I need scarcely say that this divine element is the great subject of modern controversy. But I hope we may meet the points more especially agitated, by considering four questions.
I. Does it extend over the whole book?
II. Is it equal?
III. Is it verbal?
IV. Does it render the word infallible?
I. Does it extend over the whole book?
Our first inquiry, then, must relate to the area covered by it; or, in other words, to the question, Is the whole inspired? Were all the writers of Scripture thus moved by the Holy Ghost? or merely some of them, and those in certain books only?
Now, taking the language of St. Paul in 2 Tim. iii. 16, as our guide, we have a clear and decisive answer; for it is here written, ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.’ It is stated by Dr. Lee [8] that the word ‘Scripture’ occurs either in the singular or plural no less than fifty times, and in every single instance it is employed solely with reference to that collection of writings which were regarded as the oracles of God. Everything therefore included in that collection is here declared to be ?e?p?e?st??, or given by inspiration.
The only possible question therefore is, How much was included?
Now, whatever men may think of the doctrine of inspiration, all must admit as an historical fact, that when St. Paul wrote these words, the whole of the Old Testament was included in the Jewish canon. The Jews, notwithstanding all their faults, were admirable guardians of Scripture, and there was no doubt in the mind of any pious Jew as to what books together formed his Bible. He was much clearer on that subject than many of our modern writers. When therefore St. Paul spoke of ‘All Scripture,’ there is no doubt in the world that he included in his statement every line and letter of the Old Testament, and he taught us in those words that the whole, from first to last, from the first of Genesis to the last of Malachi was given by inspiration of God.
In saying this, I make no exception whatever with reference to the historical books. I think it has been clearly shown that those historical writings which are not in the Pentateuch are included in that part of Scripture called the Prophets. In which case the language of St. Peter, already quoted, refers to history as well as prediction. Nay, more! I do not hesitate to say, that if I were called upon to prove inspiration, there is no portion of the whole volume on which I should be better pleased to meet an opponent than the historical portions of the Old Testament. So strong is the argument in their favour, that although by so saying I may startle some, I am prepared, after the most careful deliberation, to affirm that I cannot separate them from the word of God without at the same time abandoning the whole of my Christianity. My reason for this statement is, that our Lord Himself in His own teaching has most distinctly sanctioned them. Men cavil at the strange miracles recorded in them, but, while men cavil, He refers to no less than nine of these miracles as facts. The flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the death of Lot’s wife, the burning bush, the manna, the brazen serpent, the cure of Naaman, the preservation of the widow of Sarepta, and the rescue of Jonah, are all endorsed by His divine authority. To the books of Moses, which are chiefly historical, He perpetually refers as to the word of God, describing their testimony as more worthy of credit than that of men risen from the dead. And as for the much-despised first chapter of the book of Genesis, the speculation, as we are now taught, of some ancient Hebrew Descartes, He actually quotes the 27th verse as descriptive of the fact of creation. I am brought therefore to the conclusion that if there is any portion of the whole volume which may pre-eminently be said to have the broad seal and stamp of our Lord’s authority placed upon it with His own hand, that portion is the Pentateuch. All, therefore, I am thoroughly persuaded, must rise and fall together. If we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we must receive the books of Moses as inspired Scripture; and never can we abandon them till we are prepared to admit that in His own sacred teaching the Lord Himself has misled His people, or, in other and plainer words, till we cease to be believers in Jesus.
But are we to limit this language of St. Paul to the Old Testament? I think it has been clearly shown that we are not. For although the canon of the New Testament was not complete when St. Paul wrote these words, we must remember that the second Epistle to Timothy was one of the latest epistles, and that, according to Horne’s list, the whole of the New Testament, or very nearly the whole, except the writings of St. John, were written at or about the time of its publication. The only question is, whether these writings were then regarded as Scripture: for, if they were, they were clearly included in the declaration that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Now, one thing is perfectly clear, namely, that St. Paul claimed the authority of Scripture for his own epistles: for after having carefully drawn the distinction between his private opinions and inspired decisions, he distinctly says, ‘Yet not I, but the Lord’ (1 Cor. vii. 10). It is equally clear that St. Peter classed the apostles with the prophets, 2 Pet. iii. 2. It is equally clear again, that the Gospel of St. Luke was already admitted as Scripture, for in 1 Tim. v. 18, St. Paul quotes two passages, one from Deuteronomy and one from St. Luke, declaring of both equally that they were taken from Scripture. ‘For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.’ (Deut. xxv. 4; Luke, x. 7.) It is equally clear again, that St. Paul’s Epistles were included by St. Peter in the canon; for he clearly regarded them as Scripture when he wrote his second epistle. He saw some difficulties in them, but that did not affect his opinion of their admitted inspiration, when he said (2 Pet. iii. 15, 16), ‘Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.’
