THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE AS BELIEVED BY BAPTISTS
By: B.H. Carroll
[B.H. Carroll is the co-founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary]
THE FIRST ARTICLE OF FAITH
"We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its Author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions shall be tried."
This is the first Article of Faith of a great many Baptist churches in our Southland. The first statement is, "We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired." This brings us at once to the subject of the inspiration of the Scriptures. The word inspiration is derived from the Latin word inspiro which means 'to breathe on' That is the literal meaning of the word. The theological meaning is to breathe on or to breathe into for the purpose of conveying the Holy Spirit, in order that those inspired may speak or write what God would have spoken or written. That is inspiration. A Scriptural example of this is found in John 20:22: "And when he said this he breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit." That gives us the true conception of inspiration. Following that, verse 23 gives the result: "Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained." That is, an inspired man can declare exactly the terms of remission of sins, and the terms upon which sins can cannot be remitted, because he is speaking for God.
The book that a man, so breathed on, writes is called a theopneustos, a Greek word meaning God-inspired." Example: "From a babe thou hast known the sacred writings, which are to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus. Every scripture is inspired of God" (2 Tim. 3:15-16a).
AFTER GOD BREATHED INTO MAN
After God breathed into man the Holy Spirit in order that he should accurately write the things which God wanted written then the book that he wrote was called theopneustos. So that this second passage is a very important one in discussing inspiration, probably the most important in the whole Bible. If the book is God-inspired, then it is God's Book and not man's book. Another illustration is found in the second chapter of Genesis: "And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." The body was present, but it was dead. It had no vitality. The distinction between a body that is in-breathed and a body that is not in-breathted is the distinction between death and life. Therefore, a man's book is a dead book. I don't care how lofty its thought, how fine its argument, or how perfect its rhetoric, the book will pass away. It has not the principle of eternal life. But books that are God-breathed are called the "living oracles" (Acts 7:38). It is impossible for a God-book to die. The oldest book that was ever God-inspired is as much living as the latest one, and it will be unto the end of time a living oracle.
WHAT IS AN ORACLE?
But what is an oracle? In Greece there certain
shrines - certain deities - such as the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. There was a
priestess that ministered at that shrine. Men would stand before her and ask a
question, and the priestess would fall into an ecstasy. While in that ecstasy
here answers were called oracles. Heathen oracles are dumb, but these
God-inspired oracles are living. They are not only called living oracles, but
they are called the oracles of God, as we see from Romans 3:1-2: "What
advantage hath the Jew? Much every way, for first of all they were entrusted
with the oracles of God." The advantage is that these Old Testament books
were entrusted to them, not as man's books, but as containing the speeches of
God, as well as the works of God.
Now, I will briefly set forth the inspiration of both the Old and
the New Testaments. Second Timothy 3:15-16 covers all the Old Testament. Paul
says to Timothy: "From a babe thou has know the sacred writings." Any
other writing is what is called profane writing, not in our modern sense of
profanity, but means not divine, but rather human or secular. "Thous hast
know the sacred writings, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation. Every
Scripture is inspired of God." etc. He first speaks of the books of the Old
Testament in groups, ta hiera grammata, the sacred writings. Then he speaks of
then disturbutivley, pasa graphe. Every one of these sacred writings is
God-inspired. We may stand on that one declaration to affirm the inspiration of
every one of the Old Testament books.
Another passage bearing on Old Testament inspiration is 2 Peter
1:20: "No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. For no
prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by
the Holy Spirit." Here again is the idea of inspiration. An inspired man
speaks, does not speak his will. When he writes, he does not speak his will, but
he speaks and writes for God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.
THE NEW TESTAMENT
Now let us take up the New Testament. In John
14:26 we find that a promise was made, before inspiration was given, that they
should be inspired: "But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I said unto you." Again in 16:12-13: "I have yet
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the
Spirit of truth, is come he shall guide you into all the truth; for he shall not
speak from himself; but what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak;
and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come." That is, Christ
in His lifetime did not complete the revealed truth. They were not prepared to
receive it all. But he made provision for the revealing of the truth by
promising the Holy Spirit who would teach them all that it was necessary for
them to know. What Christ said in His lifetime, which they had forgotten, the
Holy Spirit enabled them to remember and guided them into the completion of the
truth. So, after His resurrection, Christ breathed on them and said unto them,
"receive ye the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). This is inspiration and
fulfills His promise to them. This same thought is emphasized in 1 John 2:27:
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not
that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things,
and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in
him.
One other passage, a very important one, is 1 Corinthians 2:6-13:
"Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of
this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: But we speak
the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained
before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew:
for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as
it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God
hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things,
yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the
spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the
Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit
which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of
God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth,
but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with
spiritual."
