Biblical Inerrancy Pt 4: Inspiration

Okay, are we ready? Okay, we're on part four of explaining inerrancy, and we're looking at inspiration tonight.

Again, just to review, so you know where we're going. There are 19 articles of affirmation and denial, articles 1 and 2.

Article 3 through 5 addresses revelation. This is what we will be looking at tonight, articles 6 through 8, addressing the

Bible and inspiration. Article 9 through 12 addresses the Bible and inerrancy, and then of course the

Bible and truth, and the Bible and you. Alright, so starting with article 6, we're looking at verbal plenary inspiration.

First, the affirmation. We affirm that the whole of scripture and all of its parts down to the very words of the original were given by divine inspiration.

Pretty straightforward statement, affirmation, but we're going to take it apart in a few minutes.

The denial is we deny that the inspiration of scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts or some of the parts but not the whole.

That seems almost too simple to put up there, but believe it or not, there are people who say, well, no,

I believe that the whole Bible is inspired, but I don't think that every part of it is.

Go figure, alright? Or there are those who do just the opposite, say, well, certain parts of it are inspired, but not the whole thing, alright?

But verbal plenary inspiration, even the wording of that, verbal, obviously meaning down to the very words, and what is plenary?

No clue? You ever go to a conference and you have plenary sessions? What are the plenary sessions?

The whole session, that's for everybody, that's the whole, everybody who's involved, that's the plenary sessions, alright?

And then you break up into workshops, alright? So verbal plenary inspiration means from the very words to the whole thing, that's what it stands for, okay?

So what's in view in Article 6 is the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration.

Plenary inspiration means that the whole of Scripture is given by divine inspiration because some have maintained that the whole has been given by inspiration, but some parts of that whole are not by divine inspiration.

We are speaking of the origin of Scripture, which does not begin with the insights of men, but comes from God, alright?

That's the key. Now, under this section, there's three articles that we're going to be looking at about inspiration, and this is setting the stage for that.

The whole of Scripture is inspired by God, and what we're talking about is not, is the origin of Scripture.

Where does Scripture emanate from? Where is its roots? Where does it come from? It does not begin with insights of men, and we're going to talk about what inspired means a little bit later on, but comes from God himself, okay?

Notice the words in the affirmation down to the very words of the original, okay?

Who can tell me where the original manuscripts are kept? Anybody know where the original manuscripts are kept?

There are no original manuscripts. I just wanted to see if somebody thought they were smarter than they really were, alright?

Down to the very words of the original, alright? Now, that phrase deals with the extent of inspiration down to the very words.

We're going to talk about the originals next week, alright? So, I'm not going to really cover the autographs yet, but that phrase deals with the extent of inspiration, alright?

So, it's not just a general inspiration. It's down to the very words that were used by the writers.

The very words themselves are inspired by God, alright?

However, there is a limitation indicated by the phrase of the original. Obviously, only the originals are, we can claim to be verbally and plenary inspired, okay?

And that will be expounded on further when we get to Article 10, which will be next week. The phrase, the very words, however, often fosters the view called dictation theory, alright?

And it's very important that you understand that's not what our view of inspiration is.

The dictation theory means some people believe that God gave them the words and they just dictated what they wrote, having no input themselves into it, alright?

That's not what we believe, alright?

However, this article does not promote nor imply that theory, okay?

It doesn't promote it nor does it imply that theory. Article 7 specifically denies this theory and we'll talk about that a little bit later.

Article 8, inspiration as used here involves a divine superintendence, alright?

Which preserved the writers in their word choices from using words that would falsely distort or the message of scripture, alright?

And again, we're going to expand on this a little bit later on as we go through, but notice it's divine superintendent.

The Holy Spirit was divinely superintendent in each of the writers of biblical truth which preserved the writers in their word choices but prevented them from using words which would distort or present the false view of God.

Does everybody follow that? Alright, so in other words, the choices of the words were the writers themselves, but the

Holy Spirit wouldn't permit them to write something that was false, okay?

It depends on what you mean by compatibilism.

Okay. Thus, on the one hand, the statement affirms that God's superintendence and inspiration of the

Bible applied down to the very words and on the other hand, denies that he cancelled out the exercise of the writers, personalities and the choices of words to use to express the truth revealed, alright?

Now notice, one hand, the statement affirms that God superintended the writing, alright?

So, the words were God's, you know, coming down to the writers, alright?

And the inspiration of the Bible applied down to the very words, but then on the other hand, alright, the counsel denied that he cancelled out the exercise of the writers' personalities, alright?

