Featured What Does "Inspired" Mean, Relative to the Bible?

Why thank you sir! :saint:

 

Touche! This is a kind of Wild West of debate, isn't it?

I oppose the use of the word "motivate" in reference to inspiration because the term has no meaning of responsibility. In other words, if I motivate someone to try to develop a cure for a disease, they are on their own. I don't help them, I don't advise them, I don't superintend them. But God's inspiration of Scripture is direct, and He provides not only the truths conveyed but the verbal content (through the personality and experience of the writer of Scripture, of course).

In the thread "Can a Translation be Inspired and Infallible?" Archie showed that he believed there were errors in the originals and that what is inspired is the message, not the words (a form of "thought inspiration"). However, in B. B. Warfield's words, the Bible is "not a book, then, in which one may, by searching, find some word of God, but a book which may be frankly appealed to at any poit with the assurance that whatever it may be foun to say, that is the Word of God" (The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 1948, p. 106). And that, you will agree I'm sure, is the historical evangelical position.

 

The giving of the Holy Scriptures was virtually a one-time event for which we do not possess a singularly adequate English word to describe it, and we certainly do not comprehend the precise details of the method employed by God for the process. We know men were intimately involved but the ultimate words are God's alone. Anything directly or immediately brought into being by God could be described as being good, perfect, or inerrant (like His Creation, for example). God don't make bad stuff.

 

It is interesting how much our theology goes in to exegeting this one word used in 2 Tim 3:16. "The giving of Holy Scriptures was virtually a one-time event..." is just one of many examples that this thread has provided.

 

I'm coming in this late;
nice to see some interaction

Revelation stems from God's desire to reveal himself, he wants to show us what he is like. He worked through men to reveal himself.

Inspiration has its source in God, it means what was written by the hand of man had God's full approval.

Scripture draws its Authority from the fact that it comes from God; so a result of God's inspiration is biblical authority, we can trust our scriptures for instruction, reproof and training.

Some insert the phrase, "without error" into the definition; it burdens the definition and restricts the ways God may have worked. A simple example; Jesus used creative storytelling (parable) as a way to more fully reveal himself.

Inspiration, a miraculous process? Hard to argue against but sometimes the author knew that he was writing God's words, other times he didn't.
But since scripture is revelation from God, it's a given.

Rob

 

The Biblical word for the process is "moved" in 2 Peter 1:21. This is the Greek word phero, which indicates action by an outside force, usually to physically move something, but in this case I would say a metaphorical meaning. It is in the form of a participle before the main verb of "spoke." Thus, the writers of Scripture were not just lead by the Spirit, not just motivated, but impelled to write Scripture.

I'm sure that's true, but I'm not going to speculate, but simply take what you say.

On the other thread I said that one cannot convey truth without words, which statement you immediately and rudely dismissed. However, it is extremely relevant.

There are two main linguistic theories of communication, code theory and relevance theory. Both presuppose the use of words in syntactic constructions to communicate. Any theory of inspiration that discounts the importance of how the words of Scripture were chosen is therefore incomplete (not that I need linguistics to tell me this). To refute verbal inspiration with your thought inspiration theory, you must say where all the words came from. How did the human writers choose the words?

My view is similar to that of Gaussen (Divine Inspiration of the Bible), who actually did use the word "dictation." However, the liberal straw man of "mechanical dictation" means that modern evangelicals are afraid of the term. I believe that God prepared the writers of Scripture so that 100% of what they wrote was their own wording and came from their own personalities, yet was 100% the wording that the Holy Spirit lead. The liberal immediately says, "Aha, mechanical dictation," when their is nothing mechanical at all about i, and the process is nothing like a modern boss dictating to a stenographer."

I've translated the NT into Japanese and several books into English, but have yet to find a single provable grammatical or other error.

Then you do not understand what Warfield meant, because he was the greatest 20th century theologian delineating verbal-plenary inspiration. His book set the 20th century standard for the position.

