Chapter III: Inspiration Of The Scriptures (2)

(_d_) The theory is logically indefensible, as intimating that illumination with regard to truth can be imparted without imparting truth itself, whereas God must first furnish objective truth to be perceived before he can illuminate the mind to perceive the meaning of that truth.

The theory is analogous to the views that preservation is a
continued creation; knowledge is recognition; regeneration is
increase of light. In order to preservation, something must first
be created which can be preserved; in order to recognition,
something must be known which can be recognized or known again; in
order to make increase of light of any use, there must first be
the power to see. In like manner, inspiration cannot be mere
illumination, because the external necessarily precedes the
internal, the objective precedes the subjective, the truth
revealed precedes the apprehension of that truth. In the case of
all truth that surpasses the normal powers of man to perceive or
evolve, there must be special communication from God; revelation
must go before inspiration; inspiration alone is not revelation.
It matters not whether this communication of truth be from without
or from within. As in creation, God can work from within, yet the
new result is not explicable as mere reproduction of the past. The
eye can see only as it receives and uses the external light
furnished by the sun, even though it be equally true that without
the eye the light of the sun would be nothing worth.

Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 17-19, says that to Schleiermacher
revelation is the original appearance of a proper religious life,
which life is derived neither from external communication nor from
invention and reflection, but from a divine impartation, which
impartation can be regarded, not merely as an instructive
influence upon man as an intellectual being, but as an endowment
determining his whole personal existence—an endowment analogous to
the higher conditions of poetic and heroic exaltation. Pfleiderer
himself would give the name “revelation” to “every original
experience in which man becomes aware of, and is seized by,
supersensible truth, truth which does not come from external
impartation nor from purposed reflection, but from the unconscious
and undivided transcendental ground of the soul, and so is
received as an impartation from God through the medium of the
soul’s human activity.” Kaftan, Dogmatik, 51 _sq._—“We must put
the conception of revelation in place of inspiration. Scripture is
the record of divine revelation. We do not propose a new doctrine
or inspiration, in place of the old. We need only revelation, and,
here and there, providence. The testimony of the Holy Spirit is
given, not to inspiration, but to revelation—the truths that touch
the human spirit and have been historically revealed.”

Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 182—Edwards held that spiritual life in
the soul is given by God only to his favorites and dear children,
while inspiration may be thrown out, as it were, to dogs and
swine—a Balaam, Saul, and Judas. The greatest privilege of
apostles and prophets was, not their inspiration, but their
holiness. Better to have grace in the heart, than to be the mother
of Christ (_Luke 11:27, 28_). Maltbie D. Babcock, in S. S. Times,
1901:590—“The man who mourns because infallibility cannot be had
in a church, or a guide, or a set of standards, does not know when
he is well off. How could God develop our minds, our power of
moral judgment, if there were no ‘spirit to be tried’ (_1 John
4:1_), no necessity for discrimination, no discipline of search
and challenge and choice? To give the right answer to a problem is
to put him on the side of infallibility so far as that answer is
concerned, but it is to do him an ineffable wrong touching his
real education. The blessing of life’s schooling is not in knowing
the right answer in advance, but in developing power through
struggle.”

Why did John Henry Newman surrender to the Church of Rome? Because
he assumed that an external authority is absolutely essential to
religion, and, when such an assumption is followed, Rome is the
only logical terminus. “Dogma was,” he says, “the fundamental
principle of my religion.” Modern ritualism is a return to this
mediæval notion. “Dogmatic Christianity,” says Harnack, “is
Catholic. It needs an inerrant Bible, and an infallible church to
interpret that Bible. The dogmatic Protestant is of the same camp
with the sacramental and infallible Catholic.” Lyman Abbott: “The
new Reformation denies the infallibility of the Bible, as the
Protestant Reformation denied the infallibility of the Church.
There is no infallible authority. Infallible authority is
undesirable.... God has given us something far better,—life....
The Bible is the record of the gradual manifestation of God to man
in human experience, in moral laws and their applications, and in
the life of Him who was God manifest in the flesh.”

Leighton Williams: “There is no inspiration apart from experience.
Baptists are not sacramental, nor creedal, but experimental
Christians”—not Romanists, nor Protestants, but believers in an
inner light. “Life, as it develops, awakens into
self-consciousness. That self-consciousness becomes the most
reliable witness as to the nature of the life of which it is the
development. Within the limits of its own sphere, its authority is
supreme. Prophecy is the utterance of the soul in moments of deep
religious experience. The inspiration of Scripture writers is not
a peculiar thing,—it was given that the same inspiration might be
perfected in those who read their writings.” Christ is the only
ultimate authority, and he reveals himself in three ways, through
Scripture, the Reason, and the Church. Only Life saves, and the
Way leads through the Truth to the Life. Baptists stand nearer to
the Episcopal system of life than to the Presbyterian system of
creed. Whiton, Gloria Patri, 136—“The mistake is in looking to the
Father above the world, rather than to the Son and the Spirit
within the world, as the immediate source of revelation....
Revelation is the unfolding of the life and thought of God within
the world. One should not be troubled by finding errors in the
Scriptures, any more than by finding imperfections in any physical
work of God, as in the human eye.”

3. The Dictation-theory.

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.

