The Sense of Scripture: Studies in Interpretation . . .
WHAT
INSPIRATION MEANS AND DOES NOT MEAN
All Scripture is given by
inspiration of God. - 2
Tim 3:16
We should recognize first of all
that whatever we determine inspiration
to mean the how of inspiration
will always elude us. It is like other acts of God, whether the creation of
the universe or the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can accept the fact when we can not explain the how. No one knows, including scientists and theologians alike, how
God does or has done his mighty works. This includes inspiration, whether of
men or of documents.
It
is also appropriate at the outset to realize that the acceptance of the
inspiration of Scripture is a matter of faith and not a matter of scientific
proof. No one can prove that the
Bible is inspired, just as no one can prove
that the universe has a Creator. Some things, such as the order and
design of things, strongly indicate a Creator, but other things, such as all
the suffering and pain, might indicate otherwise. And so some people believe
in a Creator and some do not. It is a matter of faith, not of science. So
with the Bible. Its lofty and inspiring passages point to God's guiding
hand, but other passages with their historical inconsistencies and
questionable ethics suggest otherwise. And so some people believe in the
inspiration of Scripture and some do not.
It
may also prove helpful to realize that while the proposition All
Scripture is inspired of God is
true (to the believer), the converse of that, All
inspired writings are
Scripture, is not. A
document may be inspired by God and still not be Scripture. The passage
before us, 2 Tim. 3:16, states only that if it is Scripture it is inspired,
and not that if it is inspired it is Scripture. False conversion is an old
fallacy that we must guard against. It is more obviously fallacious in this
conversion: All children are human beings, therefore all human beings are
children. Or this one: All whales are mammals, therefore all mammals are
whales.
The
early church considered many documents inspired that they did not accept as
Scripture, such as Barnabas, Shepherd
of Hermas, and Clement's Epistle
to the Church at Corinth. It was not a document's inspiration that led
the church to accept it as Scripture. That was not enough. The criteria for
canonicity was apostolicity and catholicity. A document called the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) may have been inspired,
but it was not close enough to the apostolic tradition nor was it
widely-enough accepted by both the East and the West, to be canonized as
Scripture.
Is
it not the case in our own time? God inspires poets, novelists, playwrights,
and historians, but that does not make their writings the holy Scriptures.
While we cannot limit inspiration to any one age, we can limit the
Scriptures to the apostolic age, for that is the basic criterion of
Scripture, that it be apostolic. Any person might be "moved by the
Spirit" and God may speak to us through anyone - which is what
inspiration is - but such experiences do not have the authority of
Scripture. Conrad Hilton, the hotel magnet, tells how his life was greatly
influenced by a single quotation from Shakespeare that his mother often
quoted to him:
Might
not God have inspired the Mayflower Compact or the Constitution of the
United States? And many of us see the word of God in Jefferson's great
statement, "I swear upon the altar of God eternal hostility against all
forms of tyranny over the minds of men." From God perhaps (inspiration)
but still not Scripture. Handel's Messiah
may be inspired music, and more inspiring than some of the psalms, but
the church could not properly include it in the psalms of Scripture.
As
to the selection of the books of the canon (the church's fixed list of
biblical books) it is a matter of fact that some books, such as 2nd and 3rd
John and Jude, barely made it and only then after hundreds of years, while
others, such as those already named, barely missed being accepted. And it
was the church of the early centuries that determined this. While we can
believe that God's providential care was at work in all this, it is
understandable if one concluded that Clement is more valuable to us than is
Jude. The early church did make a place for the non-canonical inspired
writings: they are suitable for private edification but not to be read in
the church as Scripture. But it was, after all, the church that named the
books in the Bible, not a revelation from God. Even so the church was almost
four centuries determining the canon or the New Testament as we now have it.
But it is reassuring to realize that the church had very high standards for
what was Scripture. Beyond the fact of inspiration was that a document had
to be written by an apostle or one close to an apostle, so Mark
was readily accepted while 2 Peter
and Hebrews were not, their
authorship being questionable.
As
for the Old Testament, the early church, growing as it did out of Judaism,
accepted the canon that was determined by the Jewish church, though the
Roman Catholics have always accepted a few additional writings as canonical
that Protestants view as apocryphal. But when one reads these books he may
decide that 1 Maccabees, which is a history of the Maccabean revolt in the
interTestamental period, is of as much value as the historical books of the
"Protestant" Old Testament, and almost certainly he will find the Wisdom
of Solomon and Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
much more inspiring and informative than Ecclesiastes
or the Song of Solomon. As for
the Song of Solomon, one is left
to wonder why it was ever accepted by either the Jews or the Christians as
Scripture. Apart from the device of allegory, it is hardly more than a very
carnal love story. Some vain college students have been known to name it as
their favorite book in the Bible!
We
may therefore concede that the church, both the Jewish and the Christian,
may have erred in determining the books of the Bible. But it certainly did
not seriously err, for we have the Scriptures we need. And we believe that
God was at work in history and in the church to give us the Bible we have,
and whether it is the Protestant canon or the Roman Catholic canon does not
matter, for the difference is not all that great. After all, both Bibles
have "the law, the prophets, and the psalms" as well as the
gospels, Acts, and the apostolic
epistles, and these bear witness to Jesus Christ, who is the essence of all
Scripture.
But
the fact needs to be emphasized that it was the church that fixed the canon,
not divine fiat. It might be better to say that the church simply recognized
the documents that gradually came to be recognized as Scripture. And so we
may have an imperfect canon, but it is nonetheless an adequate canon. Man is
not likely to do anything with absolute perfection, not even with God's
help.
