"As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been
since the world began."-Luke 1: 70.
"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past
unto the fathers by the prophets."-Heb, 1:1.
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness."-II Tim. 3:16.
That Paul here refers to "sacred Scriptures of the Jews" and all the books of those writings, no one doubts. The inspired declaration, then, is that each and several of those canonically received books is an inspired book. It is not denied but that this is true, in the same sense, of each and several of the canonically received books of the New Testament. The question now is: Are all parts of each of the books of our sacred Scriptures inspired at all, or, if so, equally inspired with the other parts? It will be admitted by all that-
THE WHOLE INCLUDES THE SUM OF ALL ITS PARTS.
Then what is true of the Scriptures as a whole, or of each book as whole, is equally true of each and every part of it. Let us once more hear the statement of the unerring Spirit: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God."
Each part, then, of each book is inspired of God; and since no distinction is made in the amount of inspiration of any part received, we are not at liberty to intimate a difference. Each part is therefore equally inspired with any other part. If the whole is God's Word, each and every portion and part of it, every paragraph and period, every sentiment and sentence and word is equally God's Word. To intimate that the last sentence or allusion of the Scriptures is inaccurate or false is to make God a liar.
It is urged by some who profess to be friends of Christianity that since the Bible was not given to teach us geology or astronomy, geography or history, that only those parts are inspired that teach religion, while there may be inaccuracies with respect to secular and scientific matters. I cannot accept this proposed betrayal of the Word of God. I accept no compromise. It is all God's Word, or none of it is God's Word. Can all Scripture be indeed inspired of God and yet abound with manifest and manifold errors touching secular things? Is not God as regardful of His veracity in small things as well as in the greatest-concerning science, geography and history as purely "religious matters"? When one falsehood can be undoubtedly fixed upon any part of the Sacred Book, then its claims upon my credence are forever forfeited.
If one statement is found to be false, I know not which ones are true. There may be errors in the transcription of the ancient manuscripts; there may be errors in translation, and errors many in interpretation, but that the original Scriptures are the words of the living God, He most explicitly declares them to be. No true friend to Christianity can advocate a spotted inspiration, since it effectually wipes out the Bible as a reliable book from the face of the earth. God has placed His imprimatur upon "all scripture," and therefore He avows Himself the Author of each and every utterance and illusion they contain. This is my position:
ALL SCRIPTURE IS INSPIRED, AND THEREFORE NO SCRIPTURE CAN BE UNINSPIRED.
But to account for the fact that each writer stated the same doctrine and related the same circumstance or discourse in different words, and preserved his own peculiar style, the theory is put forth and largely embraced that the doctrines and ideas only were infused into them, but the words were not given them, only a general superintendency or direction was observed, sufficient to preserve them from error touching religious matters, which character of inspiration is called plenary. If this were not in plain contradiction to the teachings of Scripture, as well as derogatory to its All-wise Author, we might grant it, since the result was always truth unmixed with error, and the message would be authoritative, as though every word were God-given. But to grant this would be to deny God's Word. It would be man's production, assisted by God.
In some schools the teacher gives out a subject for composition and lectures upon it, imparting all the information needed concerning it, and indicating the proper treatment of it, and requiring each member of the class to write an essay upon it. Now this done, the teacher may correct it as to the grammar and orthography, and weed out all improper words and substitute others, so that the essay will contain no error. Still, that essay cannot be said to be the teacher's composition-it is the scholar's, or more correctly, the conjoint work of both.
If this is the correct theory of inspiration, then the Bible is a partnership work-neither God's nor man's, but partly both. And this is the popular theory, inspired matter in inspired words adopted, as we have said, to account for the different language and style in which the evangelists relate the same sentence, circumstance, or discourse of the Saviour. This would indeed account for the difference in words and style.
We may have inspired thoughts in uninspired words, as we do in the translations of our Scriptures, but we cannot certainly know that we have the inspired thoughts without knowing the inspired words, for how else can thoughts be known except by the words that convey them? In the language of Carson:
"How can we know the thoughts of an author except by the words of the author? Had the inspired writers been left to themselves as to the choice of words in any part of their writings, they might have made a bad choice, and in adequately or erroneously represented the mind of the Spirit. The best writer that ever moved a quill may often fail in expressing his own sentiments."
Instances might be given in which the most learned writers misstate their own meaning and sometimes convey no meaning at all. Shall the fishermen of Galilee, then, be supposed equal to express themselves with unerring correctness if left to their own phraseology? Let the reader remember that these were rude, uneducated men, taken from the lowest callings of life-from the fishing boats along the lakeshore of Tiberias; and though we grant they were eye and ear-witnesses of all the acts and words of Christ, how could they each and severally relate them in the elegant Greek in which we find their histories?
Take an uneducated laborer and make him familiar with all the facts of English and American history-would he thereby be qualified to write them down in the classic language of a Macaulay or a Bancroft? "He must have a thorough knowledge of the words of the language in which he writes, art to arrange, and, what is still more difficult, a fluency of expression and facility of composition," not one of which an evangelist or apostle possessed. Whence, then, did they obtain their pure speech, their flowing diction and faultless grammer? Unaccustomed to public speaking how came they, with practice, to win, by their first efforts, the name of "Boanerges" - "sons of thunder"?
There is but one way by which to account for it. They wrote and spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, not in the words which man's wisdom taught them, but which the Holy Spirit taught them. We do not conjecture this, we know it. Read these Scriptures.
"But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought therefore what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. - Mark 13:11.
No one believing this can doubt that the Holy Spirit put the very words they were to speak into their mouths. They did not know what they were to speak until after it had been spoken through them by the Holy Spirit.
The apostles so understood the inspiration of the Spirit that it was not simply plenary, but verbal.
"Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual [words]."-I Cor. 2:13.
In this way spoke all whom God ever inspired to speak to us.
"For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God ... " -John 3:34.
Will any opposer of the plenary-verbal theory of inspiration presume to affirm that Peter and Paul did not each retain his own peculiar style when speaking before the Sanhedrin, rulers and kings, as when he wrote his epistles? It is frankly conceded by the most inveterate opposers of verbal inspiration that a large portion of our Scriptures must have been verbally inspired-that all the prophets of the Old Testament, the discourses of Jesus and the Book of Revelation, were verbally inspired. How did David and Isaiah, Daniel and Jeremiah, Zechariah and Amos retain their own peculiar styles when the very words they used were confessedly infused into their minds? But they did retain their several styles, as did the apostles when they spoke before rulers and kings, and therefore we know that verbal inspiration does not destroy the style of the writer or speaker.
"A man does not cease to be himself when God uses him. His powers are not changed, they are merely controlled so as to effect the very purpose, and no other, which God would accomplish. It is as if a musician were to play first upon a flute and then upon a comet; each instrument would give its own sound wholly different from the other, but the breath that makes the sound and the genius that inspires the music is the same. Moses, David, Isaiah, James, Paul, Peter were so many different instruments, though not mechanical instruments, each with personal peculiarities of his own, but all were used by the same God as the media of communicating with men"'- H. H. Tucker.
We close with this additional statement: If it can be shown that God did, in one solitary instance, indite the very words as well as the matter, then we may know that, in this specific way, He made all His revelations to us, and therefore we implicitly rely upon all the words of the sacred Scriptures as right words.
But of this fact can anyone doubt when the Holy Spirit expressly declares it, viz.; "All scripture [all sacred writings] is given by inspiration," etc., it is the writing and not writers that is here declared to be inspired, and what is writing but a collection of words? If the writing is inspired, it is because the sentences and words composing it are inspired-inbreathed by God. So long, then, as this passage remains as an unchallenged portion of God's Word, so long must this be considered a settlement of the whole question of inspiration: All the writing of Holy Scripture is inspired of God.