ONE OF the most basic convictions of Christians is that the Bible is the sure Word of God, to be carefully studied and implicitly followed in all things. We are to live by the Word of God in this life, because we will be judged by it at the end of life. Jesus said, “He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day” (John 12:48). This means that we must be careful to study the Bible often enough and thoroughly enough that we can learn what God wants to tell us about how to live for him.
A Special Kind of Book
A careful study of Mark 7:9–13 shows that Jesus called the writings of the Old Testament “the word of God.” He quoted from the writings of Moses in Exodus and Leviticus and then called it the Word of God. Not only so, but Jesus condemned the Pharisees for setting aside these words of God in favor of their own traditions (v. 13).
The fact is that this is the usual way the New Testament writers use the Old Testament—as the Word of God and the final authority for belief and action. Fifty-one times in the New Testament the term scripture (Greek, graphe) is used, and each time it refers to the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament or to some part of them. It is never applied to any other writings. The expression “Word of God” is used forty times in the New Testament, and usually refers to the written Scriptures—the Bible or some part of it. By the “Word of God” is meant God’s message, whether in spoken or written form.
John A. Witmer quoted William Evans as concluding that certain direct statements that the word of the Lord was being recorded occur 3,808 times in the Old Testament. [1 William Evans, The Great Doctrines of the Bible (Moody Press, 1912), p. 203. Quoted by John A. Witmer, Bibliotheca Sacra. 121:483, p. 247, “The Biblical Evidence For The Verbal-Plenary Inspiration of the Bible.”] I have heard Dr. Carl F. H. Henry quote the same figure in a lecture, possibly from the same source. This would be an average of more than two times on each page of the Old Testament. It sounded to me like a guess, so I picked out four of the Hebrew expressions by which it is said that God said something to someone and counted the times each is listed in Lisowski’s Hebrew concordance to the Old Testament. This resulted in the following:
Ne’um Yahweh (the message of the Lord) 362 times
Koh ’amar Yahweh (thus says the Lord) 435 times
’Elohim dabar (God spoke) 420 times
Deber Yahweh (The Lord’s word) 394 times
Total 1611 times
Thus, using only four of the synonymous expressions, I found nearly half the number suggested. On an earlier occasion I had counted the occurrences of ten such expressions in the Book of Numbers and found 109 in those thirty-six chapters alone. This makes the suggested total sound reasonable.
It is clear, then, that the Old Testament claims to be a special kind of book—one that tells us a message from the Creator of the universe. This is an astounding claim. It is no wonder that many find it hard to believe. They are used to books which are purely the products of human thinking, and they do not like to think of God so guiding the writing and preservation of a set of literature that it is something more than human. Yet that is exactly what the Bible claims to be.
Inspired by God
The Bible is not a collection of human traditions or speculations; it is the Word of God. It was not dictated word for word by God, but it is so carefully guided by the Holy Spirit in its writing and preservation that it is a safe, dependable guide to the truths God wants us to know. This guidance is what we mean when we say it is inspired.
When we are speaking of the Bible, we do not use the word inspiration in its usual sense, but in its original meaning. In common speech, we use the word to refer to any kind of emotional exhilaration which enables one to do one’s best at writing, speaking, or whatever one does. This is not what we mean when we say that the Bible is inspired. We use the term because of 2 Timothy 3:16, which states that “all scripture is inspired by God.” The Greek word used by Paul would be literally translated “God-breathed.” Paul was not simply saying that the Bible writers were highly stimulated to do their human best; he was saying that God moved them to write and guided them in their writing. God protected them from writing falsely. What they wrote is so clearly guided by the Holy Spirit that we can depend upon their writings never to lead us astray. It is God’s message to us.
Peter strongly supports this view of the Bible: “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:20–21). So we must not read the Bible as though it were the mere words of people. We must see it as the inspired Word of God, with all the authority of God behind it.
The Message of the Bible
The Bible was written down over a long period of time—much more than a thousand years. Millions of people lived and died; kings and kingdoms rose and fell; civilizations developed and decayed; books were written and forgotten; all this happened during this long period in which the Bible was being written and preserved. Knowing something of this history can help us understand what the Bible intends to say to us. Even knowing the history recorded in the Bible itself is a help toward reading it with understanding. Perhaps the following brief summary would be a good beginning.
The Bible says that God created everything, including human beings. He made them good and capable of a loving relationship with God. But the people turned away and became most sinful. God then began the agelong search for people who would be the people of God. Under Moses, God led Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt and made a covenant with them, gave them a law, a form of worship free of idolatry, and a homeland in Canaan. They became strong and established a kingdom there which lasted more than a century before splitting into two parts.
Eventually the Divided Kingdom fell to Assyria and Babylon. Jerusalem, the capital city, was destroyed and some of the people were taken into exile in Babylon. But under the guidance of prophets, some of these remained true to God and were brought back to Jerusalem by God’s help. There they rebuilt the city and Temple, and though they were never again an independent nation, they continued to learn of God and God’s ways. The prophets insisted that God would not utterly and permanently reject them, in spite of their sins, but would one day send an Anointed One to save them, make a new covenant with them, and make them truly God’s own people.
Then Jesus, God’s Anointed One, came and preached for three years about the kingdom of God and its meaning. Since the people did not want the kind of kingdom he proclaimed, they had him put to death. But on the third day he rose from the dead and convinced some that he was God. These followers became convinced that by believing in Jesus Christ they entered into a new covenant relationship with God and became God’s own people. They went out preaching the good news of what God had done in Christ Jesus, made many followers, and established groups of Christians all over the world. One of them, Paul, was unusually zealous in preaching all over the Roman Empire. Many of the early believers were put to death, but the new “church” became strong and has lasted until this day.
