I believe that scripture is the inspired word of God. However, it's difficult to refer to it as "inerrant." My understanding is that some of the scribes made errors or changes in copying the original texts, and biblical scholars have struggled with this in their efforts to recapture the original words. In addition, the scholars state that some of the O.T. was partially recomposed by the scribes, who typically worked for the current king. What do you think?
Lin
Inspired vs. Inerrant Word of God
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Inspired vs. Inerrant Word of God
Last edited by Guest on Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm, edited 0 times in total.
Reason:
Reason:
Hi Lin,
Your questions are of the type that can be answered quite quickly and glibly by ideologues of either the Catholic, evangelical or liberal branches of theology, according to their respective prejudices—but they are not at all easy to answer from the point of view of an open-minded, plain man (as I attempt to be), coming to the issue without agendas and drawing conclusions from the data of scripture alone! At the beginning of my answer, one might jump to the conclusion that I do not believe in the infallibility of scripture. This would be a mistake, so please follow my entire argument to its end, if possible. There is no one on earth (I am persuaded) who is more determined to be surrendered to the authority of scripture than I am, or who, more than I, looks to the scripture as the final court of appeals on all matters of faith and practice.
The first problem in answering your question responsibly comes in defining the key terms used: “inspired” and “inerrant.” The first word, found in 2 Timothy 3:16, really translates a Greek word meaning “God-breathed.” Evangelicals usually affix the adjective “plenary” (meaning “word-for-word,” “the very words,” or, as we might say, “verbatim”) before the term inspiration. But what does this mean? Does it mean that God exhaled the exact words, phrases and sentences into the minds of the writers in such a manner as to deprive them of the capacity for human error when they were writing—almost like the occult phenomenon of “auto-dictation”? This was certainly the way I understood the expression through the earliest years of my ministry, but it is not at all evident from Paul’s language that this is the meaning of the expression, nor do most of the biblical writers state or hint that such a phenomenon was at work upon them as they wrote.
Moses seems to have compiled the material in Genesis from ten or eleven family histories passed down from earlier inspired men, which documents he identifies as “the generations of…” (e.g. 2:4/ 5:1/ 6:9/ 10:1, etc.). Of course, Moses was able to write most of the Pentateuch as memoirs from his own experience (Ex.24:4/Num.33:2). The laws he gave Israel, and the words addressed to him by God, which he recorded, were clearly divinely inspired. He says nothing about the inspiration of his narrative material, but there is no reason to doubt his competence to document his own experiences as they actually happened. If we cannot trust him to tell the truth about these things, then neither could we trust his claims that he was writing under inspiration, were he to make such claims.
The historical books of the Old Testament were compiled, at least partly, from previous historical writings, which are now lost (cf., 1 Kings 14:29/ 16:5/ 1 Chron.29:29/ 2 Chron.26:22, etc.). Solomon wrote from the gift of a mind enlightened by God, though not necessarily as an oracle (1 Kings 3:11-12) and the Psalms often express the intense personal feelings of the psalmists, which were not necessarily always those of God Himself (Ps.73:12-13/ 137:9).
The prophets, whose oracles were definitely given to them directly from God, often wrote down visions which they had seen on earlier occasions (e.g., Dan.7:1ff/ 8:1ff), and sometimes expanded in writing on an earlier first draft of their work (Jer.36:32). There is nothing very “magical” in any of this, though God was unquestionably (at least to my mind) involved in the production of these writings to a degree that guaranteed their reliability and which guarantees their divine authority. Somehow, perhaps “in diverse manners,” God communicated clearly and accurately His message to each of the “holy men of God” who wrote these books. They “spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21) and also wrote down much of what they had spoken, or had it written down by their disciples. This much is affirmed by the apostles about the Old Testament writings, and I find no rational reason to doubt their correctness.
Now what about the “inspiration” of the New Testament writers? If we allow them to speak for themselves, the writers of the Gospels and Acts tell us that they were reporting information that they gained from first-hand experience (John 19:35/ 1 John 1:3/ cf.2 Pet.1:16), or which they learned through careful research and reliable testimony (Luke 1:1-3). We do have the guarantee, vouched by Jesus Himself, that these men would be assisted by the Spirit in the accurate recollection of Jesus’ sayings (John 14:26) and that the apostles can be trusted to understand properly the Old Testament texts referenced in their works (Luke 24:45).
In the epistles, we have the apostles transmitting the truths that Jesus had taught them while on earth (obviously a reliable source!), as well as things that were subsequently revealed to them by the Holy Spirit (another reliable source!—John 16:12-13).