This theory naturally connects itself with that view of miracles
which regards them as suspensions or violations of natural law.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:624 (transl. 2:186-189), calls it a
“docetic view of inspiration. It holds to the abolition of second
causes, and to the perfect passivity of the human instrument;
denies any inspiration of persons, and maintains inspiration of
writings only. This exaggeration of the divine element led to the
hypothesis of a multiform divine sense in Scripture, and, in
assigning the spiritual meaning, a rationalizing spirit led the
way.” Representatives of this view are Quenstedt, Theol. Didact.,
1:76—“The Holy Ghost inspired his amanuenses with those
expressions which they would have employed, had they been left to
themselves”; Hooker, Works, 2:383—“They neither spake nor wrote
any word of their own, but uttered syllable by syllable as the
Spirit put it into their mouths”; Gaussen, Theopneusty, 61—“The
Bible is not a book which God charged men already enlightened to
make under his protection; it is a book which God dictated to
them”; Cunningham, Theol. Lectures, 349—“The verbal inspiration of
the Scriptures [which he advocates] implies in general that the
words of Scripture were suggested or dictated by the Holy Spirit,
as well as the substance of the matter, and this, not only in some
portion of the Scriptures, but through the whole.” This reminds us
of the old theory that God created fossils in the rocks, as they
would be had ancient seas existed.

Sanday, Bamp. Lect. on Inspiration, 74, quotes Philo as saying: “A
prophet gives forth nothing at all of his own, but acts as
interpreter at the prompting of another in all his utterances, and
as long as he is under inspiration he is in ignorance, his reason
departing from its place and yielding up the citadel of the soul,
when the divine Spirit enters into it and dwells in it and strikes
at the mechanism of the voice, sounding through it to the clear
declaration of that which he prophesieth”; in _Gen. 15:12—_“About
the setting of the sun a trance came upon Abram”—the sun is the
light of human reason which sets and gives place to the Spirit of
God. Sanday, 78, says also: “Josephus holds that even historical
narratives, such as those at the beginning of the Pentateuch which
were not written down by contemporary prophets, were obtained by
direct inspiration from God. The Jews from their birth regard
their Scripture as ‘the decrees of God,’ which they strictly
observe, and for which if need be they are ready to die.” The
Rabbis said that “Moses did not write one word out of his own
knowledge.”

The Reformers held to a much freer view than this. Luther said:
“What does not carry Christ with it, is not apostolic, even though
St. Peter or St. Paul taught it. If our adversaries fall back on
the Scripture against Christ, we fall back on Christ against the
Scripture.” Luther refused canonical authority to books not
actually written by apostles or composed, like Mark and Luke,
under their direction. So he rejected from the rank of canonical
authority Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter and Revelation. Even
Calvin doubted the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, excluded the
book of Revelation from the Scripture on which he wrote
Commentaries, and also thus ignored the second and third epistles
of John; see Prof. R. E. Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 3,
1898:803, 804. The dictation-theory is post-Reformation. H. P.
Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 85—“After the Council of
Trent, the Roman Catholic polemic became sharper. It became the
endeavor of that party to show the necessity of tradition and the
untrustworthiness of Scripture alone. This led the Protestants to
defend the Bible more tenaciously than before.” The Swiss Formula
of Consensus in 1675 not only called the Scriptures “the very word
of God,” but declared the Hebrew vowel-points to be inspired, and
some theologians traced them back to Adam. John Owen held to the
inspiration of the vowel-points; see Horton, Inspiration and
Bible, 8. Of the age which produced the Protestant dogmatic
theology, Charles Beard, in the Hibbert Lectures for 1883, says:
“I know no epoch of Christianity to which I could more confidently
point in illustration of the fact that where there is most
theology, there is often least religion.”

Of this view we may remark:

(_a_) We grant that there are instances when God’s communications were uttered in an audible voice and took a definite form of words, and that this was sometimes accompanied with the command to commit the words to writing.

For examples, see _Ex. 3:4—_“God called unto him out of the midst
of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses”; _20:22—_“Ye yourselves have
seen that I have talked with you from heaven”; _cf._ _Heb.
12:19—_“the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated
that no word more should be spoken unto them”; _Numbers 7:89—_“And
when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with him, then
he heard the Voice speaking unto him from above the mercy-seat
that was upon the ark of the testimony, from between the two
cherubim: and he spake unto him”; _8:1—_“And Jehovah spake unto
Moses, saying,” etc.; _Dan. 4:31—_“While the word was in the
king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king
Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken: The kingdom is departed from
thee”; _Acts 9:5—_“And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I
am Jesus whom thou persecutest”; _Rev. 19:9—_“And he saith unto
me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper
of the Lamb”; _21:5—_“And he that sitteth on the throne said,
Behold, I make all things new”; _cf._ _1:10, 11—_“and I heard
behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet saying, What thou seest,
write in a book and send it to the seven churches.” So the voice
from heaven at the baptism, and at the transfiguration, of Jesus
(_Mat. 3:17_, and _17:5_; see Broadus, Amer. Com., on these
passages).

(_b_) The theory in question, however, rests upon a partial induction of Scripture facts,—unwarrantably assuming that such occasional instances of direct dictation reveal the invariable method of God’s communications of truth to the writers of the Bible.

Scripture nowhere declares that this immediate communication of
the words was universal. On _1 Cor. 2:13—οὐκ ἐν διδακτοίς
ανθρωπίνης σοφίας, λόγοις, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν διδακτοîς πνεύματος_, the text
usually cited as proof of invariable dictation—Meyer says: “There
is no dictation here; διδακτοîς excludes everything mechanical.”
Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 333, 349—“As human wisdom did
not dictate word for word, so the Spirit did not.” Paul claims for
Scripture simply a general style of plainness which is due to the
influence of the Spirit. Manly: “Dictation to an amanuensis is not
_teaching_.” Our Revised Version properly translates the remainder
of the verse, _1 Cor. 2:13—_“combining spiritual things with
spiritual words.”