And the choices of the words, whoops, went too quick, choices of the words used to express the truth revealed.

You follow what they're saying? In other words, when Paul sat down and wrote, alright, you can see

Paul's personality. You can see the different styles. In fact, you can tell even some of the writers who had a

Hellenistic or a Greek upbringing as opposed to those who had a Hebraic upbringing, alright?

You can see by just the words and how they used the words. Alright, yeah,

I guess that's right. This one's a little bit different. I'm giving you all the scripture verses at the end, alright, because they're all kind of interrelated with each other.

So, now Article 7, which is titled Inspiration. We affirm that inspiration was the work in which

God, by his spirit, notice whose work is it? It's the work of God, through human writers, gave us his word.

The origin of scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us, alright?

How did God superintend? How did he cause them to write the words that he wanted, yet the words were then, came from themselves?

I don't know. And the confession, this counsel made no attempt at telling us how this was done.

In some cases, we are told, like with the prophets, God tells them to say specific things.

That's different, because that is, that's them merely repeating God's word, alright? The reporting of it is inspired.

And we'll get into that, you'll see. So, for example, when God came and told the prophet, go tell the people thus and so, alright?

The Holy Spirit, in the superintendents, brought back to their mind everything that was told them.

So, it was inspired in that sense. Okay? Does that make sense?

Yes. Well, I think of like Luke's writing, with the

Gospel Luke, and also the Book of Acts, where it's more chronological, in contrast, perhaps, to John, which is more of like the theological exposition, like especially the reading of John.

Is it safe to kind of presume that that was more of an example of like directly inspired, as opposed to just reporting?

Yeah. Again, if you try to try to, if you try to figure it out, you're going to get nowhere, because we have some of the greatest theological minds who came up with this statement that the mode of divine inspiration remains a mystery to us.

So, if we have the greatest theological minds of our day who say, this is something that you have to leave a mystery,

I'm content to leave it a mystery. Okay? But we know that every word that was penned of the original documents was inspired, and God would bring to their mind exactly what they needed to write.

Yet, he didn't override their personalities in doing so. Yeah. Didn't Jesus, in John 14 or 13, reveal that the

Holy Spirit would come and bring humanity? 1426, we'll look at that in a few minutes. Okay.

Alright. So, the denial is, we deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any mind.

What that's, see, we use, and this is where we have to be careful, alright, in how we use our words.

Theologically, words may have a different meaning than the standard usage of it in day -by -day

English, alright? And inspiration is one of them. When somebody writes a beautiful poem, how often do we say, the work was inspired, okay?

They might have been inspired by a sunset, by a beach, or by seeing the ocean, alright?

Or maybe they were inspired by the wind, by a hurricane. I mean, it could be anything, alright? So men are inspired.

Or even some of the work that mathematicians and scientists do.

We can say, you know, it rises to the level of genius. We say, they were truly inspired. That's not what we're talking about here.

And that's what the denial is saying. We're not saying that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to even heightened states of consciousness of any kind.

That's not what, they're denying that specifically, alright? And we'll explain that a little bit.

Article 7 spells out in more detail what is implied in Article 6. Here are clear references given to the human writers of the text, alright?

Remember, at the beginning of this, we talked about the fact that the Bible is the inscripturated

Word of God. Jesus is the incarnate Word of God, alright?

Jesus is fully God and fully man. The Bible is fully human and fully divine, alright?

In the same way that Jesus is, alright? So that the actual work of writing is fully human.

God didn't take their hands and force them to write. But on the other hand, the truth content, down to the very words, were

God's choice. Again, it's a little on the mysterious side.

We can't explain it completely. The human writers become the human instruments by which

God's Word comes to us, okay? And then here, again,

I can guarantee this was probably R .C. Sproul's phrasing here. Classically, the

Holy Scriptures have been called the Verbum Dei, that is, the Word of God, alright?

Or even the Vox Dei, the Voice of God, okay? Yet, at the same time, the

Holy Scripture comes to us as the words of men. So it's the very

Word of God, but men actually penned it on paper using the words that the superintendents of the

Holy Spirit gave them, okay? In other words, there is an agency of humanity through which

God's divine Word is communicated, yet the origin of Scripture is always divine.

And that's why a lot of times we can say that we know that Paul wrote this, or Paul wrote that, or Matthew wrote this, you know.

Yep, absolutely. And hence the argument over the book of Hebrews, alright?

Because there's good arguments on both sides, alright? And everybody who is so absolutely sure that it wasn't

Paul, I'd just say, go read the 47 pages that John Owen wrote. What the framers of the document, that's this document that we're studying, have in view here is the primary meaning of the word theonoustos.