From this brief summary—a bird’s-eye view—it is clear that the Church is the result of God’s ancient plan to have a people in the world (Eph. 3:10–13). This does not mean that the Church as seen in the world today is necessarily pleasing to God. But by following the will of God as revealed in the New Testament, we can be pleasing to God. The preaching and teaching of the Bible will build the Church God wants in the world. As people accept the Bible and find God through it, God builds them into a Church which he is not ashamed to call his own.
The Church and the Bible
Since the Church, as God has planned it, is so closely tied to the Bible, it is the responsibility of the Church to preserve the Bible, to understand it as well as possible, and to preach and teach it constantly. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Tim. 4:1–2).
Preserving the Bible. The Church is not to preserve the Bible by keeping it hermetically sealed in a museum and charging each person for a quick look at the outside. The Bible needs to be in the homes, hands, heads, and hearts of all people on earth. It must be read, meditated on, and lived. The Bible is not a magical book to be carried as a talisman to protect one from harm and danger. It is a book which can do no good unless it is read and truly believed.
The Bible must be preserved from being neglected. It must be saved from being so misinterpreted that its true message does not come through. It must be preserved from the ravages of those who so carefully analyze the words that they miss what God is trying to say. It must be preserved from the kind of false reverence which makes some feel that only the experts can understand it. The way to preserve the Bible is not to put it away carefully in a closet, but to read it, study it, meditate on it, and seek to know God by means of it. I have friends who so reverence the Book that they will not mark on its pages. But I like my old Bible so much more because of the way special passages are marked. Notes are written in the margin about the meaning I have found there, and about other passages which say something related. So an old, well-marked Bible feels more like mine. It is not the paper pages which must be preserved in their pristine purity, but the message from God which must be kept in our minds and hearts and lives.
Understanding the Bible. A young man told me how amazed he was to hear me say that the Bible can be misunderstood. He apparently assumed that if it was the Word of God, all one had to do to understand it correctly and fully was to read it. But how can that be? It is written in human words, and words are always subject to being misinterpreted. Perfect words, perfectly written or pronounced, can still be misunderstood. If we are to understand the Bible correctly, we must bring to it our most careful attention, an attitude of prayerful submissiveness, and the determination to study it until the message of God for us is fully disclosed. This will take more than a lifetime.
We must not imagine that the Bible must be easy to understand. Yet this is a common thought. There is a feeling that the Bible, the Word of God, ought to be so simple that a casual reading can bring complete understanding. This feeling may come partly from an assumption that nothing religious and spiritual has any right to be difficult. Many feel that hard thinking is not relevant to spiritual things. But nothing could be farther from the truth. God made our minds and wants us to use them to understand his will. When Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength,” he added the words “and with all your mind” (Mark 12:30). Thus Jesus emphasized the necessity of using our minds—our reasoning ability—as well as our hearts to know God’s will.
A book that is simple and easy to understand at first reading is limited in what it can teach. If I say, “Two plus two equals four,” you understand easily what I mean, but I have not taught you anything. If I say, “In a right triangle, the sum of the squares of the two sides is equal to the square of the hypotenuse,” I have said something a little more complicated. But I have expressed a truth which amazed and excited its discoverers in ancient Egypt. A formula in integral calculus would be much harder to understand or to explain, but without it much of modern progress would be impossible.
We expect to find important truths in mathematics, biology, geology, sociology, and meteorology which are extremely difficult to comprehend. Why should we be amazed to find in the Bible and theology truths which we cannot understand, and that require deep study to figure out? Since the Bible is the most important and valuable book ever written, it requires hard, serious study to begin to comprehend the deeper truths it holds. But any person who can read can learn from it the way to God.
Teaching the Bible. As the Church has the responsibility to preserve and understand the Bible, so the Church is responsible for preaching and teaching it to all. This obligation rests not only on full-time clergy, but on every Christian. Preaching in the pulpit reaches only those who can be persuaded to come to the formal services. Teaching in the classroom also reaches only the relatively small number who come. If the Bible is to be taken to the world, much of it must be done by average Christians who read the Bible, live its teachings, and are not ashamed to talk to others of what they know is helpful. Note carefully the two verses which follow what Jesus called the “first and greatest commandment”: “And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 6:6–7). This is the way Christians are to teach what they know of the Bible.
The Bible is to be taught, then, by the Church. If the Church forsakes the Bible or neglects it, it will cease to be God’s Church. It is the business of the Church to preach and teach the Bible in every way possible all of the time. The neglect of this work spells doom for the Church and for those the Church should be teaching. This means that the Bible must be central in the preaching of the minister and in the teaching of all the classes of the church school. It is not enough for us to learn the facts of Bible history, but learning these facts is most helpful as we seek to understand what the Bible is really saying. It is not enough for us to memorize the words of the Bible, since we could memorize all of it and still be wicked. But we ought to memorize much of it, and teach others to memorize it, also. Then we need to help them understand how its meaning relates to their own problems. We should show them how, through the study of the Bible, God can help them to live richer, fuller, more rewarding lives. Not only that, we should show them that they can also find assurance of blessed life after death.
