Chapter III: Inspiration Of The Scriptures (5)

Gore, in Lux Mundi, 355, suggests in a similar manner that the
books of Jonah and of Daniel may be dramatic compositions worked
up upon a basis of history. George Adam Smith, in the Expositors’
Bible, tells us that Jonah flourished 780 B. C., in the reign of
Jeroboam II. Nineveh fell in 606. The book implies that it was
written after this (_3:3_—“Nineveh _was_ an exceeding great
city”). The book does not claim to be written by Jonah, by an
eye-witness, or by a contemporary. The language has Aramaic forms.
The date is probably 300 B. C. There is an absence of precise
data, such as the sin of Nineveh, the journey of the prophet
thither, the place where he was cast out on land, the name of the
Assyrian king. The book illustrates God’s mission of prophecy to
the Gentiles, his care for them, their susceptibility to his word.
Israel flies from duty, but is delivered to carry salvation to the
heathen. Jeremiah had represented Israel as swallowed up and cast
out (_Jer. 51:34, 44 __sq.__—_“Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon
hath devoured me ... he hath, like a monster, swallowed me up, he
hath filled his maw with my delicacies; he hath cast me out.... I
will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed
up.”) Some tradition of Jonah’s proclaiming doom to Nineveh may
have furnished the basis of the apologue. Our Lord uses the story
as a mere illustration, like the homiletic use of Shakespeare’s
dramas. “As Macbeth did,” “As Hamlet said,” do not commit us to
the historical reality of Macbeth or of Hamlet. Jesus may say as
to questions of criticism: “Man, who made me a judge or a divider
over you?”_ _“I came not to judge the world, but to save the
world”_ (Luke 12:14; John 12:47)_. He had no thought of
confirming, or of not confirming, the historic character of the
story. It is hard to conceive the compilation of a psalm by a man
in Jonah’s position. It is not the prayer of one inside the fish,
but of one already saved. More than forty years ago President
Woolsey of Yale conceded that the book of Jonah was probably an
apologue.

(_c_) In none of these cases ought the difficulty of distinguishing man’s words from God’s words, or ideal truth from actual truth, to prevent our acceptance of the fact of inspiration; for in this very variety of the Bible, combined with the stimulus it gives to inquiry and the general plainness of its lessons, we have the very characteristics we should expect in a book whose authorship was divine.

The Scripture is a stream in which “the lamb may wade and the
elephant may swim.” There is need both of literary sense and of
spiritual insight to interpret it. This sense and this insight can
be given only by the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, who
inspired the various writings to witness of him in various ways,
and who is present in the world to take of the things of Christ
and show them to us (_Mat. 28:20_; _John 16:13, 14_). In a
subordinate sense the Holy Spirit inspires us to recognize
inspiration in the Bible. In the sense here suggested we may
assent to the words of Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst at the
inauguration of William Adams Brown as Professor of Systematic
Theology in the Union Theological Seminary, November 1,
1898—“Unfortunately we have condemned the word ‘inspiration’ to a
particular and isolated field of divine operation, and it is a
trespass upon current usage to employ it in the full urgency of
its Scriptural intent in connection with work like your own or
mine. But the word voices a reality that lies so close to the
heart of the entire Christian matter that we can ill afford to
relegate it to any single or technical function. Just as much
to-day as back at the first beginnings of Christianity, those who
would _declare_ the truths of God must be inspired to _behold_ the
truths of God.... The only irresistible persuasiveness is that
which is born of vision, and it is _not_ vision to be able merely
to describe what some seer has seen, though it were Moses or Paul
that was the seer.”

10. Acknowledgment of the non-inspiration of Scripture teachers and their writings.

This charge rests mainly upon the misinterpretation of two particular passages:

(_a_) Acts 23:5 (“I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest”) may be explained either as the language of indignant irony: “I would not recognize such a man as high priest”; or, more naturally, an actual confession of personal ignorance and fallibility, which does not affect the inspiration of any of Paul’s final teachings or writings.

Of a more reprehensible sort was Peter’s dissimulation at Antioch,
or practical disavowal of his convictions by separating or
withdrawing himself from the Gentile Christians (_Gal. 2:11-13_).
Here was no public teaching, but the influence of private example.
But neither in this case, nor in that mentioned above, did God
suffer the error to be a final one. Through the agency of Paul,
the Holy Spirit set the matter right.

(_b_) 1 Cor. 7:12, 10 (“I, not the Lord”; “not I, but the Lord”). Here the contrast is not between the apostle inspired and the apostle uninspired, but between the apostle’s words and an actual saying of our Lord, as in Mat. 5:32; 19:3-10; Mark 10:11; Luke 16:18 (Stanley on Corinthians). The expressions may be paraphrased:—“With regard to this matter no express command was given by Christ before his ascension. As one inspired by Christ, however, I give you my command.”

Meyer on _1 Cor. 7:10_—“Paul distinguishes, therefore, here and in
verses 12, 25, not between _his own_ and _inspired_ commands, but
between those which proceeded from his own (God-inspired)
subjectivity and those which Christ himself supplied by his
objective word.” “Paul knew from the living voice of tradition
what commands Christ had given concerning divorce.” Or if it
should be maintained that Paul here disclaims inspiration,—a
supposition contradicted by the following δοκῶ—“I think that I
also have the Spirit of God”_ (verse 40)_,—it only proves a single
exception to his inspiration, and since it is expressly mentioned,
and mentioned only once, it implies the inspiration of all the
rest of his writings. We might illustrate Paul’s method, if this
were the case, by the course of the New York Herald when it was
first published. Other journals had stood by their own mistakes
and had never been willing to acknowledge error. The Herald gained
the confidence of the public by correcting every mistake of its
reporters. The result was that, when there was no confession of
error, the paper was regarded as absolutely trustworthy. So Paul’s
one acknowledgment of non-inspiration might imply that in all
other cases his words had divine authority. On Authority in
Religion, see Wilfred Ward, in Hibbert Journal, July,
1903:677-692.