(_c_) It cannot account for the manifestly human element in the Scriptures. There are peculiarities of style which distinguish the productions of each writer from those of every other, and there are variations in accounts of the same transaction which are inconsistent with the theory of a solely divine authorship.

Notice Paul’s anacoloutha and his bursts of grief and indignation
(_Rom. 5:12 __sq._, _2 Cor. 11:1_ _sq._), and his ignorance of the
precise number whom he had baptized (_1 Cor. 1:16_). One beggar or
two (_Mat. 20:30_; _cf._ _Luke 18:35_); “about five and twenty or
thirty furlongs”_ (John 6:19)_; “shed for many” (_Mat. 26:28_ has
περί, _Mark 14:24_ and _Luke 22:20_ have ὑπέρ). Dictation of words
which were immediately to be lost by imperfect transcription?
Clarke, Christian Theology, 33-37—“We are under no obligation to
maintain the complete inerrancy of the Scriptures. In them we have
the freedom of life, rather than extraordinary precision of
statement or accuracy of detail. We have become Christians in
spite of differences between the evangelists. The Scriptures are
various, progressive, free. There is no authority in Scripture for
applying the word ’inspired’ to our present Bible as a whole, and
theology is not bound to employ this word in defining the
Scriptures. Christianity is founded in history, and will stand
whether the Scriptures are inspired or not. If special inspiration
were wholly disproved, Christ would still be the Savior of the
world. But the divine element in the Scriptures will never be
disproved.”

(_d_) It is inconsistent with a wise economy of means, to suppose that the Scripture writers should have had dictated to them what they knew already, or what they could inform themselves of by the use of their natural powers.

Why employ eye-witnesses at all? Why not dictate the gospels to
Gentiles living a thousand years before? God respects the
instruments he has called into being, and he uses them according
to their constitutional gifts. George Eliot represents
Stradivarius as saying:—“If my hand slacked, I should rob
God—since he is fullest good—Leaving a blank instead of violins.
God cannot make Antonio Stradivari’s violins, Without Antonio.”
_Mark 11:3—_“The Lord hath need of him,” may apply to man as well
as beast.

(_e_) It contradicts what we know of the law of God’s working in the soul. The higher and nobler God’s communications, the more fully is man in possession and use of his own faculties. We cannot suppose that this highest work of man under the influence of the Spirit was purely mechanical.

Joseph receives communication by vision (_Mat. 1:20_); Mary, by
words of an angel spoken in her waking moments (_Luke 1:28_). The
more advanced the recipient, the more conscious the communication.
These four theories might almost be called the Pelagian, the
Arminian, the Docetic, and the Dynamical. Sabatier, Philos.
Religion, 41, 42, 87—“In the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Father
says at the baptism to Jesus: ‘My Son, in all the prophets I was
waiting for thee, that thou mightest come, and that I might rest
in thee. For thou art my Rest.’ Inspiration becomes more and more
internal, until in Christ it is continuous and complete. Upon the
opposite Docetic view, the most perfect inspiration should have
been that of Balaam’s ass.” Semler represents the Pelagian or
Ebionitic view, as Quenstedt represents this Docetic view. Semler
localizes and temporalizes the contents of Scripture. Yet, though
he carried this to the extreme of excluding any divine authorship,
he did good service in leading the way to the historical study of
the Bible.

4. The Dynamical Theory.

The true view holds, in opposition to the first of these theories, that inspiration is not simply a natural but also a supernatural fact, and that it is the immediate work of a personal God in the soul of man.

It holds, in opposition to the second, that inspiration belongs, not only to the men who wrote the Scriptures, but to the Scriptures which they wrote, so that these Scriptures, when taken together, constitute a trustworthy and sufficient record of divine revelation.

It holds, in opposition to the third theory, that the Scriptures contain a human as well as a divine element, so that while they present a body of divinely revealed truth, this truth is shaped in human moulds and adapted to ordinary human intelligence.

In short, inspiration is characteristically neither natural, partial, nor mechanical, but supernatural, plenary, and dynamical. Further explanations will be grouped under the head of The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration, in the section which immediately follows.

If the small circle be taken as symbol of the human element in
inspiration, and the large circle as symbol of the divine, then
the Intuition-theory would be represented by the small circle
alone; the Dictation-theory by the large circle alone; the
Illumination-theory by the small circle external to the large, and
touching it at only a single point; the Dynamical-theory by two
concentric circles, the small included in the large. Even when
inspiration is but the exaltation and intensification of man’s
natural powers, it must be considered the work of God as well as
of man. God can work from within as well as from without. As
creation and regeneration are works of the immanent rather than of
the transcendent God, so inspiration is in general a work within
man’s soul, rather than a communication to him from without.
Prophecy may be natural to perfect humanity. Revelation is an
unveiling, and the Röntgen rays enable us to see through a veil.
But the insight of the Scripture writers into truth so far beyond
their mental and moral powers is inexplicable except by a
supernatural influence upon their minds; in other words, except as
they were lifted up into the divine Reason and endowed with the
wisdom of God.

Although we propose this Dynamical-theory as one which best
explains the Scripture facts, we do not regard this or any other
theory as of essential importance. No theory of inspiration is
necessary to Christian faith. Revelation precedes inspiration.
There was religion before the Old Testament, and an oral gospel
before the New Testament. God might reveal without recording;
might permit record without inspiration; might inspire without
vouching for anything more than religious teaching and for the
history, only so far as was necessary to that religious teaching.
Whatever theory of inspiration we frame, should be the result of a
strict induction of the Scripture facts, and not an a priori
scheme to which Scripture must be conformed. The fault of many
past discussions of the subject is the assumption that God must
adopt some particular method of inspiration, or secure an absolute
perfection of detail in matters not essential to the religious
teaching of Scripture. Perhaps the best theory of inspiration is
to have no theory.