That's in 2 Timothy 3 .16, the word translated inspired by God. In the

New American Standard, it says, all Scripture is inspired by God. Where it says inspired by God, the

Greek word is theonoustos, which is right up there. Literally that means

God breathed, alright? You can see theo, that's God. Noustos means breath, it means wind.

It's from where we get the word pneumatic. You have pneumatic tires, pneumatic pumps, because there's air, compressed air.

When you see the word noustos in its various forms in Scripture, it can mean the

Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Man, or it can mean the breath of God, etc.

It can mean many different things, but it all has to do with breath. So here where it's combined with theo, it's

God breathed, okay? So in this case, I'm not that crazy.

Even though the New American Standard is my favorite Bible translation to use,

I think they would've been better off using God breathed, alright? Because literally it means

God breathed, and the primary reference is to God breathing out his word rather than breathing inspiration into the human writers, alright?

For lesser things, as I mentioned earlier with a poet writing beautiful poetry, or an engineer developing a new design for a bridge,

I'm sure God gives inspiration for that, alright? But that's not what we're talking about here.

Remember here, it's actually, the better word, if you want to use the inspired, would be expired.

The only thing is expired has another connotation, meaning he's dying, which is not the case obviously.

But the whole idea is it needs to come out. John Calvin said that it's so much

God breathed, alright, that when you read the pages of scripture, you should take it as though God were audibly speaking to you, okay?

Alright, so God breathing out his word rather than breathing inspiration into the human writers.

The source of the scripture is God, but it comes through human agency, alright?

Let's look at, it is explicitly stated in this article that the precise mode by which

God accomplishes inspiration remains a mystery, alright? And again, that's, there are certain things that we should just leave alone, you can only tread so far before you're going to wind up going into error.

The document makes no attempt to define how, the how of divine inspiration, or even to suggest that the method is known to us.

It goes exactly the opposite and says we don't know how exactly God does this.

But we must make a distinction between this usage of the term inspiration and how it is often used in society, and we've already talked about this a little bit.

How is it used in society? It refers to genius level working as being inspired. It's greater than that, alright?

Thus, the articles are saying that the Bible, though it is a human book, insofar as it is written by human writers, has its humanity transcended by virtue of the divine origin and inspiration, which sets it apart from any other work.

Now we move to Article 8, which is titled Human Authors. We affirm that God in his work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities, alright, distinctive personalities, and literary styles of the writers whom he had chosen and prepared.

Notice chosen and prepared. I love those words that they used there to describe.

The work of inspiration, distinctive personalities, he utilized them and their literary styles because he had chosen those who were going to write scripture and prepared them for it.

That's why when we get to what Steve was alluding to, I think it's John 14, 26, where the

Holy Spirit would bring to mind, alright? That promise was first and foremost to the apostles who were going to write scripture, alright?

We can take secondary application for it. We can pray that when we're asked to, whether it be debate or share our faith, that God would bring to our mind those things and because it is scripture, but that primarily isn't, that's not the main application.

The main application was actually the writing of scripture. We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that he chose, overrode their personalities, okay?

In other words, he did not override their personalities. Article 8 reiterates that God's work of inspiration does not cancel out the humanity of the human writers he uses to accomplish his purpose.

The writers of scripture were chosen and prepared by God for their sacred task.

However, the process of inspiration may have been, it does not include the cancelling of the personality of the writers as they wrote.

Though the word is not used in the article, what is clearly in view is a denial of any kind of mechanistic or mechanical inspiration, right?

Mechanical inspiration would reduce the human authors to the level of automatons or robot -like machines.

That's not, that's an absolute denial, alright?

Mechanistic, alright, would reduce human authors to the level of automatons or robot -like machines.

However, through divine inspiration, God made it possible for his truth to be communicated in an inspired way, making use of the backgrounds, personalities, and literary styles of these various writers.

And that's getting back to what Maria had mentioned earlier, that you can tell, when you read the

Gospel of Luke and then you read the book of the Acts of the Apostles, there's no doubt that Luke wrote both of those, alright?

When you read the Gospel of John and then you go to the three epistles, there's no doubt that John wrote all four of those books.

And you can see that, especially with Paul's letters, he writes some of the same things, you know, in those letters.

You can pick out the personalities, alright? Even a cursory reading of Scripture reveals the different personalities and writing styles, alright?

There are even personal greetings and requests in some of the New Testament epistles. Paul does this frequently, say hello to so -and -so and so -and -so, alright?

