Three Definitions
Three Definitions
Aware, then, of the importance of our subject and of the disfavor with which many will regard our attempt to defend the uniqueness of the Bible, we shall begin with some definitions. The three great words commonly used by Christians in this connection are “revelation,” “inspiration” and “authority.” They are related but distinct.
The fundamental word is “revelation.” Derived from a Latin noun meaning “unveiling,” it indicates that God has taken the initiative to make himself known. The reasonableness of this concept should be plain. For whoever or whatever God may be, he is altogether beyond our knowledge. “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?” (Job. 11:7). Indeed not. His infinite greatness is veiled from our eyes. We cannot discover him by ourselves. If we are ever to know him, he must make himself known.
The second word “inspiration” indicates the chief mode God has chosen by which to reveal himself. He has revealed himself partly in nature and supremely in Christ, but also by “speaking” to particular people. And it is this process of verbal communication which is called “inspiration.” We do not use it in the general sense that we may say a poet or musician is “inspired.” On the contrary, it has a special and precise connotation, namely that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16)—a phrase translating a single Greek expression, less precisely translated in some versions as “inspired by God.” The meaning, then, is not that God breathed into the writers, nor that he somehow breathed into the writings to give them their special character, but that what was written by men was breathed out by God. He spoke through them. They were his spokesmen.
Further, we do not hesitate to say that this inspiration was “verbal inspiration,” in that it extended to the very words used by the human authors. This is what they claimed. The apostle Paul, for example, could declare that in communicating to others what God had revealed to him, he used “not words taught us by human wisdom but … taught by the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:13). Nor is this in the least surprising, for it is not possible to convey a precise message in any other way than in precise words.
“Authority,” the third word, is the power or weight which Scripture possesses because of what it is, namely a divine revelation given by divine inspiration. If it is a word from God, it has authority over men. For behind every word that anybody utters stands the person who speaks it. It is the speaker himself (his character, knowledge and position) who determines how people regard his words. So God’s Word carries God’s authority. It is because of who he is that we should believe what he has said.
This is the lesson Simon Peter learned when Jesus told him on the lake of Galilee to put out into deep water and let down his nets for a catch. All his fisherman’s expertise, gathered from years of experience, rebelled against the suggestion. He even protested, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.” Yet wisely he added, “But because you say so, I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:4–5).
Our claim, then, is that God has revealed himself by speaking; that this divine (“God-breathed”) speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture; and that Scripture is, in fact, God’s Word written down, which therefore is true and reliable and has divine authority over us.