Warfield and Hodge, Inspiration, 8—“Very many religious and
historical truths must be established before we come to the
question of inspiration, as for instance the being and moral
government of God, the fallen condition of man, the fact of a
redemptive scheme, the general historical truth of the Scriptures,
and the validity and authority of the revelation of God’s will
which they contain, i. e., the general truth of Christianity and
of its doctrines. Hence it follows that while the inspiration of
the Scriptures is true, and being true is a principle fundamental
to the adequate interpretation of Scripture, it nevertheless is
not, in the first instance, a principle fundamental to the truth
of the Christian religion.” Warfield, in Presb. and Ref. Rev.,
April, 1893:208—“We do not found the whole Christian system on the
doctrine of inspiration.... Were there no such thing as
inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential
doctrines would be credibly witnessed to us”—in the gospels and in
the living church. F. L. Patton, Inspiration, 22—“I must take
exception to the disposition of some to stake the fortunes of
Christianity on the doctrine of inspiration. Not that I yield to
any one in profound conviction of the truth and importance of the
doctrine. But it is proper for us to bear in mind the immense
argumentative advantage which Christianity has, aside altogether
from the inspiration of the documents on which it rests.” So argue
also Sanday, Oracles of God, and Dale, The Living Christ.

IV. The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration.

1. The Scriptures are the production equally of God and of man, and are therefore never to be regarded as merely human or merely divine.

The mystery of inspiration consists in neither of these terms separately, but in the union of the two. Of this, however, there are analogies in the interpenetration of human powers by the divine efficiency in regeneration and sanctification, and in the union of the divine and human natures in the person of Jesus Christ.

According to “Dalton’s law,” each gas is as a vacuum to every
other: “Gases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as
into vacua.” Each interpenetrates the other. But this does not
furnish a perfect illustration of our subject. The atom of oxygen
and the atom of nitrogen, in common air, remain side by side but
they do not unite. In inspiration the human and the divine
elements do unite. The Lutheran maxim, “Mens humana capax divinæ,”
is one of the most important principles of a true theology. “The
Lutherans think of humanity as a thing made by God for himself and
to receive himself. The Reformed think of the Deity as ever
preserving himself from any confusion with the creature. They fear
pantheism and idolatry” (Bp. of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our
Lord’s Knowledge, xx).

Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 66—“That initial mystery, the relation
in our consciousness between the individual and the universal
element, between the finite and the infinite, between God and
man,—how can we comprehend their coëxistence and their union, and
yet how can we doubt it? Where is the thoughtful man to-day who
has not broken the thin crust of his daily life, and caught a
glimpse of those profound and obscure waters on which floats our
consciousness? Who has not felt within himself a veiled presence,
and a force much greater than his own? What worker in a lofty
cause has not perceived within his own personal activity, and
saluted with a feeling of veneration, the mysterious activity of a
universal and eternal Power? ‘In Deo vivimus, movemur, et
sumus.’... This mystery cannot be dissipated, for without it
religion itself would no longer exist.” Quackenbos, in Harper’s
Magazine, July, 1900:264, says that “hypnotic suggestion is but
inspiration.” The analogy of human influence thus communicated may
at least help us to some understanding of the divine.

2. This union of the divine and human agencies in inspiration is not to be conceived of as one of external impartation and reception.

On the other hand, those whom God raised up and providentially qualified to do this work, spoke and wrote the words of God, when inspired, not as from without, but as from within, and that not passively, but in the most conscious possession and the most exalted exercise of their own powers of intellect, emotion, and will.

The Holy Spirit does not dwell in man as water in a vessel. We may
rather illustrate the experience of the Scripture writers by the
experience of the preacher who under the influence of God’s Spirit
is carried beyond himself, and is conscious of a clearer
apprehension of truth and of a greater ability to utter it than
belong to his unaided nature, yet knows himself to be no passive
vehicle of a divine communication, but to be as never before in
possession and exercise of his own powers. The inspiration of the
Scripture writers, however, goes far beyond the illumination
granted to the preacher, in that it qualifies them to put the
truth, without error, into permanent and written form. This
inspiration, moreover, is more than providential preparation. Like
miracles, inspiration may use man’s natural powers, but man’s
natural powers do not explain it. Moses, David, Paul, and John
were providentially endowed and educated for their work of writing
Scripture, but this endowment and education were not inspiration
itself, but only the preparation for it.

Beyschlag: “With John, remembrance and exposition had become
inseparable.” E. G. Robinson; “Novelists do not _create_
characters,—they reproduce with modifications material presented
to their memories. So the apostles reproduced their impressions of
Christ.” Hutton, Essays, 2:231—“The Psalmists vacillate between
the first person and the third, when they deliver the purposes of
God. As they warm with their spiritual inspiration, they lose
themselves in the person of Him who inspires them, and then they
are again recalled to themselves.” Stanley, Life and Letters,
1:380—“Revelation is not resolved into a mere human process
because we are able to distinguish the natural agencies through
which it was communicated”; 2:102—“You seem to me to transfer too
much to these ancient prophets and writers and chiefs our modern
notions of _divine origin_.... Our notion, or rather, the modern
Puritanical notion of divine origin, is of a preternatural force
or voice, putting aside secondary agencies, and separated from
those agencies by an impassable gulf. The ancient, Oriental,
Biblical notion was of a supreme Will acting through those
agencies, or rather, being inseparable from them. _Our_ notions of
inspiration and divine communications insist on absolute
perfection of fact, morals, doctrine. The Biblical notion was that
inspiration was compatible with weakness, infirmity,
contradiction.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 182—“In inspiration the
thoughts, feelings, purposes are organized into another One than
the self in which they were themselves born. That other One is _in
themselves_. They enter into communication with Him. Yet this may
be supernatural, even though natural psychological means are used.
Inspiration which is external is not inspiration at all.” This
last sentence, however, seems to us a needless exaggeration of the
true principle. Though God originally inspires from within, he may
also communicate truth from without.

