The Second London Confession On The Doctrine Of Scripture (Part 2): The Identity of the Scriptures (1.2-3)

By Robert P. Martin

Dr. Robert P. Martin is Pastor of Emmanuel Reformed Baptist Church, Seattle, Washington, and Editor of Reformed Baptist Theological Review.

2. Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testaments, which are these: 

Of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi 

Of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, The first and second Epistles of Peter, The first, second, and third Epistles of John, the Epistle of Jude, the Revelation 

All which are given by the inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life. 

3. The books commonly called Apocrypha,[1] not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon (or rule) of the Scripture, and therefore, are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.

These paragraphs address the question of the identity of Scripture. They list the books to be received as authentic (i.e., as being inscripturated divine revelation) and specifically exclude the books of the Apocrypha. The dividing line between the Old and New Testaments on one side and the Apocrypha (and all other writings of merely human origin) on the other side is divine inspiration. The Confession says that the books of the Old and New Testaments “are given by inspiration of God,” while the books of the Apocrypha, “not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon (or rule) of the Scripture, and therefore, are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.” The two-pronged, inter-related focus of these paragraphs, therefore, is canon and inspiration. Following on the opening paragraph, in which the authors confessed their belief in inscripturated divine revelation, these paragraphs answer the question: “Which books are of this character?”

In its original historical context, these paragraphs were written to address problems on two fronts. Paragraph two was written chiefly in opposition to the Deists, who denied that the books of the Old and New Testaments were inspired of God. Paragraph three was written in opposition to Rome’s claim that the Apocryphal books were to be received as of equal authority with the books of the Old and New Testaments. These views are still with us today, in that Rome continues to assert the inspiration of the Apocrypha and theological liberals of every stripe continue to deny that the Bible is divinely inspired in any meaningful way. With the appearance and reappearance of other alleged Christian scriptures (e.g., the Book of Mormon, the Gospel of Thomas,[2] the Gospel of Judas[3]), the question of the proper canon of Scripture is even more in play than in the Seventeenth Century.

The term “canon” (from κανών, a carpenter’s rule, cf., קָנֶה, reed), when used of Scripture, refers to the collection of books that are received as Holy Scripture. This term underscores the authoritative nature of these books in the matter of establishing and governing Christian faith and practice.[4] Robert Reymond says, “From the beginning of the process of the inscripturation of the Word of God to the present time, the biblical faith has always been a ‘book religion.’ That is to say, during this period the people of God have always had a divinely inspired, authoritative canon (‘rule’ or ‘standard’) comprised of documents which served them as their guide in matters of faith and life.”[5]

Inscripturation began with Moses, and from the time of his writing “the book of the covenant” (cf., Exod. 24:7) or “the book of the law” (cf., Deut. 31:26), a written canon (or, Bible) has existed.[6] While this original Mosaic canon was always normative for God’s people under the terms of the covenant at Sinai,[7] it was not a closed canon, as is evident from Joshua’s adding to it the covenant made at Shechem (cf., Josh. 23:6; 24:25-26). God also caused other materials of various character to be added as the centuries passed (cf., 1 Sam. 10:25; Prov. 25:1), so that we can speak with Warfield of an “increasing” canon, i.e., the books of Scripture “gradually grew in number from Moses to Malachi.”[8] By the time we come to the later prophets, Daniel speaks of the prophecy of Jeremiah as included in “the books” (Dan. 9:2) and Zechariah speaks of “the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets” (Zech. 7:12), indicating that in his mind “the law” and “the prophets” were “in some measure coordinate.”[9]

Jewish tradition credits Ezra and Nehemiah with the final collecting of the canonical books of the Old Testament, and while there clearly is embellishing in 2 Esdras’s account of the extent of Ezra’s work, there is no reason to dispute the general point itself, that Ezra the scribe took in hand a work that was carried on also during the governorship of Nehemiah and that was completed not later than the days of the revolt against Antiochus IV.[10] It is common to refer to this work in terms of the activity of “the Great Synagogue.” Pirqe Aboth 1:1 says, “Moses received the Torah from Sinai, and he delivered it to Jehoshua, and Jehoshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets delivered it to the men of the Great Synagogue.”[11]

The Old Testament canon was not settled in an historical vacuum. From the time of its constitution, the life of the congregation of Israel and the establishment of the Old Testament canon moved forward together. As McClintock and Strong observe, “The construction of an ecclesiastical polity involved the practical determination of the divine rule of truth.”[12] The circumstances of the return from the Exile, as well as the crisis during the reign of Antiochus IV, brought this process to its climax. On the heels of the greatest trauma in Israel’s history, the Babylonian Exile, the need for identifying the canon of sacred writings that was to regulate the nation’s life was paramount. Only obedience to God could prevent another such catastrophe in the future. The epoch of the Old Covenant prophets was not yet ended, but the last of the prophets (Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi) were on the scene. What part (if any) they may have had in settling the Old Covenant canon, we cannot say; however, there was a certain (perhaps even conscious) finality to their ministries, in that with the rebuilding of the temple and the reestablishment of Old Covenant ritual worship, only the establishment of the kingdom of God’s Signet (Hag. 2:20-23),[13] only the coming of the Branch, the king-priest of the house of David, who yet will build the temple (Zech. 6:12-13), only the coming of the great Messenger of the Covenant to his temple (Mal. 3:1), remained on the divine timetable. Given the nature of these prophecies, the old canon virtually closed itself, even as the coming and prophesying of Christ opened the new canon (cf., Heb. 1:1-2; 2:1-4).

In the days of the Seleucid rule of Israel, the providential pressure of persecution put its seal on the canonizing of the Old Testament. Among Antiochus IV’s many desolating sacrileges was an effort to destroy the sacred books of Israel. “They cut in pieces, and burnt with fire the books of the law of God: and every one with whom the books of the covenant of the Lord were found, and whoever observed the law of the Lord, they put to death, according to the edict of the king” (1 Macc. 1:56-57). In such a circumstance, the previous settling of the canon by the men of the Great Synagogue was sealed by the willingness of God’s people to die for the sacred books. As we will see, in a similar way, in the fires of persecution God put his providential seal on the canon of the New Testament as well. On the present subject, however, the testimony of Josephus is certainly accurate:

We have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them. For it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records that contain them; whereas there are none at all among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on that account, no, nor in case all the writings that are among them were to be destroyed.[14]

However we account for the process by which the Hebrew canon was established, by the time of Christ’s appearing, the canon of Scripture was fixed in the Jews’ understanding.[15] As further testimony of this fact, the prologue to Ecclesiasticus speaks of “the law and the prophets and the others that followed them,” “the law and the prophets and the other books of our fathers,” and “the law itself, the prophecies, and the rest of the books” as the source of “instruction and wisdom” for God’s people. Jesus refers to the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Scriptures (the thirty-nine books of the Protestant Old Testament) as “the law and the prophets” (Matt. 5:17; 7:12; 11:13; 22:40; Luke 16:16; cf., Acts 24:14; Rom. 3:21), “Moses and the prophets” (Luke 16:29,31; 24:27; cf., Acts 26:22; 28:23), and “the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms” (Luke 24:44).[16] The rule by which books were received into the canon of Scripture was that of divine inspiration, which was known (at least in part) on the basis of the analogia fidei, so that those books only were received that agreed with preceding revelation (cf., Deut. 13:1-3). The closing verses of Ecclesiastes point to an extensive literature beyond the sacred writings; but Solomon speaks disparagingly of it (Eccl. 12:12). In any case, “the cessation of the prophetic gift pointed out the necessity and defined the limits of the collection.”[17] Our Confession therefore is correct in its listing of the canonical books of the Old Testament, in that it simply follows the testimony of the ancient Jews, and of Christ and the apostles of the New Covenant.[18]

On the use of the Apocrypha by some in the early church, McClintock and Strong observe:

The general use of the Septuagint (enlarged by apocryphal additions) produced effects which are plainly visible in the history of the O.T. Canon among the early Christian writers. In proportion as the fathers were more or less absolutely dependent on that version for their knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, they gradually lost in common practice the sense of the difference between the books of the Hebrew Canon and the Apocrypha. The custom of individuals grew into the custom of the Church; and the public use of the apocryphal books obliterated in popular regard the characteristic marks of their origin and value, which could only be discovered by the scholar. But the custom of the Church was not fixed in an absolute judgment. The same remark applies to the details of patristic evidence on the contents of the Canon. Their habit must be distinguished from their judgment. 

During the first four centuries this Hebrew Canon is the only one which is distinctly recognized, and it is supported by the combined authority of those fathers whose critical judgment is entitled to the greatest weight. The real divergence as to the contents of the Old Testament Canon is to be traced to Augustine, who enumerates the books contained in “the whole Canon of Scripture,” including the Apocrypha, without any special mark of distinction . . . (De Doctr. Christ. 2:8 [13]; comp. De Civ. 18:36; Gaud. 1:38). The enlarged Canon of Augustine, though wholly unsupported by any Greek authority, was adopted at the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397?) . . . nevertheless, a continuous succession of the more learned fathers in the West maintained the distinctive authority of the Hebrew Canon up to the period of the Reformation. 

Up to the date of the Council of Trent, the Romanists allow that the question of the Canon was open, but one of the first labors of that assembly was to circumscribe a freedom which the growth of literature seemed to render perilous. The decree of the Council “on the Canonical Scriptures,” . . . pronounced the enlarged Canon, including the apocryphal books, to be deserving in all its parts of “equal veneration” (pari pietatis affectu), and added a list of books “to prevent the possibility of doubt” (ne cui dubitatio suboriri possit). This hasty and peremptory decree, unlike in its form to any catalogue before published, was closed by a solemn anathema against all who should “not receive the entire books, with all their parts, as sacred and canonical” (Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in ecclesia catholica legi consueverunt et in veteri vulgata Latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit . . . anathema esto, Conc. Trid. Sess. 4). This decree was not, however, passed without opposition . . . and, in spite of the absolute terms in which it is expressed, later Romanists have sought to find a method of escaping from the definite equalization of the two classes of sacred writings by a forced interpretation of the subsidiary clauses. Du Pin (Dissert prelimn. 1:1), Lamy (App. Bibl. 2:5), and Jahn (Einlin d. A. T. 1:141 sq. ap. Reuss, § 337) endeavored to establish two classes of proto-canonical and deutero-canonical books, attributing to the first a dogmatic, and to the second only an ethical authority. But such a classification, however true it may be, is obviously at variance with the terms of the Tridentine decision, and has found comparatively little favor among Romish writers.[19]

In line with the reaction of the Calvinistic churches to Trent’s decree, our Confession rejects the Apocrypha, asserting that these books, “not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon (or rule) of the Scripture, and therefore, are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.”

The Old Testament canon, though complete and closed long before the First Century A.D., nonetheless was not the final canon, not even in the minds of the Jews. They expected the appearing of the Messiah who would be “the messenger of the covenant” (and his forerunner “Elijah the prophet”) promised by Malachi (cf., Mal. 3:1; 4:5-6). This would be the age (the אַחֲרִית)20 when, as Joel prophesied, God would pour out his Spirit and his sons and daughters would prophesy (Joel 2:28-29). When these things were fulfilled in the appearing of John the Baptist and Jesus, and in the ministries of the apostles and prophets of the New Covenant, it was only natural that this resumed verbal revelation should be recorded and that the books that did so should be received as Holy Scripture. This is in fact what happened. The church of the New Covenant therefore did not invent the idea of a scripture “canon” but inherited the canon of Israel, expanding it only in response to the renewal of divine verbal revelation.

