On Inspiration and Inerrancy

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the opportunity to talk about your Word, talk about the subject of inspiration and inerrancy. I pray that as we go through the next few weeks looking at this subject that we will, in our hearts and minds, just have a better understanding of these words and what they mean when we say them.

Lord, we know that the doctrine of inerrancy is one that's under attack in our day, and under attack in such a way that most people don't even realize it's under attack. So I pray for wisdom and clarity when I'm teaching on this.

In Jesus' name, amen. Most of us are familiar, at least in some basic way, with the doctrine of inerrancy. Typically, you will hear someone affirm, I believe the Bible is inerrant. And I remember when I first started using that term with people who had never heard it, they thought I was saying the Bible is in error.

And so I had a bunch of people come up to me after church because I was saying, it's inerrant, it's inerrant, it's inerrant. And they said, are you saying the Bible's in error? That it's wrong? I was like, no.

It seems like that would have been the better way to say it. The Bible is true. But the doctrine of inspiration and the doctrine of inerrancy are two sister doctrines that are often confused with one another, they're often talked about together and in such a way that people don't understand the distinction between the two.

And what each one is saying. And furthermore, we live in a time where there are so many people who will say, I believe the Bible is inerrant, without error. But they will also say, we don't believe that anyone has the right interpretation of it.

So it doesn't matter if you have an inerrant Bible, if you don't know what it means. I mean, this is the new way of getting around the inerrancy issue. As people say, sure, the Bible's inerrant, but you don't know what it means.

Sure, the Bible's inerrant, but we don't really understand it. And so we come to a whole new issue. But because this is where we are in our book, I do want to deal with the two sister doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy.

Inspiration and Inerrancy as Source and Result

Inspiration and inerrancy. Now, very quickly, when we deal with these two things, I think I, oh, I did, that should be an A. I always mess that one up. When we deal with these two doctrines, we need to make first the distinction.

Before we even get to the page, I do want to make the distinction between the two. Because people will say the Bible is inspired and the Bible is inerrant. And when we talk about inspiration, we are talking at that point about source.

And when we talk about inerrancy, we are talking about result. That's the key difference between these two things. When we talk about inspiration, you're saying it is inspired by or it comes from a certain source.

Of course, we would believe that that source is God. So the word inspiration is actually popularized by the King James Translation because it says in 2 Timothy 3 .16 in the King James Version, all scripture is given by inspiration of God.

And so people hear that and they say, okay, that's the inspiration of scripture. And the problem with that in English is the way we use inspiration today is much different than what the writers of the King James were trying to infer in the translating of that word, theionoustos, that's the Greek word, translating that into English.

When they said theionoustos is inspired, they were attempting to translate what Paul said, which is God breathed. That's what theionoustos means. And that's why the newer translations will say God breathed.

But modern day, you'll hear a singer get up and she'll sing a wonderful song. And she'll say, I was inspired to sing that song. Or conversely, somebody will hear a singer sing a song. That song inspired me to this or to that or whatever.

I was inspired by this speaker. I was inspired by this pastor. I was inspired by this scripture passage or this wonderful poem or this quote. So we all know that the word inspired has become somewhat of a catch-all for anyone who feels anything of any type of uplifting from any statement or song or whatever.

That's not what the word inspired means. As I've already mentioned, God breathed. Greek word theionoustos means that God actually is the author or the source. I hate to say, when I say God is the author of scripture, people say, wait a minute, Paul wrote scripture, Peter wrote scripture, Ezekiel wrote scripture.

Well, when we say author, we are saying the source. But if you want to make it simple, God is the source and yet he used the medium of men to write. And so that's what we mean by inspiration. When we say the Bible is inspired, we're saying that God is the source of the scripture and his medium was men and their particular writing gifts and talents and skills because Ezekiel didn't write like Paul.

Didn't even write in the same language. If you go to talk about a Muslim about the Koran, they will tell you that the Koran is written in Arabic because that is the language that it has always been in because that is the divine language.

Arabic is the language that it has always been. And thus, if you read the Koran in English or French or any other language, you're not reading the Koran. You're reading a translation. If you want to read the Koran, you have to learn Arabic because that is the language that it has always been in.

They believe that the Koran is an eternal book and it's eternally been written in Arabic because that's the divine, if it were, divine language. We don't believe that. We believe that God used Hebrew because it was the language of his people.