God gave his Word for the salvation of humanity from sin and destruction. Only the Bible can fill our needs. Only the Bible can show us the way to live and the way to die. Only here can we find the way to know God for ourselves, and to receive the constant guidance and help we need to be what God intended. Let us make it our guide to God.
For Discussion
1. How many different meanings can you list for words?
2. How would you define the word inspired?
3. Have you known anyone who had the idea that the Bible is a book with magical powers? What is wrong with this idea? What would you say to such a person?
4. How do you feel about marking in your Bible? Why?
5. Why do you suppose some seem to feel it is wrong to study the Bible? Do we have to think hard to understand some scriptures? Would it be better to ignore such passages? Do you think God could have made it all simple if that were God’s wish? Would that have been better?
Chapter 2
God’s Self-revelation
THE UNIVERSE is so vast that it is beyond human imagination. We can use numbers to symbolize its size, and we can understand those symbols, but who can comprehend the reality? The nearest star to the earth is about twenty-five trillion miles away. That is twenty-five million million miles! One way to handle such figures is to use a much longer unit of measurement than the mile. So astronomers use the light-year as a unit of measurement. This is the distance that light travels in one year—nearly six trillion miles. This helps, since it means that that nearest star is 4.3 light-years away. Yet stars are known which are more than fifty million light-years away. If such a star disappeared fifty million years ago, we would just now be finding out about it! Yet the Bible tells us that God made all of this and that it is all under God’s control. The Bible says that before any of these things existed, God was; God created all of these things out of nothing. The Bible declares that people were made enough like God that we can have a conscious, loving relationship with God. It declares further that when humanity turned away in rebellion, God worked for thousands of years to bring humanity back to himself, and then sent the Son of God into the world to redeem humankind. When sinful humanity killed God’s Son, God raised him from the dead and promised to stand ready to use this same resurrection power to overcome the power of humanity’s sin, and to raise humanity to a new, living, loving relationship with God in Christ Jesus. God had made the wrath of humanity to praise God and had made salvation available to every human being. This is the Bible’s message about God.
God Cannot Be Known Unless He Reveals Himself
How much could we know about God without the Bible? How much could we learn from the universe about the One who made it? Quite a lot. We could learn that God loves order, for everywhere we look we see evidence of order and system. It all fits together marvelously, as though very carefully planned. We could learn much about the greatness and wisdom of God. We might even be able to infer that God is a person, since God had to be greater than that which has been created. But it is at this very point that we come face to face with the need for some special self-revelation by God. God is a person, by which we do not mean that God has a body, but rather that God can think and feel, and that God knows himself to be himself. Now a person cannot be known in the same way a thing can be known. A thing can be studied and known objectively by physical examination, but persons can be known only as they reveal themselves in various ways.
God’s Works: Self-revelation
Some people live in the world of nature but deny that God exists. They see the marvels of nature, but refuse to admit that it was all created by omnipotent, omniscient God. Such persons deny that God can be known by his works, for they begin by denying that there is a God to be known. However, this denial of the existence of God does not disprove our concept of general revelation—that God reveals himself in creation. Although some cannot or will not see God, God is still there, and their blindness does not change the fact. The fact is that God does reveal something of himself and his nature in creation. Just as artists or builders reveal something of their own ideas, hopes, and abilities in what they make, so God is revealed in what has been created. Theologians call this “general revelation.” If we seek to analyze it, we find that God’s nature is revealed in various aspects of creation.
An Orderly Universe. We call all creation a “universe” because we are so impressed with the fact that the whole is a unit in which all the parts fit together marvelously as though planned by some great intellect. It is not a chaos of unrelated parts each going its own way, for all the parts are interrelated and interdependent. Astronomers have long known this about the stars and the planets, and ecologists are telling us it is true of every aspect of our life on earth. All the things that exist fit together in a single whole. The importance and significance of this fact can be seen by contrasting it with the opposite possibility. This would be either that all things came into being by chance without any guiding Intelligence, or that they were made by a multitude of unrelated gods. In either case there would be no overall interdependence of the parts, and there would be no “laws” which could be developed into physical and biological sciences. Each of the parts would be independent and unrelated to other parts. The result would be chaos. One would never know what to expect. This leads us to the next point.
The Reality of Law. Law, in the scientific sense, is closely related to the fact of order in the universe, since laws express the ways in which things and events are related. Scientific laws differ from laws of society in that laws of society prescribe the way in which persons should act in order to get along well together, while scientific laws describe the way things do act in their interrelatedness. Water always boils at the same temperature and atmospheric pressure. Chemicals, when combined under the same conditions, always react in the same way. Things are consistent in the way they act and react. They are so consistent, in fact, that we can write brief statements or descriptions of the way they act under various conditions, call these laws, and use them as guides for our own interaction with things.
So we see that humanity does not invent laws of nature, but only discovers what God has already created. God systematically works and thinks, as is shown in the consistent operation of the universe. God is also exhibiting self-unity. The world was not created by many minds, or even by a committee, but by one God. Beauty and Appreciation. As far back in history as we can go, people have always demonstrated appreciation for beauty through producing art. When people lived in rude caves, they scratched or painted pictures on the wall. When people first learned to make tools for themselves, they tried to make them beautiful in shape as well as utilitarian. Soon they began decorating them in various ways. In the most primitive of Old Testament times we read of people expressing their love of beauty (cf. Gen. 4:21).
