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The Preservation of the Revelation: Inspiration · Reformed Thinking

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Hello and welcome back to the Deep Dive.
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We are identifying this specific session as reformed thinking.
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I am thrilled to be sitting down with you again because, well, we
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are tackling a subject that really acts as the ground floor
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for everything else we discuss. If we get this wrong, the whole
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House of Cards, it feels like it could come down.
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We're looking at the doctrine of inspiration.
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It is good to be with you, and you were so right about the
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stakes here. This isn't, you know, a side
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discussion or some minor point of disagreement we can just set
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aside. This is the issue of authority.
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When we open our Bibles, what are we actually holding?
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Are we holding the best thoughts of religious men, or are we
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holding the very words of God? That is the question, and to
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help us answer it, we are going through the work of Miller J
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Erickson in his Systematic Theology, specifically focusing
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on how the Reformed tradition, and well, by extension those of
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us adhering to the Westminster Confession, views the origin of
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the Scriptures. We really need to understand how
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the infinite God communicated with finite humans without the
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message getting, you know, garbled in the process.
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It's the central tension of our faith, isn't it?
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We believe the Bible is true, but we also know it was written
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by men. Men like Peter who made
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mistakes, and David who committed grievous sins.
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So how do you get a perfect book out of imperfect people?
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That is what the of inspiration seeks to explain.
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OK, so let's start by clearing up the vocabulary.
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I think that's the best place to begin.
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In church circles, we tend to use words like revelation and
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inspiration, almost as if they mean the same thing.
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I might say, oh, that sermon was inspired or God revealed
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something to me in prayer. But Erickson draws a very, very
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sharp line between these two concepts.
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How should we distinguish them? It's a necessary distinction if
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we want to be precise. Absolutely.
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Erickson defines revelation as the vertical communication from
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God to humans. Think of the direction it comes
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down from above. This is the communication of
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truth itself. It's the flash of insight, the
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voice from the burning Bush, the dream given to a prophet.
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The direct address of God to Moses.
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Exactly. It's the unveiling of something
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that was previously hidden. So revelation is the input.
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It's the moment God speaks or shows something new.
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Correct. Now contrast that with
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inspiration. Erickson defines inspiration as
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the horizontal preservation of that truth.
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This is the relaying of that truth from the first person who
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got it to others. If revelation is that vertical
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flash of lightning, inspiration is the process of ensuring that
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the photograph taken of that flash is sharp and clear, not
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blurry. I really like that photography
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analogy. It helps clarify it for me
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because you can have this magnificent event, this
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incredible flash of lightning, but if the camera is out of
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focus or if the photographer shakes his hand, the record of
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the event is basically ruined for everyone.
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Else that's the point. That's it exactly.
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Revelation is of immense value to the person who receives it
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directly. If God's speaks to Isaiah,
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Isaiah is edified. Isaiah knows the truth.
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But for that revelation to benefit you and me thousands of
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years later, there has to be some mechanism of preservation.
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If God didn't ensure that the record of His revelation was
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accurate, then the value of that revelation is just lost to
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history. We'd be left playing a game of
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telephone. A game of telephone where the
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message just degrades with every single retelling until it's
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completely unrecognizable. Inspiration guards against that
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degradation. OK, so this raises a really
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fascinating question that I saw in our notes.
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We usually assume these two things, God speaking and the
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Spirit recording, happen at the same time.
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But Erickson argues they are separable.
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You can have one without the other.
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Can you actually have inspiration without revelation?
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You certainly can, and understanding this helps resolve
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so many of the common objections people raise about the Bible.
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Let's look at inspiration without revelation first.
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The Holy Spirit sometimes moved the biblical writers to record
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things that were not divinely revealed in a supernatural
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sense. They weren't, you know, new
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pieces of information coming down from heaven.
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You mean like ordinary history? Oh, genealogies, ordinary
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history, or facts the writer witnessed with their own two
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eyes. Think about the genealogies in
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First Chronicles when the author lists those hundreds and
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hundreds of names. We don't believe God whispered
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each name into His ear in some mystical trance.
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The author likely went to the royal archives or the public
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records of Israel. The names were already known
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data. However, the Holy Spirit
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influenced the writer to select those specific names and to
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record them accurately in the text.
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So the content wasn't a new revelation, but the recording of
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it was inspired. That makes perfect sense.
