Steve's View on Inspiration

[steve]

On the matter of transmission, my thoughts are as follows:

1. I know of no place in scripture where God promised to supernaturally preserve a flawless text, and the many variants among surviving manuscripts suggests that He has not done so (or if He has, it is not obvious which manuscript preserves it);

2. There is the promise that the words of Jesus will never pass away (Mark 13:31). Whether this statement refers to the record of those words or not, I am not certain, but it would seem to be in God's interests to preserve such a faithful record;

3. The survival of thousands of New Testament manuscripts (and a respectable number of Old Testament witnesses) would strongly suggest that either God or man has managed to preserve these valuable records through the centuries, and the science of textual criticism gives us reasons for confidence that the material has come down to us through the ages without substantial alteration;

4. Though the precise original reading of many verses still lies in some doubt, the specific message of the original writers seems, in almost every case, to have been preserved faithfully, so that I have not the slightest discomfort in accepting the meaning preserved in the leading manuscript evidence as bearing a faithful correspondence to that of the original writers.

In other words, I see nothing in the history of the transmission of the text to worry me about the reliability of our best modern versions.

[anochria]

Thanks for the great reply. I am definitely in agreement.

However, a question still remains for me: how do you personally define "inspiration" particulary (as opposed to inerrency). Inspiration seems to imply God as a casual agent of Scripture in at least some way- obviously not to the point of dictating the words of Scripture (ala the Qu'ran), but nonetheless indicating involvement by God in some way.