We believe God used Greek because it was the language of the commoner. It's called koine Greek. Koine means common. It was the common language of the day. It was the language of commerce. Everybody who did business spoke Greek.

So the New Testament writers, if they would have written only in Hebrew, they would have reached a very limited audience. They wrote in Greek because it reached a much broader audience. And then, of course, you have Aramaic.

People often say the Bible is written in three languages. The Bible is written in two languages, Hebrew and Greek. There is Aramaic in there. Aramaic is not the intended language of the scriptures. We see words like talithakumi, which is Jesus saying, little girl, arise.

That's Arabic. But it's translated right there. It's translated, little girl, arise. In Greek, it goes, Jesus said these words, but this is what he meant. This is because nobody else spoke that in the common language.

Aramaic was a dialect of Hebrew, which was very limited as far as its use. So really, the Bible is written in two languages. It has three languages contained within it. But ultimately, we talk about source.

The source is God. Inerrancy, though, is the result. The result is an inference. Because inspiration is not inferred in scripture. Inspiration is declared in scripture. All scripture is theanustas. Pasagraphe, theanustas.

All scripture is theanustas, right? We know. Do you know what inference is? Do you know what inference is? An inference is when something is not stated declaratively or explicitly. For instance, if I come up and I get close to you.

You're my daughter, so I come up and I kind of put my arm around you. And I say, what smells? You might say, well, that's my perfume.

Okay.

I knew it was something from her. What's that smell? I'm inferring that it's coming from you, right? It might be a good smell. Hopefully, it's a good smell. But there's an inference there, right? I didn't have to say, hey, there's a smell.

By asking the question, I'm inferring that there's an issue there. And the same thing we see in scripture. There are many things that are inferred. The Trinity, not explicitly stated. Nowhere does it say God is one in essence, three in person.

And that these three persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and distinct. But that is the doctrine of the Trinity that is inferred by looking at the fact that the scripture teaches that God is one. It shows three persons who are called God.

And these three persons interact in such a way that they demonstrate co-equality and co-eternality and distinction. Because they interact with one another. So we infer a doctrine called the Trinity based on explicit teachings about the oneness of God.

The three persons called God and the interrelationship between those three persons. That's an inference, but it is a necessary inference. There are things that are unnecessary inferences. For instance, where do we get the doctrine of baptism of infants?

We don't teach that, but where do churches get it? Because in the Bible, they talk about household baptisms. In the Bible, they talk about the promise being for your children. In Acts chapter 2. In the Bible, they talk about the relationship between baptism and circumcision.

Circumcision was given to infants. So all of these things become inferences whereby entire denominations, entire church groups, entire nations have accepted the concept that baptism isn't for the believer only, but it's for the believer and his posterity.

Up to a certain age. Is that a necessary inference? I would argue that it is not. But it is an inference. Because that's how they get there. They will tell you and they will, I mean, R .C. Sproul would no doubt say, we arrive at infant baptism through inference, not through explicit teaching.

So inferences are important, but inferences can also lead us to dangerous places. It can lead us to false teaching. In fact, I would argue that every false prophet, every cult and leader of cults has arrived where they are by virtue of the unnecessary inference.

For instance, Jehovah Witnesses. I don't believe that Jesus is God. So we must say he's a God because the Bible clearly says that he has the quality of divinity. And because we can't believe he's fully divine, we must create a second category of the created deity.

The created divine. And that's where Jesus fits into their category. They infer that Jesus is a created divine because they cannot believe that he can be fully divine. Or will not believe that he is fully divine.

So they must infer a category that doesn't exist in scripture. There is no, and the Bible clearly says in Isaiah 43 .10, it says, before me there was no God formed and after me there will be no God formed.

And yet Jehovah Witnesses say, no, Jesus was a God who was created by God. So either God's a liar or they have missed the inference. They have messed up. So all of that being said, inerrancy is inferred.

You won't find a place in the Bible where it says that scripture is without error. You say, now wait a minute. The Bible says all scripture is given by God from his very breath. It is theanoustos. Yes, that's inspiration.

Inerrancy is the necessary inference of inspiration because inerrancy says God is perfect. Scripture clearly says that. God gave us scripture. Scripture clearly says that. Thus the inference is, scripture must be perfect.

So that's the necessary inference of inerrancy based on the explicit teaching of inspiration. One gives birth to the other. But they're not exactly the same. Because one refers to source, which is explicitly taught.