Thank you for the change of attitude.

 

Just remembered that you took umbrage on the other thread that I didn't answer your question (though I thought I did). So I thought I'd go back and make sure I answered everything, hopefully to your satisfaction.

Yes.

Yes.

This poses no difficulty at all in my Bibliology. God can do anything, so He can give the Bible by inspiration without doing what we consider to be "dictation." To me, it is a much greater difficulty to try to figure out what part of what God gave is erroneous.

Actually, we are not in accord. Yes it is the Word of God, but to me it is God's word in a verbal and plenary sense, and to you it is not.

Evangelicals believe in an inerrant Scripture, liberals do not. When you cross the line into a belief in an errant Scripture, you leave evangelicalism, according to far greater scholars than I am.

Francis Schaeffer: "There is the danger of evangelicalism becoming less than evangelical, of its not really holding to the Bible as being without error in all it affirms. We are then left with the victory of the existential methodology under the name of evangelicalism. Holding to a strong view of Scripture or not holding to it is the watershed of the evangelical world" (No Final Conflict, p. 48).

The previous quote was from Schaeffer's lecture at the Laussane Conference of evangelicals in 1974. The Laussanne Covenant said: "We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice" (ibid, p. 7).

"It is apparent that those who give up an authoritative, dependable, authentic, trustworthy and infallible Scripture must ultimately yield the right to the use of the name 'evangelical'" (Harold J. Ockenga in the forward for The Battle for the Bible by Harold Lindsell).

Stewart Custer wrote a book, Does Inspiration Demand Inerrancy? I agree with him that it does.

So my question to you: Are you an evangelical or a theological liberal?

 

We have 250,000 words, in a 25% Germanic language, the wordiest of languages.
Need a new English word? Transliterate one. It will fit right in with the Tens of thousands of others, that got here that way.

So who needs a 'one word' in English, to match a 'one word' in another language? Use 3. Use a phrase. Keep going til you make the point. That's what English is good for.

 

basically, its the truth that God the Holy Spirit , working thru human agents, using their own personalities to write/record down, so supervised that activity that what was written down was fully inerrant, no mistakes/errors, and was a full revelation from God to us!

ONLY book he ever inspired directly that fashion, as any other "inspired" writting like a Shakespeare came strictly from their own natural intellect!

 

You actually don't think you've been offensive yet? You've said I don't know what I'm talking about. You've said on this thread that nothing I wrote had any meaning. Elsewhere you've said I didn't answer your questions then rudely ignored me when I did. Where have I been offensive?

I'm at a loss. I have no idea what you mean. Where have I misrepresented you? You do believe there are errors in Scripture, do you not? You have said so plainly a number of times. And you do not believe that every word of the originals was inerrant, correct?

I haven't even called you a liberal yet. I gave you the chance to deny it--which you haven't done yet. And you seem not to know theologically what legalism is if you think anything I've said is legalistic.

“Legalism is a slavish following of the laws in the belief that one thereby earns merit; it also entails a refusal to go beyond the formal or literal requirements of the law” (Christian Theology, 2nd ed., by SBC theologian Millard Erickson, p. 990).

 

Would say that the original manuscripts were preserved/kept by God in a fashion that made them created with NO errors/mistakes in them, but also that the Lord did not dictate that thru the writers, but allowed them to write as theydesired, but oversaw it to have finished product without fault/blemish!

 

the doctrine of verbal plenary views on the inspiration of the bible seems to be one of those areas where there seems to have had MANY pull away from that notion, to a limited view, such as what happened at Fuller in mid 70's!

 

:smilewinkgrin:

I agree. I don't think many of the younger evangelicals are even aware there was a conflict at Fuller, in the SBC and elsewhere.

And the errantists of that day would say what Archie just said to you:

Notice that Archie leaves it open to scientific and historical errors in the Bible with this statement. I'd like to see him address that issue--but he may have quit talking to me like he did on the other thread. I bother him. :smilewinkgrin: