2 Timothy 3:16

WHAT INSPIRATION IS NOT

‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.’

2 Timothy 3:16

Can we believe the Bible? Such a question may sound childish, or something worse. But it has become necessary to discuss it.

I. The mode of inspiration is beyond human definition.—For seventeen centuries, at least, the Church of Christ deliberately refrained from defining it. And she showed her wisdom in refraining. The attempts of later days to distinguish between ‘the inspiration of superintendence,’ ‘the inspiration of elevation,’ ‘the inspiration of direct revelation’ etc., have ended as they deserved to end—in failure. The truth is we are no more qualified to pronounce upon the mystery of Inspiration than we are upon the mystery of the Incarnation. In both the Divine and the human elements are blended.

II. But though, we cannot fully say what inspiration is, we may be able to remove some misconceptions if we make clear what it is not.

(a) When we affirm the inspiration of Holy Scripture, we have in view not existing documents, but the original manuscripts only.

(b) But while we say this, we do not mean (as some appear to think we must) that Scripture is written in scientific language. It could not be so written, for the scientific language of one age differs widely from that of the next.

(c) Nor are we to be understood to contend that all parts of Scripture are necessarily of equal value.

(d) Nor do we mean that every statement therein recorded or therein described has necessarily received God’s sanction or been authorised by Him.

(e) We do not mean to exclude, as some suppose, the human element in the Scriptures; that is to say, we do not mean by plenary inspiration what some have termed a mechanical inspiration, as if the writers of the Bible were mere machines.

III. But, while this is so, it remains true that the writings of Holy Scripture, however diverse their features, and whether directly inspired or selected under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit from existing documents, did all at length receive such an imprimatur of Divine authority, not only as regards their thoughts, but their language, as constituted them for us God’s Word written.

—Rev. E. W. Moore.

Illustrations

(1) ‘ “You have no idea,” said a young man in a City office to me only a few months ago, “what I have to go through. I am known to be a Christian, and I am the butt of the office, because I believe the Bible. ‘What!’ they say, ‘believe that old book! Why, it has been exploded long ago. No one believes the Bible nowadays. Who believes in Jonah and the whale, and all the rest of it? You must be a little weak, gone in the upper storey,’ etc. etc.” That young man was fighting a hard battle, and there are hundreds of others like him. They need sympathy and they need support, and too often they fail to receive it.’

(2) ‘When Dr. J. P. Thompson visited Berlin in his early manhood he met the famous Lepsius in the library of the Royal University, and when the young man told the scholar that he hoped, at some future time, to write a little book on Moses, the German professor exploded. “But, mein Gott, there never was a Moses.” That was the fashion fifty years ago. But since the discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, which prove that the art of writing was practised a hundred years before Abraham, Moses has come back to stay.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

WHY WE BELIEVE IN INSPIRATION

If we believe in the inspiration of Holy Scripture we must be able to say why we believe it.

I. Because Scripture itself affirms it.—Our first appeal, necessarily, must be to the Book itself, and the answer it gives us is decisive. ‘All Scripture’ says St. Paul in his famous utterance (2 Timothy 3:16), ‘is God-breathed.’ See such passages (among many others) as Acts 1:16 (‘This Scripture must needs have been fulfilled which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake,’ etc.); Acts 3:21 (‘Which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began’); and again (where the names of writers are altogether omitted), Hebrews 3:7, ‘the Holy Ghost saith, To-day’ (the quotation being from Psalms 95.); and Hebrews 10:15, ‘The Holy Ghost is a witness to us’ (the quotation which follows being taken from the prophet Jeremiah, chapter Jeremiah 31:33).

II. Because the condition of mankind requires it.—Is it conceivable that a God of love should leave Himself without witness in the world that he has made? Is there to be no voice, nor any answer to His creature’s cry? It is not so. God has spoken.

III. Because the consciousness of the seeking soul responds to it.—I say ‘of the seeking soul,’ for this book is an oracle, and does not reveal its secrets to every one. This book is a living book.

IV. Because the Jews, with whom the conservation and defence of their ancient writings was a passion, and who had far better opportunities than any twentieth-century scholars, however learned, can have of knowing what were and what were not canonical writings, received as God’s Word the very same books as those with which we are now familiar as the Scriptures of the Old Testament.

V. Because the Church militant here upon earth says so.—The attack upon the truth of inspiration is comparatively of recent date. For centuries, from apostolic times downwards, the question was never raised.

VI. Because the Church triumphant in heaven says so.—‘They have Moses and the prophets,’ said Abraham, to Dives, in the parable, ‘let them hear them.’

VII. We believe the Bible to be inspired because the Christ Whom it has revealed to us says it is.—This, after all, is the kernel of the whole matter. You may rely upon it, it is impossible to maintain your faith in the infallibility of Christ if you lose your faith in the inspiration of His Word. Let it never be forgotten, this testimony of Christ to the Scripture was given not only during the period of His ‘Kenosis’ as it has been termed; it was given on the day of His Resurrection, when sin, death, and hell were captives at his feet. It is in the walk to Emmaus (St. Luke 24:44) that He once more endorses the whole Jewish canon as it is known to us, and as it was known to Him. This, surely, is decisive as to the whole question, even if it stood alone.

—Rev. E. W. Moore.