3. Inspiration, therefore, did not remove, but rather pressed into its own service, all the personal peculiarities of the writers, together with their defects of culture and literary style.

Every imperfection not inconsistent with truth in a human composition may exist in inspired Scripture. The Bible is God’s word, in the sense that it presents to us divine truth in human forms, and is a revelation not for a select class but for the common mind. Rightly understood, this very humanity of the Bible is a proof of its divinity.

Locke: “When God made the prophet, he did not unmake the man.”
Prof. Day: “The bush in which God appeared to Moses remained a
bush, while yet burning with the brightness of God and uttering
forth the majesty of the mind of God.” The paragraphs of the Koran
are called _ayat_, or “sign,” from their supposed supernatural
elegance. But elegant literary productions do not touch the heart.
The Bible is not merely the word of God; it is also the word made
flesh. The Holy Spirit hides himself, that he may show forth
Christ (_John 3:8_); he is known only by his effects—a pattern for
preachers, who are ministers of the Spirit (_2 Cor. 3:6_). See
Conant on Genesis, 65.

The Moslem declares that every word of the Koran came by the
agency of Gabriel from the seventh heaven, and that its very
pronunciation is inspired. Better the doctrine of Martineau, Seat
of Authority, 289—“Though the pattern be divine, the web that
bears it must still be human.” Jackson, James Martineau,
255—“Paul’s metaphor of the ‘treasure in earthen vessels’_ (2 Cor.
4:7)_ you cannot allow to give you guidance; you want, not the
treasure only, but the casket too, to come from above, and be of
the crystal of the sky. You want the record to be divine, not only
in its spirit, but also in its letter.” Charles Hodge, Syst.
Theol., 1:157—“When God ordains praise out of the mouths of babes,
they must speak as babes, or the whole power and beauty of the
tribute will be lost.”

Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 16, 25—“The πνεῦμα of a
dead wind is never changed, as the Rabbis of old thought, into the
πνεῦμα of a living spirit. The raven that fed Elijah was nothing
more than a bird. Nor does man, when supernaturally influenced,
cease to be a man. An inspired man is not God, nor a divinely
manipulated automaton”; “In Scripture there may be as much
imperfection as, in the parts of any organism, would be consistent
with the perfect adaptation of that organism to its destined end.
Scripture then, taken together, is a statement of moral and
religious truth sufficient for men’s salvation, or an infallible
and sufficient rule of _faith and practice_.” J. S. Wrightnour:
“Inspire means to breathe in, as a flute-player breathes into his
instrument. As different flutes may have their own shapes,
peculiarities, and what might seem like defects, so here; yet all
are breathed into by one Spirit. The same Spirit who inspired them
selected those instruments which were best for his purpose, as the
Savior selected his apostles. In these writings therefore is given
us, in the precise way that is best for us, the spiritual
instruction and food that we need. Food for the body is not always
given in the most concentrated form, but in the form that is best
adapted for digestion. So God gives gold, not in coin ready
stamped, but in the quartz of the mine whence it has to be dug and
smelted.” Remains of Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his
Friends, 274—“I see that the Bible fits in to every fold of the
human heart. I am a man, and I believe it is God’s book, because
it is man’s book.”

4. In inspiration God may use all right and normal methods of literary composition.

As we recognize in literature the proper function of history, poetry, and fiction; of prophecy, parable, and drama; of personification and proverb; of allegory and dogmatic instruction; and even of myth and legend; we cannot deny the possibility that God may use any one of these methods of communicating truth, leaving it to us to determine in any single case which of these methods he has adopted.

In inspiration, as in regeneration and sanctification, God works
“in divers manners”_ (Heb. 1:1)_. The Scriptures, like the books
of secular literature, must be interpreted in the light of their
purpose. Poetry must not be treated as prose, and parable must not
be made to “go on all fours,” when it was meant to walk erect and
to tell one simple story. Drama is not history, nor is
personification to be regarded as biography. There is a rhetorical
overstatement which is intended only as a vivid emphasizing of
important truth. Allegory is a popular mode of illustration. Even
myth and legend may convey great lessons not otherwise
apprehensible to infantile or untrained minds. A literary sense is
needed in our judgments of Scripture, and much hostile criticism
is lacking in this literary sense.

Denney, Studies in Theology, 218—“There is a stage in which the
whole contents of the mind, as yet incapable of science or
history, may be called mythological. And what criticism shows us,
in its treatment of the early chapters of Genesis, is that God
does not disdain to speak to the mind, nor through it, even when
it is at this lowly stage. Even the myth, in which the beginnings
of human life, lying beyond human research, are represented to
itself by the child-mind of the race, may be made the medium of
revelation.... But that does not make the first chapter of Genesis
science, nor the third chapter history. And what is of authority
in these chapters is not the quasi-scientific or quasi-historical
form, but the message, which through them comes to the heart, of
God’s creative wisdom and power.” Gore, in Lux Mundi, 356—“The
various sorts of mental or literary activity develop in their
different lines out of an earlier condition in which they lie
fused and undifferentiated. This we can vaguely call the mythical
stage of mental evolution. A myth is not a falsehood; it is a
product of mental activity, as instructive and rich as any later
product, but its characteristic is that it is not yet
distinguished into history and poetry and philosophy.” So Grote
calls the Greek myths the whole intellectual stock of the age to
which they belonged—the common root of all the history, poetry,
philosophy, theology, which afterwards diverged and proceeded from
it. So the early part of Genesis may be of the nature of myth in
which we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we do not
deny that it exists. Robert Browning’s Clive and Andrea del Sarto
are essentially correct representations of historical characters,
though the details in each poem are imaginary.

