From the Mouth of God: Inspiration Theories [Foundations]

Does inspiration apply to every part of Scripture? Just the “spiritual” parts? Just the New Testament? Just the gospels? The biblical view says that all of Scripture is inspired.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the Theological Touchpoints podcast. I'm Julian. The focus for this episode is foundations theology for the everyday and a Baptist. The Bible comes from the mouth of God, as 2 Timothy 3.16 says. Scripture is theonostas. God breathed.

Speaker 1: 0:27

When Scripture speaks, god speaks. Since Scripture comes from God, it speaks with his authority. Since it comes from God, it is truthful. God is true. Scripture is trustworthy since God is a reliable witness. The fact that God is spoken also tells us something about God's character. He desires to be known. He has revealed himself to us in and through the pages of Scripture And if he has spoken, we believe he intends to be understood.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Scripture is clear, but what we're primarily looking at in this podcast is what's called the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. That is, this idea that when Scripture speaks, god speaks. Or, put differently, god decided to reveal himself to mankind primarily through a book, through Scripture, and Scripture is that revelation. Scripture is God speaking to us. As we discovered last time, most Christians agree that Scripture is inspired, though they sometimes disagree when they define that inspiration. We looked at one view of inspiration that's sometimes called the dictation theory, which essentially says the writers of Scripture were no more than courtroom tellers or pen men who recorded God's words word for word from his mouth. The main problem with this view is that as we read Scripture we discover different writers, different personalities, different ways of expressing the truth, and if they were merely recording words from God's mouth, we wouldn't see their different personalities represented in the material. And also Scripture was developed from a variety of sources. God did sometimes speak directly to and through men, but Scripture also includes research material and historical material, such as the Gospel of Luke and the companion book, the book of Acts, which Luke studied out and compiled and recorded from the accounts of others a good and orderly account of the things that had happened. So there's divine revelation, there's prophetic material, but there's also research and historical material present in Scripture.

Speaker 1: 2:36

So to say that it all just was dictated by God doesn't quite capture the content, the nature of Scripture as we have it. Maybe. On the other side there's the idea of illumination that in the writing of Scripture God just gave additional insight to understand. Natural revelation gave people extra measures of wisdom and of understanding of knowledge in order to be able to write Scripture. But the problem in this is that there is content in Scripture that cannot be known unless God reveals it. For example, genesis 1, god is the only one who was there. It's impossible for man to deduce how the world was created, but God chose to reveal how the world was created. And so to say that Scripture came just by illumination, by a heightened understanding, a heightened ability to understand God's world, misses the fact that there are parts of Scripture that indeed come straight from God, content that cannot be known unless God reveals it.

Speaker 1: 3:35

So I argued last time for more of a balanced view, and this is probably more or less for most of you are. It is more or less the traditional view as well, sometimes called the dynamical theory though we don't usually use that word speaking of the idea that God used men to write Scripture without stripping away their personalities, and so the way John expresses truth is different than how Paul expresses the truth, and is different than how James expresses the truth. It's different from how Peter expresses the truth, and this doesn't mean they're expressing different truths, but rather they're different experiences, they're different even levels of education, they're different perspectives, produce writings that are different between the books, and God used a different man to write Scripture without stripping away their personality, and he even directed in the historical compilations the research that went into writing things like the Gospel of Luke, but God was involved in the entire process. God directed the composition so that the writers wrote all that he wanted them to write, and so we can rightly say, in the end, that Scripture comes from God or, as Secondary 316 says, from the mouth of God. It is breathed out by him, or it is God himself speaking. When we read Scripture, though, we are reading the writings of men. We understand that behind it all, in it, all, through it all, god was at work, and God is speaking to us through the pages of Scripture, through the words of Scripture.

Speaker 1: 5:05

In our discussion on the inspiration of Scripture, we are now moving from how God inspired the Bible to what that inspiration entails. Does inspiration apply to every part of Scripture, or maybe just the spiritual parts? or is just the New Testament inspired? or maybe just the Gospels are inspired, or perhaps some sections are more inspired than others? There are some who divide Scripture into pieces and say that certain parts are inspired while other parts are not. We're going to look at this under the heading of partial inspiration.

