We have visible evidence that the Bible is a revelation from God. And in the Bible we are told that God gave revelation by inspiration. If the Bible is God’s revelation, it is simply to let him speak for himself of his own nature. therefore, our goal is to seek in this chapter the meaning and nature of inspiration, according to the purpose of the testimony of the Bible.
In the course we follow here, we observe reason in its highest sense; it has been shown that reason requires believing in the existence of God; and it has also been emphasized that it is reasonable to expect a written revelation from God. It is therefore the responsibility of reason, in relation to revelation, first of all to examine the references of communications purporting to be a revelation from God. If these references are satisfactory, then reason must accept communications as coming from God; therefore, it accepts things presented as true. “Revelation is the viceroy who first presents his credentials to the provincial assembly and then presides?(Liebnitz). In the above way, reason itself opens the way to revelation above reason and asks for implicit trust in such revelation when it is given?(Strong).
- The above reason is not against reason.
- It is the cruder rationalism possible that rejects everything that cannot be rationally deepened or demonstrated.
- “The most irrational people in the world are the ones who depend solely on reason.
- In the most limited sense?(Strong).
- The simple reasoning or exercise of logical power Reason.
- In the broadest sense.
- Includes all the mental strength to recognize the truth.
- Reason can only reject precisely what contradicts known facts.
- And then.
- Of course.
- Reason must be conditioned in its activity by a saint Affection and enlightened by the Holy Spirit?(Strong) For the same reason.
- Scripture presents nothing contradictory.
- Although it makes it known far beyond man’s helplessness to fully discover or understand.
When Paul said, “Is all scripture inspired by God?(II Timothy 3:16), used the Greek word “Theopneustos” with the idea of inspiration. The Greek word consists of ‘theos’, meaning God, and ‘throw’, which means breathing. The compound word is an adjective that literally means “breathed by God”. Since it is the breath that produces the word, this word has provided a very appropriate and impressive way of saying that Scripture is the word of God.
However, it is only in special cases that the words to be written have been spoken orally to the authors of the Bible. In most cases, the minds of writers have become the laboratory in which God has converted His breath, so to speak, into human language. It was not made by a mechanical process. The personality and temperament of the writers has not been suspended. These are evident in the writings. Thus we read Gaussen: “By affirming that all Scripture comes from God, are we far from thinking that man is nothing? In the Scriptures, are all the words of man, as well as all the words of God? In a sense, the Epistle to the Romans is a letter from Paul, and in an even greater sense, is the Epistle to the Romans a letter from God? (Theopneustia, a highly approved book by CH Spurgeon). Virile:. ? The divine origin and authority of the Word of God must not be affirmed in a way that excludes or obstructs the reality of human fatherhood and the particularities that flow from it. The Bible is the Word of God to man, in its entirety, but at the same time, it is truly and completely the makeup of a man. No attempt should be made and we certainly won’t do anything to undo or ignore the? Human element? of Scripture, which is unequivocally very apparent, no one should want to enlarge the divine to the point of eliminating it, in part or in whole. This is one of the mistakes honest men make. [The following quote is too much for the point here 😕 At times, it may be frankly admitted, zeal for divine authority and the infallibility of Scripture may have led to untenable theories and modes of expression, which have clouded the truth. To say, for example, that the writers were only passive instruments in the hands of the Spirit, or in the best of the Anuenses written in the saying, to adopt, in other words, the theory of mechanics, is unjustified and malicious. . Isn’t this part of the doctrine and has it never been done in general? (New Bible Guide, Urquhart, vol. 8, page 175). ] May both be admitted, acknowledged, accepted with gratitude and joy, each helping to make the Bible more fully adapted to human needs as an instrument of divine grace , and guidance for weak and wandering human souls. The word does not belong to man, as to its origin, nor does it depend on man, as to his authority. It is by and by man as his means; not only as the channel through which it flows, like water through a lifeless tube, but through man as an active voluntary agent, and intelligent in his communication. Both sides of the truth are expressed in biblical language: “The holy men of God spoke inspired (commissioned) by the Holy Spirit. ? (2 Peter 1:21) Have men spoken, impetus and direction come from God? (The biblical doctrine of inspiration). “The Scriptures contain a human being as well as a divine element, so while it constitutes an infallible body of truth, is this truth molded in human molds and adapted to ordinary human intelligence? (Strong)
The human element in the Bible does not affect its infallibility, just as the human nature of Christ has not affected its infallibility. Inspiration was miraculously fulfilled just as Christ’s virgin birth was performed by miracle, and just as men are miraculously led to repentance. Repentance and faith are voluntary acts of man, but because they are fulfilled in him by the Holy Ghost, God fulfilled the miracle of inspiration by providentially preparing writers for their work and thus revealing their truth to them and allowing them to guide them. and by creating them in this way, recording how to give us through them an accurate and complete transmission of all that He wanted to reveal.
“Although the Holy Ghost did not choose words for writers, is it obvious that he did so through writers?(Bancroft, elementary theology).
The miraculous element of inspiration, of course, cannot be explained, and we have no desire for man to explain it. But to some extent, at least, we can discern from the scriptures the methods God used to inspire us. A study of the methods used should enhance our appreciation of inspiration.
Sometimes a direct and oral revelation was given to be written, as was the case with the presentation of the Mosaic Law (Exodus 20:1) and as was sometimes the case with other writers (Daniel 9:21-23; Revelation 17). : 7).
In other cases, there was a supernatural vision with or without interpretation of it, as was the case with Joo on the island of Patmos.
