those who build it labor
in vain.”[1]
Who is building in this familiar Psalm? Is the LORD building? Or are people building?
It was 1983. God moved into my life in transforming power. A neighbor invited me to attend his church. It was not long before the Associate Pastor involved me in a Bible Study that was studying foundational truths of Christianity. The study textbook was written by a Dr. Bruce Milne, entitled Know the Truth: A Handbook of Christian Belief. The very first section was on The Final Authorities in Matters of Faith. It covered topics like authority, revelation, and Scripture. Dr Milne gave several theories of inspiration but the one preferred, he named “supervision.” God “supervised” the chosen men who penned the pages of the Bible. I will discuss that later.
The Biblical authors were not
hesitant to claim their own authorship. Therefore, Luke could write, “it seemed
good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to
write an orderly account for you . . ..”[2] And we also find in the New Testament that
many authors were not ashamed to affirm themselves as authors. For example:
a. “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, . . . To all those in Rome.” (Ro 1:1–7).
b. “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion:” (Jas 1:1)
c. “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles.” (1 Pe 1:1)
d. “I have written something to the church.” (3 Jn 9)
e. “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called.” (Jud 1).
The Doctrine of Inspiration did not make the human authors robotic, nor was it conducted (for the most part) through word-by-word dictation. Through this miracle, God wrote, and man wrote. Thus, the word that Milne uses, i.e., “supervision” is not a bad word. (I struggle to find a better word, yet I might choose the phrase, “providentially ordained.” I.e., working all things in accordance with His will.) He goes on to explain:
“This theory asserts that in the process of giving to us the Scriptures, God sovereignly supervised and ordered the background, heredity and circumstances of the individual writers; as a result, when they recorded events, meditations or sermons in writing, the words used were consciously the free composition of the authors and at the same time the very Word of God.”[3] [Emphasis mine]
So, from the very beginning of my Christian journey, I believed that God used chosen men to write Scripture. I believed their writings were largely their very own composition, yet at the very same time the very Word of God. I accepted this as a mystery, yet a necessary and essential truth. Milne summarizes: “Their inspired words, therefore, are clearly stamped as ‘theirs’ and address their immediate situation but are also in God’s providence part of his eternal Word to his people in every age.”
Much to my surprise, I didn’t realize that some people didn’t believe that. Opponents to the position that I present in this article will agree that man had a role in the production of Scripture, but they would say that the words “did not originate in man.” Although not entirely bowing to a theory of dictation, they would argue that the work of “inspiration” gave to the writers the God-thoughts. In other words, they prefer to refer to these men as recorders of the Bible, not authors. They’re problem is a misunderstanding of the word “inspiration.” The Biblical word “inspiration” does not mean as it does today. Someone might say, “God inspired me to write these lyrics.” That is not how the Bible speaks of inspiration. Mounce is helpful here:
“θεόπνευστος,
“God-breathed,” occurs only here in the Greek Bible, being found rarely in
pre-Christian literature. It has generally been translated “inspired,” but the niv translation “God-breathed”
accurately reflects the etymology of the compound word (θεός, “God” + πνειν [aorist *πνευ (ς)-], “to breathe” + verbal
adjectival ending-τος) and its
meaning as asserting the divine origin of Scripture. It denotes not the
manner of the inspiration of Scripture but rather its source.”[4] [Emphasis mine]
We could
paraphrase 2 Timothy 3:16 accurately by rendering it: “All Scripture is sourced
in God.” Of course, the position of this paper affirms that. Paul is not
teaching “how” the transmission of Scripture takes place in 2 Timothy 3:16. Likewise,
the ESV Study Bible comments: “The term stresses the divine origin and thus the
authority of Scripture. Paul does not point to the human authors of Scripture
as inspired people but says that the writings themselves (“Scripture,” Gk.
graphē, “writing,” which in the NT always refers to biblical writings) are the
words spoken (“breathed out”) by God.”[5]
But but the reader will say, “That
is fine, but what about 2 Peter 1:21, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the
will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit.” Surely
this passage will confirm that Biblical authors simply wrote what God moved
them to write. It was not original to them. I respond by calling us to a
careful reading of the text.
a. The subject (v.16) is the making known to the reader, the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. In short Peter is writing about the Second Coming of Christ.
b. Peter uses the Transfiguration as a prelude or anticipation of this Return (ESV Study Bible).
c. The Return of Christ is certain, even as it was certain that Peter experienced the glory of Christ on Mount Transfiguration. Yet the prophetic truths about Christ and His return are more certain than Peter’s experience.
d. Peter affirms Old Testament prophecies about Christ’s return by his statement in v.21.
e. Peter is assuring that all the Scriptural prophecies about Christ’s return were not produced by someone’s personal notions but in fact were given to them by the Holy Spirit.