Illustration

‘It may be worth while to quote the well-known passage from Josephus in which this matter is referred to. It runs thus (Tract v. Apion, Bk. I. ch. 8): “For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us disagreeing from and contradicting each other (as the Greeks have), but only twenty-two books, which contain the record of all past times, which are justly believed to be Divine. And of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind until his death. This interval of time was little less than 3000 years. But as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, King of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets who were after Moses wrote down what was done in their time in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life. How firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already elapsed no one hath been so bold as either to add anything to them, or take anything from them, or to make any change in them. But it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them.” ’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE

Granted that Scripture is inspired, what is inspiration? I answer that question by asking another: What is life? We know the difference between a living person and a dead body, and we know what the power and forces of life are, but that is all. And, in the same way, we may all know what inspiration is, by its influence upon ourselves and its influence upon others.

I. Nowhere in the whole of the New Testament is one word said about the nature of inspiration.—It is merely the fact that is asserted, and its results. And what are the results of inspiration? They are these: first of all, that the Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus; and next, that they are profitable for the whole education of the Christian man.

II. It is this spiritual force and power of the Scriptures on which I desire especially to insist.—It might have been supposed, starting with a theory, that God would have preserved His Word from all possibility of defect or error. It might have been supposed that He would have given us an infallible text, that He would not have left it uncertain what the original words are in which the revelation was conveyed. We might have expected that everything would have been made so clear, and plain, and easy, that even a child should understand it. But God has not so ordered His Word. It is not so delightfully simple and easy as some good people would have us believe. Neither is it perfect, in the sense in which men deem perfection. So long as the words of God are translated into any language, they must take a certain colouring from the translator. And therefore it is quite useless to insist on the inspiration of the very words of the Bible. Ought we not rather to rejoice in this than to be troubled by it? Ought it not to be a comfort for us to be able to rest assured that the translation we have is sufficient? We do not need to be Hebrew or Greek scholars, thank God, to read our Bibles with profit and edification, and to find in them food for our souls, to find them all that St. Paul declares them to be, as profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. In short, this theory of the absolute perfection of the Bible in every detail—does it not rest upon an entire mistake?

III. God would have us learn that what we men deem perfection is no necessary evidence of a Divine work. Look at Nature. Nature is God’s work. Nature shows forth His glory. Am I to deny this? Am I to say that Nature is not God’s handiwork because I see on the face of Nature many traces of imperfection? Nature has her monstrous births, and imperfect growths, and her abnormal developments; everywhere side by side with perfect loveliness there is failure, blight, and imperfection. How can we reconcile these things with our ideas of Divine order and perfection? Is the world less Divine because there is so much in it, quite apart from the ravages of sin, which baffles and perplexes us? And if I find in God’s other and greater book, that book which does not merely display the glory of God, but which reveals to me the will of God, and opens to me the gates of eternal life, through the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord—if I find there traces of apparent incompleteness and imperfection, or of what men deem imperfection, am I then to say, I give it up altogether; it is merely a human work; God is not there? No; it is God’s book, but it is a book given to us through men. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. It is God’s Word, it is God’s witness, but human hearts beat there, and human pens have conveyed the message, and on everything human there must rest in some measure—or it would cease to be human—the shadow of imperfection.

—Bishop J. J. S. Perowne.

Illustration

‘I am more and more persuaded every day I live, that the defence of the Bible is constantly put upon a wrong footing. I am more and more convinced that the attempts which are made by zealous and well-meaning persons to make claims for the Bible which it nowhere makes for itself have been a fruitful source of unbelief. We find the plainest facts denied. We find explanations given in our commentaries of difficulties which we should be ashamed to put on similar difficulties in profane authors, and which would really almost justify the taunt of some of the divines of the Church of Rome, that Scripture is a nose of wax, that with Protestant licence you can bend and twist it, and give it any shape you please. These desperate shifts can never satisfy a candid mind.’

(FOURTH OUTLINE)

WHY THE BIBLE WAS WRITTEN

I. The Bible is a library, a collection of books gathered together ages ago by those who were competent to do so, from a large number of writings which lay before them, which ranged over centuries of time, were written by persons of very different characters and nationalities, in many different tongues and in many different parts of the world. When we realise that this was a library of books, we see, what helps us very much in our own personal life, that God taught the writers that they may teach us. God’s revelation to us is so universal that it has been given in all sorts of places, by all sorts of men, and in all sorts of tongues.

II. What brings these books all together?—Why have they for centuries been always placed together as one library? Because they do all hang together in a very remarkable way. The great connecting link is this—God, man, a Saviour. In some by anticipation, in others in poetry, in others in prophecy, in others in allusion, but always there is in the Bible something about God, about God’s views, which must be true views, concerning man, and about the need of some one to live and die for man to put man right with God. Why do we call them inspired, and what do we mean? We mean that we believe exactly what the books say about themselves.

III. Why was the Bible written?—To teach us. Above everything else, the Bible was written to save souls. The acquisition of knowledge, the knowledge of a string of facts, is of little worth, in many cases is nothing worth, if character and conduct count for nothing. A human being stored with facts and full of energy, whose character and conduct have never been trained, is something very much like a curse to the community. What is the use, when we know we shall only live in this world for a very few years, of being stored with knowledge which is of no use beyond the edge of the grave? From the beginning to the end of the Bible we have the Blessed Saviour manifested—Jesus, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; Jesus from beginning to end; Jesus the Way and the Truth and the Life.

—Rev. Dr. Springett.