A Definition of Inspiration

This week an excellent three-part article appeared by The Rush discussing the relevancy of the Scriptures. I was priviledged enough to join the discussion and add my humble opinion to the mix. The statement I made about the relevancy of Scripture and its inspiration was as follows:

"But while the Bible was inspired by God, it was also authored by non-immutable, non-omniscient, non-omnipotent men and women writing from their own culture to people in their own culture. The Bible is written in three dead languages with loaned words from a dozen other dead languages. The Bible uses various forms of literature that are no longer used. The Bible speaks of cultural conditions that are no longer applicable. The Bible speaks of historical events, people, and places 2000-3000 years removed from modern American culture. The Bible uses poetic/symbolic language to speak about 1) the structure of heaven and earth, 2) the spiritual realm, and 3) pre-historical and post-historical events. All this must play a factor in its relevance."

Another person responded with this insightful request:

"I would be interested in hearing your definition of inspiration. Maybe you should treat this topic on your blog, so that we might understand your view. From your previous reply, it sounds as if your definition would be different from mine."

In order to answer the request posed, I must first deal examine three areas of this topic: the issue Inerrancy, the history of the doctrine of inspiration, and the meaning of the Word of God.

On December 22nd 2004, I wrote the following:

"I believe that the Bible is the inspired (God-breathed), inerrant, infallible, record of the revelation of God. But while I am an inerrantist I do not mind other Christians and Christian scholars who do not believe in inerrancy. I think they are wrong but their beliefs are their own and it is between them and God."

Since that time I have practically discarded the term inerrancy from my confessional statements. Inerrancy is a corollary to the full inspiration of the Bible. The term has not typically appeared in Baptist confessions of faith as a description of our belief in the Bible nor does so now. The term inerrancy means different things to different people. So many theories abound that the term has lost much of its meaning if it ever had any meaning to begin with. If anything, the debate over this term is just that, a debate over terminology. I have decided to drop its name but preserve the meaning of what I believe the actual nature of the Bible's "inerrancy" is, namely, inerrancy of purpose. Inerrancy of purpose holds that the Bible inerrantly accomplishes its purpose. The purpose of the biblical revelation is to bring people into personal fellowship with Christ, not to communicate historical, cosmological, and scientific truths. Therefore, we should not necessarily use the book of Joshua, Judges, Daniel as historical books even though they do contain many historical truths. The authors of the books under the guidance of the Holy Spirit had a theological purpose and shaped the historical events according to that theological purpose. I do not think the Bible is in error when it gets history or science wrong because its intent is something other than conveying history and science. Humans have the ability to uncover the truths of history and science on our own accord. The Scriptures are for us because we cannot uncover these truths; we need God for this.

Any statement about the biblical teachings on inspiration must be based upon examples, for no creedal passages are to be found. The inspiration of holy men is prior to Holy Scripture, for there were inspired prophets in the time of oral transmission. Both are included in 2 Peter 1:20f: "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy $pirit spoke from God."

This movement of the Holy Spirit from God is the exact impression received from the Deuteronomic historians. As the transition is made from the ecstatic power of the judges, the shopetim, to the ecstatic prophecy of the cultic prophets, the nebiim, the picture is one of possession of the prophet by the Spirit of the Lord (1 Sam. 10;1-13). Saul was "turned into another man" as "God gave him another heart" (10;6, 9). Saul uttered ecstatic prophecy when the Spirit came upon him (10;6, 13). Those who followed Saul were a combination of the two, "men of valor whose hearts God had touched" ( 10;26). Ecstatic power was manifested when "the Spirit of the Lord took possession of Gideon" (Judg. 6;34). This experience of appearing "touched" is the meaning of possession. Ecstatic utterances are first mentioned in the Balaam oracles {Null. 24:3f).

New Testament prophetism reflects the same distinction in ranking inspired prophecy above ecstatic utterances in tongues (1 Cor. 14). The boundary again is the rational content of the utterance. Praying and singing with the human mind and the human spirit, the nous and the pneuma, are higher forms of inspiration than praying and singing in ecstatic tongues in which only the human spirit, the pneuma, is active.

When this is applied to the inspiration of Holy Scripture it requires a view broad enough to include the historical writings of the Old Testament and Luke-Acts of the New Testament, as well as the almost dictation view of inspiration found in such apocalyptic writings as Daniel and Revelation. The inspiration of Holy Scripture became a theological question when oral tradition became a written record. A complex process of composition leads from the first documents to the central summary of Old Testament Scripture. Speaking of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament containing the Apocrypha, 2 Timothy 3; 16f. says; "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." After general agreement on the New Testament canon was achieved, this was usually applied to all Greek and Latin Bibles until the Protestant Reformation.

It would now benefit us greatly to examine the history of the doctrine of inspiration before I make a definition public. A doctrine of inspiration was not fully formulated unfil the Protestant Reformation when biblical authority became the supreme appeal over ecclesiastical tradition. A doctrine of biblical authority produced theories of inspiration. The Roman Catholic reaction to the Reformation declared that both Scripture and tradition were dictated by the Holy Spirit. On April 8, 1546, the Council of Trent declared that the whole of Scripture, as well as the body of unwritten tradition, was given Spiritu sancto dictante, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. Vatican Council I, 1869-70 and Providentissi mus Deus, an encyclical by Pope Leo XIII in 1893, reaffirmed this dictation view. Later pronouncements, especially Spiritus Paraclitus by Benedict XV in 1920 and Afflante Spiritu by Pius XII in 1943, dealt with the issue, but a dramatic debate took place in 1962. When the conservative constitution Dei Verbum was presented to Vatican II, Pope John XXIII intervened and appointed a special commission to rewrite it. The new draft, enacted on Nov. 18, 1965 by a vote of 2,344 to 6, subordinated tradition to Scripture and confined inerrancy to matters pertaining to salvation. The modern historical approach to the study of the Scriptures was approved, and the two-source view of revelation was left an open issue.