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The Spirit ensures the accuracy of the record, even if the
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source material was, you know, already available.
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But here's where it gets a little trickier.
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Erickson mentions that the Bible records lies.
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This is a crucial point. It really is.
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The Bible records the words of Satan in the garden.
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It records the lies of Potiphar's wife against Joseph.
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It records the terrible theological advice of Job's
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friends. Now we have to ask, are those
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words revelation from God? Do they express God's mind?
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Definitely not. No, They're falsehoods.
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They're the opposite of God's mind.
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Right, but the recording of them is inspired.
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The Holy Spirit made sure that the writer accurately recorded
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the lie that was told. So it is historically true that
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the lie was spoken, even if the content of that statement is
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false. That's a perfect example of
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inspiration without direct revelation.
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OK, I see. So when we say the Bible is
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inspired, we're not saying God endorses every statement made by
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every character in the book. We're saying the narrative
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accurately portrays what happened and what was said.
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Now what about the reverse? Can we have revelation without
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inspiration? We can and we do, and this is a
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thought that might surprise some of you listening.
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There were definitely instances where God spoke to people or
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revealed truth, but the Holy Spirit did not move anyone to
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write it down for the permanent Canon.
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It was for that moment or for that person, but not for the
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Church throughout all of history.
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Is there biblical evidence for that?
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It just feels like if God speaks, we should probably write
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it down. Well, we see a very clear
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reference to this in the Gospel of John.
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In John 21 verse 25, the apostle writes.
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Jesus did many other things as well.
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If every one of them were written down, I suppose that
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even the whole world would not have room for the books that
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would be written. That is a staggering thought.
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The mind just boggles at that. It is, and it implies that Jesus
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said and did many, many things that were divine revelation.
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They were pure truth, but they were not inscripturated.
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They weren't written down. The Spirit was selective.
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He chose what was necessary for the church and ensured that that
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specific content was preserved through inspiration.
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So we don't have everything God ever said.
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We have everything God wanted us to have.
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That clears up the definitions beautifully.
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We're talking about the preserving work of the spirit.
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But now we have to face the critic.
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Ericsson brings up a very logical objection right at the
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start of his argument. He calls it the circularity
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problem. It's the first hurdle in
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apologetics, isn't it? The objection goes like this.
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You're using the Bible to prove the Bible is inspired.
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You quote to Timothy 3.16 to prove that to Timothy is true.
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To a skeptic, that looks like textbook circular reasoning.
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Right. It sounds like someone saying
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I'm the king because it says so on my hat and I'm the one who
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wrote what's on my hat. It does sound that way on the
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surface. However, Ericsson provides a
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very helpful nuance here regarding how we handle
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evidence. He suggests we view this like a
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courtroom trial. Imagine a defendant is on the
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stand. He's allowed to testify on his
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own behalf. Now, does the judge or the jury
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automatically believe him just because he says I'm innocent?
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No, of course not. That would be naive.
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But is his testimony thrown out as inadmissible?
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No, it's admissible evidence. It's a claim that must be
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weighed against other factors. Erickson argues that initially,
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we treat the biblical writers as historical witnesses making a
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claim about their work. We don't start with the
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assumption that they are inspired, we start with the fact
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that they claim to be inspired. We let the document speak for
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itself first. So we look at the Bible's self
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testimony not as the final proof in and of itself, but as the
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starting point of our investigation.
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We're asking, what do these writers actually think they're
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doing? Do they think they're writing
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philosophy, or do they think they're channeling the divine?
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Precisely if the writers claim they were just offering their
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best opinions, our doctrine of inspiration would be dead on
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arrival. But when we examine the
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testimony, the evidence is overwhelming that they believe
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they were writing words given by God.
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Erickson points us to the New Testaments view of the Old
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Testament. The classic text here is second
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Peter 1, verses 20 and 21. I have that text right here.
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No prophecy of scripture came about by the prophets own
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interpretation, for prophecy never had its origin in the will
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of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by
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the Holy Spirit. There's a Greek word in there
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that's just fascinating. For Romanoi, it's translated as
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carried along or born along. In the secular Greek of that
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time, this word was often used in a nautical context.
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It described a ship being driven by the wind.