Both natural beauty and human appreciation of beauty speak of the nature of God. The existence of beauty speaks of something in the nature of God which goes beyond the orderliness of law. The fact of humanity’s appreciation of beauty would be hard to understand apart from creation by God who loves beauty. Reality of Love. When we consider the whole of creation as the work of God, we must include the mind and heart of humanity as well as other things. When we do, we realize that not only does the existence of beauty speak of God, but our appreciation of beauty also speaks of the nature of God who created us. God created us in such a way that we could have and develop an appreciation of beauty.
In the same way, God made us in such a way that we have the capacity for receiving and giving love. There are various kinds and levels of human love, and it may be that not all are equally capable of showing love. Nonetheless, love is a universal human experience. Some who scoff at it then show it—almost to their own surprise.
Natural Revelation Is Not Enough
We have been speaking of the ways in which God reveals himself in creation, the revelation which is called “natural revelation” or “general revelation.” It is true that God is revealed through things created, but there are two major problems with this revelation: it is obscure, and it is partial.
First of all, it is obscure. It is possible to look at this world and all that is in it for a long time without ever seeing God or recognizing the works of God. In fact, it is only in comparatively modern times that the orderliness of God has been seen in the universe. It is possible to see the beauty of the world without once thinking that this was created by a God who loves beauty. The universe does not speak to everyone of the unity of God, though once it is seen and accepted, it is obvious. Consider the thousands of years that people of intelligence lived in the world without knowing anything of the way things speak to us of their Creator.
The creation does not speak clearly enough of God for it to be the only way we learn of God. It is true that the “heavens declare the glory of God,” but only those who already believe really hear the message. This is seen from the fact that so many have been polytheistic while living in this universe. Then we see it confirmed by the Israelites, who continued being tempted to worship Baal and Ashtaroth for centuries after Moses told them of the one God who made heaven and earth.
But an even more important problem with this natural revelation is the fact that it is only partial, and cannot reveal some of the more important facts about God and God’s nature. We can never learn from nature that God is a person, yet that is the most basic fact we need to know about God. By this we mean that God is aware of himself as one who knows, feels, and chooses. We mean that God is not merely impersonal, unfeeling Law. God is not blind, unthinking Nature. God is not unfeeling Fate.
When we say that God is personal, we are saying that God has created human beings as persons—thinking, knowing, feeling, choosing—and that God must be greater than that which has been created. Otherwise, how could God have created human personality?
But we are not saying that God is limited to the characteristics of human nature. God’s personality must be infinitely more complex than human nature, and infinitely greater and richer. We are saying that God is like the best there is in us, only infinitely more. God’s love is like the best of human love—raised to the nth degree. God’s sense of justice is like humanity’s, only infinitely greater and purer, and guided by infinite wisdom and knowledge. Of course, in all of this, we are only stating the obverse of Genesis 1:27, which states that people are made in the image of God. Our own personalities, with self-consciousness, emotion, self-determination, and moral discrimination, give us some clue as to the nature of the God who could create such personalities.
The fact that God is Person means that we can never adequately know God through things created. For example, one can learn much about an artist by examining the paintings the artist has done. It is easy to think of some of the things one might learn in this way about the artist, but it is even easier to think of the many facets of the artist’s personality which could never be learned from a study of paintings. And what of the artist’s hopes, plans, desires, and love? The person is more than works. The person is more than can be communicated in works. So if one is to know the person, one should meet the worker. One might then learn much more about the worker by listening to that person explain his or her own works, but the knowledge would come from the person more than from what is made, or even from what is said.
We see then that a person can be adequately revealed only through a person and to a person. Facts can be revealed in words, but if we are to know the person, we must know more than the person’s words. Now we see how important it is to understand that God is a person. When we recognize this, we understand why we cannot learn enough about God through a study or contemplation of the universe God has created. Natural revelation is not enough to bring us to a knowledge of God. We need something more.
God Is Revealed in Christ
God is revealed most fully to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, without whom there could be no Christianity. It is not by accident that we call it “Christianity.” Without Jesus Christ, the Son of God, there could be no Christianity, for the whole of Christian thought centers in him. The Christian life is built around the new life we find in Christ and the fellowship we have with him.
In Jesus Christ we have the highest revelation of God. This is a self-revelation of God to humanity, for “God was in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:19, KJV) revealing to us his own nature, attributes, will, and plans. This is a higher revelation of God than we have in any other way because it is a personal revelation—revealed in a person. God, the infinite Person, speaks to human persons in the divine-human person of Jesus Christ. In this way God speaks more fully, completely, and perfectly than is possible by any other means.
Persons can speak to persons using impersonal means, such as written messages, smoke signals, paintings, and architecture. But there is much that can never be communicated in these ways. For example, a few years ago I was examining a house which had been designed and built by one of the world’s great architects. Suddenly, I felt that I could almost sense the architect’s strong desire for freedom of expression and freedom of form. I felt I knew more about the architect for having seen the house. But I would not recognize the man if I met him. I do not know what he looks like or what his voice sounds like. I don’t know if he loves his wife and children, or even if he is married. I don’t know his background or his native land. Does he ever laugh? Is he even-tempered? I think he loves things, but I wonder if he loves people. These things I can know only through some sort of personal contact with the person.
So it is with God. There is much that we can know about God by studying God’s creation, but there is also much which can never be learned in this way. These things God has revealed to us in his own Son, Jesus Christ. Through the coming of Christ, we learn that God is love. We learn the depth of God’s love for us and for truth. We learn of the hatred God has for all that harms us and leads us away from fellowship with God for which we were made. We learn through Christ of God’s deep, overarching concern for us, and we learn of the effect the human condition has on God. Through the suffering of Jesus on the cross we learn that God does care so much about humanity that our sin causes God, out of love, to suffer as a natural consequence. Rather than casting sinful humanity aside and thus being rid of the offender, God enters into our situation, even though that entails suffering, and seeks by every means to save us from sin. This tremendous fact could hardly have been revealed except in the person of Jesus Christ.