As with the Old Testament, so with the canon of the New Testament, “both grew silently under the guidance of an inward instinct rather than by the force of external authority.”[21] That is to say that no church or civil authority produced the New Testament canon as the churches now universally receive it. Instead, God’s people, impelled by the Holy Spirit’s inward witness to the truth and by God’s providential superintendence, received those writings that they believed were inspired of God. We see this process already in the First Century in the testimony of Peter to the scriptural character of Paul’s letters:

According to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, in which dwells righteousness. Therefore, beloved, seeing that you look for these things, give diligence that you may be found in peace, without spot and blameless in his sight. And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unstedfast wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:13-16).

Paul himself validates the canonical place of Luke’s Gospel in his statement at 1 Tim. 5:18. “For the scripture says, You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn. And, The laborer is worthy of his hire.” The first statement is that of Moses recorded in Deut. 25:4. The second is that of Jesus recorded in Luke 10:7. Paul does not distinguish between the sources of these statements but speaks of both as authoritative “scripture.”[22]

Even as the old canon came to be known as “the Law and the Prophets,” so the enlarged canon came to be known as “the Law and the Prophets, and the Apostles along with the Gospel,”[23] or “the Law and the Gospel,”[24] while the New Testament was known as “the Gospel and the Apostles.”[25] Very telling is Polycarp’s reference to New Covenant revelation as included in “the oracles” (τὰ λόγια), a term that Paul had used of the Old Testament scriptures.[26] In Polycarp’s day (A.D. 65-155), very early in the history of the church, “the Gospel and the Apostles” were classed with the Old Testament scriptures as “the oracles” of the Lord.

Like the history of the collection of the Old Testament canon, so the history of the New Testament canon is difficult to reproduce because of the paucity of data bearing directly on the process by which it took place. On the basis of the surviving evidence, there seem to be three landmarks in the process of New Testament canon formation and recognition by the universal church.

The first landmark is at the end of the Second Century. By this time the twenty-seven books of the New Testament had circulated among the churches, although some difference of opinion over which books are inspired was present. From this period comes the so-called Muratorian Fragment[27] and in this period the views of Marcion on the extent of the canon were examined and rejected.[28] Some of the canonical books for a time were questioned in some places (i.e., Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation), while some received other books (e.g., the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Revelation of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas). During the Third Century, however, while the non-canonical books fell to the wayside, the seven disputed books were received by virtually all the churches.[29] As Reymond observes, “as the several regions of the church grew in their ecumenical ties with one another it became increasingly evident that the doubts concerning these writings were only regional and that these regional doubts contradicted what the larger church had for a long time believed about these matters.”[30]

The second landmark was the persecutions of Christians by the Roman emperor Diocletian (and his edict which required the destruction of Christian books). Coming at the end of the Third Century and at the beginning of the Fourth Century, these persecutions forced Christians to decide which books they were willing to surrender and which they were willing to die for.[31] By A.D. 367, Athanasius can say of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, “These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these.”[32]

The final landmark was the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), which ratified the canon of twenty-seven New Testament books already accepted in the churches of Africa (Canon 24).[33] After this time, while individuals occasionally continued to question certain books, most notably Luther at the time of the Reformation, not even the influence of a Luther could bring about a change in the canon of the New Testament.[34]

Scholars long have debated the precise criteria by which inspired books were distinguished from uninspired books. The criteria of evidence proposed are these:[35] (1) apostolicity, i.e., was the book written by an apostle or a close associate who received apostolic endorsement? (2) antiquity, i.e., is the document from the apostolic age? (3) orthodoxy, i.e., does the teaching of the book accord with the analogia fidei or apostolic faith? (4) catholicity, i.e., was the book virtually universally accepted among the churches? (5) lection, i.e., was the book widely read and used in the worship of the churches? There is no doubt that these factors were considered by those who wrestled with the question of canon in the early centuries of the church; however, we must be careful not to think that the church, through the use of evidence and reason alone, i.e., by historical research, established the canon of Scripture. This would amount to God’s letting the formation of the canon and the authority of the Scriptures so recognized to be subject “to the relativity of historical study and fallible human insight.”[36] McClintock and Strong state the demands of historical research in matter of fact terms:

In order to establish the Canon of Scripture [i.e., by deduction from the historical evidence], it is necessary to show that all the books of which it is composed are of divine authority; that they are entire and incorrupt; that, having them, it is complete without any addition from any other source; and that it comprises the whole of those books for which divine authority can be proved. It is obvious that, if any of these four particulars be not true, Scripture cannot be the sole and supreme standard of religious truth and duty.[37]

While scholarship has done much to assure us of the correctness of the present canon in light of the demands of these criteria, absolute certainty on the basis of historical investigation is not possible. Therefore, we are warranted in saying that the canon of Scripture is established in some other way. We must look away from man to God. It is more accurate biblically to say that the God who works all things after the counsel of his own will so superintended the process that just those books which he willed were recognized by his people as Holy Scripture. Even as these books (and these alone) are God-breathed, so God’s governing providence determined their recognition by the Spirit-wrought persuasion which he gave his people of their inspiration. While we reach this conclusion by faith, as Reymond says, “In sum, the formation of the twenty-seven-book New Testament canon, after all is said and done, appears ultimately to have been the work, not of men, not even of the church, but of God’s Spirit alone.”[38] This accords, of course, with what the Confession later says about the authority of Scripture (cf., 2nd LCF 1.4-5).

As we have seen, these paragraphs address the question of the identity of Scripture, listing the books to be received as authentic (i.e., as being inscripturated divine revelation) and excluding all others (specifically noting the books of the Apocrypha). The dividing line between the Old and New Testaments on the one side and the Apocrypha (and all other writings of merely human origin) on the other side is divine inspiration. The Confession says that the books of the Old and New Testaments “are given by the inspiration of God,”[39] while the books of the Apocrypha, “not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon (or rule) of the Scripture, and therefore, are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.” Again, the two-pronged emphasis of these paragraphs is on the inspiration and the canon of Holy Scripture. Having considered the question of canon, let us turn now to the question of inspiration.

Those familiar with the ongoing controversy over the Bible’s inspiration at first reading may be surprised by the simplicity and seeming indefiniteness of the Confession’s statement. For example, there is no explicit mention of a specific theory of inspiration. The authors of the Westminster Confession merely said that they believed in the “inspiration of God” or “divine inspiration.” Because of this, some have argued that the Westminster divines adhered to (or at least allowed) the modern liberal doctrine of Scripture. Most famously, in his book Whither?, Charles A. Briggs argued that the doctrine of the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture was a modern development and that the Westminster Assembly had refrained deliberately from any specific doctrine of inspiration.[40] Commenting on Briggs’s argumentation, B. B. Warfield responded, “Such a contention as this, as the French say, brings us stupefaction.”[41] There are still those who argue as Briggs did. Jack Rogers, for example, says, “Despite the fact that Briggs was historically correct, Warfield’s views prevailed in the Presbyterian Church.”[42] But was Briggs historically correct? Warfield argues convincingly that he was not, not only showing Briggs’s misuse of data derived from the writings of select seventeenth-century Puritans but also citing convincing positive evidence that the Westminster men (as was true of the Puritans generally) held to verbal-plenary inspiration and biblical infallibility and inerrancy.

This leads us then to take up the question, especially in view of the controversy that has raged over the doctrine of inspiration since the Seventeenth Century: What view of inspiration was held by those who framed the Westminster Confession (and the Savoy Declaration) from which our Confession takes these paragraphs? To put the question another way, If the Westminster divines in this chapter (“Of the Holy Scripture”) did not explicitly state a doctrine of verbal-plenary inspiration (as well as an attendant doctrine of biblical inerrancy), is there evidence that they assumed that they would be understood in this sense?

Perhaps the place to begin is to recognize that from the beginning of the Christian era, starting with Jesus and the Apostles, the great lights of Christian history have been one in their basic idea as to the character of the Scriptures. Later we will examine in some depth the view of Christ and the Apostles (as recorded in the New Testament). Here simply consider the voices of a few of the notable men in the early ages of the church who adopted the New Testament view as their own. Clement of Rome (A.D. 30-100), Paul’s companion and fellow-worker (Philip. 4:3), writing to the Corinthians near the end of the First Century, says, “Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit. Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written in them (ὅτι οὐδὲν ἄδικον οὐδὲ παραπεποιημένον γέγραπται ἐν αὐταῖς).”[43] Irenaeus (A.D. 120-202), says that we should be “most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit (quia Scripturae quidem perfectae sunt, quippe a Verbo Dei et Spiritu ejus dictae).”[44] Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 153-217), in his Stromata (7.16), uses the following expressions interchangeably: “the voice of the Lord” (τῇ τοῦ κυρίου φωνῇ), “the God-breathed writings” (τὰς θεοπνεύστους γραφάς), and “the God-breathed words” (τοῖς θεοπνεύστοις λόγοις).[45] In his Exhortation to the Heathen, commenting on Paul’s words in 2 Tim. 3:15-17, Clement says, “‘Thou, O Timothy,’ he says, ‘from a child hast known the holy letters (τὰ ἱερὰ γράμματα), which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith that is in Christ Jesus.’ For truly holy are those letters (γράμματα) that sanctify and deify; and the writings or volumes (τὰς γραφὰς τὰ συντάγματα) that consist of those holy letters and syllables (γραμμάτων καὶ συλαβῶν τῶν ἱεπῶν), the same apostle consequently calls “inspired of God (θεοπνεύστου), being profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished to every good work.”[46] What do such statements contain but expressions of belief in the divine production and verbal inspiration of the Scriptures?

Origen (A.D. 185-254), despite his peculiarities as an exegete and theologian, was at one with his predecessors on the subject of the character of Scripture.

Being about to begin the interpretation of the Psalms, we prefix a very excellent tradition handed down by the Hebrew [a Jewish teacher that he refers to elsewhere] to us generally concerning the whole divine Scripture (περὶ πάσης θείας γραφῆς); for he affirmed that the whole inspired Scripture (τὴν ὃλην θεόπνευστον γραφήν) . . . . But if ‘the words of the Lord are pure words, fined silver, tried as the earth, purified seven times’ (Ps. 11. 7) and the Holy Spirit has with all care dictated them accurately (μετά πάσης ἀκρίβειας ἐξετάσμενος τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα ὑπεπβέβληκεν) through the ministers of the word, let the proportion never escape us, according to which the wisdom of God is first with respect to the whole theopneustic Scripture unto the last letter (καθ᾿ ἕν ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἐφθάση γραφὴν ἡ σοφία τοῦ θεοῦ θεοπνεύστου μέχρι τοῦ τυχόντως γράμματος); and haply it was on this account that the Saviour said, ‘One iota or one letter shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled’: and it is just so that the divine art in the creation of the world, not only appeared in the heaven and sun and moon and stars, interpenetrating their whole bodies, but also on earth did the same in paltry matter, so that not even the bodies of the least animals are disdained by the artificer. . . . So we understand concerning all the things written by the inspiration (ἐξ ἐπίνοιας) of the Holy Spirit.[47] 

There is in the Divine oracles nothing crooked or perverse, for they are all plain to those who understand. And because to such an one there is nothing crooked or perverse, he sees therefore abundance of peace in all the Scriptures, even in those which seem to be at conflict, and in contradiction with one another. And likewise he becomes a third peacemaker as he demonstrates that that which appears to others to be a conflict in the Scriptures is no conflict, and exhibits their concord and peace, whether of the Old Scriptures with the New, or of the Law with the Prophets, or of the Gospels with the Apostolic Scriptures, or of the Apostolic Scriptures with each other. For, also, according to the Preacher, all the Scriptures are “words of the wise like goads, and as nails firmly fixed which were given by agreement from one shepherd;” [citing Eccl. 12:11] and there is nothing superfluous in them. But the Word is the one Shepherd of things rational which may have an appearance of discord to those who have not ears to hear, but are truly at perfect concord. For as the different chords of the psalter or the lyre, each of which gives forth a certain sound of its own which seems unlike the sound of another chord, are thought by a man who is not musical and ignorant of the principle of musical harmony, to be inharmonious, because of the dissimilarity of the sounds, so those who are not skilled in hearing the harmony of God in the sacred Scriptures think that the Old is not in harmony with the New, or the Prophets with the Law, or the Gospels with one another, or the Apostle with the Gospel, or with himself, or with the other Apostles. But he who comes instructed in the music of God, being a man wise in word and deed, and, on this account, like another David–which is, by interpretation, skillful with the hand–will bring out the sound of the music of God, having learned from this at the right time to strike the chords, now the chords of the Law, now the Gospel chords in harmony with them, and again the Prophetic chords, and, when reason demands it, the Apostolic chords which are in harmony with the Prophetic, and likewise the Apostolic with those of the Gospels. For he knows that all the Scripture is the one perfect and harmonized instrument of God, which from different sounds gives forth one saving voice to those willing to learn, which stops and restrains every working of an evil spirit, just as the music of David laid to rest the evil spirit in Saul, which also was choking him.[48]

