

The theological problem of a variant text, however, is both augmented and illuminated by the Church’s problem of translating our Hebrew and Greek manuscripts into other tongues, which now number about 3,000. The difficulties involved in translating into these languages with their hundreds of differing and contradictory linguistic phenomena are greater than those of the Hebrew and Greek variants. Remember also that the number of people brought to a saving knowledge of Christ through a Hebrew or Greek Bible is infinitely smaller than the number brought in by the translations. I even know of one African translation of the Old Testament that was made from the King James Version! And yet these translations (good or bad) save souls.

The only really efficient textual critic and translator is no human scholar of any kind but only the Holy Spirit himself, and he is not handicapped by textual variants or translation problems. The Author of Scripture is also the Interpreter of Scripture. The God who personally opened up the doctrine of justification by faith to Abraham and Paul also opens it up to each of us. And the same Holy Spirit stands by all of us to open up all Scripture! Paul phrased it well in First Thessalonians 1:5 when he said that the Gospel came not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit. The saintly Ethiopian eunuch had an inspired text before him, but he frankly stated that he could not understand it until the Holy Spirit sent Philip to interpret it. The Revised Standard Version phrases this idea excellently when it says in Second Peter 1:20, “No prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.”

Strange as it may seem, no one comes to God in his own wisdom. This is demonstrated by the fact that a Jewish theological seminary can have a chair of New Testament (and Jewish scholars are among the most brilliant in the world). But that New Testament department does not win souls to Christ. Both conservatives and liberals have a tendency to treat the Bible text as a mechanical thing—get the original text and all your problems are solved. But even such an infallible Bible would still not be a self-illuminating book, as would an excellent treatise in science. The Bible can be seen only in the “invisible light” of the Holy Spirit and with him as a personal teacher.

Remember also that some of the most successful soul-winners in the world are Bible-school teachers who have never read the Bible in its original languages. It is also interesting that the first version of the Bible that was put into a “barbarian tongue” omitted the books of Samuel and Kings. Ulfilas, missionary to the Goths, omitted these books lest they stir up the fighting spirit of the Goths. This abridged Bible, however, converted the Goths. Remember also that the Catholics use a Bible that includes the Apocrypha, which Protestants reject. And yet with differing Bibles, both Protestants and Catholics bring unsaved men to Jesus Christ. Nevertheless it behooves every Christian minister to use the best critical text of the Bible that he can find! This is both the ideal and the practice of the American Bible Society, which is constantly working on such a critical text as the basis for its world wide translations.

A third common mistake of modern writers on inspiration is that they overemphasize the application of Scripture to the immediate circumstances of the writing and omit the Bible’s universal message to all men at all times and in all places. The Bible is actually the only timeless book in the world’s history!

I am as interested as anyone else in the immediate circumstances of the writing of Scripture. For forty years a very heavy portion of my salary has gone into archaeological digs, and I read everything I can about the archaeology and the historical background of Scripture. But these researches have shown me that human nature is the same in all ages. Nathan said to David, “Behold, thou art the man,” and Scripture from Genesis to Revelation has been constantly echoing that theme to sinful man. The Fifty-first Psalm is the penitential prayer of most Christians, but the background that occasioned David’s song is seldom related to the personal experiences of the Christians who use it. No Palestinian shepherd would risk his flock with an American city Christian, but when that American Christian lies down to die, the Twenty-third Psalm is the funeral song of hallelujah he wants as he crosses over into the promised land.

Archaeology has laid a new emphasis upon the immediate circumstances of the Bible, for, like the microscope, archaeology opens up a new world. But this new world is simply the old world seen in minute detail. Therefore archaeology only opens up a world in which God is more wonderful than before. But in addition it lends a vivid color to the picture that was not there before. One sees it as it were in Kodachrome. The true believer thus sees thousands of new features of Scripture that fit perfectly into the present problems of the Church around the world.

But God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Now if you are interested in looking at the men of Scripture (be they such giants as Abraham, Moses, John, and Paul) only through your own eyes rather than through God’s eyes, then your judgment of these men will be as accurate as Satan’s estimate of Job and the evaluation Judas put on Jesus. The timeless eyes of an omniscient loving God alone will enable us to see the totality of Scripture.

A fourth mistake made by many writers on inspiration is to use modern theological techniques. One of the problems of the Church today is that too many of its seminary professors and preachers are lineal descendants of the Greeks whom Paul addressed in Athens—men who spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. When I read these modern theological-philosophical hybrids, I am reminded of the remark of one of my former theological professors. He said, “Gentlemen, if you didn’t learn enough in college, we will try to help you learn more. If you don’t know enough Bible we will help you get it here. But if you don’t have common sense, neither we nor God can be of any help to you.” This new esoteric phase of the doctrine of inspiration was so excellently refuted by C. S. Lewis in an essay printed in the June 9, 1967, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY that one need not add anything to his comments.

The glory of science is its emphasis on common sense. The scientific scholar must make his researches so plain that any other scholar in the world can reproduce them. And not until his findings have been confirmed are his conclusions a valid part of science. Unfortunately, liberal theologians do not think after this pattern. It is the esoteric that they are interested in. They are modern gnostics.

The saintly man you meet in Scripture is always a man of common sense. He was not such a man before God changed his life. He, too, had many esoteric ideas. But when the Holy Spirit converts a man he gives him a unique kind of Common Sense. This term is now capitalized because it now has a new meaning. It is Common Sense because it is now a sense common to Jesus and Christians. It is this that makes possible a valid doctrine of inspiration—an infallible rule of faith and practice.

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