I'm sending you Timothy and I'm sending you Epaphroditus. Oh, by the way, when he comes, send him,

I need a cloak, and tell him to bring my books. He was a Reformed Baptist, you can tell right then and there, because he was concerned about his library, alright?

Send me my books, especially the parchments, okay? So we see that, I mean, those are obviously his words, and they're there for a reason.

They're inspired. Don't just gloss over those things. There's some great biblical principles contained in those requests that Paul makes, okay?

And of course the genealogy, you know, the genealogies, don't ever pass over those genealogies, you know, those are important.

I mentioned it here before, I knew a man who came to Christ by reading the genealogies.

He was weird, but that's... No, I'm kidding. I'm also thinking that, like for instance with the

Gospels, Luke, when he describes the crucifixion, he describes it in more medical -type terms than he will, so it's as if God specifically, or God did specifically chose

Luke, because of his personality, to present these words as well.

So it's not, you know, it's inspired, definitely, but he specifically chose these people because of who they were.

Absolutely. And why four Gospels? You know, if they were all exactly the same, you'd only need one.

Okay, human authorship. What is overcome or overridden by inspiration is not human personality, style or literary structure, but human tendencies to distort, falsehood and error.

That's the main purpose of what inspiration does. When the Holy Spirit is inspiring the writers to write, they cannot, they were unable to write falsehood or distortion as they wrote

Holy Scripture. They were prevented from that. That's exactly what our doctrine teaches. This is a crucial point in the doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy, that those are the tendencies.

That's exactly what he does. They couldn't even distort it or inflate a position or overstate it.

It has to be 100 % truth. And that's one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit in guiding them in writing the

Scriptures. God didn't change the personalities of the writers of Scripture. He superintended their writing to keep it error free.

But again, how he did this, it's a mystery. So now we're going to get to the

Scripture references, and I've just listed them all in one, just to give an idea that these are the doctrines that are taught in Scripture itself.

First, of course, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. This is the hallmark. If you're ever doing anything on inspiration or inerrancy of Scripture, you have to come at some place to 2

Timothy 3. And there's that word, all Scriptures inspired by God, that is all Scriptures, theonoustos.

All right, is God breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work.

I only have that up there for the inspiration, not for the rest, as important as that is. First Thessalonians 2, 13.

For this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, all right, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God.

All right, which also performs its work in you who believe. John 14, 26.

But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

Right now, again, we can take comfort in this, that God does do that to us. There have been times where I've been preaching, following my notes, and all of a sudden a verse comes into my mind that I had not studied, had not looked at, and it fits perfectly in with the sermon.

So the Lord does still do those things, but not infallibly as he did when they were writing scriptures.

I wish my sermons were infallible. No. Never mind.

I was going to say, I go back and I've read some of my sermons from 20 years ago, and I go, oh, did

I really say that? No heresies, but just better ways of saying it.

2 Peter 1, 2 and 3, Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and our

Lord Jesus Christ, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness.

If you look at the whole context of 2 Peter, that's talking about his scriptures right there.

Through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. And then further down in that same chapter, but know this first of all that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, but no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the

Holy Spirit spoke from God. That's one of the clearest altogether. John 16, 13,

But when he the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will disclose to you what is to come.

Look at that. He will disclose to you what is to come. There's your prophecy given. OK. Romans 3, 1 and 2,

Then what advantage has the Jew? What is the benefit of circumcision? Great in every respect.

First of all, they were entrusted with the oracles of God. What a benefit that the

Jews had. They had the very oracles of God. And remember what Paul said in 2 Timothy 3, just prior to verses 16 and 17.

He said that Timothy, you had the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise unto salvation.

The Old Testament oracles were able to make you wise unto salvation. Then Ezekiel 13, 2 and then 17,

Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who prophesy, and say to those who prophesy from their own inspiration.

This is the Hebrew equivalent of Theonoustos. Their own inspiration, not

God's inspiration. Listen to the word of the Lord. And then in verse 17, you, son of man, set your face against the daughters of your people who are prophesying from their own inspiration.

All right, prophesy against them. Questions? That was inspiring.

Yes. At the end of Romans, I just happened to read a bit, there's a guy that wrote

Romans. He's a Tertius? Yes. Was he like a stenographer for Paul?

No, no. He, Paul would see Paul, we received the inspiration and he would dictate what he wanted, you know, his amenuencies to say.

Hi. Catherine, nice to meet you. But I did have a question before it runs out of my mind.

Sure. When he, you know, when you're sitting there and being divinely inspired.

I thought of whoever you were speaking of.

