Three Disclaimers
Three Disclaimers
It seems necessary now to add to these definitions certain disclaimers which may anticipate objections and disarm possible criticism.
First, the process of inspiration was not a mechanical one. God did not treat the human authors of Scripture as dictating machines or tape recorders, but as living and responsible persons. Sometimes he spoke to them in dreams and visions, sometimes by an audible voice, sometimes by angels. At other times we are not told how the word of God came to them. They may well not have been conscious of it at all. Thus in the case of Luke the evangelist divine inspiration was certainly not incompatible with human research, for he tells us in the preface to his Gospel about the painstaking enquiries he had pursued. Whatever means of communication God employed in speaking to men, it never obliterated their own personality. On the contrary, as they wrote, their literary style and vocabulary were their own. So too—more important still—was their theme. It is not an accident that Amos was the prophet of God’s justice, Hosea of his love and Isaiah of his kingly sovereignty, nor that Paul was the apostle of grace and faith, James of works, John of love and Peter of hope. The internal evidence, gathered from reading the biblical text, is that God made full use of the personality, temperament, background and experience of the biblical authors, in order to convey through each an appropriate and distinctive message.
So, then, Scripture is equally the word of God and the word of men. This is, indeed, how it describes itself. If it is true that “the mouth of the LORD has spoken” (for example, Isa. 1:20), it is also true that God spoke “through his holy prophets” (for example, Acts 3:21). Similarly, “God spoke … through the prophets” (Heb. 1:1), and “men spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21). Again, the law could be described by one author in a single passage both as “the Law of Moses” and as “the Law of the Lord” (Luke 2:22–23).
The dual authorship of Scripture is an important truth to be carefully guarded. On the one hand, God spoke, revealing the truth and preserving the human authors from error, yet without violating their personality. On the other hand, men spoke, using their own faculties freely, yet without distorting the divine message. Their words were truly their own words. But they were (and still are) also God’s words, so that what Scripture says, God says.
My second disclaimer is that, although Scripture as God’s Word is true, this does not mean—to quote a common claim—that “every word of the Bible is literally true.” Such a statement would need to be qualified in several ways. Although I am here trespassing slightly upon what I shall write in the next chapter about biblical interpretation, I think I need to say something about it here.
To begin with, every word of the Bible is true only in its context. Isolated from its context, it may be quite untrue. The best example of what I mean is the Book of Job, the bulk of which consists of a dialogue between the grief-stricken Job and his three “comforters,” together with a fourth who appears later. This part occupies chapters 1–37. Then God reveals himself to Job in chapters 38–42. Some of what Job and his comforters say about suffering in the first thirty-seven chapters is mistaken. It is recorded in order to be contradicted, not in order to be believed. We are told so at the end of the book when Job says to God, “I spoke of things I did not understand,” and God says to Job’s comforters “you have not spoken of me what is right” (Job 42:3, 7). It would be quite impossible, therefore, to take any verse from the Book of Job and say “this is the word of God,” for it may not be. The book as a whole is God’s Word, but the first thirty-seven chapters can be understood only in the light of the last five.
The key principle, already mentioned in chapter 2 and to be further elaborated in the next chapter, was well expressed in the Lausanne Covenant (1974), namely that Scripture is “without error in all that it affirms.” This phrase indicates that not everything contained in the Bible is affirmed by the Bible (as we have seen in the Book of Job). It then adds that whatever is affirmed by Scripture is true and without error, because its affirmations are God’s. This vital principle has not always been apparent in the so-called “inerrancy debate” in the United States. We should be able to agree that whatever Scripture affirms is true, whether in the field of religion or ethics, history or science, its own nature or origins. But this leaves the major question of interpretation: precisely what is the Bible affirming in these areas?
Then again much of Scripture is deliberately presented in a highly figurative manner. Thus, there are many “anthropomorphic” descriptions of God, representing him in human form, and referring to his eyes and ears, his “outstretched arm,” “mighty hand” and fingers, his mouth, his breath and his nostrils. We do not interpret these literally for the simple reason that “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and therefore has no body. So when we read that “the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chron. 16:9), we do not try to visualize a pair of divine eyes literally running about over the earth’s surface, but understand, rather, that God sees everyone everywhere and is always ready to save and to strengthen those who trust in him. In the same way, when we read of people hiding under his “wings,” we do not picture him as a bird with feathers, but learn that he protects those who take refuge in him.
Similarly, when the psalmist writes that the sun comes forth “like a bridegroom … from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course,” and when he goes on to refer to the sun’s “rising” and “circuit” from one end of the heavens to the other (Ps. 19:1–6), he does not commit us to a pre-Copernican view of the solar system. For he is evidently describing the sun’s resplendent magnificence both in poetic imagery and from the point of view of an earthbound observer. Even sophisticated technocrats of the 1980s can wax eloquent about the sun, and can talk of its “rising” and “setting.” They do not need to apologize for doing so. People recognize that they are using the language of poetry, and of ordinary observations, not of science.
The third disclaimer I would make concerns what the inspired text of Scripture is, which alone can be regarded as God’s Word written. This is the original Hebrew or Greek text as it came from the authors’ hands. We claim no special inspiration or authority for any particular translation as a translation—whether ancient Latin or modern English, nor indeed for any particular interpretation.
It is true that no actual autograph has survived. Their loss is presumably due to a deliberate providence of God, which may have been to prevent us giving superstitious reverence to pieces of paper. Nevertheless, we know something of the scrupulous care with which scribes copied the sacred Hebrew text, and the same would have been true of the New Testament documents. Further, we possess a great many more early copies of the original text than of any other ancient literature. By comparing these with each other, with the early “versions” (that is, translations) and with biblical quotations in the writings of the church fathers, scholars (called “textual critics”) have been able to establish the authentic text (especially of the New Testament) beyond any reasonable doubt. The uncertainties which remain are almost entirely trivial; no doctrine of any importance hangs upon them.
So far I have tried to clear the ground by indicating both what we do and what we do not claim for the Bible. It is time to ask on what grounds we base our assurance that it is God’s Word written, originating with God and authoritative for men. Many different answers have been given. I will touch on the first three briefly and concentrate on the fourth and decisive argument.