5. The inspiring Spirit has given the Scriptures to the world by a process of gradual evolution.

As in communicating the truths of natural science, God has communicated the truths of religion by successive steps, germinally at first, more fully as men have been able to comprehend them. The education of the race is analogous to the education of the child. First came pictures, object-lessons, external rites, predictions; then the key to these in Christ, and then didactic exposition in the Epistles.

There have been “divers portions,” as well as “divers manners”_
(Heb. 1:1)_. The early prophecies like that of _Gen. 3:15_—the
seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head—were but faint
glimmerings of the dawn. Men had to be raised up who were capable
of receiving and transmitting the divine communications. Moses,
David, Isaiah mark successive advances in recipiency and
transparency to the heavenly light. Inspiration has employed men
of various degrees of ability, culture and religious insight. As
all the truths of the calculus lie germinally in the simplest
mathematical axiom, so all the truths of salvation may be wrapped
up in the statement that God is holiness and love. But not every
scholar can evolve the calculus from the axiom. The teacher may
dictate propositions which the pupil does not understand: he may
demonstrate in such a way that the pupil participates in the
process; or, best of all, he may incite the pupil to work out the
demonstration for himself. God seems to have used all these
methods. But while there are instances of dictation and
illumination, and inspiration sometimes includes these, the
general method seems to have been such a divine quickening of
man’s powers that he discovers and expresses the truth for
himself.

A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 339—“Inspiration is that,
seen from its divine side, which we call discovery when seen from
the human side.... Every addition to knowledge, whether in the
individual or the community, whether scientific, ethical or
theological, is due to a coöperation between the human soul which
assimilates and the divine power which inspires. Neither acts, or
could act, in independent isolation. For ‘unassisted reason’ is a
fiction, and pure receptivity it is impossible to conceive. Even
the emptiest vessel must limit the quantity and determine the
configuration of any liquid with which it may be filled....
Inspiration is limited to no age, to no country, to no people.”
The early Semites had it, and the great Oriental reformers. There
can be no gathering of grapes from thorns, or of figs from
thistles. Whatever of true or of good is found in human history
has come from God. On the Progressiveness of Revelation, see Orr,
Problem of the O. T., 431-478.

6. Inspiration did not guarantee inerrancy in things not essential to the main purpose of Scripture.

Inspiration went no further than to secure a trustworthy transmission by the sacred writers of the truth they were commissioned to deliver. It was not omniscience. It was a bestowal of various kinds and degrees of knowledge and aid, according to need; sometimes suggesting new truth, sometimes presiding over the collection of preëxisting material and guarding from essential error in the final elaboration. As inspiration was not omniscience, so it was not complete sanctification. It involved neither personal infallibility, nor entire freedom from sin.

God can use imperfect means. As the imperfection of the eye does
not disprove its divine authorship, and as God reveals himself in
nature and history in spite of their shortcomings, so inspiration
can accomplish its purpose through both writers and writings in
some respects imperfect. God is, in the Bible as he was in Hebrew
history, leading his people onward to Christ, but only by a
progressive unfolding of the truth. The Scripture writers were not
perfect men. Paul at Antioch resisted Peter, “because he stood
condemned”_ (Gal 2:11)_. But Peter differed from Paul, not in
public utterances, nor in written words, but in following his own
teachings (_cf._ _Acts 15:6-11_); _versus_ Norman Fox, in Bap.
Rev., 1885:469-482. Personal defects do not invalidate an
ambassador, though they may hinder the reception of his message.
So with the apostles’ ignorance of the time of Christ’s second
coming. It was only gradually that they came to understand
Christian doctrines; they did not teach the truth all at once;
their final utterances supplemented and completed the earlier; and
all together furnished only that measure of knowledge which God
saw needful for the moral and religious teaching of mankind. Many
things are yet unrevealed, and many things which inspired men
uttered, they did not, when they uttered them, fully understand.

Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 53, 54—“The word is divine-human in the
sense that it has for its contents divine truth in human,
historical, and individually conditioned form. The Holy Scripture
contains the word of God in a way plain, and entirely sufficient
to beget saving faith.” Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 87—“Inspiration
is not a miraculous and therefore incredible thing, but normal and
in accordance with the natural relations of the infinite and
finite spirit, a divine inflowing of _mental_ light precisely
analogous to that _moral_ influence which divines call grace. As
every devout and obedient soul may expect to share in divine
grace, so the devout and obedient souls of all the ages have
shared, as Parker taught, in divine inspiration. And, as the
reception of grace even in large measure does not render us
_impeccable_, so neither does the reception of inspiration render
us _infallible_.” We may concede to Miss Cobbe that inspiration
consists with imperfection, while yet we grant to the Scripture
writers an authority higher than our own.

7. Inspiration did not always, or even generally, involve a direct communication to the Scripture writers of the words they wrote.

