The Inspiration of Scripture

I do believe that the Scriptures are inspired by God. Usually, when this subject comes up in conversation with nonbelievers, they are quick to try and point out the “teeming contradictions” that evidently abound within the Bible. Like most people I have met, they are unable to make the case specifically apart from the general and vague comment that “The Bible is full of contradictions.” I do not say this to be derogatory, but it goes to show how the idea of scriptural inerrancy is certainly under attack and not readily accepted in our day. I think the biggest reason this is so is due to the reigning paradigm of our day which is not friendly to the idea of authority or to absolute truth. If the Bible speaks to me, then that is all well and good, but if it doesn’t speak to someone else, then that is “ok” also.

We have hit upon two of the most significant ideas which under gird the inspiration of Scripture: authority and absolute truth. When I assert the inspiration of Scripture, I assert first and foremost that Scripture is the final authority. The quintessential “buck” stops here. If there is some conflict between the assertions of Scripture, and the assertions of some other person, discipline or field of study, then Scripture has the final and uncontested say.

This is not to say that we should unthinkingly follow what Scripture dictates. As it does indeed come from God, then it will also be reasonable to follow what it teaches. I have often heard people quip that God has given us minds and therefore our minds are trustworthy – but very often I also hear that said to justify doing or believing something that we think is true or good in our minds, but that is declared not to be so within Scripture.

Why is this so? The reason we ought to give final say to Scripture is because it is inspired. Ultimately it is inspired because it comes from God and is His will regarding how we are to lead our lives. This divine authorship is also what lends the Scripture its final authority. God is the final authority whether we follow Him in our hearts or not. His will for us has been written down and made known to the nations, and as we ought to follow God we ought also to follow what His word teaches.

Yet God has made other things that can discern the will of God, such as (occasionally) the human mind. Why Scripture, and scripture alone? In a word: sin. The effects of sin include an influence over our thoughts, beliefs and even the imagination. This is why, I think, Archbishop William Temple called worship the “cleansing of imagination by His holiness.” This is why Socrates thought that once we knew what the morally right thing to do was, we could not fail to do it, because we naturally seek the good. Socrates was wrong on one point – we do not naturally seek the good. Indeed, we naturally seek the evil. As Paul wrote, “The good that I want to do – that I do not do. The evil I do not want to do – that I keep on doing. Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

The Scriptures, unlike our thoughts, are caused and authored by God Himself. Some parts were indeed penned by His own hand, such as the writing on the original stone tablets that Moses smashed upon descending Mount Sinai. However, I also attest that the Scriptures were written by human hands. This does not necessarily dilute the authorship of God, nor does it immediately make them suspect because those human authors were also sinful. Yes we are all sinful, and because of sin we make mistakes of the mind and heart, not just of action and deed. Yet we must not forget that while sin and evil pervade our will, and we are all caught up in it, that God is not. The same God who “caused light to shine out of darkness, has caused his light to shine in our hearts, to give to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6).”

Therefore God, being good and all-powerful, can select certain persons and work through their deepest most abiding sins and bring about a true and authoritative account of His will and His history with mankind. Indeed, God may even use certain persons because of their perceptions of certain things to make His message cut all the more deeply into our hearts and bring us the conviction of His Holy Spirit. Thus, God wanted Isaiah specifically for the book of the same name. God wanted Luke specifically to write his version of the Gospel and also the Acts of the Apostles. God wanted Matthew and John specifically to write their specific Gospels. This does not mean that God needed them to write those books because God needs nothing apart from Himself, but rather God can use all the nuances of their personhood and personality to create an authoritative account of His message for all of creation. Down to the very choice of each, original and smallest word God was active and involved in the recording of His will.

I do think that only the original autographs were inspired, however. While I was writing this response, I had been avoiding touching upon that statement. I do not want to hedge myself into a theological corner of the implications that God only spoke once because I do not want to believe that God is not active anymore. Yet He most surely is all the same. As to why only the originals were inspired, I can now say that I think an analogy to human death may shed some light on the subject. While God has overcome death through the work of Jesus Christ, all of us will still die a physical death although not a spiritual one. Similarly, while God brought about His Scriptures despite the sinful natures of its authors, He has only appointed the originals to be inspired because of the entropic-like effect of sin. That is not to say this is indeed the reason, nor that it can be the only reason – I don’t presume to know the mind of God. But it is the best I can understand this part of the inerrancy of Scripture.