God Is Revealed through the Holy Spirit
We have seen that the supreme revelation of God comes to us in Jesus Christ, but what of the thousands of years which have passed since Jesus’ earthly ministry? Must we now be content with a past revelation? On the night before his crucifixion Jesus said to his disciples, “I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you” (John 14:18), and “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I go not away, the Counselor will not come to you” (John 16:7). It is through the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence that we experience now the living presence of the risen Christ. The Holy Spirit is not the Christ, but it is through the Spirit that Jesus Christ is working now in the world and in the Church. At Pentecost Christ entered into a higher ministry than was possible while he was on earth in a physical body. Whatever the Spirit does is the work of Christ. Whatever Christ is doing in the world today is being done through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who works in and through those who allow the Spirit to live in their hearts.
So it is that God is now revealing himself to human beings through the Holy Spirit, who may be called the Spirit of God, or the Spirit of Christ (cf. Matt. 3:16; 1 Cor. 6:11; 1 Pet. 4:14 with Rom. 8:9; Phil. 1:19; Acts 16:7; Gal. 4:6). Whatever direct experience we have of God comes to us through the work of the Holy Spirit. When we see God in nature, the Holy Spirit has pointed God out to us. When we feel the presence of the living Christ, it is because the Holy Spirit makes Christ known. When we read the Bible and understand God’s will, the Holy Spirit has been teaching us. The Spirit is the personal guide and teacher of every Christian and is the personal revealer of God.
The Bible Reveals God
We come at last to the Bible itself as a means by which God reveals himself to us. Here we must do some very careful thinking if we are to lay the foundation for understanding the Bible and teaching it to others. We must know what the Bible claims to be and how to understand what it is saying.
Christians have claimed that the Bible is the very foundation and root of our knowledge of God. It is the record of the process by which God has revealed himself through interactions with the nation of Israel, and through Christ and his earliest followers. It is not a book written in heaven and handed down to earth for our information. It was written by human beings—by people who wrote what they knew of God and God’s dealings with humanity. They wrote what God had done for them and to them and what they felt sure God had said to them. Yet they wrote with the guidance of the Holy Spirit in such a way as to provide for us and for all time a sure guide to a knowledge of God. This guidance of the Holy Spirit is what is meant by the “inspiration” of the Bible, and it accounts for the Bible’s authority. These will be discussed more fully in the next chapter. But first we need to consider just what it is that the Bible reveals.
God’s Plan Revealed
The Bible Reveals God. This must be said first for emphasis—that the Bible reveals God to us. The Bible is like a signpost pointing to God. It may tell us much about God, but the important thing is that it shows us God himself. The Bible presents to us some doctrines and propositions about God, but the important thing is that it tells us how to find God.
Since God is a Person, God cannot be fully revealed in a book, no matter how large or well written the book is. Even if all the 773,692 words of the Bible were given over to explaining God, only a small fraction of the infinite personality of God could be so expressed. Since God is a Person, God can be known only in and of himself. Doctrines about God must be formulated, but knowing all the doctrines can never substitute for knowing God. So it is that one of the most important and vital things the Bible does for us is to show us how people have found God, or rather, how God has found them.
The Bible Reveals Persons to Themselves. People can never know themselves as they should until they see themselves as they are in relationship with God. We need to know that God has created us, and thus has authority over us and the right to determine our ways. We need to know that God has made us in a very important sense in the likeness of God. Most of all, we need to know that God loves us and seeks our love in return.
All of this is clearly revealed in the Bible. And not only is the message there, it comes through to the reader, through the ministration of the Holy Spirit. It is a common experience for one who is reading the Bible to feel, “This is speaking to me. It is describing my need. It speaks to my condition.”
The Bible reveals sin. Sin is a religious term and has no specific meaning outside the context of a knowledge of God. Sin is not the same as crime. It has to do, not with our relationship with the law of the land, but with our relationship to God. Sin is turning away from God, rejection of God, or refusing to know and love God. Sins are the actions a person does who has rejected God. It is in and through the Bible that we learn the real nature and meaning of sin against God. The Bible reveals not only sin in general, but also the specific sin of the individual reader or hearer. The Bible shows the individual sinner what is wrong with his or her life. It reveals the sinfulness of sin, and its eternal consequences. It shows the radical nature of the problem of sin, and the fact that we cannot save ourselves from it. It reveals the desperate plight of sinful humanity.
The Bible reveals salvation. The miraculous thing about the Bible is that it not only shows us our impossible predicament, but it points out the way of God’s salvation from that predicament. It shows us that we can never save ourselves, but it also shows us how to be saved. It does not hide the problem or minimize it, but demonstrates that God can solve the problem. What persons could never do for themselves, God did, in sending Christ to live, die, and rise again for the salvation of the whole world. So sinful humanity must simply accept the salvation which God provides in Christ, and begin to live holy lives as God makes it possible.
The Bible reveals the Church. God’s own holy people, who have been saved by God through Jesus Christ, make up the Church which belongs to God. God’s Church is a new thing in the world, a new creation of God. The uniqueness of it is seen when compared with the other world religions. In the Church, Christians of all nations and all ages have fellowship in Christ. The Church is God’s plan for the continuing propagation of the plan of salvation to the whole world and to all generations.