At other times, when there is no evidence of an external revelation of any kind, the writers were so conscientious and passively touched by the Holy Ghost that they were known to ignore the impact of what they wrote, as was the case with the prophets when they wrote. wrote about Christ (1 Peter 1:10).
Sometimes writers have received such divine enlightenment that it allows them to understand and apply the truth contained in previous revelations, but not entirely clear from them; as was the case with New Testament writers in the interpretation and application of the Scriptures of the Old Testament (Acts 1:16, 17, 20; 2:16-21; Romans 4: 1-3; 10: 5-11).
In some cases, writers were simply guided and sustained in such a way that they infallibly remembered historical facts according to God’s pleasure in making them, that these facts were personally known to them, or obtained from others, or revealed supernaturally. timely examples here.
On other occasions, the truth was revealed through writers through such acceleration and deepening of their own thinking that it allowed them to perceive and record the new truth infallibly, as Paul seems to have been the case in many of his epistles.
In general, we can say that the process of inspiration consisted of forms and influences that God wanted to use, depending on the circumstances, in order to give us a divine, complete and infallible revelation of all the religious truth we need in this life. Or we can say with AH Strong: “By the inspiration of the scriptures, we hear this special divine influence on the minds of sacred writers under which their productions, apart from transcription errors, when interpreted correctly, together constitute a rule of faith and practice. . infallible and sufficient ?.
We will see that verbal inspiration is involved in what we have already said; but, as has also been said, it does not destroy the human element in the scriptures. Scripture is all the Word of God; however, it is also the word of man. Do writers differ in temperament, language, and style, differences that are clearly manifested in their writings, even though their productions are so true and completely the Word of God?like any oral expression of Jesus.
To prove that the Bible is inspired by words and not just thoughts, we draw attention to the following evidence:
We are told that the scriptures are inspired. Scripture consists of written words, so of course we have verbal inspiration.
In 1 Corinthians 2:13, referring to the things he knew through the Holy Ghost, he said, “What are we talking about, not with the words taught by human wisdom, but with those taught by the Holy Ghost?”statement from Paul that he did not leave himself to his fate in choosing words. [Some accuse that in Acts 23:5, 1 Corinthians 7:10. 12, Paul admits the lack of inspiration. In Acts 23:5, Paul says of the High Priest: “I did not know, brethren, that I was the High Priest. “This “is explained as much as the language of outraged irony: “I would not recognize such a man as high priest”; or, more naturally, as a common confession of personal ignorance and fallibility, what does not affect the inspiration of any of Paul’s final teachings or writings?(Strong). Inspiration does not mean that biblical writers have always been infallible in their judgment or impeccable in life, but that as god’s official teachers and interpreters, they have been kept away from error.
In the passages from the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul says in the case of a commandment: “I command, but not me, but the Lord”; While in the case of other commandments, he says, “I speak of others, not the Lord. “But notice that at the end of the last series of exhortations, he says, “Do I think?Do I have the Spirit of God? (1 Corinthians 7:40) So paul here distinguishes not between his own and inspired commandments, but between those who derive from his own subjectivity (inspired by God) and those that Christ Himself provided by his objective word?( Meyer, in Crazy). ]
In 2 Peter 3:1, 2, 15, 16, Peter puts his own writings and those of other Apostles according to the scriptures of the Old Testament, and because Peter believed that the scriptures of the Old Testament were verbally inspired (Acts 1: 16), it is followed that he considered his writings and those of the other Apostles to be verbally inspired. [The question can be posed as Peter’s concealment in Antioch, where one has a “practical denial of his convictions, separating onese from pagan Christians (Gal 2:11-13)?(Strong). Here, it was not public education, but the influence of the particular example. But neither in this case nor in the previous one (Acts 23:5), God allowed the error to be established. Through Paul’s work, does the Holy Ghost define the law?(Strong)]
The Jews had superstitious respect for the very letter of Scripture; Therefore, it is certain that pious Jews, if left to their fate, would be extremely careful in quoting the scriptures as written; But there are 263 direct quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament, and of these, according to Horne, eighty-eight are verbal quotations from the Seventy, sixty-four of which were borrowed from them; thirty-seven have the same meaning, but different words; sixteen are more in tune with Hebrew, and twenty differ from both Hebrew and the seventies. All New Testament writers except Luke were Jews, but they do not write as Jews. What might this explain if you had no knowledge of His divine healing for every word you wrote?Some good examples of Old Testament quotes by New Testament writers, where a new meaning is placed where the quotations are in Rom. 4: 6. 7, which is a quote from Psalms 32:1 and Rom. 10:6-8, which is a quote from Deuteronomy 30: 11-14
See the revised version of Mt. 1:22 and 2:15
In this place, Paul bases an argument on the singular number of the word “seed” on God’s promise to Abraham.
The passages that prove this are too numerous to mention.
A study of the fulfilled prophecy will convince any enlightened person that the prophets were necessarily inspired by the same words they uttered; otherwise, they could not have predicted that they knew very little.
Jesus said, “Can’t you undo the scriptures?” (John 10:35), which means that the meaning of the scriptures cannot be loosened or destroyed. Meaning and truth depend on words for expression. The foolproof meaning is impossible without foolproof words.
Author: Thomas Paul Simmons, D. Th
Digitization: Daniela Cristina Caetano Pereira dos Santos, 2004
Review: Charity D. Gardner and Calvin G Gardner, 4/5
Translation and grammatical review: Viviane Sena 2010