Biblical inspiration

Rembrandt's The Evangelist Matthew Inspired by an Angel.

Biblical inspiration is the doctrine in Christian theology that the authors and editors of the Bible were led or influenced by God with the result that their writings may be designated in some sense the word of God.

Etymology

The word inspiration comes by way of Vulgate Latin and the King James English translations of the Greek word θεοπνευστος (theopneustos, literally, "God-breathed") found in 2 Timothy 3:16–3:17:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

Omnis Scriptura divinitus inspirata utilis est ad docendum, ad arguendum, ad corripiendum, et erudiendum in justitia : ut perfectus sit homo Dei, ad omne opus bonum instructus.

πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος καὶ ὠφέλιμος πρὸς διδασκαλίαν, πρὸς ἐλεγμόν, πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν, πρὸς παιδείαν τὴν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ, ἵνα ἄρτιος ᾖ ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ ἄνθρωπος, πρὸς πᾶν ἔργον ἀγαθὸν ἐξηρτισμένος.

When Jerome translated the Greek text of the Bible into the language of the common people of Latium (the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome is located), he translated the Greek theopneustos as divinitus inspirata ("divinely breathed into"). The word "inspiration" comes from the Latin noun inspiratio and from the verb inspirare. Inspirare is a compound term resulting from the Latin prefix in (inside, into) and the verb spirare (to breathe). Inspirare meant originally "to blow into", as for example in the sentence of the Roman poet Ovid: "conchae [...] sonanti inspirare iubet" ("he orders to blow into the resonant [...] shell"). In classic Roman times, inspirare had already come to mean "to breathe deeply" and assumed also the figurative sense of "to instill [something] in the heart or in the mind of someone". In Christian theology, the Latin word inspirare was already used by some Church Fathers in the first centuries to translate the Greek term pnéo.

The Church Fathers often referred to writings other than the documents that formed or would form the biblical canon as "inspired". Some modern English translations opt for "God-breathed" (NIV) or "breathed out by God" (ESV) and avoid "inspiration" altogether, since its connotation, unlike its Latin root, leans toward breathing in instead of breathing out.

Basis

The Bible contains many passages in which the authors claim divine inspiration for their message, or report the effects of such inspiration on others. Besides the direct accounts of written revelation, such as Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, the Prophets of the Old Testament frequently claimed that their message was divine by the formula "Thus says the LORD" (for example, 1 Kgs 12:22–24;1 Chr 17:3–4; Jer 35:13; Ezek 2:4; Zech 7:9; etc.). The Second Epistle of Peter claims that "no prophecy of Scripture ... was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet 1:20–21). The Second Epistle of Peter also refers to Paul's writings as inspired (2 Pet 3:16)

An exception common to all the different views of inspiration is that, although the New Testament Scriptures quote, paraphrase, and refer to other works including other New Testament documents, the Septuagint (the Jewish translation of the Torah into Greek, later books were translated anonymously and later included in the Septuagint), including the Apocrypha, and the Greek writers Aratus, Epimenides, Menander, and perhaps Philo, none of the various views of inspiration teach that these referenced works were also necessarily inspired, though some teach that the use and application of these other materials is inspired, in some sense.

Second Timothy 3:16-17 is cited by many Christians as evidence that "all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable ..." (English Standard Version – see similar language in the King James Version and the New International Version, among others). Others offer an alternative reading for the passage, for example, theologian C. H. Dodd suggests that it "is probably to be rendered" as, "Every inspired scripture is also useful..." A similar translation has been included in the New English Bible, Revised English Bible, and as a footnoted alternative in the New Revised Standard Version. The Latin Vulgate can be so read. Yet others defend the "traditional" interpretation, calling the alternative "probably not the best translation".

Views

Hildegard of Bingen receiving divine inspiration (illustration in the Rupertsberger Codex, c. 1180)

A 2011 Gallup survey reports, "A 49% plurality of Americans say the Bible is the inspired word of God but that it should not be taken literally, consistently the most common view in Gallup's nearly 40-year history of this question."

Roman Catholic

The Roman Catholic Church holds the Bible as inspired by God, but does not view God as the direct author of the Bible, in the sense that he does not put a 'ready-made' book in the mind of the inspired person.

As summarized by Karl Keating, the Roman Catholic apologetic for the inspiration of scripture first considers the scriptures as a merely historical source, and then it attempts to derive the divinity of Jesus from the information contained therein, illuminated by the tradition of the Catholic Church and by what they consider to be common knowledge about human nature. After offering evidence that Jesus is indeed God, they argue that his biblical promise to establish a church that will never perish cannot be empty, and that promise, they believe, implies an infallible teaching authority vested in the church. They conclude that this authoritative Church teaches that the Bible's own doctrine of inspiration is in fact the correct one.

Protestant

According to Frederic Farrar, Martin Luther did not understand inspiration to mean that scripture was dictated in a purely mechanical manner. Instead, Luther "held that they were not dictated by the Holy Spirit, but that His illumination produced in the minds of their writers the knowledge of salvation, so that divine truth had been expressed in human form, and the knowledge of God had become a personal possession of man. The actual writing was a human not a supernatural act." John Calvin also rejected the verbal dictation theory.

Evangelical

Evangelicals view the Bible as a genuinely human product, but one whose creation was superintended by the Holy Spirit, preserving the authors' works from error without eliminating their specific concerns, situation, or style. This divine involvement, they say, allowed the biblical writers to communicate without corrupting God's own message both to the immediate recipients of the writings and to those who would come after. Some Evangelicals have labelled the conservative or traditional view as "verbal, plenary inspiration of the original manuscripts", by which they mean that each word (not just the overarching ideas or concepts) was meaningfully chosen under the superintendence of God.