The Bible reveals God’s plan for the end. Just as the Bible reveals that God created the world in the beginning, it shows that God plans to bring it all to an end. Jesus will come again. All will be raised from the dead and judged, and will be sent to eternal reward either in heaven or in hell. There is much we will never understand about it until it happens, but God will bring it to pass. Knowing this, we are told that we must be ready, by living for God now.
For Discussion
1. If scientists are right about the size of the universe, some stars must have been created billions of years ago. Do you have any problem believing this? Could the universe be this old?
2. Explain in your own words the difference between natural theology and revealed theology.
3. Would you say that scientific laws are more like descriptions than legal commands? Explain your answer.
4. Do you think God appreciates beauty? What reasons can you give for your answer?
5. Do you agree that if God is Personal, God cannot be fully revealed in nature, but must be revealed more completely in some other way?
6. How many of the last six things (God, persons, sin, salvation, Church, last things) are revealed in nature?
Chapter 3
Inspiration
THE WHOLE discussion about the nature of the Bible as the Word of God centers in its claim to be inspired. If we are to speak intelligently about the inspiration of the Bible we need to agree first on the definition of several related terms.
Revelation. This word can be used in several senses. It is the act of making known that which was not known before. Or it is the fact or concept which has been made known. Or it is the process of making something known. Revelation is the act or process of revealing something, or it is that which is revealed. In our discussion, God is the one who reveals truth to humanity.
Inspiration. Inspiration is the process by which God guided and guarded over the writing down of that which had been revealed by God. The result of this inspired writing is the Bible itself.
Authority. The authority of the Bible is its right to command belief and obedience. As a book, the Bible has no authority in and of itself. Its authority is the authority of God over all people. God’s authority comes to us in the written book God has given us which is the infallible guide to God and God’s will for us.
These brief definitions are merely preliminary and will need to be elaborated, but they will at least help us to see what we are discussing. Since most of the current discussions of the subject have much to say about the idea of inspiration, it will be just as well to begin with this term.
Scripture Is Inspired
The word inspired comes from a Latin term meaning “breathed into,” but this tells us nothing true about the biblical concept of inspiration. This would seem to imply that God breathed power into the words of the Bible or that God breathed into the writers, but that is not what the Bible says. The fact is that inspired was not a good English word to use in translating 2 Timothy 3:16, since it gives a false impression if studied etymologically. However, it was used by Wycliffe and Tyndale under the influence of the Latin Vulgate, and has since become well entrenched as a theological term, so we must use it. All we need to do is note that its original Latin signification is not biblical.
The word is used in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The Greek word translated “inspired by God” is theopneustos, and is used only here in the Bible. It means literally “God-breathed.” In speaking of Scripture, Paul used a strong word to express the fact that the real source of the Bible is God. It is for this reason that the Bible is also profitable. It is not just another book of human origin—it is from God.
The same sort of concept is expressed in 2 Peter 1:21: “Because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” What Paul had said, Peter declares firmly. Peter had been discussing the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, and proves it by pointing to fulfilled prophecy. He emphasized the force of prophecy by pointing out that it is not fable and does not come from a human being, but from God. It is true, he says, that persons spoke the words, but they spoke as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit. They spoke in the power of the Holy Spirit, as he moved them to speak. The result is that they spoke “from God.”
These are strong statements, but there are two points we must consider. The first is the extent of the Scriptures. There is no doubt that both Paul and Peter were speaking of the Old Testament. Did they mean all of it or only some parts? Peter speaks of “prophecy,” but the writers of the New Testament regularly refer to all parts of the Old Testament as Messianic prophecies, using Genesis, Psalms, and Isaiah, for example, as predicting the Messiah. And it is clear that Jesus did the same. (See Luke 24:27.) Furthermore, all parts of the Old Testament, when quoted in the New Testament, are taken as authoritative and inspired, so that it is all referred to as Scripture. Peter even included the writings of Paul in his use of the word Scripture (2 Pet. 3:16) as being just as much inspired writings as any of the Old Testament! The New Testament claims the same sort of authority and inspiration for itself as it does for the Old Testament.
A second point is that we must carefully distinguish the divine inspiration of the Bible from all other meanings or uses of the word inspired. A poet or artist may be said to be inspired when he or she is emotionally moved to produce excellent work, but this has no relation to the theological word, which speaks of the work being done under the direct supervision of the Holy Spirit. The secular uses of the word lead to much misunderstanding unless we are careful.
Theories of Inspiration
In the long centuries of Christian thought, a wide variety of theories of inspiration have been developed. Some of these are intuition, divine assistance, illumination, dictation, dynamical, concept, limited, and evolutionary. There would be little profit in discussing all of them in detail, as this would only lead to confusion and puzzlement. Probably it would be most helpful to classify them with respect to the way they see God and people operating in the production of the Bible. In this way we can see that they all fit on a continuum between divine dictation and purely human or natural insight. Dictation Theory. Fundamentalists are accused, rightly or wrongly, of believing that God simply dictated the Bible word for word, and that the writers simply acted as stenographers for God. There is no doubt that some have held this wooden view of mechanical dictation, but it is difficult to find any theologian, however conservative, who holds this view for the whole Bible. To call the Bible the Word of God does not need to imply that the words were chosen and dictated to passive secretaries.