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That's a powerful image. You have the ship, which is the
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human author, and it's active, it's moving, it has sails, it
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has a rudder. But the impetus, the energy, the
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direction, that all comes from the wind.
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Correct. The ship cannot move itself in
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that manner without the wind. It implies that the drive and
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the direction of the writing did not originate with the human
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author. It came from the Holy Spirit.
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The human was active, yes, but the driving force was divine.
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It rules out the idea that Scripture is just a human
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project. And then of course we have the
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verse we alluded to earlier, the real anchor text for this whole
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doctrine. Second Timothy 3.16.
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All scripture is God breathed. The Greek term there is the
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opnistos. It's a very strong compound
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word. It parallels the account in
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Genesis where God breathes the breath of life into Adam.
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Paul is telling Timothy that the Scriptures are literally exhaled
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by God. What strikes me about that verse
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is the focus on the product, not just the author.
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He doesn't say All authors were God breathed.
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He says all scripture, the writings themselves are God
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breathed. That's a critical observation.
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It really is. Inspiration, technically
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speaking, terminates on the text.
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The authors were the instruments, but the quality of
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being God breathed belongs to the document.
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And notice Paul immediately emphasizes the utility of this
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because it's God breathed, it is useful.
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It is a tool for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and
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training. Its authority comes from its
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origin. Erickson also mentions how the
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apostles preached in the book of Acts.
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It seems like they had this incredibly high view of the Old
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Testament long before any formal theology was written down about.
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It absolutely did. In Acts One Peter's talking
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about Judas and says the Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth
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of David and in Acts 4 the believers pray and say God spoke
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by the mouth of his servant David.
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They developed this kind of theological equation in their
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minds. It is written in scripture
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equals God has said it. There was no gap for them
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between the text and the voice of thee.
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That brings us to the ultimate witness.
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And for a Christian, this really should be the end of the
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argument, shouldn't it? What was Jesus's attitude toward
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the Scripture? Because if we claim to follow
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him, we can't really hold a lower view of the Bible than he
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did. This is, in my opinion, the
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strongest apologetic argument for the authority of the Bible.
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Jesus engaged in arguably the most intense theological debates
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in history. He argued with the Pharisees,
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the Sadducees, the scribes. He disputed their
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interpretations constantly. He told them they were wrong
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about the resurrection, wrong about the Sabbath, wrong about
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the Messiah. But, and this is the key, he
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never once disputed the authority or the nature of the
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Scripture itself. That's a very significant in
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silence. He never said, well, you know,
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Isaiah was a bit of a pessimist, so take that chapter with a
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grain of salt. Never, not once.
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He assumed the Scripture was the final Court of Appeals.
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In fact, he affirmed the text down to the smallest possible
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detail. In Matthew 5.1.
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He says not the smallest letter or the small stroke of a pen
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will disappear until everything is accomplished.
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He's referring to the Hebrew yod, which is the smallest
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letter in the alphabet, and the title that tiny ornamental
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stroke on a letter. It's like us saying not the dot
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on the I or the cross on the T will be lost.
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Exactly. And in John 10.35, in the middle
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of this heated debate, he just drops the statement.
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The scripture cannot be broken. It's an axiom.
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For him it's a given. Erickson draws this beautiful
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contrast between Jesus view of the temple and his view of the
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Word. The Temple was the center of
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Jewish life, the holiest place on earth, the place where God
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dwelt. Yes, a sacred object, if there
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ever was 1. Yet Jesus predicted its
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destruction. He said not one stone would be
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left on another. He was willing to see the
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institutional center of the faith crumble to dust, but of
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the Word, He affirmed its permanence.
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Heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will not.
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So the logic is inescapable. If Jesus is our Lord, we are
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compelled to adopt his view of Scripture.
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We can't call him master and then critique the very book he's
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submitted to. OK, so we've established the
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fact of inspiration. The Bible claims it, the
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apostles taught it, Jesus affirmed it.
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But now we get to the mechanics, the how.
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And this is where things get messy in theology, because we're
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trying to explain a miracle. Erickson outlines a whole
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spectrum of theories that have cropped up over the centuries.
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It's helpful to look at these as a spectrum.
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You're right because most people likely hold to one of these
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views without even realizing, saying it has a technical name.
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Ericsson lists 5 specific theories and they range from a
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purely naturalistic view on one end to a hyper supernatural view
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on the other. Let's walk through these.
