Inspiration
Charles
Ryrie defines inspiration as “…God’s
superintendence of the human authors so that, using their own individual
personalities, they composed and recorded without error His revelation to man
in the words of the original autographs.”[1]
Benjamin
Warfield writes, “Inspiration is,
therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred
writers by the Spirit of God, by virtue of which their writings are given
Divine trustworthiness.”[2]
J.
Vernon McGee states, “Inspiration
guarantees what God has said—that it is reliable, it is accurate, and it is
without error.”[3]
Paul
said in 2 Timothy 3:16 that “All
Scripture is God-breathed…,” meaning, the Bible is inspired. Several points
should be noted here concerning inspiration:
(1) Inspiration
is a supernatural superintendence of the Holy Spirit (superintendence is the
Spirit’s supernatural work of inspiration).
(2)
It relates to the original autographs.
(3)
It is verbal and plenary. Verbal means that all the Bible, the Scriptures in
their entirety are fully inspired. Plenary means that every part of the Bible
is inspired. In other words, divine inspiration extends down to the very words
and letters and to every part of the Scriptures. Not only did Paul affirm this
but so did Peter (2 Pet. 1:21 )
and Christ (Matt. 5:17 -18;
22:22 -23; John 10:31 -38).
(4)
It involves divine and human (dual) authorship.
Inspiration
leads us to the conclusion that the Bible is completely authoritative and
trustworthy and that as far Christians are concerned, learning and living it
should be our highest priority.
Inerrancy
When
we say that the Bible is inerrant, we are saying that it is without error in
what it affirms, that is free from error. Paul Feinberg states, “When all the facts become known, they will
demonstrate that the Bible in its original autographs and correctly interpreted
is entirely true and never false in all it affirms, whether that relates to
doctrine or ethics or to the social, physical, or life sciences.”[4]
Robert
Lightner writes, “When applied to
Scripture inerrancy means that the original documents were without error. If
assertions are God-breathed, they must be without error, otherwise God would be
guilty of asserting error…To believe the Bible is inerrant is to believe it
does not lie in anything it affirms.”[5]
What
inerrancy affirms is that the Bible is completely and perfectly accurate, inspiration
and inerrancy go together. Inspiration has to do with the divine origin and
process of writing the Bible, while inerrancy, with the result or product of
that inspiration, namely, an error free Bible.
A
couple of other things need to be mentioned here:
(1) If
we are referring to the original autographs when we speak of inerrancy, what
about modern translations? Well, based on all the manuscript evidence extant
today, we can safely conclude that what we hold in our hands today, although
not the originals, they as faithful to the originals as we can get. How has
that been achieved? Because not only is God the One who authored Scripture, He
is the One who preserves it as well.
(2)
The cost of rejecting inerrancy is extremely high. Historically, those who
rejected inerrancy ended up without failure rejecting many other of the
fundamental doctrines of the faith. It is usually the first step in the
rejection of orthodox Christianity.
Canonicity
Floyd
Barackman writes, “Canonicity concerns
the right of any literature to be accepted as the Word of God. Canon refers,
one, to the standard that a literary work must meet before it is recognized by
God’s people as Scripture and, two, to the collection of books that meet this
standard.”[6]
Paul Enns
states, “The word canon is used to
describe the inspired books…The terms ‘canon’ and ‘canonical’ thus came to
signify standards by which books were measured to determine whether or not they
were inspired. It is important to note that religious councils at no time had
any power to cause books to be inspired, rather they simply recognized that
which God had inspired at the exact moment the books were written.”[7]
When
we speak of the canon of Scripture, we are speaking of the sixty-six books of
the Bible, thirty-nine books in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New.
The Apocryphal books had never been recognized as inspired nor accepted as
canonical neither by the Jews nor by conservative Christians. None of these books
are quoted in the New Testament nor were they in the canon Christ accepted. The
Apocryphal books contain errors (historical, geographical, doctrinal, etc.) and
in some cases they contradict canonical books. Concerning the inclusion and
exclusion of books in the Bible, McGee states, “But I do insist that the inclusion of certain books in the Bible, as
well as the exclusion of other books, was inspired by the Holy Spirit.”[8] By
about 360 A.D., the Church had recognized the twenty-seven books of the New
Testament as inspired and canonical. It is important to note that no one
individual or group of individuals decided what books would be part of the
canon, the Holy Spirit had already determined that, the Church simply
recognized what the Spirit had determined.
The Necessity and Sufficiency of Scripture
It is
imperative that all people, but particularly Christians understand why
revelation is necessary. Without revelation, we would not know what is
necessary to become a Christian, we would not know how to grow or even live our
lives as Christians. Without revelation we would never come to know God
personally, we would never be able to know that our sins can and/or have been
forgiven, we would never be able to know what God’s will is or His expectations
are for our lives.
Biblical
Christianity has always held that the Bible is the sole rule or authority for
faith and practice in the life of the believer. Why? Because the Bible alone
contains the words of God, all the words that we need for becoming, growing,
and living as Christians. Scripture is the only place we need to go to, in
fact, it is the only place we can go to when we are searching for God and want to
know what He wants to say to us.
[1] Charles C.
Ryrie, A Survey of Bible Doctrine
(Chicago: Moody, 1972), p. 38.
[2] Benjamin B.
Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority
of the Bible (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948), p. 131.
[3] J. Vernon McGee, p. 11.
[4] Paul D.
Feinberg, in Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical
Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), p. 142.
[5] Robert P.
Lightner, Evangelical Theology (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1986), p. 12.
[6] Floyd H.
Barackman, Practical Christian Theology Grand
Rapids: Kregel, 2001), p. 32.
[7] Paul Enns, The Moody
Handbook of Theology (Chicago: Moody, 1989), p.170.
[8] McGee, p. 10.
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