The Reformers resisted the unwritten tradition, but they too adopted the dictation theory of biblical inspiration. Lutheranism hardened into a mold of biblical rigidity that still resists the historical reconstruction of biblical history and any effort to adapt the early chapters of Genesis to the modern scientific view of the world and man. A current example of this is the conflict at Concordia Theological Seminary in which the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church is called back to the pre-scientific and pre-critical views of the Reformation.

Historic Calvinism taught the dictation view of inspiration for Holy Scripture. When Louis Cappel of the French academy of Saumur denied the verbal inspiration of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Helvetic Consensus (Formula consensus ecclesiarum Helveticarum) of 1675 declared even the Hebrew vowel points, added centuries after the close of the canon, to be inspired. Even after the Helvetic Consensus was no longer required by most adherents of the Second Swiss Confession of 1566, this belief was widely held. The classic defense of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures was no doubt Louis Gaussen's Theopneustia (1840), and this is the usual basis for most later defenders of the theory.

By the end of the nineteenth century A. H. Strong, in his Systematic Theology (1886), could delineate four theories of inspiration: (1) the intuition theory that is but the higher development of natural insight into truth, (2) the illumination theory that adds the belief in the inspiration of the writer but not of the writing, (3) the dictation theory that regards the writers as passive, and ( 4) the dynamic theory that holds to both a human and a divine element in inspiration. This last theory he regarded as the true view, so he was able to accept much of modern science, including evolution and higher criticism. Other modified Calvinists among Baptists found Strong's view acceptable. A conservative as staunch as J. McKee Adams seemed to hold the dynamic view.

The dictation view is, however, very much alive. Most who speak of the Bible as "God's inspired, infallible, and inerrant word" stop short of Strong's dynamic view. A storm of protest went up among Southern Baptists when Clifton J. Allen, in the introductory article to the Broadman Bible Commentary (1969), advocated the dynamic view. It is not sufficient to repeat Strong's exclusive approach. Even the intuition and illumination views have value when stated positively. Bible writers did have great natural insight as well as illumination by the Holy Spirit. Some passages in the Bible do approach passive reception, even though this is not the usual impression.

A biblical view of inspiration must be broad enough to include the truth in all the historical theories and adequate for a constructive theology in dialogue with the sacred writings of other world religions, the contributions of great systems of philosophy, and the discoveries of modern science. The biblical view is broad enough to include both the view in the late priestly tradition which says the two tables of stone were "written by the finger of God" (Ex. 31: 18, cf. 8:19), and the older history by the Yahwist in the Hexateuch who competes with the author of the Early Source in 1-2 Samuel for the name "father of history," a title usually given to the Greek historian Herodotus who lived at least five hundred years later. The description of the apocalyptic inspiration of Ezekiel in the Later Prophets comes near to the dictation theory. Luke 1:1-2 describes a historical method evident in the composition of Luke-Acts, but it is no less inspired than Revelation and other apocalyptic writings that describe the writer in a more passive role (Rev. 1:2, 10f.; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10).

Now turning to the meaning of the Word of God, on December 22nd 2004, I also wrote the following:

"Furthermore, I agree with the neo-orthodox scholars who say that the Scriptures are not the Word of God. To understand what the neo-orthodox scholars mean by this statement it is important to understand that they have a very high view of what the Word of God is. They also have a very high view of revelation. To them revelation is when the Word of God comes to a person. When a person reads the Scriptures it can have two different effects upon them. On one hand, a person can read the Scriptures and God can speak through it to the person and the truth is revealed to that person. On the other hand, the person can read the Scriptures and God does not speak through it to the person and the truth is not revealed to the person. It is only when God speaks through the Scriptures to the person that the Scriptures become the Word of God. Reason suggests that this must be the case. Why is it that someone can read the Bible and have an experience with the Divine while others can read the Bible and not experience anything other than reading a document? The difference is that God has chosen to or not to speak through the Scriptures to the person. So the Scriptures are not the Word of God, the Bible is not revelation but, instead, is the vehicle of revelation and the manner in which God can speak to man. And, lastly, I agree with the 1963 BFM that states that “the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.” I think this is a beautiful declaration of faith that I am sorry is no longer a part of the Southern Baptist confession. This statement existed to answer questions about how we relate to the Old Testament. Do we stone people who are caught in adultery? Do we exert ourselves on the Sabbath? How do Christians interpret the Law of Moses? The answer is that we follow the teachings of Christ and use Him as our means of interpreting Scripture."

I still hold to this confessional statement to be true.

Therefore, having briefly examined the issue of inerrancy, the history of the doctrine of inspiration, and the meaning of the Word of God, I can now offer my definition of the inspiration:

"The influence of the Holy Spirit on the Scripture writers which rendered their writings an accurate record of the revelation of God's communication to humans of truth that they need to know in order to relate properly to God."

I think the Scriptures are extremely complex and varied with regards to the various theories of inspiration. I think the Bible contains aspects of the dictation theory, the verbal theory, the plenary theory, and the dynamic theory. But in general, I hold to the dynamic theory because I think this theory holds to the majority of the Scriptures. The dynamic theory emphasizes the combination of divine and human elements in the process of inspiration and the writing of the Bible. The Spirit of God works by directing the the writer to the thoughts or concepts, and allowing the writer's own distinctive personality to come into play in the choice of words and expressions. Thus, the writer will give expression to the divinely directed thoughts in a way uniquely characteristic of that person.

Thus ends my definition of inspiration.