Speaker 1: 5:42

Another group owns or agrees that all of Scripture is inspired, but they say there are various levels of inspiration. Some portions are more inspired than others. This is sometimes called degree inspiration, different degrees, different levels of inspiration. Still others think that God inspired the concepts of Scripture but left the writers to choose the words. This is called concept inspiration. Others say the Bible contains the word of God, but we have to strip away the mythological and supernatural elements to find the truth and ultimately to discover the living word, christ himself. This is sometimes called Barthian inspiration, popularized by theologian Karl Barth. Some of these capture a measure of the truth, but none satisfy Scripture's testimony about itself. In this podcast we're going to be looking mostly at incorrect views and then in the next podcast we'll look at what the Bible seems to present, though we will touch on the biblical teaching along the way as we think about this together.

Speaker 1: 6:45

The Orthodox biblical view says that all of Scripture is inspired. It holds that it is all equally inspired, all equally from God. I should say that these views are summaries of the various perspectives that exist. They don't necessarily represent every idea that's out there, nor do they include all the nuances and clarifications that would certainly be given by someone who holds one of these views, but talking about them this way does help us get an idea of different approaches to inspiration. If you aren't acquainted with these views, if our discussion here is new material for perhaps at the very minimum, thinking about them will help you appreciate more fully the biblical doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture.

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First let's look at partial inspiration. Partial inspiration takes a pick-and-choose approach to Scripture. Where this typically shows up is those who divide the spiritual and religious issues from the historical and scientific. They say the spiritual and religious issues are inspired. It's inspired in things relating to faith and practice, but the historical accounts and the scientific references are not necessarily inspired. This view holds that God inspired the writings pertaining to Christ and salvation, but may or may not have inspired the historical accounts surrounding these truths. This allows us to see Scripture as infallible in matters of faith and practice, but not in things which are not of an immediately religious character. So in this view, it's acceptable for the biblical writer to be in error in things which relate to history or science, and this allows us to accept what contemporary scientists tell us about origins or the cosmos, while still confessing a belief in inspiration. We can disregard or reinterpret the biblical record of history if it doesn't seem to fit with other accounts, because, in this view, only these spiritual issues are truly inspired.

Speaker 1: 8:43

The problems with this view are quickly evident, however. First, if we can't trust Scripture in historical and scientific matters, how can we trust it in spiritual matters? Can we accept one sentence and not another? How do we choose what to keep and what to reject? Who gets to make that decision? Once Scripture's integrity is compromised, it is no longer reliable for any issue, whether that's historical, scientific or spiritual, and so this perspective puts man above Scripture rather than him being subject to it. If the Bible is only partially inspired, we can accept the pieces we believe to be true and disregard the rest, but then it is no longer authoritative, since we can dismiss any segment we disagree with. We get to pick and choose, defining the truth on our own terms rather than accepting what God has revealed. Most significantly, though, is that this view does not fit with what Scripture says about itself, this text that we're going to be going back to again and again 2 Timothy 3, 16,.

Speaker 1: 9:44

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, so we need to notice the all We discussed on previous podcast, the Canon of Scripture. As we discussed, our current collection of Scriptures is well established. All 66 books are rightfully placed within our Holy Scriptures. Paul, by the Holy Spirit, here in 2 Timothy, tells Timothy that each of these books, each of the 66 books of Scripture, is inspired by God, including the entire content of every book. That means, when the Bible tells us something, that something is always correct, even if it doesn't fit with what people tell us.

Speaker 1: 10:26

Now it is possible for us to misunderstand Scripture and be wrong, but Scripture itself cannot be in error. Scripture is true. Scripture is inspired. All of it comes from God and so is consistent with His character. Now, christians have sometimes wrongly interpreted Scripture to make it say things that it doesn't in fact say, and we should be open to taking another look at Scripture in those cases to see whether we've imposed ideas on Scripture or whether Scripture itself is in error. And we should expect to find that Scripture itself is true, but it has been mishandled or misunderstood. And so, when Scripture buts heads with science, we need to be willing to evaluate our interpretation of Scripture to see if, maybe, our interpretation is incorrect. But the clear teachings of Scripture must never be compromised in order to make room for what scientists are telling us. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and must be accepted as His inspired word.

