Inspiration

Exploring the Basics of the Bible

INSPIRATION

When God spoke to people in the early times, it was an oral special revelation. As far as we know, there was no writing until some time after the Flood. Some method of recording numbers of objects may have been used, but it seems that writing as we know it began in Mesopotamia and Egypt a little before 3000 B.C. God’s oral revelation, however, was just as special and true and inspired as His later written words. When God spoke to Cain, it was not the voice of conscience within; Cain answered in anger. It was an objective speaking from God.

No one knows the names of many of the people to whom God spoke in the early days. Although the Old Testament records that Enoch “walked with God,” the word here probably refers to habitual living rather than mere walking together. But in any case, it indicates a harmony and a fellowship including discourse. This fits with the New Testament reference to Enoch as a prophet (). Noah received extensive revelations from God—even as to the dimensions of the ark, the animals to be assembled, etc. Without these specific revelations Noah would have perished too. He did not get the instructions for the ark from his heightened spiritual imagination.

A further lesson from Noah’s life is that he ministered the word of God to his generation. The record in Genesis implies and 2 Peter states that Noah warned his generation of the coming judgment. This is the function of a prophet—having received the word of God, to speak it to the people.

While the Bible contains no information on God’s revelation during the long years from Noah to Abraham, it says much after that. God spoke to Abraham many times. He gave him specific commands and promises that were fulfilled in ways Abraham could not have guessed. Abraham moved in society as a prince () and as a worshiper of the true God (). By life and word he ministered to his generation, and through the record Moses wrote, he ministers also to us.

Moses was the first writing prophet. God spoke to Moses face to face (). In addition, God ordered Moses to write His commands (). Most of the Pentateuch after Moses’ call in is governed by such expressions as “the Lord said to Moses.” At the end of Deuteronomy, it says that Moses wrote down this law of the Lord and instructed the people to obey its commands and to read it publicly at the Feast of Tabernacles every seven years ().

More will be said about the prophets and their work in chapter 4. For now, we shall study some of the consequences of this view of the Old Testament prophets as organs of revelation, God’s spokesmen to the people (). Remember that a prophet in Israel was not just a highly spiritual man. A prophet was a man called of God to receive revelation from Him (). The prophet’s word was so much God’s word that it was as if the prophet had eaten a scroll from heaven and had given it out orally to the people (). The word spoken was God’s word.

The same must be said of the words the prophets wrote. All prophetic messages were not written down. Uriah prophesied in the name of the Lord as Jeremiah had done, but he was killed by King Jehoiakim, and his words were not written (). But when the Lord spoke through the prophets in ancient Israel, their words were truly God’s word, whether they were merely spoken or also written down. Joshua wrote his record in the Book of the Law of God (). Much, if not most, of the Old Testament was spoken first and written afterwards.

Some make a distinction between the prophetic speech and the prophetic writing, saying that only the writing was inspired, but the Old Testament makes no such distinction.

These examples illustrate what is meant by the term “inspiration of the Scriptures.” A good definition is “that work of the Holy Spirit in chosen individuals by which the person is moved to speak or write in his own idiom the very words of God without error in fact, doctrine, or judgment.” Chapters 2 and 3 will give further biblical evidence for this concept.

VERBAL INSPIRATION

This view of inspiration holds that the words themselves are truly God’s words, inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is sometimes caricatured as a “dictation theory.” But most conservatives today do not believe that God simply dictated His Word to scribes working like a modern secretary or a robot. God used the prophets and controlled them, but He did not violate their styles or personalities. The nearest thing to a theory of dictation is the teaching of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent in 1545, which said in Latin that the Scriptures were “Spiritu Sancto dictante.” But the Latin dictante does not mean “dictate” in the modern sense. It simply means “spoken” or “said.”

INFALLIBLE AND INERRANT

Historically, the Bible has been called inspired, meaning that it is God’s Word and fully true. Traditionally, it was also called infallible. That is to say, it is incapable of mistake. In more recent times conservative believers have considered belief in the Bible as “the only infallible rule of faith and life.” They clearly meant to affirm that the Bible is infallible and that it is a rule of faith and conduct. But with the rise of liberalism, this vow was often reinterpreted to mean that the Bible was only infallible in matters of faith and morals. Thus the word infallible was watered down to allow errors of science and history, and this view is widely held among liberals today. To protect against this lower view of the Scriptures, conservative believers have found it necessary to use the additional adjective inerrant, which is to say that the Bible is without error.