The later Fathers also held high views of inspiration. Augustine (A.D. 350-430), for example, writes to Jerome:

I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error (ut nullum eorum auctorem scribendo aliquid errasse firmissime credam). And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the Ms. is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it. As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves, or by arguments addressed to my reason. I believe, my brother, that this is your own opinion as well as mine. I do not need to say that I do not suppose you to wish your books to be read like those of prophets or of apostles, concerning which it would be wrong to doubt that they are free from error (de quorum scriptis, quod omni errore careant, dubitare nefarium est). Far be such arrogance from that humble piety and just estimate of yourself which I know you to have.[49]

Luther adopts Augustine’s words as his own and affirms that the whole of the Scriptures is from the Holy Spirit and therefore cannot err.[50]

Calvin, commenting on 2 Tim. 3:16, the text cited by our Confession in support of its assertion of the Scriptures’ inspiration, says,

First, he commends the Scripture on account of its authority; and secondly, on account of the utility which springs from it. In order to uphold the authority of the Scripture, he declares that it is divinely inspired; for, if it be so, it is beyond all controversy that men ought to receive it with reverence. This is a principle which distinguishes our religion from all others, that we know that God hath spoken to us, and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare. Whoever then wishes to profit in the Scriptures, let him, first of all, lay down this as a settled point, that the Law and the Prophets are not a doctrine delivered according to the will and pleasure of men, but dictated by the Holy Spirit. . . . This is the first clause, that we owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God because it has proceeded from him alone, and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it.[51]

The testimony of the Reformers could be multiplied. We close this point by citing the preface to the Augsburg Confession, the first of the Protestant confessions of faith, in which Philip Melancthon says, “we offer, in this matter of religion, the Confession of our preachers and of ourselves, showing what manner of doctrine from the Holy Scriptures and the pure Word of God has been up to this time set forth in our lands, dukedoms, dominions, and cities, and taught in our churches.”

Warfield remarks, “At no age has it been possible for men to express without rebuke the faintest doubt as to the absolute trustworthiness of their [the Scriptures’] least declaration. . . . The church has always believed her Scriptures to be the book of God, of which God was in such a sense the author that every one of its affirmations of whatever kind is to be esteemed as the utterance of God, of infallible truth and authority.”[52] That the Westminster divines, who owed so much of their understanding of the character of the Scriptures to the Church Fathers and to the Reformers of the Sixteenth Century, should depart from their view or deliberately leave room for a lesser view, as the French say, brings us stupefaction.

But what is the testimony of the men who framed the Westminster Confession? Consider the oath required of every member of the Westminster Assembly: “I, , do seriously promise and vow, in the presence of Almighty God, that in this Assembly, whereof I am a member, I will maintain nothing in point of doctrine but what I believe to be most agreeable to the Word of God; nor in point of discipline, but what I shall conceive to conduce most to the glory of God, and the good and peace of his Church.” William Hetherington says, “This protestation was appointed to be read afresh every Monday morning, that its solemn influence might be constantly felt.”[53] Even as these men were determined to labor in such a way that the highest glory should come to God, so, with such a vow always renewed among them, we would expect to find among them the highest views of Scripture. Their writings (as with the writings of those who published the Savoy Declaration) are numerous enough and plain enough to dispel any reasonable doubt as to their view of Scripture. A sampling is all that is possible; however, the evidence bearing on this point is almost limitless.

John White was one of two assessors appointed by the Westminster Assembly, whose role was to chair the assembly’s meetings in the absence of William Twisse, the prolocutor. In his Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Scriptures (1647), commended by another of the Westminster divines, Thomas Goodwin, commenting on 2 Pet. 1:20-21, White says that . . .

not onely the matter or substance of the truths revealed, but the very forms of expression were not of mans devising, as they are in Preaching, where the matter which men preach is not, or ought not to be the Ministers own that preacheth, but is the Word of truth, 2 Tim. ii. 15. but the tearms, phrases, and expressions are his own. Secondly, he saith, that it came not by the will of man, who neither made his own choice of the matters to be handled, nor of the forms and manner of delivery. So that both the understanding, and will of man, as farre as they were meerly naturall, had nothing to doe in this holy work, save onely to understand, and approve that which was dictated by God himselfe, unto those that wrote it from his mouth, or the suggesting of his Spirit. 

Again, the work of the Holy Ghost in the delivery of the Scriptures is set down affirmatively, when the Pen-men of those sacred writings are described, to speak as they were moved or carried by the holy Ghost, a phrase which must be warily understood. For we may not conceive that they were moved in writing these Scriptures, as the pen is moved by the hand that guides it, without understanding what they did: For they not onely understood, but willingly consented to what they wrote, and were not like those that pronounced the Devils Oracles, rapt and carried out of themselves by a kinde of extasie, wherein the Devill made use of their tongues and mouths, to pronounce that which themselves understood not. But the Apostles meaning is, that the Spirit of God moved them in this work of writing the Scriptures, not according to nature, but above nature, shining into their understandings clearly, and fully, by an heavenly and supernaturall light, and carrying and moving their wils thereby with a delight, and holy embracing of that truth revealed, and with a like desire to publish and make known the secrets and counsels of God, revealed unto them, unto his Church. 

Yea, beyond all this, the holy Ghost not only suggested unto them the substance of that doctrine which they were to deliver and leave upon record unto the Church, (for so far he usually assists faithfull Ministers, in dispensing of the Word, in the course of their Ministery) but besides hee supplyed unto them the very phrases, method, and whole order of those things that are written in the Scriptures, whereas he leaves Ministers in preaching the Word, to the choice of their own phrases and expressions, wherein, as also in some particulars which they deliver, they may be mistaken, although in the main fundamentals which they lay before their hearers, and in the generall course of the work of their Ministery, they do not grossly erre. Thus then the holy Ghost, not only assisted holy men in penning the Scriptures, but in a sort took the work out of their hand, making use of nothing in the men, but of their understandings to receive and comprehend, their wils to consent unto, and their hands to write downe that which they delivered, When we say, that the holy Ghost framed the very phrase and style wherein the Scriptures were written, we mean not, that he altered the phrase and manner of speaking, wherewith custome and education had acquainted those that wrote the Scriptures, but rather speaks his own words, as it were in the sound of their voice, or chooseth out of their words and phrases such as were fit for his own purpose.[54]

John Lightfoot “was probably the greatest Biblical scholar that took any large part in the discussions of the Assembly.”[55] Although his works are chiefly exegetical, they are not lacking in bearing witness to his high view of the Bible’s inspiration. Consider the following excerpts:[56]

So that the Spirit of God inspired certain persons, whom he pleased, to be the revealers of his will, till he had imparted and committed to writing what he thought fit to reveal under the Old Testament; and when he had completed that, the Holy Ghost departed, and such inspirations ceased. And when the gospel was to come in, then the Spirit was restored again, and bestowed upon several persons for the revealing farther of the mind of God, and completing the work he had to do, for the settling of the gospel, and penning of the New Testament: and that being done, these gifts and inspirations cease, and may no more be expected, than we may expect some other gospel yet to come.[57] 

When the inspired penmen had written all that the Holy Ghost directed to write, ‘all truth’ was written.[58] 

Now was the whole will of God revealed and committed to writing, and from henceforth must vision, and prophecy, and inspiration, cease for ever. These had been used and imparted all along, for the drawing up of the mind of God into writing.[59]

Commenting on 2 Pet. 2:15 (and the difference between Bosor and Beor), Lightfoot says . . .

that no tittle in Scripture is idle, but ought to have its consideration; according to the saying of the Jews, ‘That there is no tittle in Scripture, but even mountains of matter hang upon it’: and, as our Saviour saith, ‘one jot or tittle of the law shall not perish’; so, not one jot or tittle in Scripture, but hath its weight. Here is one poor letter, which, one would think, was crept in by some oversight, yet that carries with it matter of important and weighty consideration.[60]

William Bridge, one of several Independents present at the Westminster Assembly, in his sermons entitled “Scripture Light the Most Sure Light,” says,

More sure is the word written, than that voice of revelation; not ratione veritatis, not in regard of the truth uttered, for that voice was as true as any word in the Scripture; but more sure, ratione manifestationis, more certain, settled and established.[61] 

The written word of the Lord is certain, sure and stedfast; “Heaven and earth shall pass, but not one tittle of the word shall pass:” the least apex and tittle of it is more established than the mountains.[62] 

Take heed and attend to the Scriptures, for they are our great and most sure light, whereunto ye do well if ye take heed, as unto a light shining in a dark place. Oh, then take heed thereunto. What must we do, that we may take heed and attend unto Scripture? Ye must do three things. I. Ye must attend to know and understand it. II. Ye must attend to keep it. And, III. Ye must attend to walk by the same. And, I. For your knowledge in and understanding of the Scripture, and the written word of God, ye must, 

1. Observe, keep, and hold fast the letter of it; for though the letter of the Scripture be not the word alone, yet the letter with the true sense and meaning of it, is the word. The body of a man is not the man; but the body and soul together, make up the whole man: the soul alone or the body alone is not the man. So here, though the letter of the Scripture alone, do not make up the word; yet the letter and sense together do. And if ye destroy the body, ye destroy the man; so if ye destroy the letter of the Scripture, you do destroy the Scripture: and if you deny the letter, how is it possible that you should attain to the true sense thereof, when the sense lies wrapped up in the letters and the words thereof?[63]

Samuel Rutherford, one of the Scottish delegates to the Assembly, in his A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (1649) contended ably for the Bible’s inspiration. Warfield, using Rutherford’s own words, summarizes his argument this way:

To Rutherford, therefore, all the Scriptures, whether in matters fundamental or not, were written by God (p. 373); he quotes them with the formula, “The Holy Ghost saith” (pp. 353, 354 bis); he declares that the writers of the New Testament were “immediately inspired” (p. 368), a phrase of quite technical and unmistakable meaning; represents it as the part of an apostate to deny “all the Scriptures to be the word of God” (p. 349); and looks upon them as written under an influence which preserved them from error and mistake (pp. 362, 366, etc.), and as constituting a more sure word than an immediate oracle from heaven (p. 193). . . . he declares that “The Scripture resolves our faith on, Thus saith the Lord,” which is “the only authoritie that all the Prophets alledge, and Paul”; and adds that, if it were so as Mr. [John] Goodwin averred, “all our certainty of faith” would be gone; wherefore he praises God that “we have βεβαιότερον λόγον a more sure word of Prophesie, surer then [than] that which was heard on the Mount for our direction, and the establishing of our faithe.”[64]

Similar testimony may be found in the writings of men not present at the Westminster Assembly but who fairly represented the Reformed and Puritan doctrine of Scripture. For example, Richard Baxter, though highly controversial in some of his doctrinal views, was one with his Puritan brethren on the subject of Scripture.

Those that affirm that it was but the doctrine of Christianity that was sealed by the Holy Ghost, and in which they were infallible, but that their writings were in circumstantials, and by passages, and method, and words, and other modal respects, imperfect and fallible as other good men’s, (in a less degree,) though they heinously and dangerously err, yet do not destroy, or hazard the christian religion by it. 