Thought is possible without words, and in the order of nature precedes words. The Scripture writers appear to have been so influenced by the Holy Spirit that they perceived and felt even the new truths they were to publish, as discoveries of their own minds, and were left to the action of their own minds in the expression of these truths, with the single exception that they were supernaturally held back from the selection of wrong words, and when needful were provided with right ones. Inspiration is therefore not verbal, while yet we claim that no form of words which taken in its connections would teach essential error has been admitted into Scripture.

Before expression there must be something to be expressed. Thought
is possible without language. The concept may exist without words.
See experiences of deaf-mutes, in Princeton Rev., Jan.
1881:104-128. The prompter interrupts only when the speaker’s
memory fails. The writing-master guides the pupil’s hand only when
it would otherwise go wrong. The father suffers the child to walk
alone, except when it is in danger of stumbling. If knowledge be
rendered certain, it is as good as direct revelation. But whenever
the mere communication of ideas or the direction to proper
material would not suffice to secure a correct utterance, the
sacred writers were guided in the very selection of their words.
Minute criticism proves more and more conclusively the
suitableness of the verbal dress to the thoughts expressed; all
Biblical exegesis is based, indeed, upon the assumption that
divine wisdom has made the outward form a trustworthy vehicle of
the inward substance of revelation. See Henderson, Inspiration
(2nd ed.), 102, 114; Bib. Sac, 1872:428, 640; William James,
Psychology, 1:266 _sq._

Watts, New Apologetic, 40, 111, holds to a verbal inspiration:
“The bottles are not the wine, but if the bottles perish the wine
is sure to be spilled”; the inspiring Spirit certainly gave
language to Peter and others at Pentecost, for the apostles spoke
with other tongues; holy men of old not only thought, but “spake
from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”_ (2 Pet. 1:21)_. So
Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 171—“Why the minute study of the
_words_ of Scripture, carried on by all expositors, their search
after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to
the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring
of mood and tense and accent?” Liberal scholars, Dr. Gordon
thinks, thus affirm the very doctrine which they deny. Rothe,
Dogmatics, 238, speaks of “a language of the Holy Ghost.”
Oetinger: “It is the style of the heavenly court.” But Broadus, an
almost equally conservative scholar, in his Com. on _Mat. 3:17_,
says that the difference between “This is my beloved Son,” and
_Luke 3:22—_“Thou art my beloved Son,” should make us cautious in
theorizing about verbal inspiration, and he intimates that in some
cases that hypothesis is unwarranted. The theory of verbal
inspiration is refuted by the two facts: 1. that the N. T.
quotations from the O. T., in 99 cases, differ both from the
Hebrew and from the LXX; 2. that Jesus’ own words are reported
with variations by the different evangelists; see Marcus Dods, The
Bible, its Origin and Nature, chapter on Inspiration.

Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that
there was a God, but she had not known his name. Dr. Z. F.
Westervelt, of the Deaf Mute Institute, had under his charge four
children of different mothers. All of these children were dumb,
though there was no defect of hearing and the organs of speech
were perfect. But their mothers had never loved them and had never
talked to them in the loving way that provoked imitation. The
children heard scolding and harshness, but this did not attract.
So the older members of the church in private and in the meetings
for prayer should teach the younger to talk. But harsh and
contentious talk will not accomplish the result,—it must be the
talk of Christian love. William D. Whitney, in his review of Max
Müller’s Science of Language, 26-31, combats the view of Müller
that thought and language are identical. Major Bliss Taylor’s
reply to Santa Anna: “General Taylor never surrenders!” was a
substantially correct, though a diplomatic and euphemistic,
version of the General’s actual profane words. Each Scripture
writer uttered old truth in the new forms with which his own
experience had clothed it. David reached his greatness by leaving
off the mere repetition of Moses, and by speaking out of his own
heart. Paul reached his greatness by giving up the mere teaching
of what he had been taught, and by telling what God’s plan of
mercy was to all. Augustine: “Scriptura est sensus
Scripturæ”—“Scripture _is_ what Scripture _means_.” Among the
theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as
to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching,
are Luther, Calvin, Cocceius, Tholuck, Neander, Lange, Stier, Van
Oosterzee, John Howe, Richard Baxter, Conybeare, Alford, Mead.

8. Yet, notwithstanding the ever-present human element, the all-pervading inspiration of the Scriptures constitutes these various writings an organic whole.

Since the Bible is in all its parts the work of God, each part is to be judged, not by itself alone, but in its connection with every other part. The Scriptures are not to be interpreted as so many merely human productions by different authors, but as also the work of one divine mind. Seemingly trivial things are to be explained from their connection with the whole. One history is to be built up from the several accounts of the life of Christ. One doctrine must supplement another. The Old Testament is part of a progressive system, whose culmination and key are to be found in the New. The central subject and thought which binds all parts of the Bible together, and in the light of which they are to be interpreted, is the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The Bible says: “There is no God”_ (Ps. 14:1)_; but then, this is
to be taken with the context: “The fool hath said in his heart.”
Satan’s “it is written,”_ (Mat. 4:6)_ is supplemented by Christ’s
“It is written again”_ (Mat. 4:7)_. Trivialities are like the hair
and nails of the body—they have their place as parts of a complete
and organic whole; see Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:40. The verse which
mentions Paul’s cloak at Troas (2 Tim. 4:13) is (1) a sign of
genuineness—a forger would not invent it; (2) an evidence of
temporal need endured for the gospel; (3) an indication of the
limits of inspiration,—even Paul must have books and parchments.
_Col. 2:21—_“Handle not, nor taste, nor touch”—is to be
interpreted by the context in _verse 20—_“why ... do ye subject
yourselves to ordinances?” and by _verse 22—_“after the precepts
and doctrines of men.” Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:164—“The difference
between John’s gospel and the book of Chronicles is like that
between man’s brain and the hair of his head; nevertheless the
life of the body is as truly in the hair as in the brain.” Like
railway coupons, Scripture texts are “Not good if detached.”