As
for what inspiration is not, we may further distinguish inspiration from
revelation. We can say with the Bible itself that all Scripture is inspired,
but even the Bible does not say that all Scripture is revealed. Inspiration
is not revelation. Much of the Bible was not revealed, but came from the
writer's own experience and research, other documents and information gained
from witnesses. Luke, for example, is inspired Scripture but it is not revelation.
In the preface Luke explains that he drew upon his own experience and other
documents in what he wrote. Oftentimes the Bible quotes from another book,
line upon line, as in 2 Sam. 1:18 where several verses are taken from the
Book of Jasher, a book unknown to us. Much of Ezra 7 is copied directly from
Persian archives. Paul quoted from pagan poets and philosophers. Inspiration
but not revelation! I will later explain what I believe inspiration means in
this context.
To
say that Scripture is inspired does not necessarily mean that it is
inspirational. The dull, endless genealogies are inspired Scripture but they
are not inspiring. And what a difference there is between Paul's "love
hymn" in I Cor. 13 and the purification rites in Leviticus! Some books
are both inspiring and uninspiring. There are gems of truth in Ecclesiastes
but it is overall pessimistic
and discouraging. Esther tells a
great story in which we can see (with some effort) the providence of God at
work, but in the end it is grossly vengeful and bloodthirsty. Scholars are
still puzzled that it was ever accepted as canonical. It never mentions the
name of God and its spiritual value can be questioned. The Jewish church
probably accepted it as Scripture because it gives the origin of one of
their favorite feasts. And the Christian church accepted it because the
Jewish church did!
This
brings us to another distinction: All
Scripture is equally inspired but not all Scripture is equally important. Inspiration
does not imply equality. All of Paul's writings are equally inspired, but Romans
is probably by far the most important. The New Testament is so much more
important than the Old that there is hardly any comparison, except that both
are inspired Scripture and profitable, as 2 Tim. 3:16 says. But it does not
say that all Scripture is equally profitable.
Jesus refers to "the weightier matters of the law," which implies
that there are lighter, less important matters, even though they are still
Scripture. This is why we can properly value that old motto, "In
essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love."
Prophets like Micah assure us that justice, mercy, and humility before God
are far more important (essential) than many other things that may be
equally inspired, equally Scripture, and equally true. I've known people
whose thinking about the Bible was turned completely around when they came
to see that while all truth is equally true it is not all equally important.
When one learns that she is likely to have a broader view of Christian
fellowship, for sectism and legalism are based on the premise that all the
New Testament is equally important.
Further,
inspiration is not dictation or a verbal, word by word disclosure of the
mind of God, though in rare instances this seems to have been the case. Luke
had no way of knowing what Agrippa said behind closed doors (Acts 26:30-32)
unless the Spirit told him, word by word. And Paul had those moments when
God must have spoken to him line by line, as in Eph. 3:3-4: "how that
by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I wrote before in few
words, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the
mystery of Christ)." Compare how Paul received certain commandments
relative to marriage in I Cor. 7. The "Thus saith the Lord" of the
prophets often indicate that they simply repeated what God had revealed to
them.
But
overall we see that inspiration is more "concursive," as one
scholar describes it, which means that the Spirit used normal human forms of
composition, including the individual resources, knowledge, skills, and
peculiarities of the various writers. This accounts for the diversity (and
sometimes conflicts) between writers who describe the same event.
I
have yet to define the term inspiration, which is no simple matter inasmuch
as the Greek term from which it comes is used only in 2 Tim. 3:16, and that
is the only way we know what words mean, by the way they are used. Literally
the term means God-breathed, but what are we to make of God-breathed
Scriptures? I am persuaded that this simply means that they have their
origin in God. Somehow, some way God breathed the Scriptures into existence.
They have their source in him. So, 2 Tim. 3:16 could read and we will
recognize the fact that the first is in the verse is not in the original: "Since all Scripture
comes from God it is profitable for doctrine, etc."
This
precludes any need for a theory of inspiration. We accept by faith the fact
that the Scriptures come from God and are therefore useful, and yet we don't
know the how of their coming from
God. We do not need to know, and we certainly do not need to theorize to the
point of creating a doctrine of inspiration. Our word
"inspiration" is not even necessary. If we limited ourselves to
what Jesus thought of Scripture, we would be in good company. He saw them as
authoritative, as the word of God, and as directives for his own life and
mission. He spoke of them as "They testify of me," and he saw
himself as their fulfillment It is unlikely that he held any theory of
inspiration.
What
we need to know is clearly evident in the nature of Scripture. Since they
are of human authorship as well as God-breathed, they are indeed both the
word of man and the word of God, both natural and super-natural, both
historical and beyond history. It is something like the creation of the
universe: we know that natural sources have always been at work in a never
ending process and yet "the Spirit of God moved over the face of the
waters" (Gen. 1:2). The Spirit was "concursive" with human
activity in giving us the Bible just as he was with nature in giving us the
world as we now have it. With our finite mind we cannot understand the
"how" of the God-man process that gave us the Bible anymore than
we can understand the God-nature process that gave us the universe.
So,
what "All Scripture is inspired of God" is asserting is the
activity of God in the whole process of the miracle of Scripture in history.
And so it is useful to our needs: doctrine, discipline, instruction in
righteousness.
What
Scripture is all about is that it lays on our hearts and minds such truths
as "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not
comprehend it." The glorious miracle is that while it was written by a
mere man it somehow has its origin in the breath of God. —the
Editor