Sermon Tone Analysis

Properties of Inspiration:

Scriptural Inspiration is Plenery

Scriptural Inspiration is Verbal

Therefore Scriptural Inspiration is Sentential in its Transmission.

That is, God has revealed Himself to us in Hebrew and Greek Sentences.

In faithfulness to God and to our readers, it was deemed appropriate that all participating scholars sign a statement affirming their belief in the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture, and in the inerrancy of the original autographs.

NKJV Translation Team

New stuff:

Scriptural Inspiration is Confluent.

Inspired: God Breathed

But also: People wrote the Bible.

ps 2

Theories of Inspiration

The Dictation Theory

Writers are stenographers.

Islamic - no christian doctrine.

Reason - Certain phenomoa of scriptures

1: Different styles, vocabularies

If a single writer and dictation, then every book will have the exact same style and vocabulary.

If i write 2 different sermons - different content, but same style and word use, cause it same writer.

But the books of the bible, while all having a singhle coherent story and doctrine all have different styls and vocabularies that refect their human writers.

Isaiah not like amos.

Paul not like Peter.

Luke is not like John.

2: Levicula

Are we take this :Thus saith the Lord?

Did God dictate this to Paul, Does God want us to greet all these people?

We have not got any idea who these people were., they are mention here and no where else.

This passage might have limited historical info, but its useless to us over 2000 years later.

NOW:

Still inspired, still plenery, but clearly not a result of dictation.

Third phenomoa:

Human Emotions

Best example is the imprecatory Psalm - To call down evil upon.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , .

These also also called the deliverance Psalms.

They record the deep anger, frustration and even hatred that the writer felt as a result of loss in battle, or violation of sacred decree or other terrible oppressive acts of other nations.

This anger and hatred is hard to understand, especially for us as christians who’s Master command us to love our enemies.

And it would be very hard to sjustify these Psalm as being the result of dictation.

For example: Do anyone of you believe that God would tell his people that the best way to vent their frustration and find joy is to raid enemies homes, steal babies from their mothers and then bash those babes heads on rocks?

No?

ps 137

The imprecatory psalm are often used by atheists and muslims to show that God is not loving patient and that God is more evil than people because not even the atheist would, for example, smash his adversaries innocent babies on a rock.

ps 137 1-10

And many christians, when questions about this, don’t know what to say.

Because the bible is “God’s Word” god must have said it.

What they do not understand is the doctrine of inspiration.

If you subscribe to dictation theory then you are in deep trouble because then you have to say that God really did say that joy is found in the murder of children.

Dictation theory puts word in God’s mouth that he never actually said.

Now: This Psalm and all the others are inspired, and the writers were all carried along by the Holy Spirit, but these Psalm are not given like proverbs, they are God ordained to show and help us who at times might also feel these terrible feeling of revenge and hatred and anger, because we read them and we see that we are not alone, and we can see how later the writers of these psalm found peace and hope and forgivness and that gives us hope.

The inspiration and preservation of these Psalms is not God giving consent to the content and the emotions, he is showing how someone filled with such hatred and anger can later find peace in God.

Another example:

So Dictation Theory falls very short in explaining these phenomia.

2: The Accommodation Theory

That God accomodates himself to us.

John Calvin big proponent of this theory.

For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us?

Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accomodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity.

To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness”

John Calvin

So This theory is very simple - God has had to condescend himself so that we can understand and comprehend him in scripture.

Now: This theory is true, God has accommodated himself to us, he accommodated himself when he chose to reveal himself in Hebrew and Greek, 2 human languages.

Hebrew is a type of Chaldean dialect and greek is from pagan Rome.

So God has accommodated Himself, so the theory is true, however it still does not explain things like the levicula.

Its true but its also inadequate.

3: The Supervision Theory

This is the theory that agreed upon by virtually all of evangelical Christendom.

Its simple: The Holy Spirit supervised all the wrings of holy Scripture.

Its fits most in line with scripture:

In this theory, the Holy Spirit is not in a passive role but in a very active role, but that role is not one of puppeteering (dictation) but rather a role of supervising.

So the writers of scripture were not listening to some inner voice or something.

They were holy men, taught ether by Jesus or the Holy Spirit or both, they were spirit filled men.

And when they wrote Scripture they wrong freely and spontainsisly out of their hearts to these churches.

But while they wrote spontainesly, they did not write independently of the Holy Spirit and as they wrote the Holy Spirit supervised every word and every sentence so that the end product is, for example the writing of Paul and bear all his trademarks, styles and characteristics, but also the very Word of God.

And that gets it right.

It explains why every book that is authored by a different writer is different in its style and vocabulary.

It explains why we have the levicula and why Paul could ask for someone to bring his jacket to the next meeting.

And it explains the human emotion of some passages as they spoke and wrote out of their feelings of deep frustration.