New Testament therefore, as well as Old, was included in the declaration, ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God;’ and the conclusion to which I am irresistibly brought is, that we have no right to pick and choose amongst the various portions of the word of God. I believe the whole to be arranged as a whole for the accomplishment of God’s great purpose, that the whole is included in ‘the Scriptures,’ and that the parts are so interwoven one with another, and so beautifully fitted into each other by God’s divine hand, that there will be found ultimately to be no intermediate path between receiving the whole as the word of God, or sweeping away the whole, and launching forth on a sea of scepticism, without a Bible, without a Saviour, and, as the last step, without a God.
II. Is it equal?
I need scarcely say that many persons, and some of them most excellent men, have entertained the idea of a graduated scale of inspiration, and hence the great importance of the question. Is it equal throughout? Or is it variable?
In attempting an answer to this question, it is essential that we observe the wide distinction between the authorship and the subject-matter of the book, for, if not, we shall soon get into confusion.
Now Christian brethren must not be startled by my stating that in the subject-matter there are the widest possible distinctions. It appears indeed to consist of three distinct classes of subjects, or rather three distinct kinds of matter.
In the first place, there are direct communications, communicated from heaven without the use of the mind of man. Of this class are the ten commandments, the words, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ and the discourses of our Lord. Such words were not given by inspiration, for they did not pass through the medium of the human mind, but came direct from heaven. In them there was no inspiration, but communication.
There is a second large class of passages which were given by inspiration. The human mind was employed as the medium for conveying God’s will and purpose. This was the case with the prophets, the Psalms, and other similar passages. Here was inspiration, and the words so uttered were divine words, though given through the human medium, and not in direct communication.
But there is a third large class of passages in which there is neither inspiration nor communication. There are various sayings and doings of uninspired men, good actions and bad actions, good words and bad words, interspersed with miracles and other wonders of God’s hand. Now no one supposes that all these persons spoke by inspiration, and it is utterly unfair to quote such passages as inconsistent with the inspiration of Scripture, for no one asserts that they are inspired. It is utterly unfair, for example, of Mr. Coleridge to quote the language of Job’s friends, and to attack the inspiration of the book by the assertion that it is impossible to believe them to be inspired. Of course it is, for, if we believed them to be inspired, we should be flying in the face of the inspired book itself which records the divine communication, ‘Ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right’ (Job, xlii. 7.) We do not claim inspiration for those words, but for the authorship of the book which declares that the speakers spoke those words, and that in doing so they were wrong.
In the subject-matter then we have three divisions, direct communications, inspired writings, and the miscellaneous sayings and doings of uninspired men. But in addition to this there is the question of authorship, which is clearly totally distinct from the matter, and it is the inspiration of the author which makes the book the word of God. Whatever the matter be if the author is inspired the book becomes inspired scripture. The sayings of uninspired men may be put on record by an inspired author, and our Heavenly Father may have shown just as much mercy in directing His prophets to record the sins of bad men for our warning, as the actions of His chosen servants for our guidance and encouragement. Now, so far as the authorship is concerned, we find no distinction whatever. All alike is called ‘Scripture;’ all ‘the word of God;’ all is included in the statement, ‘Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scripture might have hope;’ and all is stamped by divine authority in the words, ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God.’
III. Is it verbal?
I am now approaching a difficult subject, and I should be sorry to speak rashly. But at the same time, I must not speak with hesitation, for the more I have studied the subject the more firmly am I brought to the deliberate and fixed conviction that the whole book, including words as well as thoughts, is to be received by the believer as the word of God. Let me briefly state my reasons.
1. I can draw no other conclusion from the title given to it, viz. ‘The word of God.’ When I find it especially mentioned as God’s word; when I meet with such a passage as ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,’ I find it hard to believe that the words are not included in the act of inspiration, and that the divine inspiration extends no farther than to the thoughts. If the expression were ‘the truth of God,’ or ‘the will of God,’ I could understand a reference to His mind without the necessity of applying inspiration to the language; but I cannot exclude the idea of inspired words from that book whose title is ‘the word of God.’
2. I find certain quotations, the whole value of which entirely depends on verbal accuracy. In Gal. iii. 16, St. Paul quotes from Gen. xii. 7, and his whole argument turns on the distinction between the singular and plural number in one word contained in the promise made to Abraham: ‘He saith not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.’ So in Matt. xxii. 32, our Lord quotes the words spoken to Moses in Exod. iii. 6, and rests his whole argument on the present tense of the substantive verb: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,’ proving by that present tense that Abraham was at that time an existing person awaiting the resurrection. It may perhaps be said that both these instances occur in direct divine communications; but we must remember that we have to consider the inspiration of Moses who recorded that communication, and surely the quotation proves that the historical inspiration of the author might be trusted for verbal accuracy.
3. There are many passages in which the words are quoted quite independently of the thoughts of the context. As an illustration, refer to our Lord’s quotation of Isa. lvi. 7. The whole of that passage refers simply to the admission of the sons of the stranger into the covenant. The emphatic words of the prophecy are ‘for all people,’ and the one idea of the context is the admission of all people to the covenant. But, in unfolding this truth, the prophet was led to express the prophecy in the words, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer;’ and this expression our Lord extracts from the prophecy, and makes it the groundwork of His stern rebuke when He cleared the temple.