Paul? Yes, Paul. I'm sorry. I'm very tired right now. And that, do you think it was done all in one setting?

Or do you think his paper basket was overflowing? See, that's what came to my mind when you said that.

So I wanted to get it out. You know, I thought of, I was like, oh my gosh, that poor paper bag. Because I'm, you know,

I struggle with that. I struggle with words on paper. All right. Well, see, this is the good part about inspiration.

When the holy writers wrote, they were inspired and the words were given to them and they didn't have a loss for words.

No, I don't think Paul's basket was overflowing. I don't think he had three copies of Romans before the one that entered into the

Bible. But whether it was all done at one time or not, there's just no way of knowing.

I mean, he could have written the first three chapters, you know, one day and the next. No, not an editor.

No, no, no, no, no editor. No, no editor. He had, we know

Paul had a stenographer, so to speak. You know, somebody who would actually write the words. Because sometimes he actually wrote,

I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. So he actually even distinguished that at some place.

Sure. Well, with Ezekiel, for instance, they were multiple oracles written at various times that were collected together.

Yeah. Yes. I'm always fascinated with certain passages in Revelation because John himself, as he was recording these visions, must have been astonished and having, if it wasn't the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit, he would have, words would have limitations of what he actually thought.

Yeah. And actually, Ted, you're always one week ahead of us. Because we actually will cover in, under next week where we're looking at inspiration, how it wasn't even necessary for the biblical writers to fully understand and comprehend what they were writing.

All right. In fact, we presume that they didn't necessarily understand, which again, enhances the idea of the superintendents of the

Holy Spirit and, you know, giving them the very words, you know, to write in the originals.

And we'll talk about the original autographs as well. Also, one other thing.

When I think of non -scripture writing as being, quote, unquote, inspired,

I think of John Frederick Handel writing the Messiah and locked in a room for, not locked, but he stayed in the room for a month.

26 days. 26 days. And this poured out of him.

And, of course, it was scriptural. Sure. But you have to be astonished that Handel's abilities are certainly

God -given. And that is amazing. And, I mean, I love the

Messiah in particular, but all of Handel's music and all. But just so long as we don't equate that inspiration with this inspiration, it's different.

That was God putting something in him that inspired him to write that, as opposed to the expiration or the

God -breathing of Scripture. It's different. Steve. The fact that each book, each writer, has kept their own personality,

I can't help but think about us as a church. You know, we each all have our own tendencies and personalities that we retain as well.

And we're inspired by the Holy Spirit, not in the same way as these writers and these apostles were, but we can understand that.

I'll share just a little personal story. When I was first starting to preach, and if you talk to any preacher, you know, when you're first starting out, you struggle with your style, you know.

And you listen to some of the great preachers, and you have a tendency to try to emulate your favorite preacher, okay?

And my pastor, who was my mentor back then, this is going back 30 years ago now, and one day he just, after I had preached, he walked up to me, he was a big man, much bigger than I am, and he put his arm around me, and he looked at me and said, you know,

Rich, God didn't see fit to override the personalities of the men who wrote Scripture.

He says, do you think he has to override your personality when you preach? And I said, oh.

He says, you should be the same person in the pulpit as you are when you're sitting down in the pew. And that just changed the whole way

I looked at preaching. And those of you who know me, you know, the same stupid sense of humor comes through even in the pulpit.

All right? I mean, that's me in the pulpit, and there's, you know, there's no pretenses. So good insight.

Erica. Okay, when you said that we aren't told how, of how

God does, basically passes down, well, I was trying to figure out what you meant by, we don't know the how.

The methodology. How did God give them the words? Oh, okay.

Without overriding their personalities. I don't know. It's unknown. Don't know.

I was thinking about how when different people witness the same thing, you kind of see how when they're retelling the story, they tell the story differently.

Like, they tell it in different words. And that's how I was kind of viewing the personality part of it.

That's very good because you can have two people tell the same story completely differently and yet both be absolutely true as long as they're not contradicting each other.

Yeah. The gospel, right? Sure. The gospel is a perfect example of it. Ted. One last comment.

Looking at the whole of the Bible, there were, I believe, 40 different authors, from farmers to kings to shepherds, all different types of people over,

I think it was 1 ,500 years of writing. You can correct me if I'm wrong on that.

And yet all of the Bible from the beginning to the end, all 40 authors were unified, had unity in their message, and there aren't contradictions.

Right. I mean, there are people that try to nitpick and find this and that and the other thing, but there's no real contradiction in the

Bible. Yeah. Any other thoughts? No.