If it be urged that the quotations which the New Testament makes from the Old are rarely ipsissima verba, the language being in many instances greatly changed, it should be noted in reply how significant even these changes often are. If the Holy Spirit directed in the writing of both books, he would have a sovereign right to alter the phraseology, if need be, from the one to the other. In the opinion of many scholars the change of "the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob," in Isa. 59: 20, to "There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer," in Rom. 11: 26, is an inspired and intentional change.[5] So of the citation from Amos 9: 11, "In that day will I raise up the tabernacle that is fallen," as given in Acts 15:16, "After these things I will return, and I will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen"; the modification of the language seems designed, in order to make clear its significance in its present setting. Many other examples might be given of {177} a reshaping of his own words by the divine Author of Scripture. On the other hand, the constant recurrence of the same words and phrases in books of the Bible most widely separated in the time and circumstances of their composition, strongly suggests identity of authorship amid the variety of penmanship. The individuality of the writers was no doubt preserved, only that their individuality was subordinated to the sovereign individuality of the Holy Spirit. It is with the written word as with the incarnate Word. Because Christ is divine, he is more truly human than any whom the world has ever seen; and because the Bible is supernatural, it is natural as no other book which was ever written; its divinity lifts it above those faults of style which are the fruits of self-consciousness and ambition. Whether we read the Old Testament story of Abraham's servant seeking a bride for Isaac, or the New Testament narrative of the walk of the risen Christ with his disciples to Emmaus, the inimitable simplicity of the diction would make us think that we were listening to the dialect of the angels who never sinned in thought, and therefore cannot sin in style, did we not know rather that it is the phraseology of the Holy Spirit.[6]
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An eminent German theologian has written a sentence so profoundly significant that we here reproduce it in Italics: "We can in fact speak with good reason of a language of the Holy Ghost. For it lies in the Bible plainly before our eyes, how the Divine Spirit, who is the agent of revelation, has fashioned for himself a quite peculiar religious dialect out of the speech of that people which forms its theatre."[7] So true do we hold this saying to be, that it seems to us quite impossible that the exact meaning of many of the terms of the New Testament Greek should be found in a Lexicon of classic Greek. Though the verbal form is the same in both, the inbreathed spirit may have imparted such new significance to old words, that to employ a secular dictionary for translating the sacred oracles, were almost like calling an unregenerate man to interpret the mysteries of the regenerate life. Do we not know how modern progress and discovery have even put new meanings into many English words, so that one must be in "the spirit of the age" in order to comprehend them?[8] Thus {179} likewise, even in the work of verbal criticism, it is essential that one possess the spirit of Christ in order to translate the words of Christ.
As to the question of the "inerrancy of Scripture," as the modern phrase is, we may well pass by many minor arguments, and emphasize the one great reason for holding this view, viz.: If it is God the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, then the Bible is the word of God, and like God, infallible. A recent brilliant writer has challenged us to show where the Bible anywhere calls itself "The word of God."[9] The most elementary student of the subject can, with the aid of a concordance, easily point out the passages which so describe it. But we dwell on the fact that is not only called o logos tou theon, "the Word of God," but ta logia tou theou, "the oracles of God." This collective name of the Scriptures is most significant. We need not inquire of the heathen as to the meaning which they put upon the words as the authoritative utterances of their gods; let the usage of Scripture make its own impression: "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way; first of all, that they were intrusted with the oracles of God" (Rom. 3: 2, R. V.).[10]
This comprehensive expression is very helpful {180} to our faith. When critics are assailing the books of the Old Testament in detail, the Holy Spirit authenticates them for us in their entirety. As Abigail prayed for a soul "bound in the bundle of life" with the Lord, so here an apostle gives us the books of the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms bound together in one bundle of inspired authority. Stephen, in like manner, speaks of his nation as "those who received the lively oracles (of God) to give unto us" (Acts 7: 38); and Peter says, "If any man speak let him speak as the oracles of God" (1 Peter 4: 11). And not only this; the same apostles who submitted to the authority of the Old Testament as the oracles of God, themselves claimed to write as the oracles of God in the New Testament. "If any man," says Paul, "think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord" (1 Cor. 14: 37). "We are of God," writes John. "He that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us" (1 John 4: 16). These claims are too great to be put forth concerning fallible writings. Admitting their premises, the Jews were right in charging Jesus with blasphemy, in that being a man {181} he made himself God. If Christ is not God, he is not even a good man. And if the Scriptures are not inerrant, they are worse than errant; since, being literature, they make themselves the word of God.