4. Once more. It seems perfectly clear that the prophets in many cases did not understand their own writings. We are sometimes told that we must only understand the prophecies as the prophets themselves did. But if we were to act on that rule, it must follow that in many cases we could not understand them at all; for we know, in fact, that Daniel had to pray for an understanding of the prophecy just conveyed through his own lips, and we are distinctly taught by St. Peter that the prophets inquired and searched diligently into the meaning of their own prophecies. (1 Pet. i. 11.) ‘Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.’ This also I have no doubt is the meaning of the expression, ‘No prophecy is of any private interpretation’ (2 Pet. i. 20), ?d?a? ?p???se?? ?? ???eta?, ‘Has not arisen out of private interpretation,’ and is not the result of the writer’s own thoughts, ‘but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’ But, if this were the case, the whole prophecy must depend on verbal accuracy. If they were employed to speak words which had a certain deep, hidden meaning, unknown to themselves, and intended by God to remain unknown until their meaning should be made manifest by fulfilment at the coming of the Lord, surely we must admit that it was the words and not the thoughts which God inspired. The thoughts were actually withheld from the prophets, but they were moved to utter words which required events then unknown to bring out their true meaning.
5. But it may be said that this applies to the predictive portions of Scripture only, and not to the historical. It possibly may, and the last argument clearly does. But have we any thing to lead us to suppose that there is one kind of inspiration for the predictive, and another for the historical portions? Are they not all spoken of as one book? Are not many of these verbal quotations included in the historical portions, as e.g. the promise made to Abraham? Unless, therefore, it can be proved to me that there is such a distinction drawn by divine authority, I feel it my privilege to regard the whole as one, to receive the whole with equal reverence, and to accept the whole, prediction, psalm, history, facts, thoughts, and words, as the inspired Word of the living God.
But after some measure of careful study, I have been led to the conviction that the question of verbal inspiration is not the one really at issue. For no one believes that, if there be any inaccuracy, it took place in the words only. It must have taken place in the thoughts, in the matter, in the facts. If, e.g., there is a variation between St. Matthew and St. Luke, no one supposes that they meant to convey the same thoughts, but made a mistake in accidentally selecting different words. The real point of the controversy is the infallible accuracy of the matter. And this leads to my last question.
IV. Is it infallible?
On the answer to this question must depend our confidence in Scripture. Some excellent men tell us it is infallible in so far as divine truth is involved. But I freely confess that this does not satisfy my own mind. I do not like that limitation. I am prepared to receive the whole book as invested with infallible accuracy from God Himself, and in taking this view of the subject, I feel the great satisfaction of believing that I am in harmony with the mind of St. Paul, St. Peter, and our great Head Himself.For St. Paul’s mind, I would refer to his words in Acts, xxviii. 25, and Heb. x. 15. In the Acts he is quoting from Isaiah, and says, ‘Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet,’ and in the Hebrews he is quoting from the prophet Jeremiah; but instead of saying, ‘whereof Jeremiah is a witness to us,’ he says, without mentioning Jeremiah, ‘Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us,’ taking the word, as it were, out of the hands of fallible man, and placing it in those of the infallible Spirit. These passages place inspiration on an equal footing with direct communication. But if inspired writings were spoken of as the actual words of the Holy Ghost just as much as if they had been direct communications; if inspiration was of such a character as to render the words the words of the Spirit Himself, can we believe that those words were capable of error?For St. Peter’s testimony, I would refer to his language in 2 Pet. i. 19, in the context of which passage he is assuring his hearers that he had not followed cunningly devised fables. And now mark the threefold evidence which he produces. First, there is vision, ‘We were eye-witnesses of his majesty.’ Secondly, there is hearing, ‘The voice from heaven we heard.’ But lastly, there is an evidence more clear, more true, more trustworthy, than either the sight of his own eyes, or the hearing of his own ears. That evidence is Scripture. ‘We have also a more sure word of prophecy.’
For the testimony of our Lord Himself, refer to two passages, the one referring to a nice point in a quotation from the Psalms, John, x. 35; the other to the whole word in its sanctifying power, John, xvii. 17. Now what is His language? In the one, ‘The scripture cannot be broken.’ In the other, ‘Thy word is truth.’
With these statements of our blessed Lord, I am content to leave this portion of our subject. In these words of Scripture, I believe that God Himself has spoken to man, and therefore in the midst of all the world’s disappointments, and in all the failures of even the Church of God, we have here that on which the soul may calmly, peacefully, and fearlessly repose. And whether we look at history or prediction, at promises or judgments, at prophecies understood by those who uttered them, or language veiled in mystery until the divine purpose is developed in history, we receive the whole as inviolable truth, for all has the stamp of the Spirit Himself, and all is given by inspiration of God. We receive it, we honour it, we submit to it, we acknowledge its divine authority, and welcome with heartfelt thanksgiving its infallible promises. Yes, we receive it not merely with the deepest conviction of our most deliberate judgment: but we welcome it to our soul with all the deep feelings of a thankful heart, and say with the inspired Psalmist, ‘Thy word is very pure, therefore thy servant loveth it.’
