Inspiration

Would there be any violation of the truth to say that parts of the Scriptures were verbally inspired and not all?

To say that some of the Scriptures were verbally inspired and some not, would be to deny the testimony of Scripture to itself. The writers of Scripture “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’ (2 Pet. 1:21). This does not imply automatic dictation, but such a control, by the Spirit, of the vocabulary of the different writers as to exclude from their writings everything not intended by the Spirit to go into them, and also such a use of the vocabulary of the writers as would give the full and complete thought in the Spirit’s mind. This leaves room for the individuality of the writers, so apparent, but not for the modern contention that only parts of the Scripture are inspired. This notion leaves each individual free to reject as uninspired whatever in the divine Word happens to be irksome to obey or unwelcome to believe. The teachings of God never were nor ever will be acceptable to the natural heart and will (1 Cor. 2:14; Rom. 8:7). We need, these days more than ever, to “contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3, R.V.).

If the Bible was inspired, must we not also believe that the present arrangement of the books was inspired also?

Our arrangement of the books of the Bible differs from the Jewish order, which was Christ’s Bible, and this again from the order of the Septuagint, which was the Apostles’ Bible, therefore it would be exceedingly difficult to show that the order of the books which our present-day Bibles follow is of divine authority. Reverence for the Scriptures as verbally inspired in the original documents is one thing. To believe that the divine Providence so watches over Scripture as to make a wrong arrangement of the books impossible is not only another thing, but is flatly contradicted by the history of the canon. The one position is that of faith, the other of superstition. The one makes of the words God’s infallible revelation to man; the other makes a fetich of the mechanical arrangement of the books.

In what way does the term, “‘Book of Moses,”’ prove the inspiration of the Pentateuch?

The first five books of the Bible were accepted by the Jewish people as the ‘Book of Moses” and was not disputed by them. If that book were a mixture of facts and fables, as the Son of God Christ would know it and would have corrected the Jewish idea. ‘If it were not so, I would have told you.” If the Word of the Lord is “tried” (2 Sam. 22:31) and “every word of God is pure” (Prov. 30:5), He never would have allowed it to pass down through the centuries adulterated with the uninspired thoughts of men, for then it would not have been a “‘tried,”’ nor a very “pure” Word.

How far does verbal inspiration go?

What inspiration undertakes to do in reporting the words of men is to report them correctly. Whether those words, thus correctly reported, are words which God inspired the man to utter, or his own words, must be decided by: (1) what is said in Scripture concerning them; (2) by their agreement with revealed truth on that subject. For instance, Satan, in Genesis 3:4, said, “Ye shall not surely die.” Inspiration correctly reports Satan, but the words were Satan’s lie, not God’s truth. In the case of Zophar, Bildad and Eliphaz (Job 42:7), Scripture expressly declares, “Ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.” What Job said, then, is “right,” or inspired truth; what the three friends said is correctly reported and so inspired, but is not the thing that is “right,” therefore not inspired truth.

Verbal inspiration is not claimed for the various translations of the Bible, but only for the original manuscripts. Of course the nearer the translators come in their interpretations to the original Greek and Hebrew meanings, the clearer is the inspired Word translated.

Do not holy men write now under inspiration just as truly as when the Bible was written?

No, not in the sense in which that word is applied to the Holy Scriptures. The proof of this is found in the contrasts between the best of their writings and the Scriptures.

Not one of Paul’s later epistles contradicts or modifies a single statement of one of his earlier epistles. It is commonly said by adversaries of plenary inspiration that in 2 Thessalonians 2 Paul contradicted the idea taught in 1 Thessalonians 4 that Christ might come at any time for His Church. It is not true. In the earlier epistle the apostle is speaking of the coming of Christ for His Church, in the latter of His subsequent glorious appearing after the apostasy and the manifestation of the man of sin.

The writings of Paul and the other apostles have exactly the same authority that the words of Christ have, that is, divine authority. Christ said that He would leave an incomplete revelation (John 16:12). He said that this revelation would be completed after the Holy Spirit came (John 16:18). It is impossible to think of anything beyond “all” truth. The Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 2:9-13) describes the whole process of revelation by inspiration in the following steps: (1) The things which form the subject of revelation are not discoverable by natural powers, (2:9); (2) God has revealed them by His Spirit to “us” the apostles (2:10). Those revealed things the writers utter “not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.”’ The promise of Christ (John 16:13) is thus fulfilled. Paul’s “experience,” “broader view,’ etc., have nothing to do with his writings. They are Spirit-revealed, Spirit-given words. They have therefore the same divine authority as the words of Christ Himself.

The commands of holy men now have absolutely no authority, for they are not revelations, nor are they communicated in Spirit-taught words. Nor, needless to say, does any really holy man so claim.

With all the modern teaching concerning the historical portions of the Old Testament, is a minister at liberty to use his own judgment in allegorizing?

Every minister of Jesus Christ is under obligation to preserve toward the Old Testament precisely the attitude of Jesus Christ. What the Old Testament was to Jesus Christ is easy of ascertainment. In one afternoon one may go through the Gospels and select every reference of our Lord to the Scriptures. From those passages may be drawn Christ’s doctrine of the Old Testament. That He received it all as the very Word of God is indisputable to any one trained in the law of evidence. He obeyed it Himself; He appealed to it as containing His doctrine, and as testifying of Him. He never criticized it, never intimated that it was in any sense unworthy of credence. Instead of saying that the accounts of the flood, of Jonah, of Lot’s wife, were myths or allegories, He went, as one may say, out of His way to affirm the historicity of those events.