To say the Bible is infallible ought to be enough. But in the current situation, we find it necessary to say also that the Bible is inerrant, if we mean that it is really true in all it says. The Bible is verbally inspired, it is infallible, and it is inerrant in the manuscripts as they were originally written. The statement of faith of the Evangelical Theological Society expresses it briefly but well: “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs [original documents].”

Many think that this view of the Scriptures is too narrow. They say that in this twenty-first century, people cannot believe this. They say that the facts are against it, that the Bible’s science is outmoded: We can no longer believe in a flat earth with heaven upstairs. They say that belief in a literal creation of a literal Adam or in the story of Jonah and other such tales must be denied. Indeed, they say, the Scriptures contradict themselves. They claim that there is a human element in Scripture that inerrancy does not allow for, and, therefore, by insisting on inerrancy, we will not reach modern people.

Some brief answers to these criticisms will be suggested here and will be developed in chapter 8. It may first be said that we should be slow to depart from an ancient doctrine—grounded as it has been on the teaching of Christ and His apostles—just to reach hypothetical “modern people.” The prophets of old were commanded to preach the Word of God whether people would listen or not (see ; ; ).

Secondly, it is highly doubtful that the Bible pictures a flat earth with heaven upstairs. The claim is that it does if you “take it literally.” But actually no one, not even the staunchest conservative, takes the Bible literally. The Bible is full of metaphors, parables, and poetry, which are to be interpreted as in any other piece of literature. How could anyone take “literally” such common expressions as “tickled to death,” “a heart of gold,” “ages since I saw you,” etc. The objection depends on a crassly literal interpretation of various poetic passages and then says the Bible violates common knowledge. So would most poetry describing the moon, the trees, the mountains, and anything wonderful or beautiful.

Many forget that the standard astronomy of the New Testament world taught that the world is round. Eratosthenes had measured its circumference quite accurately in 250 B.C. It is curious that recent theologians who object to the idea that heaven is “up” speak of the “breaking in” of the kingdom of God. It is as strange to picture heaven this way, as outside a box, as it is to picture it as “up.” But, as C. S. Lewis in his book Miracles beautifully shows, all language about things that are not perceived by the senses must be metaphorical language. No other way can be found to describe the unseen.

So the Bible language does not mean to imply that the spiritual heaven is just upstairs (although Hebrew, like English, uses the same word for the heaven of stars and clouds and space where birds fly, which indeed is “up”). Similarly, “the ends of the earth” does not imply a falling-off place. The Hebrew word for “earth” is very often used for “land.” The “ends of the earth” usually mean only distant places and the “four corners of the earth” refer only to wide areas in all directions (cf. ).

Thirdly, if people cannot believe in a literal creation, they must be able satisfactorily to ascribe to chance the marvelously intricate pattern of life, or, for that matter, the unique creature of intelligence, purpose, and moral consciousness that is known as man.

Finally, to object to the inerrancy of Scripture because of alleged contradictions neglects the years of study on these matters since the days of Justin who was martyred for the faith in A.D. 148 and who had written, “I am entirely convinced that no Scripture contradicts another” (Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 65).

It is obvious that the Bible contains some seeming difficulties and things that are hard to understand. Surely this is to be expected in a document from ancient times and from another culture. If culture shock is expected when traveling to foreign countries, how much more should surprising things be found in the Bible. But so many such difficulties have been solved by new discoveries about ancient practices and languages that an informed believer can attribute the few remaining problems to people’s ignorance of the details of ancient life and history. Factual problems continue to be answered to the satisfaction of a host of scholars today.

Conservative believers do not accept the idea that Scripture contains real contradictions. Like the early Church Fathers, they believe that such alleged contradictions are due to lack of knowledge or to minor errors of copying.

Harris, R. L. (2002). Exploring the basics of the Bible (pp. 8–12). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.