To summarize then, I think that to say the Scriptures are inspired is to say that they are inerrant and authoritative because they come from God Himself, who alone can triumph over fallible, sinful and limited human beings.

Overcoming Bias in our Theology

Each of us is encumbered by a certain degree of bias and subjectivity. No theologian can keep from bringing these experiences, biases, and circumstances into their understanding of theology. Yet what should be the authoritative ground and meaning for theologizing, the interpretive key to understanding God's work in the world?

The answer, at first, seems rather obvious: the Holy Bible as revealed to us by God through His prophets and apostles. However the answer is not as obvious as it seems. This is because how I approach the Bible is different than how someone in South Africa approaches it or even someone down the hall from me in the dorm. Even though my dorm-mate and I may both be Reformed in our theological line of thought, and be born-again by the grace of Christ, how I read John 3:16 and how he reads the same passage can produce different results.

I think a large part of these differences in our understanding of theology are the associates we gather throughout he course of living our lives. To use a rather simple illustration, if I read that God is my father, and I do not have a healthy or loving relationship with my father, then my understanding of God’s fatherhood will be warped by my father’s fatherhood. Therefore I may think that “deep down,” God really loves me, but He is not always paying attention to me, nor always mindful of my needs, or necessarily want the best for me. God may want what is best for me but not what I want.

The key to this particular dilemma is that God knows what I need far better than even I do. Thus what He wants for me actually is best for me and not just the stodgy contrivance of someone who loves me but is out-of-touch with reality as I see and experience it.

Taking this example further, is there any way, by interacting more with Scripture, that my understanding of appropriate, healthy, life-giving fatherly love can be corrected and refined? The answer is, again, Scripture. One of the things that has come up in my theology classes here at seminary is that we must interpret Scripture with itself. Therefore, what else does the Bible tell me about God’s love? John 3:16 is perhaps the ultimate statement of love Jesus makes in His earthly ministry – that He loved the world so much that whoever believes in Him need never die. Furthermore, when I read that Jesus the Son came from God the Father, that indeed the Father sent the Son to reconcile me back to Himself – I hopefully begin to understand how God’s fatherly love is different than that of my earthly father’s. God’s love is as Jesus explained in the story of the Prodigal Son – scandalous, boundless, filled with joy.

With this in mind, if I am not totally blinded with spite for the idea of all fathers in general because of whatever relationship I may have had with my own, I begin to come to a true understanding of God’s love for me. A love that draws all of us to the cross in humble repentance for the gracious, abundant life that we don’t deserve to a father we forsook a long time ago.

But what of someone who reads the same things, but is so blinded by his or her own experiences, feelings, or whatever, to allow it all to sink in? I remember once I had a conversation with a woman, online, and she was citing some verse in the Old Testament law that she found abhorrent because the perpetrator was not punished. However, as I pointed out to her, the very next verse did hold punishment for the perpetrator and it was not a light punishment either – although I regrettably forget the specific issue at hand. What I do remember is the utter credulity of the whole situation. This woman was ranting and raving in this online Christian chat room about how God was not just, God cared nothing for the victims of evil. The answer she sought was one verse away and she refused to pay heed. Which hinted to me that God’s supposed lack of justice was not her real gripe. Her real gripe was that she wanted to interpret God in her own way so that she could be justified in rejecting Him. Yet this woman is no different from any unrepentant sinner, nor of any Christian before we were saved – so I don’t say want to come across as condemnatory. I understand what she was doing because I used to do similar things myself.

With this experience in mind, let me back up on what I said about the Scripture being the ultimate authority. God is the ultimate authority, who speaks to us through the scriptures. But just reading the scriptures will not necessarily help us circumvent our own biases because unless we submit ourselves to God’s will, we will merely read out of the text what we want to – just as the woman I ran across did.