We
note then that 2 Peter 1:21 is not a general statement on the authorship of
Scripture. It is affirming that no human being of their own origin or volition
could predict the Coming of the Lord. Those prophecies could only exist because
of the pheromenoi of the Spirit — bringing, bearing work of the Spirit
on the human author. So, back to my argument. The text of the Bible is for the
most part[6] “wholly”
belonging to the human author and “wholly belonging to God.”[7]
This mystical dynamic that occurs in the creation of holy Scriptures is not unlike the mystical union between the two natures of Christ. It is well known that for much of the first three hundred years of Church history, believers were engrossed in shaping and describing this Union of Christ, correcting and refuting error. The tendency was to make one Nature of Christ superior to the other or misrepresent one of the natures. The same can be true about the mystical authorship of the Bible. There will be those who make too much of the human effort and those who make too little of it by overshadowing it with Divine authorship. Warfield, I think strikes the balance that is needed (Notice the sounds of Nicene in this quote.):
“The human
and divine factors in inspiration are conceived of as flowing confluently and
harmoniously to the production of a common product. And the two elements are
conceived of in the Scriptures as the inseparable constituents of one single
and uncompounded product. Of every word of Scripture is it to be affirmed, in
turn, that it is God's word and that it is man's word. All the qualities of
divinity and of humanity are to be sought and may be found in every portion and
element of the Scripture. While, on the other hand, no quality inconsistent
with either divinity or humanity can be found in any portion or element of
Scripture.”[8]
Warfield constrains us to think
this through carefully. There is nothing contrarian or inconsistent with the
Human/Divine authorship reality. They are distinct yet inseparable. Every word
originates from both and can be found throughout Scripture. They are at no time
inconsistent with each other. This is profound. The well-known theologian
A.H. Strong will affirm that you can never look at Scripture, anywhere as
“merely human” or “merely divine.”[9] Strong will then make this provocative
statement: “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.”[10] Grudem expands,
“In cases where the ordinary
human personality and writing style of the author were prominently involved, as
seems the case with the major part of Scripture, all that we are able to say is
that God’s providential oversight and direction of the life of each author was
such that their personalities, their backgrounds and training, their abilities
to evaluate events in the world around them, their access to historical data,
their judgment with regard to the accuracy of information, and their individual
circumstances when they wrote, were all exactly what God wanted them to be,
so that when they actually came to the point of putting pen to paper, the words
were fully their own words but also fully the words that God wanted them
to write, words that God would also claim as his own.”[11] [Emphasis
mine]
Charles Hodge builds on that when
he writes, “Moreover, as inspiration did not involve the suspension or
suppression of the human faculties, so neither did it interfere with the free
exercise of the distinctive mental characteristics of the individual. If a
Hebrew was inspired, he spake Hebrew; if a Greek, he spake Greek; if an
educated man, he spoke as a man of culture; if uneducated, he spoke as such a
man is wont to speak. If his mind was logical, he reasoned, as Paul did; if
emotional and contemplative, he wrote as John wrote. All this is involved in
the fact that God uses his instruments according to their nature. The sacred
writers impressed their peculiarities on their several productions as plainly
as though they were the subjects of no extraordinary influence.”[12]
God yet used and providentially superintended every aspect of the human authorship with Divine purpose. They were authors of literature such that their personalities, culture, language, abilities were all incorporated so that their authorship was a true reality. I even will go as far as to say along with Lewis: “There is a . . . sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are.”[13]
Because the Bible is given to us by Human/Divine authorship and we are careful not to deny the human part, we therefore realize that if we do not read the Bible as literature, we will not understand God’s inspired Word. To be clear, the human author, the historical and cultural context, the genre, the language, the sentence structure, the syntax, the flow of thought, and so on, all contribute to proper interpretation and understanding. To dismiss the literary structure of the Biblical authors will in the end mar the truth of Divine authorship. The Bible teaches that it is directly and sovereignly inspired by God and is therefore to be submitted to in how He has inspired it. “If we acknowledge its authority, we must bow to it at this point too: in its dual claim that it is God’s inspired Word and that we should approach it with reverence and submission. To take another view is to stand in opposition to clear biblical teaching.”[14] [Emphasis mine]
The Bible
student, the preacher, the teacher, the author, will then carefully engage with
the human author, looking to understand his personality, the cultural, historical
context that he is writing in and his own purpose for composing his literature.
His grammar, his style, his sentence structure, his flow of logic and so on
become essential to the interpreter. At the same time, this student will
recognize that the human author is not ever inconsistent with other authors,
that what he writes is free from error and he carries the very words of God in
all their authority, sufficiency, and power.
[1] The Holy
Bible: English Standard Version (Ps 127:1). (2016). Crossway Bibles.
[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Lk 1:3). (2016). Crossway Bibles.
[3] Milne, Bruce, Know the Truth, InterVarsity
Press, 2012
[4] Mounce, W. D. (2000). Pastoral
Epistles (Vol. 46, pp. 565–566). Word, Incorporated.
[5] Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (p. 2342). Crossway Bibles.
[6] I write “for the most part” because in some cases, God
Himself to the author to write something, e.g., Moses in Exodus, or John in
Revelation. These examples are few. Most of Scripture comes from the human
author and Divine author.
[7] Frame, J. M.
(2006). Salvation belongs to the Lord: an introduction to
systematic theology (p. 66). P&R Publishing.
[8] https://theologue.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/thedivineandhumaninthebible-bbwarfield.pdf
[9] Strong, A. H. (1907). Systematic theology (p. 212-213). American
Baptist Publication Society.
[10] Ibid,
[11] Grudem, W. A. (2004). Systematic theology: an introduction to biblical doctrine
(p. 81). Inter-Varsity Press; Zondervan Pub. House.
[12] Hodge, C. (1997). Systematic theology (Vol. 1, p. 157). Logos
Research Systems, Inc.
[13]
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/c-s-lewis-on-holy-scripture/
[14] Milne, Bruce, Know the Truth, InterVarsity
Press, 2012