THE PROMISE
Here is the promise again clearly stated: that what is to be communicated through this inspiration is something eye could not see, ear could not hear, nor the heart of man conceive. It is a revelation, and it comes through the Spirit that knoweth the things of God. As your spirit alone can know you (your neighbor does not know you as well as you know yourself), so the Holy Spirit alone know the will of God, and that Spirit has communicated it to inspired men in man's words. Mark this verbal inspiration: "Combining spiritual things with spiritual words." It has always been a matter of profound surprise to me that anybody should ever question the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The whole thing had to be written in words. Words or signs of ideas, and if the words or not inspired, then there is no way of getting at anything in connection with inspiration. If I am free to pick up the Bible and read something and say, "That is inspired," then read something else and say, "That is not inspired," and someone else does not agree with me as to which is and which is not inspired, it leaves the whole thing unsettled as to whether any of it is inspired.
What is the object of inspiration? It is to put accurately, in human words, ideas from God. If the words are not inspired, how am I to know how much to reject, and how to find out whether anything is from God? When you hear this silly talk that the Bible "contains" the word of God and is not the word of God, you hear fool's talk. I don't care is he is a Doctor of Divinity, a president of a university covered with medals from universities of Europe and the United States - it is fool-talk. There can be no inspiration of the book without the inspiration of the words of the book.
PROOF OF THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE
Very briefly I have summed up the inspiration of the Old
Testament and of the inspiration of the New Testament, and now I will give you
some Scriptures on both Testaments together. Hebrews 1:1-2: "God, who at
sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son."
In old times there were inspired men; but the culmination or
completion is in the Son. That covers both. Hebrews 5:12 also cover both:
"For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach
you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become
such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat." Here the New Testament
is called "oracles" as well as the Old Testament. Those were Christian
people who had learned the first principles of the oracles of God and stopped.
Another passage is 1 Peter 4:11: "If an man speaketh, speaking as it were
the oracles of God." Peter is here talking about the Old and New
Testaments. If a mans gets up to speak, let him remember that there is a
standard, and that that standard is fixed. he must speak according to the
oracles of God. These Scriptures cover both.
Now let us consider some observations: First, the books of
the Bible are not by the will of man. Not one of the books of either the Old or
the New Testament would ever have come into being except by the inspiration of
God. I want to give you a searching proof on that, found in 1 Peter 1:10-11:
"Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who
prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it
testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should
follow."
MOVED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT
Here are men moved by the Spirit of God to
record certain things about the future, and they themselves did not understand
it. They studied their own prophecies just as we study them. They knew that God
had inspired them to say these things, but they did not understand. For example:
God instructed a prophet to say that the Messiah should come forth out of
Bethlehem of Judea. To show that these things did not come from the will of man,
the man himself could not explain them. It was a matter of study and
investigation to find out what these signified. They found out what their
prophecies were meant for the future, that is, for us.
The second observation is that the propelling power in the speaking
or writing was an impulse from the Holy Spirit. They, the inspired men, became
instruments by which the Holy Spirit spoke or wrote. Take for instance, that
declaration in 2 Samuel 23:2, where David said: "The Spirit of Jehovah
spake by me, and His word was upon my tongue." In Acts 1:16, we find that
the utterances of David were being studied. We have a declaration that the Holy
Spirit spake by the mouth of David concerning Judas; and in the third chapter of
Acts we have another declaration of the same kind. Always the speaker or writer
was an instrument of the Holy Spirit.
The third observation is that this influence of
the Holy Spirit guided men in he selection of material, even where that material
came from some other book, even an uninspired book, the Spirit guiding in
selecting and omitting material. From such declarations as John 20:30-31 and
21:25, we learn that Christ did many things, that if all were written it would
make a book as big as the world; that what ha been written was written for a
certain purpose. The Holy Spirit inspired Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to
select from the deeds and words of Jesus that which God wanted written; not to
take everything He said, but only that which was necessary to accomplish the
purpose.
The fourth observation is that inspiration is absolutely necessary
in order to take awaken the power of remembrance. John 2:22 says that after His
resurrection they remembered what He had said, that is, the Spirit called it to
remembrance. To illustrate, take the speeches of Christ, for instance, that
address delivered at Capernaum on the Bread of Life, the Sermon on the Mount
and, particularly, the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of John.
There were not shorthand reporters in those days, and there is not a man on
earth who could, after a lapse of fifty years, recall verbatim et literatim what
Christ said. Yet John, without a shadow of hesitancy, goes on and gives page
after page of what Christ said just after the institution of the Lord's Supper.
Inspiration in that case was exercised in awakening the memory so that John
could reproduce these great orations of Christ.