On rare occasions, we have Paul (apparently) delivering a directly-inspired oracle even as he was writing (2 Cor.6:17-18/ 1 Tim.4:1ff), but this is not the norm in his or the other apostles’ writings. Sometimes Paul’s position is drawn from a direct quotation of what Jesus said during His earthly ministry (Acts 20:35/1 Cor.7:10); sometimes from Paul’s knowledge of a doctrine that had previously been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit (Eph.3:4f); and sometimes he simply gives his sanctified “judgment” on a matter (1 Cor.5:3/ 7:25, 40). Even in the latter instances, I have never quite understood what strikes me as the arrogance of those who reject Paul’s “judgments” in favor of their own (were they ever “caught up to the third heaven” or did Jesus repeatedly appear to them to give them instructions?). Paul did claim that the things he was writing should be acknowledged as “the commandments of the Lord” (in the immediate context, interestingly enough, of one of his more unpopular declarations, i.e., about women’s self-restraint in the church meetings—1 Cor.14:37), but he never suggested that he was aware of some supernatural phenomenon acting upon his mind while penning his correspondence.
Occasionally, Paul may, through faulty memory, misrepresent some point of detail, and then correct himself (1 Cor.1:14-16) or Matthew might forget which Old Testament book contains the verses he is citing (Matt.27:9), but these minor lapses do not impugn the veracity of the points they are affirming in the slightest. That they claimed no miraculous influence to be upon them at the time of their writing does not mean that they wrote without divine authority. The apostles were authorized by Christ Himself to officially speak to and lead the church in His room.
And this last point brings me to something absolutely crucial. Whether a person finds reason to believe in what they call “plenary [“word-for-word”] inspiration” or not, the real concern of the humble seeker of God and truth is not the matter of inspiration so much as that of reliability and authority. If Luke (or any of the other evangelists) is a reliable witness of the things he reports about Jesus, what does it matter to me whether he was “inspired” or not? He may have been, or he may not have been—he gives no indication one way or the other! It must not have been any part of the evangelists’ concerns that their readers should see their writings as inspired, since they did not affirm or even hint about this at any time. What does seem clear is their concern that their readers recognize that the things they were writing were TRUE! And on this point, there is no reason for any unprejudiced person to doubt their assertions.
Likewise, with the writings of the apostolic epistles, their “inspiration” may be assumed or not without having any bearing on the question, “Should we believe them and obey them?” This question rests, not on the question of inspiration, but on that of AUTHORITY. Either the apostles were appointed by Christ to speak authoritatively on His behalf, or they were not. If they were, then they speak with the authority of Christ Himself, and dismissal of their teaching is tantamount to rejection of Christ Himself, who authorized them to give such instruction. If a person said that he did not believe that the epistle to the Romans was written “under inspiration,” that person would not be denying anything that Paul ever affirmed about that epistle, but if one would deny the actual doctrines taught in that epistle, he would be rebelling against the teaching authority that Christ Himself invested in Paul.
Since the Old Testament books were written by inspired prophets, and the gospels record the inspired life and teachings of Christ, and the epistles come from the pens of men who were inspired, instructed and authorized by Christ to speak officially on His behalf, it is fair to speak of the Bible as the record of God’s inspired revelation. I am not sure that we have grounds to go further and suggest that the writers claimed for their writings anything like “plenary inspiration.” This doctrine, it seems to me, was developed in the late nineteenth century by the fundamentalist movement, which arose to refute the apostate modernists in the church, who were attacking the veracity of scripture. The strategy of the fundamentalists was to defend the veracity of the Bible on the basis of the postulate of plenary inspiration. This appears to have been a “pendulum swing” that overshot the actual claims of scripture, and which was, in any case, unnecessary as a defense of biblical veracity and authority.
As for the word, “infallibility,” it is not found in scripture, but seems to suggest complete accuracy of expression and unblemished truthfulness of content. The claim of infallibility is seldom made for the existing manuscripts of the Bible, since it is well-known that some minor variations of wording have entered into the text in the course of transmission through the ages. Typically, the claim is only made concerning the original “autographs” (the original documents from the pens of their authors, as opposed to copies of their work by other hands). Not having these original autographs available to examine, it is hard to test this claim, but I would see no particular reason to challenge it, since even the manuscripts as they have come down to us are substantially free from error.
Your last point had to do with the scribal reworking of the biblical material in the interests of the current monarch. Now such activity is not difficult to imagine, but it is not only difficult, but also impossible, to document. It is the kind of thing that skeptics say in the hopes of undermining the believer’s confidence in the reliability of the accounts, but it is a charge based on nothing but the suspicious nature of the ones making the suggestion. The bottom line is that Jesus and the apostles appear to have accepted the reliability of the Old Testament as we now have it (the Dead Sea Scrolls have demonstrated that the Old Testament that Jesus read was essentially identical to the one we have). I am, for good cause, and by choice, a believer in and a follower of Christ. It therefore goes without saying that His opinion is good enough for me. God bless you. Thanks for bearing with my lengthy expostulation!