Evangelicals acknowledge that there are textual variations between Biblical accounts of apparently identical events and speeches. These are seen as complementary, not contradictory, and are explained as the differing viewpoints of different authors. For instance, the Gospel of Matthew was intended to communicate the Gospel to Jews, the Gospel of Luke to Greeks, and the Gospel of Mark to Romans. Evangelical apologists such as John W. Haley in his book "Alleged Discrepancies in the Bible" and Norman Geisler in "When Critics Ask" have proposed answers to hundreds of claimed contradictions. Some discrepancies are accounted for by changes from the autographa (the original manuscripts) that have been introduced in the copying process, either deliberately or accidentally.

Many Evangelicals consider biblical inerrancy and/or biblical infallibility to be the necessary consequence of the Bible's doctrine of inspiration (see, for example, the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy).

Three basic approaches to inspiration are often described when the evangelical approach to scripture is discussed:

• Dictation theory: God dictated the books of the Bible word by word as if the biblical authors were dictating machines;
• Verbal plenary inspiration: This view gives a greater role to the human writers of the Bible, while maintaining a belief that God preserved the integrity of the words of the Bible." The effect of inspiration was to move the authors so as to produce the words God wanted. In this view the human writers' "individual backgrounds, personal traits, and literary styles were authentically theirs, but had been providentially prepared by God for use as his instrument in producing Scripture."
• Dynamic inspiration: The thoughts contained in the Bible are inspired, but the words used were left to the individual writers.

According to T.D. Lea and H.P. Griffen, "[n]o respected Evangelicals maintain that God dictated the words of Scripture."

Criticism

At times this view has been criticized as tending toward a dictation theory of inspiration, where God speaks and a human records his words. C. H. Dodd wrote:

The theory which is commonly described as that of "verbal inspiration" is fairly precise. It maintains that the entire corpus of Scripture consists of writings every word of which (presumably in the original autographs, forever inaccessible to us) was directly "dictated" by the Deity… They consequently convey absolute truth with no trace of error or relativity… No attempt will be made here to formulate an alternative definition of inspiration… That I believe to be a false method. There is indeed no question about the original implications of the term: for primitive religious thought the "inspired" person was under the control of a supernatural influence which inhibited the use of his normal faculties.

The Evangelical position has been criticized as being circular by non-Christians and as well as Christians such as Catholic and Orthodox authors, who accept the doctrine but reject the Protestant arguments in favor of it. These critics claim that the Bible can only be used to prove doctrines of biblical inspiration if the doctrine is assumed to begin with. Some defenders of the evangelical doctrine such as B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge, however, moved away from such circular arguments and "committed themselves to the legitimacy of external verification" to inductively prove the doctrine, though they placed some restrictions on the evidences that could be considered. Others such as Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark, and John Frame have accepted circularity as inevitable in the ultimate presuppositions of any system and seek instead to prove the validity of their position by transcendental arguments related to consistency.

Modernist Christianity

The typical view within Liberal Christianity and Progressive Christianity rejects the idea that the Bible is divinely inspired in a unique way. Some advocates of higher criticism who espouse this view even go so far as to regard the Bible as purely a product of human invention. However, most form critics, such as Rudolf Bultmann and Walter Brueggemann, still regard the Bible as a sacred text, just not a text that communicates the unaltered word of God. They see it instead as true, divinely inspired theology mixed with foreign elements that can sometimes be inconsistent with the overarching messages found in Scripture and that have discernible roots in history, mythology, or ancient cultural/cultic practices. As such, form critics attempt to separate the kernel of inspired truth from the husk that contains it, doing so through various exegetical methods.

Neo-orthodox

The Neo-orthodox doctrine of inspiration is summarized by saying that the Bible is "the word of God" but not "the words of God". It is only when one reads the text that it becomes the word of God to him or her. This view is a reaction to the Modernist doctrine, which, Neo-orthodox proponents argue, eroded the value and significance of the Christian faith, and simultaneously a rejection of the idea of textual inerrancy. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner were primary advocates of this approach.

See also

• General revelation
• John Calvin's view of Scripture
• Progressive revelation (Christianity)
• Thought inspiration
• Verbum Domini - apostolic exhortation of the Pope Benedict XVI.

Bibliography

• Warfield, B. B. (1977 reprint). Inspiration and Authority of Bible, with a lengthy introductory essay by Cornelius Van Til. ISBN 0-8010-9586-7.
• Sproul, R. C.. Hath God Said? (video series).
• Geisler, Norman, ed. (1980). Inerrancy. ISBN 0-310-39281-0.
• C. H. Dodd (1960). The Authority of The Bible.

External links

• "The Authority & Inspiration of the Scriptures" by B. B. Warfield
• "God-Inspired Scripture" by B. B. Warfield
• The Inspiration Of Scripture by Loraine Boettner
• The Divine Inspiration of the Bible by Arthur Pink
• "The Protestant Rule of Faith", chapter 6 of the introduction from Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology, which argues for the traditional doctrine over and against the Modernist doctrine.
• Bibliography for and on-line articles about inspiration
• Scholarly articles on Biblical Inspiration from the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library
• Catholic Encyclopedia, Modernism
• Ten reasons why I believe the Bible is The Word of God by R. A. Torrey