Speaker 1: 11:28

Secondly, degree inspiration. This degree inspiration is a close sibling to partial inspiration. Partial inspiration essentially says some sections are inspired, some are not. Degree inspiration says there are different levels of inspiration. All Scripture is inspired, but certain portions are held at a higher plane than others. So this shows itself in a preference for maybe the Gospels over the Epistles or of the Epistles over the Gospels. Even those who profess to believe in the inspiration of all of Scripture can functionally practically only spend their time in certain portions of Scripture rather than looking at all of Scripture in their development of the truth. And so sometimes it's the Gospels over the Epistles or the Epistles over the Gospels. Sometimes this shows up in the disregard of the Old Testament. They can be the prioritization of, maybe, the application sections at the expense of the doctrinal sections, or vice versa, prioritizing the doctrinal sections while ignoring the applications.

Speaker 1: 12:26

Spending all our time in the doctrines without following through in diligent, disciplined life applications is a skewed approach to Scripture. We need to accept all of Scripture as equally valuable and equally essential in developing biblical theology. This is not to say that all sections of Scripture are equally relevant. Some are more relevant or more potent, or more accessible, or give the Gospel in straightforward, clear terms, or give God's expectations in straightforward, clear terms, but in the end, we should agree that all of Scripture comes from God and no part should be ignored, since every part is given us by God. Every part needs to be consulted, needs to be included in our development of the truth and in our devotional relationship with God and our walk of faith, where we seek to please God and how we live.

Speaker 1: 13:15

We need all of Scripture, since all of Scripture comes from God, and all of Scripture needs to be consulted, needs to be included in our Christian lives. So this degree inspiration is akin to what I sometimes encounter in Anabaptist circles. For example, some take the Sermon on the Mount as the epitome of truth and all other Scripture falls under this. Others red letter Christians accept only the recorded words of Jesus as truly inspired and they'll accept other Scriptures but subordinate them to the red letters of the Bible And at the core, this sounds good. Right, why not take Jesus' own words as inspired and filter the rest through those?

Speaker 1: 13:56

Yet this misunderstands the nature of Scripture, since all of Scripture is God speaking, and I think it can even be said, all of Scripture is Christ himself, speaking through the Holy Spirit. He says to his disciples at one point that the Holy Spirit will take what is His and declare it to them, and Jesus promised for the revelation by the Spirit. He told his disciples that more revelation would be coming, and there were things the apostles needed to know that they weren't yet ready to receive while Christ was with them. But they were taught later by the Spirit, and so that means there are truths that are essential to the Gospel that are not recorded in the four Gospels but are recorded later in the Epistles, as the apostles were taught by the Spirit and grew in their understanding of these truths and then recorded what they knew in the Epistles. So the Epistles include what the apostles were taught by Jesus and what they were taught by the Spirit later on. So the entirety of the New Testament comes from God through the Spirit, and so it can be rightly said that all of the New Testament represents the doctrine of Christ.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Splitting out or prioritizing the Sermon on the Mount while sidelighting other New Testament passages essentially elevates portions of God's Word over other portions of God's Word. But all of it comes from Him, all of it needs to be included in our Christian faith and practice. And, on the other hand, we need to make sure we are including the Sermon on the Mount in our development of the truth, that we are including the red letters of Christ, that we are including all of the New Testament and, in fact, all of Scripture in our development of the truth, in our relationship with Christ. And the Sermon on the Mount is valuable. There's no greater ethic presented than that which is presented in the Sermon on the Mount, but we need to take that in the context of everything God is saying to us in and through the New Testament. So, fundamentally, this perspective, this understanding called degree inspiration, misses a crucial theological distinction. Inspiration deals with the fact that God oversaw the composition and compilation of the Bible. All of it is as He wanted it to be. It's true that various passages are more or less relevant, but that variance doesn't mean the less relevant portions are any less the Word of God. So is the Bible inspired in degrees? No, it is all fully inspired. Yes, we connect more fully with certain passages, yet all of it must be taken as the Word of God.