Though the apostles were directed by the Holy Ghost in speaking and writing the doctrine of Christ, so that we know they performed their part without errors, yet the delivering down of this speech and writings to us is a human work, to be performed by the assistance of ordinary providence. 

All the credit of the Gospel and christian religion doth not lie on the perfect freedom of the Scriptures from all error: but yet we doubt not to prove this their perfection against all the cavils of infidels, though we can prove the truth of our religion without it. 

All that the holy writers have recorded is true, (and no falsehood in the Scripture, but what is from the error of scribes and translators). 

No error or contradiction is in it, but what is in some copies, by the failing of preservers, transcribers, printers, or translators.[65]

To the same effect is John Ball’s A Short Catechism contayning the principles of religion very profitable for all sorts of people (1645), a work greatly admired by the Puritans:

Q. What call you the word of God? 

A. The holy Scripture immediately inspired, which is contained in the Books of the Old and New Testament. 

Q. What is it to be immediately inspired? 

A. To be immediately inspired, is to be as it were breathed, and to come from the Father by the Holy Ghost, without all means. 

Q. Were the Scriptures thus inspired? 

A. Thus the holy Scriptures in the Originals were inspired both for matter and words.[66]

In his Treatise on Faith (1637), Ball says,

The ground or foundation of faith must be some thing, which is purely and simply divine, admixt without error, yea, subject to no error; the indubitate [indubitable] word and revelation of Christ, the divine & prime verity revealed by inspiration. But the Word of God alone is purely and simply divine, admixt with no error . . . every part of Scripture is God’s word, of certain and undoubted truth.[67]

We add also the testimony of John Owen, the prince of Puritan theologians, who, with Thomas Goodwin, was the chief architect of the Savoy Declaration from which our Confession was most directly taken. In his “The Reason of Faith” (1677), Owen says,

What it was they [Christians in every age][68] gave testimony unto is duly to be considered, and this was, not only that the book of the Scripture was good, holy, and true, in all the contents of it, but that the whole and every part of it was given by divine inspiration, as their faith in this matter is expressed, 2 Pet. i. 20, 21. On this account, and no other, did they themselves receive the Scripture, as also believe and yield obedience unto the things contained in it. Neither would they admit that their testimony was received if the whole world would be content to allow of or obey the Scripture on any other or lower terms, nor will God himself allow of an assent unto the Scripture under any other conception, but as the word which is immediately spoken by himself. Hence, they who refuse to give credit thereunto are said to “belie the Lord, and say, It is not he,” Jer. v. 12; yea, to “make God a liar,” 1 John v. 10. If all mankind should agree together to receive and make use of this book, as that which taught nothing but what is good, useful, and profitable to human society, as that which is a complete directory unto men in all that they need to believe or do towards God, the best means under heaven to bring them to settlement, satisfaction, and assurance of the knowledge of God and themselves, as the safest guide to eternal blessedness, and therefore must needs be written and composed by persons wise, holy, and honest above all comparison, and such as had such knowledge of God and his will as is necessary unto such an undertaking ;—yet all this answers not the testimony given by the church of believers in all ages unto the Scriptures. It was not lawful for them, it is not for us, so to compound this matter with the world. That the whole Scripture was given by inspiration from God, that it was his word, his true and faithful sayings, was that which, in the first place, they gave testimony unto, and we also are obliged so to do. They never pretended unto any other assurance of the things they professed, nor any other reason of their faith and obedience, but that the Scripture, wherein all these things are contained, was given immediately from God, or was his word; and, therefore, they were always esteemed no less traitors to Christianity who gave up their Bibles to persecutors than those who denied Jesus Christ.[69]

Speaking of the Westminster divines and their other Puritan contemporaries, Warfield says, “If they did not believe in these doctrines [verbal-plenary inspiration, the Bible’s infallibility and inerrancy], human language is incapable of expressing belief in doctrines. Is it not a pity that men are not content with corrupting our doctrines, but must also corrupt our history?”[70]

And what may be deduced from the testimony of the Puritans of the Seventeenth Century may also be seen in the Confession itself. The language of 1.5, for example, can only comport with the doctrines of verbal-plenary inspiration and biblical infallibility and inerrancy:

We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, and the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, and many other incomparable excellencies, and entire perfections thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.[71]

Returning then to our opening question, why is the Confession’s statement of biblical inspiration so simple and seemingly indefinite? Because it was written in a day when the views expressed by Lightfoot and Bridge, and Baxter and Owen, et. al. were so uniformly received among the people of God that no further qualification was needed to be understood. Since their day, large segments of the mainline Protestant denominations which once were Reformed have embraced heterodox views of the Bible’s inspiration. Because of this lamentable fact, we must be more specific than our forefathers. I have no doubt that, if the Westminster divines were writing the Confession today, they would adopt some such statement as appears in a recently published Reformed Baptist revision of the Shorter Catechism.

Q.4. Are the Scriptures trustworthy in all they affirm? 

A. The Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments, being God-breathed, are infallible and inerrant in all their parts and are, therefore, trustworthy in all they affirm concerning history, science, doctrine, ethics, religious practice, or any other topic.[72]

We now come to the question, which view of inspiration, including that represented by the Confession, is the biblical view? There are a great many theories as to the nature of inspiration espoused by those who deny verbal-plenary inspiration. Warfield observed that in his day,

Wherever five “advanced thinkers” assemble, at least six theories as to inspiration are likely to be ventilated. They differ in every conceivable point, or in every conceivable point save one. They agree that inspiration is less pervasive and less determinative than has heretofore been thought, or than is still thought in less enlightened circles. They agree that there is less of the truth of God and more of the error of man in the Bible than Christians have been wont to believe. They agree accordingly that the teaching of the Bible may be, in this, that, or the other, here, there, or elsewhere,—safely neglected or openly repudiated. So soon as we turn to the constructive side, however, and ask wherein the inspiration of the Bible consists; how far it guarantees the trustworthiness of the Bible’s teaching; in what of its elements is the Bible a divinely safeguarded guide to truth: the concurrence ends and hopeless dissension sets in. They agree only in their common destructive attitude towards some higher view of the inspiration of the Bible, of the presence of which each one seems supremely conscious.[73]

What would Warfield say today? Though there are a plethora of views on inspiration, each with its own nuance, historically they may be ranged under five heads:

1. The Naturalistic or Intuition view argues that inspiration is nothing more than superior insight on the part of the natural man into moral and religious truth. God dwells in all men; thus all men are inspired. The degree of inspiration depends on one’s natural mental and spiritual capacity (thus C. S. Lewis is more spiritually inspired than Friedrich Nietzsche—at least as far as we can tell from their writings). This view fails, however, because of crucial defects. First, it is contrary to the teaching of Scripture itself, that “the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). According to the Bible, therefore, man has no such powers as the naturalistic theory assumes. Second, this view produces hopeless confusion, for one man is inspired to utter as truth what a second man is inspired to pronounce as false. Moral and religious truth thus becomes purely subjective–a matter of private opinion. Indeed, in the minds of some, Nietzsche, who declared the death of God and heralded his successor as “superman” or “overman,” may be more inspired than Lewis. Hitler would have thought so.

2. The Illumination theory argues that inspiration is the elevating of the religious perceptions of believers. Thus inspiration refers to writers but not to their writings. The illumination of the Holy Spirit supposedly puts the writer in full possession of his normal powers, but does not communicate objective truth beyond the ability of the writer to discover and understand truth for himself. This view also is severely inadequate. Emery Bancroft observes:

Mere illumination could not secure the Scripture writers from frequent and grievous error. The spiritual perception of the Christian is always rendered to some extent imperfect and deceptive by remaining depravity. The subjective element so predominates in this theory that no certainty remains even with regard to the trustworthiness of the Scriptures as a whole.[74]

Neither the Intuition or Illumination views, of course, account for the “mysteries” disclosed in the Bible, those “things that God has prepared for those who love him,” that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man” (1 Cor. 2:9). These things cannot be discovered by human ability.

3. The Rationalistic view argues that we may distinguish between inspired and uninspired aspects and elements of Scripture.[75] This doctrine of qualified inspiration has appeared basically in three forms: (1) that only the mysteries of the faith are inspired, i.e., those things undiscoverable by unaided reason; (2) that the Bible is inspired in matters of faith and practice, but not in all matters of history or science;[76] and (3) that the Bible is inspired only in its religious ideas but not in its words. The so-called Dynamic view of inspiration so prevalent in our day is the fruit of this rationalistic approach. This view argues that the religious ideas found in Scripture rather than the words are inspired, and that the writers of Scripture were enabled by God to declare certain religious truths unmixed with error, but were allowed to express those truths in words of their own choosing. This view presently is the centerpiece of the assault on the orthodox doctrine of inspiration. Responding in his day, Charles Hodge argued rightly that inspiration must extend to words, since ideas come to the mind in words and the two are inseparable. He says, “The thoughts are in the words. The two are inseparable.”[77]

4. The Mystical view argues that the Christian has something within himself (variously described as enlightened reason, spiritual insight, or the witness of the Spirit) which tests alleged revelations from God and decides what is of religious value. Those influenced by this view (widely introduced by Friedrich Schleiermacher in the Nineteenth Century, characteristic also of Neo-orthodoxy in the Twentieth Century) “acknowledge as from God only such Scripture as ‘finds them,’–who cast the clear objective enunciation of God’s will to the mercy of the currents of thought and feeling which sweep up and down in their own souls.”[78] The fact of the complete subjectivity of this view is its best refutation. It contains no objective standard whatever by which truth claims may be measured. All is feeling. That multitudes in our day (even among those who formally espouse higher views of biblical inspiration) at a practical level are accustomed to read and use the Bible in this way is one of the most lamentable realities that pervades the present scene.

5. The Verbal-Plenary view of biblical inspiration argues that all of the Scripture, including its words, is inspired by the Holy Spirit.[79] By verbal inspiration is meant that the very words of Scripture were inspired by God. The biblical writers were not left to choose the words they used, but were divinely directed in their selection. By plenary inspiration is meant that the Bible is fully inspired in all its parts. Every word is equally inspired and of equal authority. The Bible is not a book in which one may encounter some word from God, but a book which may be appealed to at every point as the Word of God (“as the Word of God in such a sense that whatever it says God says”).[80] Further, the Scripture is exempt not only from error, but from anything superfluous.

Arguing that this view is “the church doctrine of inspiration,”[81] Warfield notes, “the church has always believed her Scriptures to be the book of God, of which God was in such a sense the author that every one of its affirmations of whatever kind is to be esteemed as the utterance of God, of infallible truth and authority.”[82] And how shall we account for this? Warfield answers, “The fact, namely, that this church-doctrine of inspiration was the Bible doctrine before it was the church-doctrine, and it is the church-doctrine only because it is the Bible doctrine.”[83] But is this the Bible doctrine? To this question we now turn our attention.

The evidence bearing on discerning the Bible’s view of its own inspiration is enormous. Not only do we have explicit statements by Christ and the apostles, but their use of the Old Testament Scriptures is such as to plainly reveal what they thought about its inspiration. The constraint of space forbids giving an elaborate account of these facts; however, in what follows, we will consider at least the chief witnesses bearing on this subject.