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The first one he lists is the intuition theory.
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The intuition theory is often found in a more liberal
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theology. It essentially says that
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inspiration is just a high degree of natural insight.
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It compares the biblical writers to other great geniuses of
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history. So Jeremiah was a religious
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genius in the same way that Plato was a philosophical genius
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or Mozart was a musical genius. So under this view, the Bible is
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just great literature. That's what it boils down to.
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Yes, it denies the supernatural element entirely.
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It says the Hebrews just had a real knack for religion.
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Ericsson critiques this heavily because it basically removes God
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from the process. It makes the Bible a human book
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about God, rather than God's book given to humans.
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It has no more authority than a book of Shakespeare.
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Moving, perhaps, but not authoritative.
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OK. Next up is the illumination
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theory. This sounds a bit more
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spiritual. It's a step up, for sure, but
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Erickson argues it's still insufficient.
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The elimination theory says the Holy Spirit heightened the
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author's normal powers. It increased their sensitivity,
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their perceptivity. Ericsson compares this to a
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student taking stimulants to study harder, or maybe a
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musician who's in a flow state. Like drinking a triple shot
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espresso to stay awake and sharp while writing an essay.
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Basically, yeah, the writer is still just himself, just a
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heightened version of himself. The problem here is that this is
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a difference in degree, not in kind, from the Spirit's work and
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all believers. We all have the Holy Spirit for
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illumination to understand truth.
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If the biblical writers only had that same illumination, just
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more of it, then their writings aren't qualitatively different
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from a great sermon or a profound theological book
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written today. It implies that if I were holy
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enough or illuminated enough, I could write scripture today.
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That is the logical conclusion, and it fails to account for the
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unique once for all authority of the Canon.
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Then we have the dynamic theory. This seems to be where a lot of
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modern evangelicals unknowingly land, I think.
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It's a very attractive middle ground.
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The dynamic theory suggests that God provides the thoughts or the
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concepts, but the writer provides the words.
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The idea is that God impresses the concept onto the prophet's
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mind. Say God loves the world, and the
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prophet then uses his own vocabulary, his own style, his
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own cultural context to express that concept.
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That sounds reasonable. I mean it.
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It explains why Paul sounds like Paul and John sounds like John.
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It protects the human element. It does, and it absolutely
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accounts for the personality of the writers.
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But as we're going to see in a moment, Erickson believes this
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just isn't precise enough. It leaves too much room for
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slippage. If God only gives the thought,
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what happens if the human author chooses the wrong word?
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What if they misunderstand the nuance of the divine thought?
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If the words aren't guarded, the message isn't safe.
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And that leads us to the 4th theory, which represents the
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reformed view, the verbal theory.
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The verbal theory, this one insists that the Holy Spirit's
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influence extends beyond just the thoughts to the actual
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selection of words. Now, Ericsson is very careful
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here. He insists this is not
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dictation. We'll get to that in a second,
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but it is specific. That is a hard balance to
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strike. How is it verbal but not
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dictation? It means the words that were
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written are the exact words God wanted used, but they were
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chosen through the mechanism of the author's own personality,
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their vocabulary, their background.
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It's confluent, Fully God and fully man.
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The Spirit worked so thoroughly in the life of the author that
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when they wrote, they freely chose the very words that God
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had ordained for them to choose. We are definitely going to have
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to dig deep into how that is even possible because it sounds
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like a paradox. But before we do, we have to
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mention the 5th theory, the one on the far right of the
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spectrum, the dictation theory. This is the view that God told
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the authors exactly what to write, word for word, bypassing
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their personalities entirely. The author is just a typewriter,
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A stenographer, a pen. The human mind is passive in the
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process. And Erickson rejects this.
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He does, and so does the mainstream Reformed tradition.
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Erickson notes that dictation just ignores the clear phenomena
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of the text. If God dictated every word in a
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mechanical sense, why does the Greek of the Book of Hebrews
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look so polished and academic, while the Greek of Mark is much
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rougher, more St. level? Why does John use such simple
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vocabulary while Paul uses these complex winding sentences?
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Dictation can't easily account for these stylistic differences.
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Unless you argue God was just doing impressions of different
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people, right? And that seems a bit contrived.
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Now, you mentioned earlier that John Calvin, the father of our
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tradition, used the word dictation.