The value of the dictation theory is that it protects the accuracy and authority of the Bible, but this protection is bought at too high a price. The Bible does not teach this, but rather says that people spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21). Furthermore, the dictation theory could not explain the differences in the personalities of the writers as they each are revealed in their choice of words. Why would Luke use longer words and more refined grammar than Mark or John? They were evidently free to choose their own wording.
James Barr, in his book Fundamentalism, complains that conservative theologians like J. I. Packer, Hodge, and Warfield strongly deny holding the dictation theory and at the same time believe that every word is the Word of God. [1 James Barr, Fundamentalism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), p. 290.] This confusion is probably the result of putting the emphasis on the method of inspiration rather than on the result of inspiration. Barr does not understand what conservative theologians are saying because they have not clearly pointed out their own basic assumptions and have argued about the wrong words.
In arguing about the mode of inspiration, Bible believers have insisted that they do not believe in any dictation theory, since that would be too mechanical and wooden. It would put all the work on God, and make the writers merely passive receptors. It would deny all the human elements in the production of the Bible. This would invalidate some of the Bible’s own statements about its origin.
Natural Inspiration. This is the theory that the natural insight of the human writers was sometimes lifted to a higher plane of development so that they would discover religious truth. This means that it was just like the “inspiration” of Shakespeare or Longfellow. The emphasis here is on human discovery, not divine revelation.
This theory is a flat denial of the biblical teaching of inspiration. If the Bible is not inspired except in the broad general sense that all well-written books are inspired, there is no point in speaking of inspiration at all. If the Bible is simply another human production, then it is not a safe guide to truth about God. It may be the best guide we have, but it is not trustworthy, and may be superseded in the future. The problem is that this theory gives the Bible no real authority as a revelation of God. It stresses the human to the exclusion of the divine. In this it is the opposite extreme from the dictation theory.
The truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Instead of saying that either God or people produced the Bible, we must say that both God and people did it.
Synergistic theory. The term simply means that God and people worked together in some way to produce the Bible. We have a problem when we try to decide exactly what was the role of each and how they cooperated because the Bible does not say. The fact is that the Bible does not explain any concept of inspiration or its mode of operation. As a result, there have been many concepts and a wide variety of statements of them. At times the debate over them has become quite heated.
As a point of beginning, we can say that inspiration is the process by which the Holy Spirit guided the writers and guarded the writing and transmission of the Bible so that it is an infallible guide in doctrine and practice.
The stress in this statement is on the fact that the Bible is a divine-human production, brought about by the synergistic action of the Holy Spirit and humans. The Bible was produced by human beings as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. In this process, the Holy Spirit so protected the writers that the Bible is an unfailing guide to God.
Divine and Human
It is most important to recognize both the human and the divine in the origin of the Bible if we are to come to a true understanding of it and if we are to know how to study it. To say that either God or humanity alone is responsible for the words written leads to wrong conclusions. If God alone decided on and dictated the words, we find it impossible to account for some of the phenomena of Scripture, such as differences of viewpoint, vocabulary, and grammar. But if we say that it is purely human in origin, we are denying what it teaches about itself, and are therefore denying its real authority.
A definition of inspiration on which all will agree, even all those who have a high concept of the inspiration of the Bible, is probably impossible to put into words. So much of the discussion has centered on the exact words to be used in defining it. Geisler and Nix were probably wise when they refrained from making a definition, but instead pointed out that any acceptable concept of inspiration must include three “essential elements: divine causality, prophetic agency, and written authority.” [2 Geisler and Nix, From God To Us (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974). p. 13.] It is the first two which we have been discussing. The third element is the authority or accuracy of what is written—the result of divine inspiration. It is the attempt to protect the authority of the Bible that various adjectives have been attached to the term inspiration.
What Kind of Inspiration?
Verbal Inspiration., This is one of the terms which has been used to protect the full authority of the Bible from the inroads of liberal ideas. Many who do not really believe in the divine authority of the Bible are willing to use the term inspired, but they use it in a diluted sense. Therefore, the word verbal has been added to it to strengthen it. But this word has not received full acceptance even among the most conservative Christians. Some have felt that it sounded too much like wooden dictation of the very words. On the other hand, its supporters have insisted that it can be understood in a less wooden way. They take it to mean that God is revealed not only in actions, but also in words. This is an important thing to say in view of some of the neo-orthodox beliefs, but does the word verbal clearly say that? It seems ambiguous and needs to be explained. Because it has been too often taken to mean “verbal dictation,” many of us have been afraid of it.
Plenary Verbal Inspiration. Plenary means “full,” and is meant to say that the words of the Bible are fully inspired by God, so that they say what God really meant for them to express. The word is used as an alternative to dictation. But since it is usually used with verbal, it does not obviate the problem of that word in the minds of many.
These words used to modify inspiration were chosen to separate those who accept the full authority of the Bible as the Word of God from those who do not. However, they have instead caused arguments among the very ones who most strongly believe the Bible. These arguments have led some of the best of scholars to break fellowship with one another because they could not agree on the use of particular words.
Dynamic Inspiration. This term was used, for example, by Adam Clarke, who explained it in this way:
I only contend for such an inspiration, or Divine assistance of the sacred writers of the New Testament, as will assure us of the truth of what they wrote, whether by inspiration of suggestion, or direction only; but not for such an inspiration as implies that even their words were dictated, or their phrases suggested to them by the Holy Ghost.” [3 Adam Clarke, Clarke’s Commentary. Vol. V (Nashville: Abingdon Press), p. 10.]