We consider first the text cited by the Confession at this point. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). We considered this passage in a previous article when dealing with the subject of the Scripture’s sufficiency.[84] Now we turn to the meaning of the expression “all scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

Paul says πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος. The Latin Vulgate translated this as omnis scriptura divinitus inspirata. Our English word “inspired” is derived from the Latin verb inspiro (used in this text) and from its companion noun inspiratio (“inspiration”). In the Vulgate, inspiro and inspiratio are used to describe effects produced as the result of a powerful, divine breathing upon or breathing into.[85] Of special interest is Job 32:8, where the Vulgate uses inspiratio to denote the source of understanding in man of divine things–“there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty (inspiratio Omnipotentis) gives him understanding.” At 2 Pet. 1:21, as at 2 Tim. 3:16, the Vulgate uses inspiro specifically of the divine breathing which produces Scripture–“holy men of God spoke as they were moved (inspirati, breathed into) by the Holy Spirit.” There is no question that the Vulgate’s use of the phrase divinitus inspirata to translate θεόπνευστος has greatly influenced English translators of 2 Tim. 3:16.[86] Warfield’s cavil, however, is very much to the point. He notes that there is nothing in θεόπνευστος that is equivalent to the in- prefix in inspiro.

The Greek term has, however, nothing to say of inspiring or of inspiration: it speaks only of a “spiring” or “spiration.” What it says of Scripture is, not that it is “breathed into by God” or is the product of the Divine “inbreathing” into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God, “God-breathed,” the product of the creative breath of God.[87]

As Warfield suggests, the word θεόπνευστος (from the combination of θεός, “God,” and πνέω, “to breathe”) should be translated into English as “God-breathed.”[88] Though it appears only here in the New Testament (and here first in Greek literature), its etymology is sufficiently simple to bring us to this conclusion. Cremer argues for the active rendering “breathing the divine [God’s] Spirit,”[89] but the passive sense of “God-breathed,” i.e., “produced by the creative breath of the Almighty,” certainly is correct.[90] If, as is possible, Paul created this word, “nothing could be more natural than that it should have enshrined in it the Hebraic conviction that God produces all that He would bring into being by a mere breath.”[91]

Before proceeding further, perhaps this is the place to take up the question: Does Paul here teach that the writers of Scripture are “inspired” or that the Scriptures themselves are “inspired”? He teaches that it is the Scriptures that are “God-breathed”; he makes no mention of the writers of Scripture at all. Commenting on Paul’s use of θεόπνευστος, Warfield says, “what is declared by this fundamental passage is simply that the Scriptures are a Divine product, without any indication of how God has operated in producing them.”[92] We should not deduce from this, however, that we may not speak of inspired writers in any sense whatever. Later we will examine 1 Pet. 1:21, where Peter describes the prophets this way: “men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”[93] Taking these texts together, we may say that inspiration may be thought of as a powerful divine “moving” that carried along the biblical writer in such a way that he “spoke from God” (ἐλάλησαν ἀπὸ θεοῦ) and that his writing (γραφή) is legitimately said to be θεόπνευστος.

Now, Paul says that “all scripture” (πᾶσα γραφή) is θεόπνευστος.[94] Both of these terms (i.e., πᾶς and γραφή) are important to our understanding the identity of the object that he calls “God-breathed.” In the way that Paul here uses the term πᾶς (with an anarthrous noun), it can mean “every one”of the class denoted by the noun annexed to it.[95] This accounts for the ASV’s rendering “every scripture,” i.e., every writing that belongs to the class denoted as “Scripture.” When used with a collective noun, however, πᾶς means “the whole” or “all,” i.e., the whole or all of Scripture.[96] This accounts for the way that most English versions handle our text, taking γραφή as a collective noun equivalent to the ἱερὰ γράμματα (“holy writings”) that Paul mentions at 3:15.[97] This accounts for the translation “all scripture” found in KJV, etc. In the end of the day, Knight is correct that either rendering will do: “All scripture perceives scripture as a whole, and every scripture perceives it in terms of its component parts.”[98] Or as Hendriksen says, “if ‘every scripture’ is inspired, ‘all scripture’ must be inspired also.”[99]

If preference must be given to one rendering, “all scripture” seems best, for the simple reason that Paul is most likely here saying that the whole of Scripture, not every individual book or passage by itself, is able to thoroughly equip the man of God for every good work (3:17).[100] This is also what we would expect from 3:15, especially if γραφή, as a collective noun, is equivalent to the expression ἱερὰ γράμματα (“holy writings”). There Paul’s point is that the whole of the Scripture, not just part, had made Timothy “wise unto salvation.” So at 3:16 it is the whole of the Scripture, not just part, that “perfectly fits” the Christian to serve God.

Now, while we may be tempted to limit Paul’s remarks to the Old Testament scriptures, that would be a mistake. As we noted above, when dealing with the question of the canonicity of the New Testament, Paul has already spoken to Timothy in terms which indicate that the body of sacred writings includes more than the Old Testament (cf., 1 Tim. 5:18).

In sum, Paul is saying that “all scripture” (the whole) or “every scripture” (in all its parts) has as its basic characteristic, which sets it apart from the ordinary writings of men, the fact that it is breathed-out by God.[101] The fact that Paul makes no mention of the human writers, who alone could be the source of any possible error, very much implies the infallibility of what he denotes as “all scripture.” It is this characteristic of verbal and plenary inspiration (i.e., that “all/every scripture is God-breathed”), which carries with it the presumption of infallibility, that enables the Scripture (seeing that there is nothing erroneous or misleading in it by virtue of its divine production) to make men wise unto salvation and to equip them fully for every good work. As Lenski observes, “The character of the source [God-inspired scripture] is matched by the profit produced [fully equipped Christians].”[102]

Paul, of course, is not the only New Testament writer to speak of Scripture in such a way as to give us a window into the apostolic doctrine of scriptural inspiration. Though not cited by the Confession at this place,[103] Peter’s words in 2 Pet. 1:19-21 are extraordinarily helpful in this regard.

The context of Peter’s remarks about scripture is important. He assures us that God’s “divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us” (1:3). More specifically, God has “given to us exceedingly great and precious promises” (1:4). In other words, there is a body of divine revelation, which includes God’s promises as they come to fullest expression in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This body of divine revelation, received and acted on by the believer, issues in what Peter calls “the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (1:2), or, even more specifically, “the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:8). The believer’s acting on God’s revelation, however, is to be two-pronged. On the one hand, all Christians have a “like precious faith with us (i.e., with the apostles) in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (1:1). On the other hand, Peter urges us to add diligently to our faith those things which, if they are ours and abound, will cause us to be “neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:8). In this way, with our faith focused on God and Christ, and giving even more[104] diligence to make our calling and election sure, we will never stumble–“for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (1:10-11).

In view of these vital issues, Peter speaks of his resolve to leave God’s people a permanent reminder of these things (1:12-15). His assurance of the correctness of what he calls “the present truth” (1:12, i.e., “the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come [lit. which is present] to you,” Col. 1:5-6),105 his confidence that he and the other apostles “did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:16), was grounded in the fact that they were “eyewitnesses of his majesty,” especially as he was transfigured before them and as the Father spoke from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (1:16-18). But lest the apostles’ testimony concerning what they saw and heard should be subject to doubt, Peter indicates that Christians already have better testimony than even that of eyewitnesses to Christ’s transfiguration. Our English versions of 1:19 are confusing and show the interpretive biases of the translators (a fact that may be unavoidable).[106] On the whole, the following translation seems best: “And we have a more sure thing, the prophetic word.”[107] But what does Peter mean? He is comparing the prophetic word (λόγος) with the divine voice (φωνή) speaking from heaven; and his point is that the prophetic word is more sure even than that.

But then [Alford asks] comes in the great difficulty, How could the Apostle designate the written word of God, inspired into and transmitted through men, as something firmer, more secure, than the uttered voice of God Himself? And our reply must be, that only in one sense of βεβαιότερος can this be so, viz. as being of wider and larger reference, embracing not only a single testimony to Christ as that divine voice did, but τὰ εἰς Χριστὸν παθήματα καὶ τὰς μετὰ ταῦτα δόξας [i.e., of the prophets, who testified beforehand “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow,” 1 Pet. 1:11]: as presenting a broader basis for the Christian’s trust, and not only one fact, however important.[108]

To this we also may add that the prophetic word, unlike the voice of God heard only by Peter, James, and John, may be subjected to every Christian’s examination as to the testimony given of God’s will in sending his Son. The Holy Scriptures may be examined daily whether the apostolic doctrine is true (cf., Acts 17:11). The actual voice of God from heaven, confined to one moment in history, cannot.

“The prophetic word” (τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον), of course, is the Old Testament Scriptures as a whole and not just the prophets proper, so that in using this designation, Peter is saying that “the OT in all its parts confidently looked forward to the glorious coming of the Messiah and His subsequent establishment of His kingdom.”[109] But more than this, “the prophetic word” (or “the Scriptures”) already in Peter’s day was viewed as including the letters and other documents which embodied the apostolic witness to Christ (cf., 2 Pet. 3:16; 1 Tim. 5:18). This (the old Scriptures of the Old Covenant and the new Scriptures of the New Covenant) is the light to be heeded by God’s people as it shines in the darkness of human ignorance concerning God and the Gospel. And it will be this light to which God’s people will have recourse “until the day (of the Lord[110]) dawns and the morning star (i.e., Christ at his coming)[111] rises in your hearts” with an illumination that scatters all the remaining darkness of ignorance in the believer’s heart, when “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2; cf., 1 Cor. 13:9-12).”

Peter finally connects our confidence in the Scriptures to what we know concerning their production: “knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (1:20-21). Here we reach the heart of Peter’s statement about the character of Scripture. The issue is the origin of Scripture.[112]

Peter uses the word πρῶτος, translated “first,” in the sense of “first in degree” or “above all.” And his point is that above all else, we know that the origin of the Scriptures is such as to place its authority and usefulness beyond all question. What follows (concerning the chief virtue of Scripture) is expressed by way of a contrast–first negatively, then positively. Negatively, “no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man.” Positively, “but (by contrast) holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” Let’s examine these statements each in turn.

Negatively, as to its origin, “no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man.” The word “prophecy (προφητεία) denotes “discourse emanating from divine inspiration.”[113] Designating the prophecy in view as “of Scripture” (γραφῆς), Peter clearly has in view the divinely inspired, inscripturated Word of God, or the Scriptures (as we noted above, not just the Old Testament but also the new Scriptures of the New Covenant).

The translation “is of any private interpretation” isn’t as precise as we could wish. Better is the ESV’s “comes from someone’s own interpretation.” But even this is lacking. The word ἐπίλυσις is used only here in the New Testament (and not at all in the LXX), but the cognate verb ἐπιλύω is used at Mark 4:34. In the proper sense, ἐπιλύω means “to unloose, untie anything knotted or bound or sealed up.”[114] Mark uses it of our Lord’s explaining the meaning of his parables to his disciples: “without a parable he did not speak to them,” i.e., to the multitudes, the meaning of Jesus’ parables remained sealed up, but “when they were alone, he explained all things (i.e., he untied or loosed these divine mysteries from their parabolic knots) to his disciples.”[115] Understood this way, Peter is saying that no prophecy of Scripture (which contains the revelation of otherwise hidden, mysterious things which pertain to life and godliness) arises as the result of the scripture writer’s untying of these sealed truths. As Warfield so succinctly states the matter: “it (Scripture) is not the result of human investigation into the nature of things, the product of its writer’s own thinking.”[116] That this is the correct view of the text is confirmed by the explanatory clause that follows: “for (γὰρ, because) prophecy never came by the will of man” (1:21). And this is but to say that prophecy did not arise from the unaided desire and effort of men to discover spiritual truth.