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He did, but scholars generally agree he was using it
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metaphorically to describe the results, not the method.
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He meant that the text is as sure as if it were dictated.
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It carries the full weight of the King's command.
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He was not describing a mechanical process where the
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writer goes into a trance and their eyes roll back in their
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head. The reformed view has always
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honored the human instrument. OK, so Erickson lands on the
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verbal theory, but to get there and to defend it, he talks about
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a methodological divide. There are two ways to approach
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building this doctrine. He calls a method A and method
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B. This feels a bit academic, but
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why is this distinction relevant for the average believer?
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It's so relevant because it determines your starting point,
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and your starting point determines your conclusion.
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It's everything. Method A is associated with the
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Princeton school, great theologians like BB Warfield and
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Charles Hodge. They focus on the didactic
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material. They ask what does the Bible
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teach about itself? They look at the text we
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discussed earlier, like Timothy 3.16.
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They build their doctrine top down from the claims of
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Scripture. And method B.
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What's that? Method B is associated with a
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scholar named Dewey Beagle and many modern critical scholars.
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They focus on the phenomena. They ask what is the Bible like.
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They look at the discrepancies, the parallel accounts and the
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gospels that seem to differ, the chronological puzzles.
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They build their theory bottom up based on the data of the text
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characteristics. So it seems like method A says
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God says this book is perfect, so we must figure out how the
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difficulties fit that truth. And method B says there are all
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these difficulties, so the book must not be perfect.
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That's a fair simplification. It really is.
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Erickson's approach, and the standard Reformed approach is
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that the primary emphasis has to be on the didactic.
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We must listen to what the Bible teaches about itself first.
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The phenomena are secondary. We interpret the data through
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the doctrine. He uses an analogy about
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sanctification that I found really helpful in visualizing
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this. Yes.
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Think about the doctrine of sanctification, the idea that a
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believer is made holy and set free from the power of sin.
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If we want to understand what a Christian is, do we go look at
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the messy, sinful lives of the believers in the church at
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Corinth? Goodness, no.
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If we looked at the Corinthians who were suing each other and
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getting drunk at Communion, we might conclude that
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sanctification doesn't really work, or that being a Christian
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allows for a lot of sin. Precisely, if you start with the
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phenomena of Christians lives, you get bad theology.
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Instead, we look at what Paul teaches about sanctification in
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Romans 6. For Galatians 5.
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We interpret the messy experience through the lens of
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the clear teaching. So applying that to inspiration,
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we establish that the Bible is God's word because it says so.
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Then we look at the phenomena like that chronological
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difficulty with the Age of Terra versus when Abraham left Tehran,
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to help us understand how that inspiration manifests.
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Right. We don't use the difficulty to
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disprove the doctrine. We use the doctrine to guide our
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handling of the difficulty. We trust the teaching and we
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wrestle with the phenomena. That gives us a really solid
20:57
framework. Now I want to circle back to
20:59
that debate between thoughts versus words.
21:02
You said earlier that the dynamic theory thoughts only
21:04
isn't enough. Ericsson makes a very logical
21:06
argument for why inspiration must be verbal, extending to the
21:09
specific words. He calls it the precise
21:12
argument. This is a beautiful piece of
21:14
logic, and it challenges the idea that you can even separate
21:17
thought from language. Erickson argues that as a
21:20
thought becomes more precise, more sharp, the number of words
21:23
available to express it decreases.
21:26
Can you give me an example? Sure.
21:28
Imagine you have a general thought about a vehicle.
21:30
You could use words like car, truck, van, automobile.
21:35
Any of those words works for the general thought.
21:38
But if your thought is very precise, say a specific type of
21:41
tracked military transport with a large cannon, eventually only
21:45
one word will do. Tank.
21:47
I see the more specific the intent, the more specific the
21:50
language has to be. Correct.
21:52
So if God has a precise theological thought, he wants to
21:55
communicate a nuance about atonement or the nature of
21:58
Christ. Eventually, only one specific
22:00
word will capture that nuance. Therefore, if God is directing
22:03
the thought precisely, he's inevitably directing the word
22:06
choice. You can't have precise thoughts
22:08
with vague language. And Erickson points out that the
22:11
biblical writers themselves seem to operate on this very
22:13
assumption. They build these massive
22:15
theological arguments on single words.
