All About the Bible
6 - The Inspiration of the Bible
The Bible is God's word to mankind. It contains His self-revelation so we can know what He is like and what He requires of us. It is the truth of inspiration that gives the Bible its authority. God speaks as we read its pages. What do we mean when we speak of inspiration? By inspiration we mean that work of the Holy Spirit where He moves the writers so what they write is God's words to mankind. He does this whilst at the same time preserving the human writers’ personality, mode of expression and vocabulary.
There are two key verses of Scripture that reveal how this is done. The first is 2 Timothy 3:16. We read, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching". In historical context this verse speaks of the Old Testament. It might be more accurate to speak about expiration then inspiration. The word breathes out from God in the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is all His work. The breath of God refers to the Spirit of God. It’s used often as a metaphor in the Old Testament of God's action. We read in Psalm 33:6, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth". Just as the breath of God created the world so it formed the Bible. So the Bible is of divine origin. The word "All" suggests that every part of the Bible is the result of divine inspiration. This includes narrative portions of Scripture, the poetic books, the history and the wisdom literature. All these literary forms were included and all were inspired.
The next verse of Scripture that throws light on the nature of inspiration is 2 Peter 1:21. We read, "For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit". The Bible was never man’s idea. How could man ever conceive of the holy and righteous God discovered in the pages of Scripture, a God who is so contrary to man’s own nature. How could he begin to imagine such a God full of glory and majesty with a mind so darkened by self and sin? So Scripture didn’t have its source in the minds and will of men. It did not arise out of a man’s own reflections. They "spoke from God". As they wrote they communicated what God wanted to have written down. The words "carried along" translate a Greek word that describes the motion of a ship driven along by the wind. Human authors were employed in the writing of Scripture, but the initiative, leading and inspiring was from God himself who "drove them along" with the wind of His breath.
There have been a number of attempts to explain how God worked with men in the production of the Bible. Some hold to the dictation view which holds that the writers of Scripture were no more than human keyboards. But the Bible says in 2 Peter 1:21, "Men spoke..." Jesus said in Mark 7:6, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites". Luke gives the reason for writing his gospel. He says in Luke 1:3, "it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account". Clearly divine inspiration didn’t override human freedom of expression.
Another explanation is the accommodation view. Some scholars say that the Bible is full of errors. But this is all right, they say, because God simply chose to accommodate himself to the limitations of the writers. Faults are inevitable. This contradicts the Bible’s own view of its origin when it says that men were "carried along by the Holy Spirit". God ensured the accuracy of His own word through human authorship.
The most satisfactory view is that of God's providential control in the process of inspiration. God supervised everything relating to the writing of the Bible including the writers’ background, circumstances, and character. Whenever they wrote down events they saw or were involved in, their thoughts on a given theme, poems, sermons, letters, and observations were the product of the writers in every way, but they were also the very word of God. The writers addressed particular issues and circumstances relevant to them, but at the same time they wrote God's word to every generation. This is what is meant when we read that the men of God were "carried along". They each had their own unique personality and character shaped by God in their journey of life, which was then moved on by the Holy Spirit, so the final product of their writing was exactly what God wanted to say.
There are two implications to the divine inspiration of the Bible. Inspiration is both verbal and plenary. Verbal inspiration means that every word is inspired by God not simply the ideas. When Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that "All scripture is God-breathed" he means every single word is God-breathed not only the ideas behind them. Plenary Inspiration means that all of the scripture in the whole of the Bible in all its parts is inspired. We do not say that the Bible contains the word of God, but that the Bible is the word of God. When it’s said that the Bible contains the word of God it implies some of it isn’t inspired. No, inspiration is plenary; it encompasses the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
So we see that the Bible is no ordinary book, it is the very word of God to us all.