The other is the result of it coming from that source, thus not explicitly taught. Simple, right? If I'm wasting, I hope I'm not wasting your time. I'm trying to help you understand the difference because you'll, again, you'll hear, you'll deal with people.

I believe the Bible's inspired. But I don't believe it's inerrant. Well then, what is it about the nature of God that would make you believe that he would provide to you a book which is false? I mean, that's an important question, right?

Because, again, you say you affirm the source. But you deny the result that that source would necessitate. Yeah, I just added an extra syllable in the word necessitate. I didn't mean to. I was in my cadence of speaking.

I messed that word up a bit. In your sheets that we have, you'll notice one on number 9, page 23. Theories of inspiration. And then on page 10, it's evangelical theories of inerrancy. And so, this is why I made this distinction.

I wanted to start with this distinction coming in. Because when we look at theories of inspiration, we're first looking at what do people believe and how do people believe God gave us the scriptures. And there are, on this side, six different theories.

There's the mechanical or dictation theory. There's the partial theory. There's the degrees of inspiration, which, again, is sort of the same as partial, but similar, but not exact. There's natural inspiration.

There's mystical inspiration. And then the final one is verbal, plenary inspiration. If you are curious as to what position the historic, reformed church has taken, it is the last one. We would reform the verbal, plenary definition of inspiration.

So, that is not to say that we don't want to hear what the others have to say or go down the list. But, you know, for a... I don't want anybody to get confused. Because some of these you'll hear and you'll say, well, I think some of that could be true.

Or whatever. You know, I don't want you to wonder where we might land as a church. Let's begin first, though, at mechanical or dictation theory. This is the viewpoint. The biblical author is a passive instrument in the transmission of the revelation of God.

The personality of the author is set aside to preserve the text from fallible human aspects. Alright, so this is the concept of sort of the divine stenographer. God wants to say something. So, he enters, as it were, into the person.

And the person begins to sort of anatomically write what God wants him to write. Have you ever seen Indiana Jones movies? I can make a pop culture reference. You don't have to laugh at me. The last one, really the worst of the series by far.

Apparently, a refrigerator will protect you from an atom bomb.

That doesn't work.

But in the movie, it did. There's a point at which there's a guy who had been overtaken by some alien spirit. And he was just doing this with his hand. Sort of just making circles with his hand. Nobody understood what was going on until somebody put a pen in his hand.

They gave him a pen. And he started looking like this and just sort of writing out words. Not even looking at the page. We would call that a type of the dictation theory. There are people who believe that Paul, when he sat down, he sort of became the celestial fax machine for God.

He sort of just zoned out. And when he woke up, 1 Corinthians was written. It's like, wow, it's a masterpiece of literature right here. And then he's done. The scripture does not show that as the way, the method.

In fact, there are times when Paul himself wrote. There are times when Paul didn't write. Paul didn't write Romans. Paul dictated Romans. Romans was written by someone else as of the very end. So we know that this idea of mechanical sort of writing is not at least the way that the Bible describes itself.

And the objections, I like the way this is kind of set up because it's going to give us the objection. If God had dictated the scripture, the style of vocabulary and writing would be uniform. But the Bible indicates diverse personalities and manners of expression in its writers.

And I think that's the best argument. As I said earlier when we were talking, Ezekiel sounds like Ezekiel. Paul sounds like Paul. David sounds like David. In fact, David didn't write all the Psalms. And if you read the Psalms of David and you read maybe the one that was from Moses and then there's others from other writers.

Yeah, you'll see somewhat of a difference in style, use of language. Paul writes differently than Luke. Luke was a physician. Paul was a theologian. Paul had a propensity to make up words. And when I say make up words, the word theanoustos is a Paulism, that word.

Theos is a word. Noustos is for... Panouma is the Greek for breath. And so Panouma is... And we normally don't pronounce the P in some circles they say you should pronounce. It should be theopnoustos, whatever.

You know, who cares? But theopnoustos, you pop the P there. But the ultimate issue is these are two words that people knew what they meant. Paul puts them together. Creates a word. Paul does this in other places as well.

And we see words then that are very specific to him. And ultimately I think that that's one of the best, if not the best, argument against the mechanical view. Is that God didn't eliminate the man as the medium.

If God wanted to provide us with scriptures that eliminated man as the medium, he could have written it himself. Has God ever written anything? Twice, right? He wrote the Ten Commandments and Jesus stuck his finger in the sand.

I always like to say Jesus did write something. Whatever he wrote in the sand, we don't know. But you remember that story? Names of their girlfriends. I always think about that story when they throw the woman in Jesus' feet.