22:17
This is the biblical evidence for verbal inspiration.
22:20
It's powerful. The New Testament authors often
22:22
hang their entire argument on a grammatical detail.
22:25
Take Galatians 3.1 sees Paul is arguing about the promises given
22:29
to Abraham. He points out that Scripture
22:31
says seed in the singular, not seeds in the plural, and he
22:35
identifies that singular seed as Christ.
22:37
Wow, so if the inspiration was just the general idea
22:40
descendants, Pauls whole argument would just collapse.
22:43
He's relying on the fact that the Holy Spirit intentionally
22:46
left the S off the end of the Word.
22:48
Completely, Paul assumes the Holy Spirit intended the
22:50
singular noun. Another example is Matthew
22:53
22.32. Jesus is proving the reality of
22:56
the resurrection to the Sadducees.
22:58
He quotes Exodus. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac,
23:01
and Jacob. He then argues that God is not
23:04
the God of the dead, but of the living.
23:05
So his entire point rests on the tense of the verb to be.
23:09
It's in the present tense, yes. If God had said I was the God of
23:12
Abraham, implying Abraham is gone and in the past, the
23:14
argument fails, but the present tense I am implies Abraham is
23:18
still existing. Jesus takes the doctrine of the
23:20
resurrection on a verb tense. And there's Matthew 22.44 as
23:25
well, where Jesus discusses Psalm 110.
23:28
The Lord said to my Lord. The whole argument rests on that
23:31
possessive suffix. My If inspiration were only
23:35
general thoughts, these specific grammatical arguments by Jesus
23:39
and Paul would be invalid. They would be nonsensical.
23:41
They are treating the text as if every syllable is weighed and
23:45
measured by God. This brings us to the biggest
23:47
challenge of the verbal theory. Then we've said it's not
23:50
dictation, but we've also said God chose the words.
23:54
How do we resolve that? How do we preserve the humanity
23:57
of the authors? Erickson tells a personal story
24:00
about secretary he worked with. I thought this was a brilliant
24:02
illustration of what he calls confluence.
24:05
It really solves the robot problem.
24:07
It's a fantastic analogy. Erickson describes his working
24:10
relationship with the secretary over several years.
24:12
In stage 1, when they first started, he dictated every
24:15
single word of his letters. She just typed what he said.
24:17
That represents the dictation theory.
24:19
Efficient but very mechanical. No personality from her.
24:23
Right, but then they moved to stage 2.
24:25
He would give her the main ideas, tell them we accept the
24:28
offer but we need to change the date, and she would write the
24:31
letter herself. That's the dynamic theory.
24:33
But then she might choose words he wouldn't use.
24:35
Her style might be different. Exactly.
24:38
But then, after years and years of working together, they
24:40
reached stage 3. She knew his mind so well,
24:45
understood his style, his vocabulary and his intent so
24:48
thoroughly, that she could answer letters for him without
24:51
him speaking a word, and the result would sound exactly like
24:55
him. Yet it was processed through her
24:57
own mind. And that is the model Erickson
24:59
is proposing for inspiration. He likens it to a sort of mental
25:02
telepathy, though we should be careful with that term.
25:05
The idea is that the biblical writers were not robots.
25:08
They were men in such close communion with God, so saturated
25:11
in his truth that they thought God's thoughts after him.
25:15
When they sat down to write, they freely chose words that
25:17
were exactly the words God intended them to choose.
25:21
And this wasn't just a momentary thing, was it?
25:23
It wasn't like God zapped them for an hour and left them alone.
25:26
Erickson talks about provenance and preparation.
25:28
This is the Longview of inspiration, and it's so
25:31
important. We tend to think of inspiration
25:33
as just the moment the pen hits the paper, but Erickson argues
25:36
God prepared the author's entire lives for this task.
25:40
Think about Luke. God ensured Luke was born where
25:43
he was educated as he was trained as a physician.
25:47
Why? So that when it came time to
25:48
write the Gospel of Luke in the book of Acts, Luke would have a
25:51
precise clinical detail vocabulary at his disposal.
25:55
Exactly. God didn't have to override
25:57
Luke's vocabulary to get technical medical details into
25:59
the text. He created Luke's vocabulary
26:02
through 40 years of life experiences.