Now, in saying these things, Peter implies conversely that “every prophecy of Scripture” has arisen from some source other than human investigation into divine truth. Turning then to a positive statement of his doctrine of Scripture’s origin, he expresses this in these terms: “but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (1:21). Again, our English versions differ. ASV most likely is correct with its “men spake from God (ἀπὸ θεοῦ), being moved by the Holy Spirit.” Even more literally, “by means of the Holy Spirit bearing (them), men spoke from God.” Men spoke, but their speaking was “from God” as its ultimate source, instrumentally brought to pass by the Holy Spirit’s agency in bearing or carrying them forward. “Speaking thus under the determining influence of the Holy Spirit, the things they spoke were not from themselves, but from God.”[117]

The term here used is a very specific one. It is not to be confounded with guiding, or directing, or controlling, or even leading in the full sense of that word. It goes beyond all such terms, in assigning the effect produced specifically to the active agent. What is “borne” is taken up by the “bearer,” and conveyed by the “bearer’s” power, not its own, to the “bearer’s” goal, not its own. The men who spoke from God are here declared, therefore, to have been taken up by the Holy Spirit and brought by His power to the goal of His choosing. The things which they spoke under this operation of the Spirit were therefore His things, not theirs. And that is the reason which is assigned why “the prophetic word” is so sure. Though spoken through the instrumentality of men, it is, by virtue of the fact that these men spoke “as borne by the Holy Spirit,” an immediately Divine word.[118]

In sum, comparing the prophetic word with the divine voice speaking from heaven, Peter argues that the prophetic word is surer and thus is to be the basis for faith and Christian living. Arguing from the Scriptures’ divine origin, its authority and usefulness is beyond question. It alone is the light that is to guide believers in this world of spiritual darkness–and that it shall be until the coming of the great day of the Lord at the end of this present age. Although Peter does not speak of the Scriptures themselves as “God-breathed,” in speaking of the Scriptures as arising as men spoke from God, being borne along by the Holy Spirit, he is saying the same thing, albeit with this difference: Paul speaks directly of the Scriptures, Peter speaks also of the writers of Scripture.

And what is the view of Jesus himself? We read in John 10 of his encounter with certain Jews who tried to stone him for speaking of himself as divine:

I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works I have shown you from my Father. For which of those works do you stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, make yourself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, You are gods? If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do, though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him (John 10:30-38).

Jesus asserts that “it is not blasphemy to call one God in any sense in which he may fitly receive that designation.”[119] In Psa. 82:6, the term “gods” refers to the civil magistrates of Israel, who exercise God-given and God-like prerogatives in their official judgments. If the term may be used in that sense of men, how much more does it apply to him whom the Father sent into the world, whose works do not just show that he exercises God-given prerogatives but also validate his claim that he himself is divine.

For our purpose, the key issue is that Jesus appeals to Scripture, saying that (as the Jews would have agreed) “the Scripture cannot be broken.” But in what sense is this so? The answer is that all Scripture has the character of divine law, i.e., it has a divine, legal authority to bind men’s consciences. Jesus cites Psa. 82:6 with the formula “Is it not written in your law?” But Psalm 82 is not part of the Old Testament Scriptures usually designated as “the law,” i.e., the Pentateuch, nor does Psa. 82:6 (“I said, You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High”) contain any legal enactment at all. Our Lord’s citation of Psa. 82:6, therefore, shows how broadly the term “law” could be applied. “In other words, He here ascribes legal authority to the entirety of Scripture, in accordance with a conception common enough among the Jews (cf. Jn. xii. 34), and finding expression in the New Testament occasionally, both on the lips of Jesus Himself, and in the writings of the apostles” (cf., John 15:25; 1 Cor. 14:21; Rom. 3:19; Gal. 4:21-22).[120] It is this legal authority, which extends to all of Scripture, which “cannot be broken.” Warfield says,

The word “broken” here is the common one for breaking the law, or the Sabbath, or the like (Jn. v. 18; vii. 23; Mt. v. 19), and the meaning of the declaration is that it is impossible for the Scripture to be annulled, its authority to be withstood, or denied. The movement of thought is to the effect that, because it is impossible for the Scripture–the term is perfectly general and witnesses to the unitary character of Scripture (it is all, for the purpose in hand, of a piece)—to be withstood, therefore this particular Scripture which is cited must be taken as of irrefragable authority. 

Now, what is the particular thing in Scripture, for the confirmation of which the indefectible authority of Scripture is thus invoked? It is one of its most casual clauses–more than that, the very form of its expression in one of its most casual clauses. This means, of course, that in the Saviour’s view the indefectible authority of Scripture attaches to the very form of expression of its most casual clauses. It belongs to Scripture through and through, down to its most minute particulars, that it is of indefectible authority. 

Scripture was common ground with Jesus and His opponents. If proof were needed for so obvious a fact, it would be supplied by the circumstance that this is not an isolated but a representative passage. The conception of Scripture thrown up into such clear view here supplies the ground of all Jesus’ appeals to Scripture, and of all the appeals of the New Testament writers as well. Everywhere, to Him and to them alike, an appeal to Scripture is an appeal to an indefectible authority whose determination is final; both He and they make their appeal indifferently to every part of Scripture, to every element in Scripture, to its most incidental clauses as well as to its most fundamental principles, and to the very form of its expression. This attitude toward Scripture as an authoritative document is, indeed, already intimated by their constant designation of it by the name of Scripture, the Scriptures, that is “the Document,” by way of eminence; and their customary citation of it with the simple formula, “It is written.” What is written in this document admits so little of questioning that its authoritativeness required no asserting, but might safely be taken for granted.[121]

One further statement of our Lord’s (among many) may be adduced here as putting his view of Scripture beyond all question. At Mark 12:34 (cf., Matt. 22:29), he says to the Jews, “Are you not therefore mistaken (πλανάω, led astray into error), because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?” Now, if the source of all error in spiritual things is ignorance of the Scriptures, then the Scriptures must be the infallible, inerrant source of all saving and sanctifying knowledge of the truth which God has revealed to men.

These texts are sufficient to establish the doctrine of the Bible’s inspiration and authority held by Christ and the apostles. Were we to consider further the witness of the formulae with which the writers of the New Testament introduce their quotations of the Old Testament, the evidence would be seen to extend far beyond the testimony of a few texts. These texts are sufficient, however, to establish beyond reasonable question that Christ and the apostles held to a verbal-plenary view of inspiration and to the infallibility and inerrancy of the Scriptures.

On the question of the nature of the Bible’s inspiration, our Confession stands in a noble stream, whose headwaters rise in the Bible’s view of itself, and whose healthful waters wash at the feet of those who love and embrace the doctrine of verbal-plenary inspiration. It was in witness to this doctrine that the Holy Spirit has persuaded God’s people of the canon of sacred Scripture. Those who deny that our Confession teaches such a doctrine simply do not understand the heritage in which it stands as a monument.