Speaker 1: 16:27

The third idea for us to look at is what is called concept inspiration. Concept inspiration acknowledges that all of the Bible is inspired, but it only extends that inspiration to the concepts, that is, the thoughts are divinely inspired. God inspired the thoughts in the minds of the men but left them to record those thoughts in words. So in this view there is a separation between the words of Scripture and the truth of Scripture. This view is somewhat attractive since it neatly divides the divine and the human. It seems to be a reaction against mechanical inspiration which essentially says God tells them what to write and they write it, and the personalities of the individuals disappear. This separates God and man in inspiration. Basically, god gives the idea, god teaches the truth but allows the writer to record them as he sees fit. And in this there's most definitely the removal of God's inspiration, of specific words, of the individual words of the text. And this sounds nice, at least on a certain level. It's clean. It allows God to give the concepts, gives the truth, but allows freedom for the writer to record them as he sees fit. But it really doesn't stand rationally or biblically Rationally.

Speaker 1: 17:44

The obvious hold up on this view is that concepts are conveyed through words. We can't have inspired concepts recorded in uninspired words and then expect inspired truth to be rightly communicated. The inspiration must include the words themselves. Words have meanings. Some words mean things, other words mean other things, and one word does not mean what another word means. If God intends to communicate the concepts clearly, he needs to not only give the concepts but actually give the words that correctly communicate those concepts, or at least ensure that the words that are used are the right words to rightly communicate the concept He intends to be communicated through a given text. Inspiration must include the words themselves, or scripture is not truly inspired. Our thoughts expressed through words. You change the words and you've changed the concepts. You can't separate the two. In order for concepts to be inspired, it is imperative that the words that express them also be inspired. That from Charles Ryery in his book Basic Theology.

Speaker 1: 18:53

Scripture also disagrees with degree inspiration. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2.13 says And so if the apostle Paul's spoken words were inspired by the Spirit, how much more his written words are inspired by the Spirit? And again, 2 Timothy 3, 16 is helpful, where it says all Scripture is inspired. Can that all be understood to mean anything but the entire message, including the words? It's interesting to note too that the word we have translated Scripture is Grafe, which references the writings, and so it's literally all of the writings are inspired.

Speaker 1: 19:53

So it's more than just the concepts, more than the ideas, but the words themselves are the words God intended to be used in order to communicate the truth. This is important because when we begin to drive a wedge between the words of Scripture and the truths of Scripture, that allows for Scripture to be used and misused to fit with other views, other perspectives that don't actually stand up based on what the words mean, based on the words God intended to use. But if we say just the concepts are inspired, then that allows us to take kind of a general, generic approach to Scripture, extract what we believe are the core concepts and discard the rest. But every word is inspired, every word is what God intended it to be, and so every word needs to be given its proper place in Scripture. And we're reminded of what Jesus said when he says heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away. And then he speaks of not one jot or tittle changing until everything is fulfilled, a jot and tittle, referencing some of the smallest marks in the Hebrew alphabet. And he emphasizes that even these marks, even these individual, almost insignificant pieces of Scripture, parts of the words of Scripture will not be changed and indicates that even these characters and the nuances they add and the meaning they bring to the words they're used in will not change. So the words themselves that communicate the truth God intends to communicate in and through his word.

Speaker 1: 21:24

The fourth view we want to look at is called Barthian inspiration. It's a view popularized by Karl Barth. He was not the first to hold this view, but it's come to carry his name. Barthian inspiration says that the Bible contains the word of God, but it is not itself the word of God. Rather, it is said that the Bible is a human book that God makes his word at the moment of personal encounter. It's a human book that God uses to speak to individuals at the moment of personal encounter.

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According to this view, we need to strip away the mythical, the mystical, the supernatural, the erroneous parts to discover Christ beneath it all. It's a division between Christ and the word of Christ. This gets rather confusing. Charles Ryery explains, for the Barthian Revelation centers in Jesus Christ. He is the center of the circle of Revelation and the Bible stands on the periphery of that circle. Jesus Christ is the word.

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The Bible serves as a witness to the word Christ. The Bible's witness to the word is uneven, that is, some parts of it are more important than their witness, than other parts. The important parts are the ones that witness about Christ. Nevertheless, such parts, though important, are not necessarily accurate. Indeed, barthians embrace the conclusion that there are errors in the Gospel. So, with everything that's going on here, essentially the Bible leads us to Christ. The Bible serves to bring us into a relationship with Christ.

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Good things right, good things Well, except in this the Bible is separated from the person of Christ, such that it is possible to have a relationship with Christ while ignoring his word, and it also makes the word less than reliable, less than accurate, less than authoritative. We can take the pieces we want. We can disregard the rest. So the Barthians are correct. Jesus is the true word.