Your questions are of the type that can be answered quite quickly and glibly by ideologues of either the Catholic, evangelical or liberal branches of theology, according to their respective prejudices—but they are not at all easy to answer from the point of view of an open-minded, plain man (as I attempt to be), coming to the issue without agendas and drawing conclusions from the data of scripture alone! At the beginning of my answer, one might jump to the conclusion that I do not believe in the infallibility of scripture. This would be a mistake, so please follow my entire argument to its end, if possible. There is no one on earth (I am persuaded) who is more determined to be surrendered to the authority of scripture than I am, or who, more than I, looks to the scripture as the final court of appeals on all matters of faith and practice.
The first problem in answering your question responsibly comes in defining the key terms used: “inspired” and “inerrant.” The first word, found in 2 Timothy 3:16, really translates a Greek word meaning “God-breathed.” Evangelicals usually affix the adjective “plenary” (meaning “word-for-word,” “the very words,” or, as we might say, “verbatim”) before the term inspiration. But what does this mean? Does it mean that God exhaled the exact words, phrases and sentences into the minds of the writers in such a manner as to deprive them of the capacity for human error when they were writing—almost like the occult phenomenon of “auto-dictation”? This was certainly the way I understood the expression through the earliest years of my ministry, but it is not at all evident from Paul’s language that this is the meaning of the expression, nor do most of the biblical writers state or hint that such a phenomenon was at work upon them as they wrote.
Moses seems to have compiled the material in Genesis from ten or eleven family histories passed down from earlier inspired men, which documents he identifies as “the generations of…” (e.g. 2:4/ 5:1/ 6:9/ 10:1, etc.). Of course, Moses was able to write most of the Pentateuch as memoirs from his own experience (Ex.24:4/Num.33:2). The laws he gave Israel, and the words addressed to him by God, which he recorded, were clearly divinely inspired. He says nothing about the inspiration of his narrative material, but there is no reason to doubt his competence to document his own experiences as they actually happened. If we cannot trust him to tell the truth about these things, then neither could we trust his claims that he was writing under inspiration, were he to make such claims.
The historical books of the Old Testament were compiled, at least partly, from previous historical writings, which are now lost (cf., 1 Kings 14:29/ 16:5/ 1 Chron.29:29/ 2 Chron.26:22, etc.). Solomon wrote from the gift of a mind enlightened by God, though not necessarily as an oracle (1 Kings 3:11-12) and the Psalms often express the intense personal feelings of the psalmists, which were not necessarily always those of God Himself (Ps.73:12-13/ 137:9).
The prophets, whose oracles were definitely given to them directly from God, often wrote down visions which they had seen on earlier occasions (e.g., Dan.7:1ff/ 8:1ff), and sometimes expanded in writing on an earlier first draft of their work (Jer.36:32). There is nothing very “magical” in any of this, though God was unquestionably (at least to my mind) involved in the production of these writings to a degree that guaranteed their reliability and which guarantees their divine authority. Somehow, perhaps “in diverse manners,” God communicated clearly and accurately His message to each of the “holy men of God” who wrote these books. They “spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21) and also wrote down much of what they had spoken, or had it written down by their disciples. This much is affirmed by the apostles about the Old Testament writings, and I find no rational reason to doubt their correctness.
Now what about the “inspiration” of the New Testament writers? If we allow them to speak for themselves, the writers of the Gospels and Acts tell us that they were reporting information that they gained from first-hand experience (John 19:35/ 1 John 1:3/ cf.2 Pet.1:16), or which they learned through careful research and reliable testimony (Luke 1:1-3). We do have the guarantee, vouched by Jesus Himself, that these men would be assisted by the Spirit in the accurate recollection of Jesus’ sayings (John 14:26) and that the apostles can be trusted to understand properly the Old Testament texts referenced in their works (Luke 24:45).
In the epistles, we have the apostles transmitting the truths that Jesus had taught them while on earth (obviously a reliable source!), as well as things that were subsequently revealed to them by the Holy Spirit (another reliable source!—John 16:12-13).