Of the orations of Paul, take the speech recorded in Acts 13, an
exceedingly remarkable speech, or the one recorded in Acts 26, or the one of
Mars Hill, in chapter 17, one of the most finished productions that the world
has ever seen. Inspiration enabled Luke to report exactly what Paul said. Luke
never could have done that unassisted. Luke, as a man, might have given the
substance, but that is not the substance, it is an elaborate report, the sense
depending upon the words used.
The fifth observation is that inspiration was to make additions to
the Scriptures until they were completed, in order that the standard may be a
perfect treasure, incapable of being added to, unsusceptible of diminution. We
wand what is there, all that is there, and no more than is there.
Therefore, when we come to the last book of the Bible, this is said
which, in a sense applies to the whole Bible: "For I testify unto every man
that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto
these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God
shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and
from the things which are written in this book. (Rev 22:18-19)
THE DESIGN OF INSPIRATION
It was the design of inspiration to give us a
perfect system of revealed truth, whose words are inspired. As an example of
verbal inspiration, take Paul's argument, based on the "seed" in the
singular number. Everything in the interpretation depends upon the number of
that noun. Apart from verbal inspiration, how on earth would Paul hinge an
argument on whether a word is singular or plural?
The next observation is that inspiration was to give different
views of the same person or thing by different writers, each perfect according
to its viewpoint, but incomplete so far as the whole is concerned, all views
being necessary in order to complete the view. There is a Gospel by Mark,
written for the Romans, beginning with the public ministry of Christ. Then there
are the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and a gospel by Paul. Each of them
is perfect according to the plan which the Spirit put in the mind of the writer.
They are perfect so far as the whole thing is concerned, but incomplete so far
as the whole thing is concerned. We have to put them side by side in order to
get a complete view of the life of our Lord. That is what we mean by harmonical
study. Each is infallibly correct, but it takes the blended view of all to make
the whole thing.
THE DESIGN OF GENEALOGY
Apart from inspiration, no man on earth can
account for Genesis. Just see in what small space there is given the history of
the world up to chapter 11 - how much is left out. We see the same plan all
through the book. It first takes up the wicked descendants, give their genealogy
a little way, then sidetracks them and takes up the true line. Then of their
descendants it follows the wicked first a short way and eliminates them and goes
back and takes up the true line and elaborates that. That principle goes all
through the Bible. For instance, the first missionary period of Paul's life
covered a greater period of time than any other, and there is no record of it,
just as single reference to it in Acts. So with his fifth missionary journey.
There are only a few referenced to it in Timothy and Titus. But the intervening
three journeys are elaborately given.
Now we come to an important point. When these inspired declarations
were written, they were absolutely infallible. Take these Scriptures: John
10:35, "The Scripture cannot be broken;" Matthew 5:18, "Till
heaven and earth shall pass away, one joy or tittle shall in no wise pass away
from the law, till all things be accomplished:" Acts 1:16, "It was
needful that the Scripture should be fulfilled." That is one of the most
important points in connection with inspiration, that the inspired word is
irrefragable, infallible; that all the powers of the world cannot break one
"thus said the Lord."
Another observation is the power that comes upon the inspired
word. Hebrews 4:12: "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul
and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart.
THE OBJECT OF THE WORD
Yet another observation is the object of the
Word. There are two objects. John sets forth the first one when he says that
they are written that we might believe, and, believing, have life, or, as Paul
says to Timothy, "which are able to make thee wise unto salvation."
They are both expressed in the nineteenth Psalm: "The law of the Lord is
perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the
simple."
The last observation is on the sufficiency of the Word; that the inspired
record is complete; that is all-sufficient. That is presented in two Scriptures,
Luke 16:29: Abraham said to the rich man in hell who wanted a special messenger
sent to his brothers: "Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the
prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went
unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear
not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from
the dead." The Other is 2 Timothy 3:17: "Than the man of God may be
complete, furnished completely unto every good work."
CONCLUSION
Let me say further that the inspiration of
the Bible does not mean that God said and did all that is said and done in the
Bible. Some of it the Devil did and said. Much of it wicked men did and said.
The inspiration means that the record of what is said and done is correct. It
does not mean that everything that God did and said is recorded. It does not
mean that everything recorded is of equal importance, but every part of it is
necessary to the purpose of the record, and no part is unimportant. One part is
no more inspired than any other part.
It is perfectly foolish to talk about degrees of inspiration. What
Jesus said in the flesh, as we find it in the four Gospel, is nor more His Word
than what the inspired prophet or apostle said. That is the folly of the
Jefferson Bible. He purposes to take out of the four Gospels everything that
Jesus said and put it together as a Bible. What Jesus said after He ascended to
heaven, though Paul or any other apostle, is just as much Jesus' word as
anything He said in the flesh.