26:04
He made Peter a fisherman to shape his worldview and his
26:07
rough hewn metaphors. The human element, the style,
26:10
the vocab was itself prepared by God through Providence.
26:15
So when we read Paul, we are getting Paul's personality, but
26:17
it's a personality honed by God for that specific task.
26:21
That is a really comforting thought.
26:22
It means God uses our full humanity our whole lives.
26:26
He doesn't just bypass it. Now, there's another technical
26:28
distinction Ericsson makes that I think is helpful for people
26:31
who get hung up on scientific precision.
26:33
In the Bible, he talks about the difference between precision and
26:36
specificity. He uses a chart involving the
26:39
color red. This is based on the linguist
26:42
Kenneth Pike's concept of magnification, and it's so
26:45
useful. We need to distinguish between
26:47
how clear an image is, that's precision, and how much detail
26:50
is included. That's specificity.
26:52
OK, so how does the red example work?
26:54
Imagine God wants to convey the concept of the color red.
26:58
Now red is a general term. Scarlet is a more specific term.
27:02
If God's intent is to convey red as a general category, then
27:05
using the word red is precise. It is a true statement.
27:08
But it's not maximally specific. Not at all.
27:11
But here's the catch. If God wanted to say red and the
27:14
writer wrote Scarlet, that would be more specific, but it would
27:18
actually be inaccurate to the intent if the object was
27:21
actually, say, Crimson. Sometimes being too specific
27:24
creates an error. So the Bible is always precise.
27:28
It says exactly what God wanted it to say, but it is not always
27:31
maximally specific. Correct.
27:33
It doesn't give every single historical detail.
27:36
It doesn't give scientific data down into the molecular level.
27:39
It gives the truth at the level of magnification God shows for
27:42
His purposes. So when the Bible describes a
27:44
battle, it might say about 5000 men fell.
27:48
That is precise. It's a true statement.
27:50
It's not specific like 4231 men fell.
27:55
We shouldn't accuse the Bible of error just because it speaks in
27:58
round numbers or general terms, as long as those terms are true
28:01
to God's intent. That solves a lot of the gotcha
28:03
questions. Doesn't oh, this number is
28:05
rounded, so the Bible must be false.
28:07
No, it's just a different level of specificity.
28:09
It allows us to trust the text without demanding it read like a
28:12
modern scientific journal, which was never.
28:14
Its purpose? Correct.
28:16
It prevents us from imposing modern standards of data
28:19
analysis on an ancient text while still upholding its
28:22
absolute truthfulness. We are coming into the final
28:25
stretch here. We need to talk about the extent
28:28
of inspiration. What is covered?
28:30
Obviously the Old Testament is covered.
28:32
That was the scripture Jesus had.
28:33
But what about the New Testament?
28:35
How do we justify treating Paul's letters to these little
28:39
churches as the word of God? It's a fair question since the
28:42
New Testament was being written as the events unfolded, but the
28:45
internal evidence is very strong that the apostles realize what
28:49
was happening. Peter in second Peter 3.4 sync
28:53
refers to Paul's letters and he says ignorant people distort
28:56
them as they do the other scriptures.
28:58
That is a huge statement, Peter's classifying Paul's
29:01
letters on the same level as the Torah or the Prophets.
29:04
He's calling them Graphis Scripture.
29:05
He is. It's an incredible moment.
29:07
And in First Timothy 5.18, Paul quotes two things as Scripture.
29:12
He quotes Deuteronomy. Do not muzzle an ox while it is
29:15
treading out the grain. And right next to it.
29:17
He quotes the worker deserves his wages.
29:20
Now, that second quote is not in the Old Testament, it's found in
29:23
Luke 10.7. So Paul is quoting the Gospel of
29:26
Luke, which was likely in circulation at that point, and
29:29
calling it Scripture right alongside Moses.
29:32
Correct. He places Moses and Luke on the
29:34
exact same level of authority. And then you have John in
29:38
Revelation 22 who gives that terrifying warning against
29:42
adding to or subtracting from the words of this prophecy.
29:46
The apostles were conscious that they were adding to the Canon.
29:48
They recognized the authority in each other's writings.
29:51
Now one final question on extent.
29:53
What about the writers themselves?
29:54
Were they inspired 24/7? Like was Paul's shopping list
29:58
inspired if you wrote a note to his mom?