And they say, what should we do with her? And he reaches down and starts writing in the sand. And they say, hey, we've asked you this question. And then one at a time they start throwing their rocks down and walk away.

Jesus said, he is without sin, cast of first stone. What was he writing? Ray Comfort thinks he wrote the Ten Commandments. Because the men would have looked at the commandments and saw their sin and thrown the stones down and walked away.

There used to be a Christian comedian, I forget his name now, but he was a funny guy. And he said, I think he wrote the names of their girlfriends. And I always thought that was funny. He said, Jesus knows.

Mike Warnky?

Mike Warnky, yeah.

Mike Warnky said, I think he's writing the names of their girlfriends. So mechanical and dictational inspiration is one that really doesn't seem to hold up with the literary form of the scripture. Second is partial.

Partial. And this will probably be, where are we at on time?

Yeah, well we've got a few more minutes.

Partial. Partial inspiration. Inspiration concerns only the doctrines of scripture that were unknowable to the human authors. God provided the general ideas and trends of revelation, but gave the human author freedom in the manner of expressing it.

So basically, what is being said is, God inspired the idea, but not the words. For instance, a good example might be this. If I went to you and I said, okay Mike, I'm going to explain to you something of great importance.

I'm going to explain to you how a person is going to get saved. By grace, through faith, and all of that. But I'm not going to tell you how to tell others. I'm just going to tell you the foundations, and then it's up to you to convey that information.

So I'm giving you information, but you're going to explain it in your words. And this is the objections to that viewpoint. Let me kind of bring that down to simple. If I say, okay Mike, I'm going to give you this way, and then you're going to explain it in your own words.

Would you not use the words that I gave you? You say, well I might want to change it and make it my own. But in doing so, is there a possibility of the loss of something? Or the possibility of the contorting of something?

And that's been the issue with this. Because essentially the idea is, Scripture is inerrant in its meta-narrative. In what it's saying. But it's not inerrant in the words themselves. And yet, ideas come to us in words.

Do you realize you think in words? You don't think abstractly. You think in your thoughts, or what we call the inner monologue. People say you're crazy if you talk to yourself. I think you're dead if you don't.

You have a conversation within yourself. How many of you have ever known you were going to have a debate with someone, or an argument with someone, and you went through the whole argument in your mind before you ever talked to the person?

If he says this, then this, this, this. If he says that, then I'll know this or that. So we have this inner monologue. And that's the idea. These guys were taking what God said, and essentially saying what they wanted to say.

They were ignoring, or changing certain things. And thus, how can we know what is absolutely true? It becomes an issue of, well, partially. It's partially true. What it's saying is true, but not necessarily how it's saying it.

That's not really possible. Because it used to be the old thing, you've got to mean what you say and say what you mean. You ever heard that phrase? Because you'd say to your mom something, and then later on she'd come back at you, and you'd say, well, I didn't mean that.

Well, say what you mean. Don't mean what you say. Say what you mean.

What you were talking about before, that reminded me that when you learn a foreign language, they say you've mastered it. When you start thinking in the language that you're learning. You can think in Spanish.

That's when you know you've mastered the language.

Yeah, it's become part of your inner monologue. And the same thing, I heard it say, when you dream in that language.

Oh, wow.

Huh?

That's not true. I'm trying to learn Japanese, and I've dreamed in Japanese, but I have no idea.

Oh, okay.

People were speaking Japanese like in my dreams.

No, I meant like you're able to. I think his point is better, is that when you're actually having that inner monologue in that language. Recently I wanted to learn how to speak Russian.

Wow, that's hard.

Well, the only reason was because I heard Vladimir Putin speak after the president election, and Vladimir Putin came out and spoke, and I was like, there's no way we're getting exactly what he's saying.

I want to know what he's really saying.

So for me it's more like a political thing. I want to know what this guy's really saying.

It's a Slavic language.

Yeah.

It's just such a you can't imagine the love poems of Russia. It just sounds like it would be very tough. I mean, French, we say French, and we say love.

Russian, like, I love you.

It's just very tough. And Japanese is a beautiful language. I know several people throughout the years, martial artists and whatnot. But, again, it can be somewhat aggressive, how it sounds. It's certainly not one of the

It depends on what level the person you're speaking to, and if you're a guy or a girl.

Germans like that too.

