The Christian faith is a faith founded upon divine revelation. We confess that divine truth is only to be found in divine revelation. Furthermore we confess that that divine revelation is exclusively located in the 66 books in the Biblical canon (at least in the modern north american Evangelical context). These 66 books are first and foremost divine. However, the answer to how exactly these books are divine and what that means has been disputed over the ages, especially that of our modern age. The word ‘inspired’ means something that has been breathed into. The way that we understand inspiration in regard to Scripture is through 2 Timothy 3:16 which refers to Scripture as “God-breathed”. This has been historically translated as “inspired” in certain translations because it was such in the Latin Vulgate. When we come to the discussion of the inspiration of Scripture three questions must be asked. What is inspiration, how does God inspire His Word, and what are the implications of this doctrine.
The church has spent centuries debating what inspiration is. Originally the definition of inspiration was quite obvious and clear. The Church Fathers asserted that the Scriptures were God’s Word rather than just man’s. They asserted that the product was inerrant and infallible. That is was truth revealed from the ultimate source of wisdom, the omniscient God. Anything contained in the Scriptures was held to with absolute and unshakable faith. It was not believed because it made sense, nor because it was observed in reality, although these things surely were the case. It was believed because it came from the mouth of God. The human authors of the Scriptures were seen as the instrument or medium through which the Lord willed to reveal His truth to the world. Francis Pieper writes of this saying: “In order to express this relation between the Holy Ghost and the human writers, the Church Fathers as well as the old Lutheran dogmaticians call the holy writers clerks, secretaries, hands, pens, of the Holy Spirit.” The church may rightly say that the Scriptures are wholly of divine origin. God in His deliverance of the Scriptures does so via the use of human authors whom the Holy Spirit moves to write the Word of God. This is the teaching expressed in 2 Peter 1:21. The men appointed by God to write His Word were not merely writing their own thoughts or facts that they thought were important but were moved by God to write the very Words which they wrote. In clarification of inspiration as a direct connection with the words rather than a supernatural influence upon human words Pieper writes; “inspiration does not consist in mere divine guidance and protection against error, but is a divine supplying or divine giving of the words that constitute Scripture.” This idea is affirmed clearly by Justin Martyr in saying; “we must not suppose that the language proceeds from men who were inspired, but from the Divine Word which moves them”. This treatment of inspiration is not given to discredit the inspiration of the human authors. What Justin Martyr is here saying is that when we look at Paul’s epistles we ought to accept it first and foremost not as Paul’s words to us, but God’s words to us, written through the instrument of Paul. For something to be God-breathed means therefore that the product is from God. Looking then at an inspired Word of God we are looking at the words that God speaks to us. As the history of Christianity progresses more differing views on the inspiration of Scripture have arisen. There have been those who see the inspiration of God’s Word to mean that He protects or keeps the words from error, that the ideas that the words convey are from God but not the words, that the general gist of the Scriptures is from God but that the rest is from man, that the Holy Spirit causes the authors to write Scriptures that are entirely human, and those who believe that the Scriptures are entirely of man reflecting only their understanding of divine matters rather than being direct revelation from God. A. H. Strong understood inspiration to mean God’s influence upon the writers rather than a direct revealing of truth through a human instrument. He phrases his position this way; “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.” What this understanding leaves us with in the finished product is a book written entirely by men that God had a heavy influence over. Norman Geisler references this position one that leaves the Bible as infallible but not inerrant. If the only interaction that the Spirit is having with the text is an influence then there is still much room for human error. The language that is used by the Church Fathers and the Confessional Lutherans is that and the same of the dictation theorists that Strong makes mention of in his writings regarding the aforementioned position. This reference is as follows; “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.” There is here a problem we find. Strong asserts that those who make the human authors of Scripture pens of God rather than penmen are dictation theorists that bring the authors to little more than possessed robots. This is clearly mechanical dictation that Strong is speaking of. However, something must be understood here. Strong believes that inspiration of Scripture is nothing more than a divine influence and understands the Scriptures to be infallible though not inerrant. In Strong desiring to make the human authors fit more closely into the role of primary author, the penman as he says, he has rendered the Scriptures errant and therefore contradicted the Word of God. In Strong’s position, the theological and ethical truths are from God, but the words chosen to deliver these truths may in reality be very erroneous in regard to historical statements. A sizable issue that this creates is that Strong can therefore not rightly say that the entirety of the Scriptures are of divine origin unless He is to say that not all that God sets His hands to is perfect. Furthermore, Strong cannot hold a position of plenary verbal inspiration, for he neither thinks that the whole of the Bible nor the words in any sense are from God nor inspired. It is for him, only the message that the Bible seeks to convey that is inspired and even then, it passes through erroneous wording. How then can anyone who reads the Word of God ascribe to it the aforementioned title? The Inspiration of God’s Word means that God’s Word came directly from the Lord Himself. This means that the Word is His, and is delivered by man, rather than it being man’s words as influenced by God. This Quenstedt tells us this:
One must distinguish between mere divine assistance and direction by which the holy writers in speaking and writing were only prevented from departing from the truth, and divine assistance and direction which included the inspiration and the dictation of the Holy Ghost. Not the former, but the latter makes the Bible Theoneoupstos.
In saying this Quenstedt draws a line in the sand between any kind of influence or superintendence that might be termed inspiration and the Biblical inspiration that is a dictation from the Holy Spirit. With this we might then properly ascribe the Scriptures the title “God’s Word.” This inspiration is extends past the theological and ethical truths within it, to every single word including those pertaining to history. Pieper teaches this idea in saying;
We would be doing violence to the statement of God if we excepted from inspiration those parts of Scripture that contain historical, geographical, scientific, etc… but also the historical data, though mentioned only incidentally, are inspired and infallible, because they are a part of Scripture.
Here we gain a clear picture of inspiration and its scope. It is a direct authoring of the Scriptures through the human instrument. As Quenstedt says, it is not a preserving from error and guidance into truth that makes the Bible inspired. It is dictation of exact words. And this dictation of exact words as we see in the writings of Pieper, this extends to the entirety of the Bible including historical data and leaves it inerrant and infallible.
God inspires His Word through His spirit. As the Scriptures say in 2 Peter 1:21, the human authors spoke or wrote, as they Holy Spirit moved within them to do so. This moving of the Spirit is not clearly in an influence unawares to the author, nor was it a mechanical possessing of the human authors mind. It is as Pieper says; “the writers were not lifeless machines but living, personal instruments, endowed with intellect and will and equipped with their own distinct style.” Therefore, God inspires His Word as we see not by possessing the human authors, or overriding and moulding their writing style, yet in the very same, God breathes out every single Word so that it is both infallible and inerrant, and perfect in every possible sense.