Notes

1. The list of books designated as part of the Apocrypha varies by source. In the Vulgate, these books (which the Council of Trent declared canonical and therefore part of the Old Testament, although they are not found in the Hebrew canon) are Tobit, Judith, the Additions to Esther (Esth. 10:4-16:24), Wisdom, Ben Sira (also called Sirach or Ecclesiasticus), Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah), Additions to Daniel (Song of the Three Children, Dan. 3:24-90; Story of Susanna (Daniel 13), Bel and the Dragon (Daniel 14), 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees. Ironically, in his Vulgate prologues, Jerome describes a canon that excludes these books, possibly excepting Baruch. The Apocrypha section of the 1611 Authorized Version includes also three books that were not received as canonical at Trent: 1 Esdras (also known as 3 Esdras), 2 Esdras (also known as 4 Esdras), Prayer of Manasseh (although these three books alone make up the “Apocrypha” section of the Clementine Vulgate, where they are described as “outside of the series of the canon”). The Douai Bible (1609) includes them in an appendix, but they are not included in recent Catholic Bibles. The Church of England formally adopted the more critical view of Jerome and, while retaining the Apocrypha in her Bible, gave it not canonical but deuterocanonical rank. In some cases, Roman Catholic writers also use the term “deuterocanonical,” but there seems to be no uniformity in making what is within a Roman Catholic context a distinction without a difference. Cf., the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), Qs.120-23,138; The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v., “Deuterocanonical Books” (Nashville, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1987). In Catholic writings, the term “apocrypha” is used of a different collection of writings than that intended by Protestants. As The Catholic Encyclopedia states, “As applied by the Church, apocrypha means that body of writings on religious matters that are outside the [Roman] canon of Scripture and that are not inspired but at one time claimed the authority of Scripture. In Protestant circles the term is used to denote those books that Catholics hold to be canonical and inspired.” Ibid, s.v., “Apocrypha.” In speaking of “the books commonly called Apocrypha,” the authors of the Confession obviously intended to include all those books not found in the list of canonical books specified in paragraph 2, whether regarded by Rome as deserving the label “apocryphal” or not (including all those apocryphal books received as deuterocanonical by the Anglican Church).
2. Marcus Borg, in his Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, cites the “early layer” of the Gospel of Thomas as a source used by the Jesus Seminar for discovering “the voice of the pre-Easter Jesus.” At the same time, the Jesus Seminar rejected John’s Gospel since it supposedly contained information about the post-Easter Jesus only. Borg says, “John’s gospel is a powerful testimony to the reality and significance of the post-Easter Jesus, the living Christ of Christian experience. John’s gospel is ‘true,’ even though its account of Jesus’ life story and sayings is not, by and large, historically factual.” Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: the Historical Quest & the Heart of Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994), 17, 21-22. Elaine Pagels, while excusing her enthusiasm as that only of a historian, speaks of the reappearance of the Gnostic books discovered at Nag Hammadi in terms of their impact on the question of the canon of the New Testament. “The process of establishing orthodoxy [in the early centuries of Christian history] ruled out every other option. To the impoverishment of Christian tradition, gnosticism, which offered alternatives to what became the main thrust of Christian orthodoxy, was forced outside. . . . Now that the Nag Hammadi discoveries give us a new perspective on this process, we can understand why certain creative persons throughout the ages, from Valentinus and Heracleon to Blake, Rembrandt, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Neitzsche, found themselves at the edges of orthodoxy. All were fascinated by the figure of Christ–his birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection: all returned constantly to Christian symbols to express their own experience. And yet they found themselves in revolt against orthodox institutions. An increasing number of people today share their experience. They cannot rest solely on the authority of the Scriptures, the apostles, the church–at least not without inquiring how that authority constituted itself, and what, if anything, gives it legitimacy. All the old questions–the original questions, sharply debated at the beginning of Christianity–are being reopened.” Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 149-51.
3. See Andrew Cochburn, “The Judas Gospel,” in National Geographic (May 2006), 78-95.
4. The word κανών also was used metaphorically to refer to “a testing rule,” e.g., in ethics, art, and grammar. Chronological tables were called “canons of time.” McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, s.v., “Canon of Scripture.” See Paul’s use at Gal. 6:16.
5. Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), 60. Many attempts have been made to write a history of the formation of the canon. Two of the many benefits of these works are to display how incredibly complex reconstructing such a history is and to show how impossible it is to determine the canon of the very early church on purely evidential grounds. Two works have been helpful in my own study: Archibald Alexander, The Canon of the Old and New Testaments Ascertained, or The Bible Complete without the Apocrypha and Unwritten Traditions (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1851) and Edward [Eduard] Reuss, History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Church, trans. David Hunter (Edinburgh: James Gemmell, 1884).
6. This does not mean that there were no written records that Moses may have used in the composition of Genesis. See the discussion of the toledoth passages in R.K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1969), 548, and in Henry Morris, The Genesis Record (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), 26. Whatever the character of the patriarchal records, they were not Scripture per se.
7. See, e.g., Josh. 1:8.
8. Warfield, “The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Phillipsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948), 412. The use of the word “now” by the Confession (“Under the name of Holy Scripture . . . are now contained”) implies that this “increasing” canon has now reached its consummate form.
9. McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, s.v., “Canon of Scripture.”
10. See 2 Esdras 14:19-26,37-48; 1 Macc. 1:56-57; 2 Macc. 2:13-14; cf., Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 1.22; Tertullian, On Female Fashion, 1.3.2; Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.21.2.
11. On the subject of the existence of the Great Synagogue, see International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, s.v., “Synagogue, The Great,” by James Orr.
12. McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, s.v., “Canon of Scripture.”
13. Like Ezekiel’s prophecy of the coming of David (Ezek. 34:23-24; 37:24-25), so this prophecy must be understood of the coming of the Son of David. At Jer. 22:24, God’s rejection of the last of Judah’s kings at the time of the Babylonian Captivity is stated in these terms: “As I live, says the Lord, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet on my right hand, yet I would pluck you off.” Haggai speaks of the coming of Christ in terms of the establishment of a kingdom for the Davidic prince Zerubbabel: “In that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will take you, Zerubbabel my servant, the son of Shealtiel, says the Lord, and will make you like a signet; for I have chosen you, says the Lord of hosts.” See C.F. Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets, in Keil-Delitzsch’s Commentary on the Old Testament (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1982), 2:212-15.
14. Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, 1.8. The method of Josephus’s reckoning twenty-two books is uncertain; however, that he is speaking of what we now recognize as the Hebrew canon is clear.
15. The idea that the Sadducees, like the Samaritans, received only the five books of Moses (e.g., Origen, Against Celsus, 1:49) is unlikely. See W.M.L. De Wette, A Critical and Historical Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament, trans. Theodore Parker (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1843), 1:42-45.
16. The Jewish division of the Old Testament into the Law, Prophets, and Writings (תּוֹרָה ֲֶנאבאיּאום וֶּכֲתוּאבים) is well known. Jesus’ use of the term “Psalms” as a designation of the third division arises “either after the Jewish custom of denoting a collection of books by the title of that with which it commenced, or, . . . using the term ψαλμοί as a general designation of these books, because of the larger comparative amount of lyric poetry contained in them.” McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, s.v., “Canon of Scripture.”
17. Ibid.
18. For a rabbinical text citing the same books of the Hebrew canon, see the list in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Bathra, 14b.
19. McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, s.v., “Canon of Scripture.”
20. On the importance of this term with reference to Heb. 1:1-2, see Robert P. Martin, “The Second London Confession on the Doctrine of Scripture. An Exposition of Chapter 1: “Of the Holy Scriptures” (Part 1), Reformed Baptist Theological Review (4.1).
21. McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, s.v., “Canon of Scripture.”
22. See also Polycarp’s (A.D. 110-140) citing of Psa. 4:5 and Eph. 4:26 as “in the Sacred Scriptures” (in sacris literis). To the Philippians, 12. Warfield notes that “after this such quotations were common.” Warfield, “The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament,” 412. Mere quotation, however, even by a canonical writer, is insufficient to warrant regarding a work as given by inspiration of God. Jude quotes 1 Enoch but does not expressly designate it as “scripture.” See George Lawrence Lawlor, The Epistle of Jude (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1972), 101-102.
23. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 6.11.
24. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 12.3.
25. Ignatius, To the Philadelphians, 5.
26. Polycarp, To the Philippians, 7; cf., Rom. 3:2. Polycarp says here: “‘For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist’ [1 John 4:3]; and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross, is of the devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles [τὰ λόγια] of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the first-born of Satan. Wherefore, forsaking the vanity of many, and their false doctrines, let us return to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning; ‘watching unto prayer’ [1 Pet. 4:7], and persevering in fasting; beseeching in our supplications the all-seeing God ‘not to lead us into temptation’ [Matt. 6:13; 26:41], as the Lord has said: ‘The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak’ [Matt. 26:41; Mark 14:38].”
27. This document (now missing both its beginning and end) contains reference to all the New Testament books except Matthew and Mark (missing from the beginning, as Luke is said to be the third of the Gospels), one of the letters of John (which one is not specified), and the epistles of Hebrews, James, and Peter (perhaps missing from the end of the fragment, which ends abruptly). Interestingly, the author of the Muratorian Fragment believed that the days of inspired prophets and apostles was past, saying that “Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the [episcopal] chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after [their] time.”
28. See Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.27.
29. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3.25.
30. Reymond, 64.
31. McClintock and Strong observe: “Some were found who obtained protection by the surrender of the sacred books, and at a later time the question of the readmission of these “traitors” (traditores), as they were emphatically called, created a schism in the Church. The Donatists, who maintained the sterner judgment on their crime, may be regarded as maintaining in its strictest integrity the popular judgment in Africa on the contents of the Canon of Scripture which was the occasion of the dissension; and Augustine allows that they held, in common with the Catholics, the same ‘canonical Scriptures,’ and were alike ‘bound by the authority of both Testaments’ (August. C. Cresc. 1:31, 57; Ep. 129, 3.).” McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, s.v., “Canon of Scripture.”
32. Athanasius, Festal Letter (#39) for A.D. 367.
33. The first council that accepted the present New Testament canon was the Council of Hippo Regius (A.D. 393); but the acts of the council are lost. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397). This Council further required, however, that “concerning the confirmation of this canon, the transmarine Church [Rome] shall be consulted.”
34. As may be seen by the Lutheran confessions of faith.
35. Suggested by Reymond, 65.
36. Reymond, 66.
37. McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia, s.v., “Canon of Scripture.”
38. Ibid., 68. Franzmann says, “Only a God who is really Lord of all history could risk bringing His written word into history in the way that the New Testament was actually brought in.” Cited in Ibid.
39. The article “the” is not present in the Westminster Confession but was adopted from the Savoy Declaration. There is no substantial difference in meaning.
40. Charles Augustus Briggs, Whither? A Theological Question for the Times (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1889). Briggs cites with approval the opinion of A.F. Mitchell (Minutes of the Westminster Assembly, 1874): “[The Westminster Confession’s] framers were so far from desiring to go beyond their predecessors in rigour, that they were at more special pains than the authors of any other Confession . . . to leave open all reasonable questions as to the mode and degree of inspiration which could consistently be left open by those who accepted the Scriptures as the infallible rule of faith and duty.” Briggs, 89. On the question of the Westminster doctrine of scripture, Briggs expressly argues against Charles and A.A. Hodge, B.B. Warfield, and Francis Patton, all of Princeton Seminary; however, he also contended that his studies of the Westminster divines “disclosed the fact that modern [nineteenth-century] Presbyterianism has departed from the Westminster Standards, all along the line.” Ibid., viii. As an interesting side-note to our study, Briggs claimed that “the Westminster symbols [had been] buried under a mass of foreign dogma. Francis Turretine became the rule of faith, and the Westminster Confession was interpreted to correspond with his scholastic elaborations and refinements.” Ibid., 21. Turretin’s Elenctic Theology was, of course, the textbook used at Princeton for the study of Systematic Theology. Commenting on the polemical nature of Whither?, Briggs asserted that “it is the theology of the elder and younger Hodge that has in fact usurped the place of the Westminster theology in the minds of a large proportion of the ministry of the Presbyterian Churches, and now stands in the way of progress in theology and of true Christian orthodoxy; and there is no other way of advancing in truth except by removing the errors that obstruct our path.” Ibid., x. Chief among these “errors,” of course, was the doctrine of biblical “inerrancy.” Briggs argued: “The Westminster doctrine of the Scriptures is an admirable doctrine. It corresponds with the statements of the Scriptures themselves, as well as with the faith of the Reformation. The advance in the science of Biblical criticism in recent times has brought evangelical critics [i.e., men like himself] into entire sympathy with it. It corresponds with the facts of the case and the results of a scientific study of the Bible. They [self-styled ‘evangelical critics’ like himself] accept the Confession of Faith, and build upon it, and use it to destroy the false doctrines that dogmaticians [A.A. Hodge, B.B. Warfield, etc.] have taught in its place. These false doctrines are partly extra-confessional, sharpening the definitions of the Westminster symbols by undue refinements and assumed logical deductions, such as, (a) the addition of the adjective verbal to inspiration, and (b) the use of the term inerrancy with reference to the entire body of the Scriptures.” Ibid., 63-64. Briggs was willing to use the term “infallible” when referring to Scripture. Earlier in this work he had said, “We have an infallible standard of orthodoxy in the sacred Scriptures. God himself, speaking in His holy Word to the believer, is the infallible guide in all questions of religion, doctrine, and morals.” Ibid., 9. In Briggs way of thinking, however, the term “infallible” did not comport with the idea of a verbal inspiration nor was it in any way to be understood in the same way as the term “inerrant.” One of his chief reasons for thinking this was his belief that the more traditional term “infallible” could be used of the religious ideas of Scripture, while the term “inerrant” was being used by Hodge, Warfield, and others of the words of Scripture as part of a verbal-plenary view of inspiration. He said: “Dr. Hodge and Dr. Warfield also stated that ‘the line can never rationally be drawn between the thoughts and words of Scripture.’ This is the private opinion of these gentlemen, but it is not the official doctrine of the Church. Other scholars, wiser and greater than they, deny it and the creeds do not affirm it. It is a narrowing and sharpening of the broader Westminster definition.” Ibid., 64-65. This assertion, of course, is important to our understanding our Confession’s use of the Westminster language when speaking of the Bible’s inspiration.