Crooker, The New Bible and its New Uses, 137-144, utterly denies
the unity of the Bible. Prof. A. B. Davidson of Edinburgh says
that “A theology of the O. T. is really an impossibility, because
the O. T. is not a homogeneous whole.” These denials proceed from
an insufficient recognition of the principle of evolution in O. T.
history and doctrine. Doctrines in early Scripture are like rivers
at their source; they are not yet fully expanded; many affluents
are yet to come. See Bp. Bull’s Sermon, in Works, xv:183; and
Bruce, Apologetics, 323—“The literature of the early stages of
revelation must share the defects of the revelation which it
records and interprets.... The final revelation enables us to see
the defects of the earlier.... We should find Christ in the O. T.
as we find the butterfly in the caterpillar, and man the crown of
the universe in the fiery cloud.” Crane, Religion of To-morrow,
224—Every part is to be modified by every other part. No verse is
true _out of_ the Book, but the whole Book taken together is true.
Gore, in Lux Mundi, 350—“To recognize the inspiration of the
Scriptures is to put ourselves to school in every part of them.”
Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere
lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet
Evolvable from the whole; evolved at last Painfully, held
tenaciously by me.” On the Organic Unity of the O. T., see Orr,
Problem of the O. T., 27-51.

9. When the unity of the Scripture is fully recognized, the Bible, in spite of imperfections in matters non-essential to its religious purpose, furnishes a safe and sufficient guide to truth and to salvation.

The recognition of the Holy Spirit’s agency makes it rational and natural to believe in the organic unity of Scripture. When the earlier parts are taken in connection with the later, and when each part is interpreted by the whole, most of the difficulties connected with inspiration disappear. Taken together, with Christ as its culmination and explanation, the Bible furnishes the Christian rule of faith and practice.

The Bible answers two questions: What has God done to save me? and
What must I do to be saved? The propositions of Euclid are not
invalidated by the fact that he believed the earth to be flat. The
ethics of Plato would not be disproved by his mistakes with regard
to the solar system. So religious authority is independent of
merely secular knowledge.—Sir Joshua Reynolds was a great painter,
and a great teacher of his art. His lectures on painting laid down
principles which have been accepted as authority for generations.
But Joshua Reynolds illustrates his subject from history and
science. It was a day when both history and science were young. In
some unimportant matters of this sort, which do not in the least
affect his conclusions, Sir Joshua Reynolds makes an occasional
slip; his statements are inaccurate. Does he, therefore, cease to
be an authority in matters of his art?—The Duke of Wellington said
once that no human being knew at what time of day the battle of
Waterloo began. One historian gets his story from one combatant,
and he puts the hour at eleven in the morning. Another historian
gets his information from another combatant, and he puts it at
noon. Shall we say that this discrepancy argues error in the whole
account, and that we have no longer any certainty that the battle
of Waterloo was ever fought at all?

Such slight imperfections are to be freely admitted, while at the
same time we insist that the Bible, taken as a whole, is
incomparably superior to all other books, and is “able to make
thee wise unto salvation”_ (2 Tim. 3:15)_. Hooker, Eccl. Polity:
“Whatsoever is spoken of God or things pertaining to God otherwise
than truth is, though it seem an honor, it is an injury. And as
incredible praises given unto men do often abate and impair the
credit of their deserved commendation, so we must likewise take
great heed lest, in attributing to Scripture more than it can
have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which
it hath more abundantly to be less reverently esteemed.” Baxter,
Works, 21:349—“Those men who think that these human imperfections
of the writers do extend further, and may appear in some passages
of chronologies or history which are no part of the rule of faith
and life, do not hereby destroy the Christian cause. For God might
enable his apostles to an infallible recording and preaching of
the gospel, even all things necessary to salvation, though he had
not made them infallible in every by-passage and circumstance, any
more than they were indefectible in life.”

The Bible, says Beet, “contains possible errors in small details
or allusions, but it gives us with absolute certainty the great
facts of Christianity, and upon these great facts, and upon these
only, our faith is based.” Evans, Bib. Scholarship and
Inspiration, 15, 18, 65—“Teach that the shell is part of the
kernel and men who find that they cannot keep the shell will throw
away shell and kernel together.... This overstatement of
inspiration made Renan, Bradlaugh and Ingersoll sceptics.... If in
creation God can work out a perfect result through imperfection
why cannot he do the like in inspiration? If in Christ God can
appear in human weakness and ignorance, why not in the _written_
word?”

We therefore take exception to the view of Watts, New Apologetic,
71—“Let the theory of historical errors and scientific errors be
adopted, and Christianity must share the fate of Hinduism. If its
inspired writers err when they tell us of earthly things, none
will believe when they tell of heavenly things.” Watts adduces
instances of Spinoza’s giving up the form while claiming to hold
the substance, and in this way reducing revelation to a phenomenon
of naturalistic pantheism. We reply that no _a priori_ theory of
perfection in divine inspiration must blind us to the evidence of
actual imperfection in Scripture. As in creation and in Christ, so
in Scripture, God humbles himself to adopt human and imperfect
methods of self-revelation. See Jonathan Edwards, Diary: “I
observe that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries,
because they are beside the way to which they have been so long
used. _Resolved_, if ever I live to years, that I will be
impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and
receive them if rational, however long soever I have been used to
another way of thinking.”