The only problem is the one pointed out by Barr: it is hard to tell much real difference between this and dictation if the result is that every word is exactly what God chose to be written. So we have much the same problem as with the terms plenary and verbal.
On the other hand, some have taken the term dynamic to mean that God simply inspired the concepts or ideas, and left the writers free to choose their own words with which to express them. This has been hailed by some as the answer to the problem, and by others as opening the door to all sorts of denials of the authority of the Bible. So it has been no real help in preventing a low view of the Bible.
Inerrant? Infallible?
In the spring of 1976, Dr. Harold Lindsell, then editor of Christianity Today, published a book entitled The Battle for the Bible, which stirred up a discussion still going on among evangelical scholars. In reply to the discussion, Lindsell in 1979 wrote a second book, The Bible in the Balance, defending his original thesis and seeking to answer his critics. The primary thesis of Lindsell in these two books is that we must declare that the Bible is inerrant, that is, totally without error of any kind in all its parts. If we give up the word inerrant, he says, we will inevitably move on to more liberal positions theologically. He declares that the key to being true to the Bible lies in the use of the word inerrant.
A variety of books have been published in response to that of Lindsell, some supporting his position, and some opposing it. Most of them have been by scholars who call themselves evangelical. Stephen Davis, for example, calls himself an evangelical scholar, yet refuses to use the word inerrant. He opts instead for the word infallible. He then defines the words in such a way as to make clear what he believes and does not believe. He is so conscious of some of the problems in understanding how to reconcile certain passages that he is not willing to affirm the inerrancy of the Bible, yet he so defines the word infallible that he is willing to say that. This illustrates the kind of redefining of words which can result when we seek to protect an idea by insisting on a particular word. Words are human inventions, and their meanings change with their uses. There is no way to force a word to resist change in use and meaning. This is one of the problems with Lindsell’s argument. The Bible is inerrant, but that statement does not mean the same to all persons who hear it or use it. I use it in the same sense Lindsell does, so far as I can see, but I am not as sure as he that its use or non-use is so all-important or effective. It is evident from the growing list of responses to his book that the word means a variety of things to different scholars.
A second problem with the book is the polemic style in which the idea is presented, and the fact that so many persons and institutions are named in the book as having defected from an evangelical attitude toward the Bible. This has nothing to do with the concept itself, though—only with its acceptance.
The third problem with Lindsell’s book is that it deals with only one of the three essential aspects of a strong definition of inspiration, and that in a rather oblique way. As we have seen, these three are divine initiative and guidance, human instrumentality, and final authority. The word inerrancy deals only with one aspect of the third. As we shall see in the next chapter, even that is a far larger and more important topic than the word inerrant would necessarily suggest.
The conclusion of this writer is that it is perfectly proper to say that the Bible is verbally inspired and inerrant and is an infallible guide in doctrine and practice. However, since good people honestly differ about the meaning of these words, it is not proper to make the words a shibboleth to divide true believers from those who are not. They cannot be used without some explanation, and even then they do not say some of the main things which should be said about the authority of the Bible. Of the three essential elements of inspiration we must say much more, but a brief explanation of each will aid in understanding.
Essential Elements of Inspiration
Divine Revelation and Guidance. God has taken the initiative in revealing to us ourselves and salvation truths. People have not discovered God, but God has revealed himself. We have not been clever enough to discover for ourselves the way of salvation, but God has shown us what the plan entails. This supernatural revelation by God of propositional truth is denied by all who are committed to a naturalistic philosophy.
Revelation would be without value to us if God had not guided the writers in recording the truths revealed, and had not guided the transmission of the writings through the ages so that we now have the Bible. It is God’s work in revelation and supervision of writing that is vital, and which determines the authority of the Bible. It is this revelation by God which is vigorously denied by those who refuse to be called “evangelical.” Or if the words are used, they are so modified in meaning as to be unrecognizable.
Human Instrumentality. What must be asserted here is that God used human beings as prophets who wrote the Bible. The human writers were more than automatons or stenographers; they were fully conscious of using their own personalities and minds to choose their words. Yet they were so led by the Holy Spirit that what they wrote was what God was pleased for them to write. Even though we do not understand the mechanism by which this is accomplished, it is clearly the teaching of the Bible about itself.
Absolute Authority. The result of such inspiration makes possible God’s absolute authority revealed through the written Word. Whatever the Bible teaches must be our guide in belief and practice, and must be our final authority. That is, nothing must have higher authority than the Bible. The Bible, as the Word of God, will be our judge in the Last Day, so it must be our guide all through this life.
Conclusion
It is now possible to see that it may not be profitable to try to define the method of inspiration because the Bible does not. And it may not be wise to limit ourselves to the use of certain words such as inerrant or infallible to describe the result of inspiration. It is better to broaden the base of the discussion to include all three aspects of the concept of inspiration and authority.
4 Stephen T. Davis. The Debate About the Bible (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1977).
For Discussion
1. How would you describe in your own words the term revelation? Inspiration? Authority? Now look up the words in a good dictionary. If possible, also look them up in a dictionary of theology, such as Baker’s or Richardson’s.
2. How would you describe the difference between the inspiration of a hymnwriter and the inspiration of the Bible?
3. Do you think we will ever fully understand the exact process by which God led the writers of the Bible to write the words of God? Do we understand just how God hears and answers prayer? Do we know the method by which God speaks peace to the converted soul? Do we know how God speaks at all to human beings? Explain your answers.