30:00
Was that scripture? That's a great question, and
30:02
Erickson addresses this by distinguishing between the
30:04
office and the writ. He argues that inspiration was
30:07
intermittent, not a permanent attribute of the person.
30:10
Like a superpower, they could just turn on and off whenever
30:13
they wanted. So it wasn't that Paul is
30:14
inspired, but rather Paul's writing of the book of Romans
30:17
was inspired. Correct.
30:19
In the Old Testament the prophets had specific times when
30:22
the word of the Lord came to them.
30:24
It wasn't a constant stream. And in the New Testament we know
30:27
for a fact the apostles could air.
30:29
We mentioned Galatians 2 Earlier.
30:31
Peter withdrew from eating with Gentiles because he was afraid
30:34
of the circumcision party. Paul had to rebuke him to his
30:37
face for not acting in line with the gospel.
30:39
That is a clear case of an inspired apostle behaving in an
30:43
uninspired, actually sinful way. Right.
30:46
If inspiration were a permanent personal attribute, Peter could
30:49
not have made that theological error in his conduct.
30:52
So we conclude that inspiration applies to the writing at the
30:55
specific time of the spirits moving.
30:57
It ensures the text is infallible, but it does not make
31:00
the human author infallible in their daily life.
31:03
That's a crucial distinction. It really is.
31:05
It saves us from hero worshipping the men, and it
31:08
keeps our focus on the text itself.
31:10
It does. We Revere the book, not the man.
31:12
So as we wrap up this deep dive into Reformed thinking on
31:15
inspiration, let's just summarize the position we're
31:18
holding to a verbal plenary confluent view.
31:21
That is the summary right there. Verbal.
31:23
The Spirit's guidance extends to the very words clenary.
31:27
It extends to all parts of Scripture equally, history,
31:30
poetry, doctrine, all of it. And confluent.
31:33
It's the product of 2 agents, God and man, working together,
31:37
where God is the ultimate source and guarantor of truth using the
31:40
prepared personality of the human author.
31:43
And we base this primarily on the didactic what the Bible
31:46
claims for itself. It's a robust doctrine.
31:48
It really feels like it stands up to scrutiny.
31:50
But I want to leave our listeners with a thought that
31:52
really stuck with me. From Ericsson's conclusion.
31:54
He talks about the quality of inspiration versus the emotional
31:58
effect. This is such a profound point to
32:00
end on. We so often confuse inspiration
32:03
with inspiring. We read the Sermon on the Mount
32:06
or Psalm 23 and we feel an emotional response.
32:08
We might cry, we feel lifted up. We say wow, that is inspired.
32:12
But then we read a list of kings and Chronicles, or the
32:15
dimensions of the Temple and Ezekiel, or a dietary law in
32:17
Leviticus, and it feels, well, it feels dry.
32:21
It doesn't generate an emotional high.
32:23
And the temptation is to think the Psalms are more inspired
32:26
than the lists. Exactly.
32:28
We instinctively grade Scripture based on how it makes us feel.
32:31
But the challenge for the Reformed thinker, for the
32:34
serious Christian, is to realize that the quality of inspiration
32:38
is objective, not subjective. We must value the accuracy of
32:42
the historical data just as much as we value the emotional high
32:45
of the Psalms. Why?
32:46
Because of the same Holy Spirit. Breathe both.
32:49
The truth of the genealogy is just as God bruised as the truth
32:53
of the Beatitudes. That is a challenge.
32:55
It calls us to submit our emotions to the text rather than
32:59
judging the text by our emotions.
33:00
It connects back to the idea of the sure guide, because the
33:03
Bible is inspired in this way. We have a sure word.
33:06
We're not left to guess about who God is or what He requires.
33:09
We have a fixed objective deposit of truth and that should
33:13
motivate us to study it, all of it, even the dry parts
33:15
intensively. Well said.
33:17
We have a sure foundation. Thank you for walking us through
33:19
this. It's been a heavy topic, but an
33:21
essential one. My pleasure, it is the ground we
33:24
stand on. Indeed it is.
33:26
Thank you for listening to this deep dive on the doctrine of
33:29
inspiration. We hope it challenges you to
33:31
pick up your Bible with a renewed sense of awe and trust.
33:34
This has been Reformed thinking. Until next time.