7. Inspiration did not always, or even generally, involve a direct communication to the Scripture writers of the words they wrote.
Thought is possible without words, and in the order of nature precedes words. The Scripture writers appear to have been so influenced by the Holy Spirit that they perceived and felt even the new truths they were to publish, as discoveries of their own minds, and were left to the action of their own minds in the expression of these truths, with the single exception that they were supernaturally held back from the selection of wrong words, and when needful were provided with right ones. Inspiration is therefore not verbal, while yet we claim that no form of words which taken in its connections would teach essential error has been admitted into Scripture.
Before expression there must be something to be expressed. Thought is possible without language. The concept may exist without words. See experiences of deaf-mutes, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1881:104-128. The prompter interrupts only when the speaker's memory fails. The writing-master guides the pupil's hand only when it would otherwise go wrong. The father suffers the child to walk alone, except when it is in danger of stumbling. If knowledge be rendered certain, it is as good as direct revelation. But whenever the mere communication of ideas or the direction to proper material would not suffice to secure a correct utterance, the sacred writers were guided in the very selection of their words. Minute criticism proves more and more conclusively the suitableness of the verbal dress to the thoughts expressed; all Biblical exegesis is based, indeed, upon the assumption that divine wisdom has made the outward form a trustworthy vehicle of the inward substance of revelation. See Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 102, 114; Bib. Sac, 1872:428, 640; William James, Psychology, 1:266 sq.
Watts, New Apologetic, 40, 111, holds to a verbal inspiration: “The bottles are not the wine, but if the bottles perish the wine is sure to be spilled”; the inspiring Spirit certainly gave language to Peter and others at Pentecost, for the apostles spoke with other tongues; holy men of old not only thought, but “spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21). So Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 171—“Why the minute study of the words of Scripture, carried on by all expositors, their search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring of mood and tense and accent?” Liberal scholars, Dr. Gordon thinks, thus affirm the very doctrine which they deny. Rothe, Dogmatics, 238, speaks of “a language of the Holy Ghost.” Oetinger: “It is the style of the heavenly court.”But Broadus, an almost equally conservative scholar, in his Com. on Mat. 3:17, says that the difference between “This is my beloved Son,” and Luke 3:22—“Thou art my beloved Son,” should make us cautious in theorizing about verbal inspiration, and he intimates that in some cases that hypothesis is unwarranted. The theory of verbal inspiration is refuted by the two facts: 1. that the N. T. quotations from the O. T., in 99 cases, differ both from the Hebrew and from the LXX; 2. that Jesus' own words are reported with variations by the different evangelists; see Marcus Dods, The Bible, its Origin and Nature, chapter on Inspiration.
Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that there was a God, but she had not known his name. Dr. Z. F. Westervelt, of the Deaf Mute Institute, had under his charge four children of different mothers. All of these children were [pg 217]dumb, though there was no defect of hearing and the organs of speech were perfect. But their mothers had never loved them and had never talked to them in the loving way that provoked imitation. The children heard scolding and harshness, but this did not attract. So the older members of the church in private and in the meetings for prayer should teach the younger to talk. But harsh and contentious talk will not accomplish the result,—it must be the talk of Christian love. William D. Whitney, in his review of Max Müller's Science of Language, 26-31, combats the view of Müller that thought and language are identical. Major Bliss Taylor's reply to Santa Anna: “General Taylor never surrenders!” was a substantially correct, though a diplomatic and euphemistic, version of the General's actual profane words. Each Scripture writer uttered old truth in the new forms with which his own experience had clothed it. David reached his greatness by leaving off the mere repetition of Moses, and by speaking out of his own heart. Paul reached his greatness by giving up the mere teaching of what he had been taught, and by telling what God's plan of mercy was to all. Augustine: “Scriptura est sensus Scripturæ”—“Scripture is what Scripture means.”Among the theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching, are Luther, Calvin, Cocceius, Tholuck, Neander, Lange, Stier, Van Oosterzee, John Howe, Richard Baxter, Conybeare, Alford, Mead.
8. Yet, notwithstanding the ever-present human element, the all-pervading inspiration of the Scriptures constitutes these various writings an organic whole.
Since the Bible is in all its parts the work of God, each part is to be judged, not by itself alone, but in its connection with every other part. The Scriptures are not to be interpreted as so many merely human productions by different authors, but as also the work of one divine mind. Seemingly trivial things are to be explained from their connection with the whole. One history is to be built up from the several accounts of the life of Christ. One doctrine must supplement another. The Old Testament is part of a progressive system, whose culmination and key are to be found in the New. The central subject and thought which binds all parts of the Bible together, and in the light of which they are to be interpreted, is the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The Bible says: “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1); but then, this is to be taken with the context: “The fool hath said in his heart.” Satan's “it is written,” (Mat. 4:6) is supplemented by Christ's “It is written again” (Mat. 4:7). Trivialities are like the hair and nails of the body—they have their place as parts of a complete and organic whole; see Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:40. The verse which mentions Paul's cloak at Troas (2 Tim. 4:13) is (1) a sign of genuineness—a forger would not invent it; (2) an evidence of temporal need endured for the gospel; (3) an indication of the limits of inspiration,—even Paul must have books and parchments. Col. 2:21—“Handle not, nor taste, nor touch”—is to be interpreted by the context in verse 20—“why ... do ye subject yourselves to ordinances?” and by verse 22—“after the precepts and doctrines of men.” Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:164—“The difference between John's gospel and the book of Chronicles is like that between man's brain and the hair of his head; nevertheless the life of the body is as truly in the hair as in the brain.” Like railway coupons, Scripture texts are “Not good if detached.”
Crooker, The New Bible and its New Uses, 137-144, utterly denies the unity of the Bible. Prof. A. B. Davidson of Edinburgh says that “A theology of the O. T. is really an impossibility, because the O. T. is not a homogeneous whole.” These denials proceed from an insufficient recognition of the principle of evolution in O. T. history and doctrine. Doctrines in early Scripture are like rivers at their source; they are not yet fully expanded; many affluents are yet to come. See Bp. Bull's Sermon, in Works, xv:183; and Bruce, Apologetics, 323—“The literature of the early stages of revelation must share the defects of the revelation which it records and interprets.... The final revelation enables us to see the defects of the earlier.... We should find Christ in the O. T. as we find the butterfly in the caterpillar, and man the crown of the universe in the fiery cloud.” Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 224—Every part is to be modified [pg 218]by every other part. No verse is true out of the Book, but the whole Book taken together is true. Gore, in Lux Mundi, 350—“To recognize the inspiration of the Scriptures is to put ourselves to school in every part of them.” Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet Evolvable from the whole; evolved at last Painfully, held tenaciously by me.” On the Organic Unity of the O. T., see Orr, Problem of the O. T., 27-51.
9. When the unity of the Scripture is fully recognized, the Bible, in spite of imperfections in matters non-essential to its religious purpose, furnishes a safe and sufficient guide to truth and to salvation.