And what if it be said that there are irreconcilable contradictions in this book which calls itself the oracles of God? Two things may be said: First, it should be expected that under "the scientific method" such contradictions should appear and constantly multiply. The Bible is a sensitive plant, which shuts itself up at the touch of mere critical investigation. In the same paragraph in which it claims that its very words are the words of the Holy Spirit, it repudiates the scientific method as futile for the understanding of those words: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,"—and insists on the spiritual method as alone adequate,—"but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit" (1 Cor. 2: 9, 10). Not only does the Bible not yield roses to the critic, it yields the thorns and briars of hopeless contradiction. "Intellige ut credos verbum meum," said Augustine to the rationalists of his day, "sed crede ut intelligas verbum Dei." "Understand my word, that you may believe it; believe God's word, that you may understand it." Faith holds not only the keys of all the creeds, but of all the contradictions. He who starts out and proceeds under the conviction that the Bible is the {182} infallible word of God, will find discrepancies constantly turning into unisons under his study. And this remark leads to the second observation: that the contradictions of man may really be the harmonies of God. An uncultivated listener, hearing an oratorio of one of the great masters, would detect discords again and again in the strains; and as a matter of fact, what are called "accidentals" in music are discords, but discords inserted to heighten the harmony. Thus, as one after another of the alleged discrepancies of Scripture having been noted and made to jar upon the ear have then been reconciled, with what an emphatic and heightened harmony have the words of the psalmist, speaking by the Holy Ghost, fallen on our ear: "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple"! There seems to the critic to be historic error in the statement of Stephen that Jacob was buried at Sychem (Acts 7: 16) instead of in the field of Machpelah before Mamre, as recorded in Gen. 50: 13, just as it was once thought that Luke had made a mistake, not to be explained away, in his reference to Cyrenius in chapter 2: 1, 2. But as the latter contradiction has disappeared, only confirming the veracity of Scripture by the investigation which it has called forth, so may the former. And so also with such alleged discrepancies as that between the record in {183} one place that King Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses, and in another forty thousand; or that of the statement in one passage that King Josias began to reign at eight years of age, and in another, at eighteen. What if we freely admit that we cannot reconcile these statements? That does not prove that they are not reconcilable. The history of solved contradictions has certainly shown this, that as "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men," so the discords of God are more harmonious than men.
We may say, in closing this chapter, that almost the highest proof of the infallibility of Scripture is the practical one, that we have proved it so; that as the coin of the State has always been found able to buy the amount represented on its face, so the prophecies and the promises of Holy Scripture have yielded their face value to those who have taken pains to prove them. If they have not always done so, it is probable that they have not yet matured. Certainly there are multitudes of Christians who have so far proved the veracity of Scripture that they are ready to trust it without reserve in all that it pledges for the world yet unseen and the life yet unrealized. "Believe that thou mayest know," then, is the admonition which Scripture and history combine to enforce. In the farewell of that rare saint, Adolph Monod, these golden words occur: {184} "When I shall enter the invisible world, I do not expect to find things different from what the word of God represented them to me here. The voice I shall then hear will be the same I now hear upon the earth, and I shall say, 'This is indeed what God said to me; and how thankful I am that I did not wait till I had seen in order to believe.'"
[1] John 3: 8. "The wind bloweth where it listeth." Without pronouncing dogmatically, it must be said that the translation of Bengel and some others—"The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice"—has reasons in its favor which are well-nigh irresistible; e.g., If to pneuma here is the wind, it has one meaning in the first part of the sentence and another meaning in the second; and that meaning too, one which it bears in no other instance of the more than two hundred and seventy uses of the word in the New Testament. It is not the word used in Acts 2: 2, as might be expected if it signified wind. Then it seems unnatural to ascribe volition to the wind, thelei. On the contrary, if the words apply to the Spirit, the saying is in entire harmony with other Scriptures, which affirm the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost in regeneration (John 1: 13) and in the control and direction of those who are the subjects of the new birth (2 Cor. 12: 4-11).
[2] The proof that the inspiration of the apostles and scribes of the New Testament was not transmitted to successors is thus stated by Neander: "A phenomenon singular in its kind is the striking difference between the writings of the apostles and those of the apostolic fathers, so nearly their contemporaries. In other instances transitions are wont to be gradual, but in this instance we observe a sudden change. There is no gentle gradation here, but all at once an abrupt transition from one style of language to another—a phenomenon which should lead us to acknowledge the fact of a special agency of the Divine Spirit in the souls of the apostles and of a new creative element in the first period."—Church History, II., 405.
[3] There are the strongest reasons for rejecting the rendering of this passage as given in the Revised Version: "Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable", etc. The reader will find the objections to this rendering powerfully and conclusively set forth in Tregelles on Daniel. Note, p. 267.