Germans are very tough. They actually have a video online that's funny because it shows the same words being in French and Spanish and English, and then German is like, rah! It's a very tough language.

Do you have German? Somebody here spoke German.

Was it you?

Somebody in the church. I know it was the girl who came from Germany, but there was somebody else who had a background.

Rob, was it?

No, it wasn't Rob. But, anyway, we kind of lost. But the last one, this last one that we're going to look at today is degrees of inspiration. It's similar to partial, and that's why I want to kind of deal with both of them at the same time.

Degrees of inspiration says this. Rather than the partial inspiration, which says that ultimately the ideas of Scripture are inspired, not the words, this says that ultimately there are certain portions that are inspired, and there are certain portions that are less inspired, as if to say not necessarily inspired at all.

Because you could have the Apostle Paul, when he's talking about salvation by grace through faith, well, that's inspired. But when the Apostle Paul is talking about the money that was given from the Ephesian church, the Corinthian church, or whatever, back and forth, the money that's being exchanged, he might not have been correct about that.

And when the Old Testament writers are talking about 603 ,550 people in the land of Egypt that went out into the wilderness fighting men, those numbers aren't correct. And that's when they overexpand.

It's inflated numbers. And so those things become an issue of, well, how do we know? How do we know that when Moses said there were 603 ,550 people in the wilderness having left Egypt, how do we know he was wrong?

And yet, when he said, thou shalt not commit murder, he was right. See, what happens with the degree of inspiration is this. People become the arbiter. And, for instance, the newest thing is the issue of homosexuality.

People say, well, when Paul was talking about men giving up their natural affections and lusting after one another and women doing the same, you know, in Romans 1, Paul wasn't talking about committed homosexual relationships.

Paul was talking about people who were temple prostitutes. No, I'm saying this is the argument. Oh, you must understand that this is why holy churches and denominations are turning over because they're interpreting it differently.

But, you know, that's a new thing.

It's cut and dried.

No, no, but that's new because what it used to be. That's a new argument. The argument used to be. Paul was just not inspired at that point.

He was just being a leaguer, I think.

Or just wrong.

Yeah.

So, you understand, that has kind of gone away, the argument that he wasn't inspired. Now, we have to reinterpret him because we've interpreted him wrong. You want to get more people to agree with you.

Oh, yeah, and you're trying to create a new way to not have to fight a battle. Nobody wants to fight the battles for truth. So, we simply roll over and say we've been wrong or the truth is not relevant or what have you.

Yeah.

So, degrees of inspiration. The argument, objection to that would be, number one, no suggestion of degrees of inspiration is found in the Scripture. The Bible doesn't say some Scripture is inspired by God.

All Scripture is given by God. And the entire Scripture is incorruptible and cannot err. We see this in John 10 .35, 1 Peter 1 .23. There are passages which reference the inerrancy of Scripture. Earlier I said it was an inference.

But there are passages that specifically reference the fact that because it's from God, it is all true. Let's end with those just to look at them. We'll leave these with our Scripture for today. Read John 10 .35 and 1 Peter 1 .23.

John 10 .35 says, it's in the middle of a conversation. It says, Ultimately, the reference there is when Jesus said the Scripture cannot be broken. Did Jesus say the Scripture is inerrant? No. But he's saying you can't piece it apart and say this is true and this isn't.

You can't say that over there is right and this over here is wrong. He's saying it can't be broken up that way. It can't be divided between truth and error. It is all true. And lastly, in 1 Peter 1 .23, and this references again the issue of inspiration, 1 Peter 1 .23, and when you're looking at 2 Peter, you're never going to find it.

So let me go back a book. 1 Peter 1 .23,. But the word of the Lord abides forever. And that word is the good news which has been preached to you. I'm in the wrong verse, excuse me. You have been born anew, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God for all flesh is like grass and all the glory like the flower of the grass.

The grass withers, the flower fails, but the word of the Lord abides forever. Again, a person saying, well, that's true, but only partially. That's true, but only in degree. Nothing in the Bible would lend to the idea that part of what Moses said was true, or part of what Paul said was correct.

Years ago, I was challenged by a man who did say that. He said, well, I don't believe the whole Bible is true. And my answer to him was simple. I said, what parts are untrue, and who becomes the arbiter to determine that truth?

And ultimately, almost in every case, the answer is me. I get to determine what's true and what's not, and thus I become the authority over Scripture rather than the Scripture being the authority over me.

Well, I've got to go. God bless you, and we'll end there.