Speaker 1: 23:15

Scripture speaks of him. Where they get it wrong is where they make the written word a supporting and somewhat optional witness to Christ. According to them, we know the person of Christ apart from the word. The word Scripture helps us along the way, but it is not the source of a right relationship with Christ. But Scripture is not just an accessory in our relationship with Christ. It is the soul means through which we can know Christ. Yes, god works in us, but he uses his word to draw us to Christ.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Christ is called the Word in John 1, indicating he is God's revelation to us. And so it's true. God speaks to us through Christ. But how is Christ known For those of us who live 2,000 years after he lived and walked on the earth? how is Christ known? Does he show up and reveal himself to us personally, individually, or does he speak to us collectively through Scripture, uniformly through Scripture, and I believe that's the right understanding. Christ is known in and through Scripture. Scripture leads us to him. Christ speaks to us by the Spirit, through the Bible. On the road to Emmaus, jesus taught the two disciples he was walking with about himself from the Scriptures Jesus is God. He's walking with them down the road. He didn't need any other authority to tell these men about himself, but he referenced the Old Testament and used scripture to show them who he was, showing how scripture pointed toward him and was fulfilled in him.

Speaker 1: 24:53

Christ is understood in and through scripture. Christ is known in and through scripture. The relationship with God, relationship with Christ, is more than knowledge, it's more than cognitive, it's more than just knowing what's told us in scripture. But relationship with Christ will not happen until we know the truth about him, as revealed in and through scripture. It is the word that leads us to Christ. This is the written word that leads us to the living word, christ. The Bible is about Christ, but we know Christ through scripture. We must have the word or we may not truly have Christ. We must not divorce Christ from his word. He is known through his word, and for the word to be trustworthy about Christ, it must be trustworthy in all things. And so we believe that all scripture is inspired and because all scripture comes from God, it is consistent with his personality as one who is truthful, is trustworthy, is authoritative. And again, what we indicated at the beginning, if God is going to speak to us and he has he's going to speak to us in a way we can understand, and so we believe. The Bible is clear, the Bible can be understood by anyone who is willing to pick up and read. Scripture is true, scripture is trustworthy. Scripture is reliable. Scripture comes from God, scripture speaks for God, scripture comes from the mouth of God. So, again, some of these views include a part of the truth.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Think about Barthian inspiration. Yes, we are to know the living word and not just the written word. But without the written word we cannot know the living word. We don't dispense with scripture to find Jesus. Rather, we search the scriptures to find Christ and he will be found if we seek him And like degree, inspiration indicates and tries to communicate but, i think, fails. Some portions of scripture are more significant to us. That doesn't mean those portions are more inspired or more from God, but simply that the truth contained in some of those more relevant passages is more relevant to our current experience. It touches our current experience in a way. Maybe other passages don't, but that doesn't mean we disregard the other passages. We need all of scripture, not just pieces. And while God did inspire the concepts in his word, thinking of concept inspiration, he also inspired the words used to convey those concepts.

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The Bible is not a myriad of smoke and mirrors that we must be aware of.

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The Bible is not a myriad of smoke and mirrors that we must navigate to discover the living word. Rather, it is clear, simple and accurate. It is not ours to dissect, it is not ours to reject. It is not ours to sort through and keep the things we like and get rid of the rest. That's what so many of these views open the door to is. Now it's up to the individual to decide what's from God and what isn't. But it's only in accepting all of scripture as inspired by God, as from him for us It speaks with God's authority. It's only in accepting all of it as God has given it to us that we are truly submitted to him and to his authority and to that which he has spoken in and through his word. All scripture comes from God's mouth. All scripture is God breathed. God speaks through it to us to equip us, to help us grow and to make us complete.

Speaker 1: 28:30

We're going to pick up here next time and go deeper into what the Bible teaches us about the inspiration of scripture. We believe all scripture is inspired. We're going to be looking at some texts that teach that to us. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Theological Touchpoints Podcast. This podcast is a production of Sword and Trumpet Ministries. For more information, visit wwwswordandtrumpetorgcom. If you have thoughts or questions, you can contact us at wwwpodcastattheologicaltouchpointscom. Now may the God of peace himself thankify you completely and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. Who also will do it.