On rare occasions, we have Paul (apparently) delivering a directly-inspired oracle even as he was writing (2 Cor.6:17-18/ 1 Tim.4:1ff), but this is not the norm in his or the other apostles’ writings. Sometimes Paul’s position is drawn from a direct quotation of what Jesus said during His earthly ministry (Acts 20:35/1 Cor.7:10); sometimes from Paul’s knowledge of a doctrine that had previously been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit (Eph.3:4f); and sometimes he simply gives his sanctified “judgment” on a matter (1 Cor.5:3/ 7:25, 40). Even in the latter instances, I have never quite understood what strikes me as the arrogance of those who reject Paul’s “judgments” in favor of their own (were they ever “caught up to the third heaven” or did Jesus repeatedly appear to them to give them instructions?). Paul did claim that the things he was writing should be acknowledged as “the commandments of the Lord” (in the immediate context, interestingly enough, of one of his more unpopular declarations, i.e., about women’s self-restraint in the church meetings—1 Cor.14:37), but he never suggested that he was aware of some supernatural phenomenon acting upon his mind while penning his correspondence.
Occasionally, Paul may, through faulty memory, misrepresent some point of detail, and then correct himself (1 Cor.1:14-16) or Matthew might forget which Old Testament book contains the verses he is citing (Matt.27:9), but these minor lapses do not impugn the veracity of the points they are affirming in the slightest. That they claimed no miraculous influence to be upon them at the time of their writing does not mean that they wrote without divine authority. The apostles were authorized by Christ Himself to officially speak to and lead the church in His room.
And this last point brings me to something absolutely crucial. Whether a person finds reason to believe in what they call “plenary [“word-for-word”] inspiration” or not, the real concern of the humble seeker of God and truth is not the matter of inspiration so much as that of reliability and authority. If Luke (or any of the other evangelists) is a reliable witness of the things he reports about Jesus, what does it matter to me whether he was “inspired” or not? He may have been, or he may not have been—he gives no indication one way or the other! It must not have been any part of the evangelists’ concerns that their readers should see their writings as inspired, since they did not affirm or even hint about this at any time. What does seem clear is their concern that their readers recognize that the things they were writing were TRUE! And on this point, there is no reason for any unprejudiced person to doubt their assertions.
Likewise, with the writings of the apostolic epistles, their “inspiration” may be assumed or not without having any bearing on the question, “Should we believe them and obey them?” This question rests, not on the question of inspiration, but on that of AUTHORITY. Either the apostles were appointed by Christ to speak authoritatively on His behalf, or they were not. If they were, then they speak with the authority of Christ Himself, and dismissal of their teaching is tantamount to rejection of Christ Himself, who authorized them to give such instruction. If a person said that he did not believe that the epistle to the Romans was written “under inspiration,” that person would not be denying anything that Paul ever affirmed about that epistle, but if one would deny the actual doctrines taught in that epistle, he would be rebelling against the teaching authority that Christ Himself invested in Paul.
Since the Old Testament books were written by inspired prophets, and the gospels record the inspired life and teachings of Christ, and the epistles come from the pens of men who were inspired, instructed and authorized by Christ to speak officially on His behalf, it is fair to speak of the Bible as the record of God’s inspired revelation. I am not sure that we have grounds to go further and suggest that the writers claimed for their writings anything like “plenary inspiration.” This doctrine, it seems to me, was developed in the late nineteenth century by the fundamentalist movement, which arose to refute the apostate modernists in the church, who were attacking the veracity of scripture. The strategy of the fundamentalists was to defend the veracity of the Bible on the basis of the postulate of plenary inspiration. This appears to have been a “pendulum swing” that overshot the actual claims of scripture, and which was, in any case, unnecessary as a defense of biblical veracity and authority.
As for the word, “infallibility,” it is not found in scripture, but seems to suggest complete accuracy of expression and unblemished truthfulness of content. The claim of infallibility is seldom made for the existing manuscripts of the Bible, since it is well-known that some minor variations of wording have entered into the text in the course of transmission through the ages. Typically, the claim is only made concerning the original “autographs” (the original documents from the pens of their authors, as opposed to copies of their work by other hands). Not having these original autographs available to examine, it is hard to test this claim, but I would see no particular reason to challenge it, since even the manuscripts as they have come down to us are substantially free from error.
Your last point had to do with the scribal reworking of the biblical material in the interests of the current monarch. Now such activity is not difficult to imagine, but it is not only difficult, but also impossible, to document. It is the kind of thing that skeptics say in the hopes of undermining the believer’s confidence in the reliability of the accounts, but it is a charge based on nothing but the suspicious nature of the ones making the suggestion. The bottom line is that Jesus and the apostles appear to have accepted the reliability of the Old Testament as we now have it (the Dead Sea Scrolls have demonstrated that the Old Testament that Jesus read was essentially identical to the one we have). I am, for good cause, and by choice, a believer in and a follower of Christ. It therefore goes without saying that His opinion is good enough for me. God bless you. Thanks for bearing with my lengthy expostulation!
Last edited by Guest on Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm, edited 0 times in total.
Reason:
Reason:
In Jesus,
Steve
Steve