41. B.B. Warfield, “The Doctrine of Inspiration of the Westminster Divines,” in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2003), 6:263.
42. Jack B. Rogers, “The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible in the Reformed Tradition,” in Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition, ed. Donald K. McKim (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1992), 62. See also Rogers’ Scripture in the Westminster Confession: A Problem of Historical Interpretation for American Presbyterianism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1967) and Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979).
43. The First Epistle of Clement 45. The adjective παραπεποιημένον (from παραποιέω) means “made falsely.” Its meaning here seems to be that nothing not bearing the marks of a true utterance of the Holy Spirit is contained in the Scriptures. While Clement twice cites unknown sources (1 Clem. 8,17) and three times the Apocrypha (1 Clem. 3, 27,55), while this may raise the question of Clement’s “canon,” it does not effect his view of the inspiration of what he regarded as “scripture.”
44. Against Heresies, 2.28.2.
45. Clement affirms, “He, then, who of himself believes the Scripture and voice of the Lord, which by the Lord acts to the benefitting of men, is rightly [regarded] faithful. . . . we are by the voice of the Lord trained up to the knowledge of the truth. For we may not give our adhesion to men on a bare statement by them, who might equally state the opposite. But if it is not enough merely to state the opinion, but if what is stated must be confirmed, we do not wait for the testimony of men, but we establish the matter that is in question by the voice of the Lord, which is the surest of all demonstrations, or rather is the only demonstration” (Stromata 7.16).
46. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen (Protrepticus) 9. Clement evidently distinguishes between Paul’s use of τὰ γράμματα and γραφή at 2 Tim. 3:15-16. While Clement’s assessment of Paul’s use of these terms may not be correct, for our present purpose it is important because it seems to indicate that he regarded inspiration as extending to the very letters and syllables of the sacred text.
47. Origen, Selecta in Psalmos, Psa. 1.3.
48. Idem., Commentary on Matthew, Book 2.
49. Letter to Jerome 82.3.
50. Luther, Werkes (Weimar Ausgabe): 19:305. Elsewhere Luther says, “The Holy Spirit is not a fool or a drunkard to express one point, not to say one word, in vain.” Cited by Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, Integrative Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 136. Commenting on Rom. 15:4 (with reference to Paul’s use of the term παράκλησις), Luther says, “If we believed firmly, as I do, even though I believe weakly, that the Holy Spirit Himself and God, the Creator of all things, is the Author of this book and of such unimportant matters, as they seem to be to the flesh, then we would have the greatest consolation, as Paul says.” Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 26-30, in Luther’s Works (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1968), 5:275. At another place, Luther takes up the same theme, albeit in an even more forceful way: “One must always keep in view what I emphasize so often, namely, that the Holy Spirit is the Author of this book. He Himself takes such delight in playing and trifling when describing things that are unimportant, puerile, and worthless; and He hands that down to be taught in the church as though it redounded to the greatest edification.” Lest we misunderstand Luther, thinking that he truly regards any word in Scripture as “unimportant, puerile, and worthless” (words that he only uses here in a comparative sense), a few lines further on he says, “But these inconsequential matters abound in consolation and doctrine.” Ibid., 5:352-53. See also John Warwick Montgomery, “Lessons from Luther on the Inerrancy of Holy Writ” (at www.mtio.com/articles/bissar37.htm).
51. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 248-49. Commenting on Rom. 15:4, Calvin explicitly extends this view to the writings of the New Testament. See Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 516-17.
52. B.B. Warfield, “The Church Doctrine of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Phillipsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948), 112.
53. William Maxwell Hetherington, History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (reprint ed., Edmonton, AB: Still Waters Revival Books, 1991), 117.
54. John White, A Way to the Tree of Life: discovered in sundry directions for the Profitable Reading of the Scriptures; wherein is Described occasionally the Nature of a Spiritual Man: and, in a Digression, the Morality and Perpetuity of the Fourth Commandment, in every circumstance thereof, is Discovered and Cleared (London, 1647). Cited in Warfield, “The Doctrine of Inspiration of the Westminster Divines,” in Works, 6:274-76. Warfield notes, “White is a fair exponent of his day.” Ibid., 6:276.
55. Ibid., 6:277.
56. Cited in Ibid., 6:280-333.
57. Lightfoot, Works (Pitman edition), 3:371.
58. Ibid, 3:369.
59. Ibid, 3:368.
60. Ibid, 7:79-81.
61. William Bridge, “Scripture Light the Most Sure Light” (in three sermons on 2 Pet. 1:19), in The Works of the Rev. William Bridge (reprint ed., Beaver Falls, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1989), 1:401.
62. Ibid, 1:415.
63. Ibid., 1:449.
64. Warfield, “The Doctrine of Inspiration of the Westminster Divines,” in Works, 6:270-71.
65. Cited in Ibid., 6:273.
66. Cited in Ibid., 6:265-66.
67. John Ball, Treatise on Faith (London, 1632), 123, 422.
68. “Unto the testimony of the divine writers themselves, we must add that of those who in all ages have believed in Christ through their word; which is the description which the Lord Jesus Christ giveth of his church, John xvii. 20. This is the church,–that is, those who wrote the Scripture, and those who believe in Christ through their word, through all ages,–which beareth witness to the divine original of the Scripture; and it may be added that we know this witness is true. With these I had rather venture my faith and eternal condition than with any society, any real or pretended church whatever.” John Owen, The Reason of Faith; or, an answer unto that inquiry, Wherefore we believe the Scripture to be the Word of God, in The Works of John Owen (reprint ed., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1979), 4:34.
69. Ibid., 4:35-36.
70. Warfield, “The Doctrine of Inspiration of the Westminster Divines,” in Works, 6:333.
71. Waldron asserts, “If further evidence is needed, the reader may consult chapters 4.1-3, 19.1 and 22.7 of the Confession where, upon any fair reading of the text, a view of creation and Genesis 1-3 is assumed which today is everywhere associated with the strictest view of biblical inerrancy.” Samuel E. Waldron, A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith (Darlington, UK: Evangelical Press, 1989), 51.
72. The Shorter Catechism: A Baptist Version (Avinger, TX: Simpson Publishing Company, 2003). Also The Shorter Catechism: A Modest Revision for Baptists Today (Grand Rapids: Truth for Eternity Ministries, 1991). In 1989, the elders of four Reformed Baptist churches circulated for discussion a draft for the revision of the 2nd LCF. The new paragraphs proposed to be added to chapter one read, The divine inspiration of the original Hebrew and Greek autographs was verbal, extending to the very words of Scripture, and plenary, including all the words of Scripture alike without exception. Nevertheless, divine inspiration does not obscure, eliminate or violate the humanity of the writers of Scripture, but rather employs, upholds, guides and sanctifies it; so that Holy Scripture in its entirety is the product of both divine and human agency, God’s infallible and inerrant Word in language comprehensible to men. The divine preservation of the Scriptures through God’s singular care and providence does not consist in his miraculous protection of the inspired originals from decay or harm, but rather in their faithful and abundant reproduction by his people. Despite copying errors and deliberate efforts to alter or destroy God’s Word the Scriptures have been (and will be) kept throughout all ages so pure that they are a sufficient rule for doctrine and practice, that they do not obscure anything needful for God’s glory or man’s salvation and that the sum and substance of everything they say and teach is preserved intact. Nevertheless, the divine preservation of the Scriptures does not insure either that every single word of the originals can be ascertained with certainty or that any one manuscript or set of manuscripts is the infallible standard for all other manuscripts. The Scriptures themselves are the only infallible rule for determining the inclusion of any word or phrase in Scripture. The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek; being thus inspired and preserved by God and therefore authentic (authoritative and trustworthy), are both infallible (incapable of being wrong or mistaken) and inerrant (entirely free from error). Accordingly, whatever they state or pronounce is entirely reliable, completely accurate, and totally true, whether they speak respecting history, science, doctrine, ethics, religious practice, or any other topic. Since the very words of Scripture, not merely its thoughts or ideas, are inspired, preserved, and authentic, translators of the Scriptures ought to strive, as much as in them lies, to render each and every word of Scripture accurately and plainly, without needlessly interpreting or paraphrasing, adding their own uninspired words, or deleting God’s inspired words. No single translation of Scripture language is a perfect translation, the ultimate translation, or the infallible standard by which all other translations are to be judged. For a variety of reasons unrelated to the doctrine of Scripture, no assembly of Reformed Baptist ministers has been called for the purpose of carrying through with revising the 2nd LCF; nonetheless, it is fair to say that the proposed changes in the statement of the doctrine of Scripture represent the views of the vast majority of our ministers and churches.
73. Warfield, “The Church Doctrine of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 105.
74. Emery Bancroft, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1976), 38.
75. Warfield notes, “With forerunners among the Humanists, this mode of thought was introduced by the Socinians, and taken up by the Syncretists in Germany, the Remonstrants in Holland, and the Jesuits in the Church of Rome.” “The Church Doctrine of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 112.
76. Thus, we are told, we may opt for an historical Christ but refuse an historical Adam, although this introduces a severe hermeneutical disconnect into Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15.
77. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1975), 1:164.
78. Warfield, “The Church Doctrine of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 113.
79. Those who hold this view usually claim it for the original manuscripts of the Bible, but not for any translation. The “King James only” position is an exception to this, if not always in theory, certainly in practice.
80. Ibid., 106. Some want to speak of this view in terms of mechanical dictation, arguing that the Holy Spirit so possessed the minds of the Biblical writers that they became passive instruments. This idea, however, does not account adequately for the human element of Scripture, i.e., those peculiarities of style which distinguish one writer’s work from that of others. The writers of Scripture were not mere “typewriters” whose individual traits disappeared. Warfield argued: “The Spirit is not to be conceived as standing outside of the human powers employed for the effect in view, ready to supplement any inadequacies that may show and to supply any defects they may manifest, but as working confluently in, with and by them, elevating them, directing them, controlling them, so that, as His instruments, they rise above themselves and under His inspiration do His work and reach His aim. The product, therefore, which is attained by their means is His product through them. . . . The human traits are traceable throughout its whole extent, but at bottom it is a Divine gift, and the language of Paul is the most proper mode of speech that could be applied to it: ‘Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth’ (1 Cor. ii. 13); ‘The things which I write unto you . . . are the commandment of the Lord’ (1 Cor. xiv. 37).” B.B. Warfield, “The Biblical Idea of Revelation,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philippsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948), 95-96.
81. “Nor do we need to do more than remind ourselves that this attitude of entire trust in every word of the Scriptures has been characteristic of the people of God from the very foundation of the church. Christendom has always reposed upon the belief that the utterances of this book are properly oracles of God. The whole body of Christian literature bears witness to this fact. We may trace its stream to its source, and everywhere it is vocal with a living faith in the divine trustworthiness of the Scriptures of God in every one of their affirmations.” Warfield, “The Church Doctrine of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 107. “If we would estimate at its full meaning the depth of this trust in the Scripture word, we should observe Christian men at work upon the text of Scripture. There is but one view-point which will account for or justify the minute and loving pains which have been expended upon the text of Scripture, by the long line of commentators that has extended unbrokenly from the first Christian ages to our own.” Ibid., 109. “It is doubtless the profound and ineradicable conviction, so expressed, of the need of an infallible Bible, if men are to seek and find salvation in God’s announced purpose of grace, and peace and comfort in his past dealings with his people, that has operated to keep the formulas of the churches and the hearts of the people of God, through so many ages, true to the Bible doctrine of plenary inspiration. In that doctrine men have found what their hearts have told them was the indispensable safeguard of a sure word of God to them,–a word of God to which they could resort with confidence in every time of need, to which they could appeal for guidance in every difficulty, for comfort in every sorrow, for instruction in every perplexity; on whose ‘Thus saith the Lord’ they could safely rest all their aspirations and all their hopes. Such a Word of God, each one of us knows he needs,–not a Word of God that speaks to us only through the medium of our fellow-men, men of like passions and weaknesses with ourselves, so that we have to feel our way back to God’s word through the church, through tradition, or through the apostles, standing between us and God; but a Word of God in which God speaks directly to each of our souls. Such a Word of God, Christ and his apostles offer us, when they give us the Scriptures, not as man’s report to us of what God says, but as the very Word of God itself, spoken by God himself through human lips and pens. Of such a precious possession, given to her by such hands, the church will not lightly permit herself to be deprived. Thus the church’s sense of her need of an absolutely infallible Bible, has co-operated with her reverence for the teaching of the Bible to keep her true, in all ages, to the Bible doctrine of plenary inspiration.” Ibid., 124-25.
82. Ibid., 112.
83. Ibid., 114.
84. See Robert P. Martin, “The Second London Confession on the Doctrine of Scripture. An Exposition of Chapter 1: “Of the Holy Scriptures” (Part 1), Reformed Baptist Theological Review (4.1).
85. Cf., in the Vulgate, Gen. 2:7; 2 Sam. 22:16; Psa. 17:16; Wisd. 15:11; Ecclus. 4:12; Acts 17:25.
86. Only the NIV (“God-breathed”) and ESV (“breathed out by God”) depart from the use of the terms “inspired” and “inspiration.”
87. Warfield, “The Biblical Idea of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philippsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948), 133.
88. See also William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Pastoral Epistles, in New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1957), 301-302; George W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles, in The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1992), 446. Fairbairn suggests “God-inspired.” Patrick Fairbairn, Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1956), 379; cf., also R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians, to Timothy, to Titus and to Philemon, in Commentary on the New Testament (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 842.
89. Cremer argues that “γραφὴ θεόπν. cannot mean inspired of God in the sense of the Vulgate; . . . it is equivalent to breathing a divine spirit, the spirit of God.” Hermann Cremer, Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek (reprint ed., Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1977), 730-31.
90. B.B. Warfield, “God-Inspired Scripture,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philippsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948), 296. Not only did Warfield dismantle Cremer’s argument but he also cited seventy-five examples of compounds of θεός with verbals ending in -τος, each of which expressed an effect produced by God’s activity. Ibid., 281-83. Warfield concludes, “From all points of approach alike we appear to be conducted to the conclusion that it [θεόπνευστος] is primarily expressive of the origination of the Scripture, not of its nature and much less of its effects. What is θεόπνευστος is ‘God-breathed,’ produced by the creative breath of the Almighty.” Ibid., 296.
91. Ibid., 286.
92. B. B. Warfield, “The Biblical Idea of Inspiration,” 133.
93. Here, as noted above, as at 2 Tim. 3:16, the Vulgate uses inspiro. We may deduce from this that in Jerome’s view, what was true of the biblical writings was also true of the biblical writers.
94. That θεόπνευστος is a predicate adjective (“all/every scripture is inspired of God”), not an attributive adjective (cf., ASV, “every scripture inspired of God”). See the parallel structure of 1 Tim. 4:4 (πᾶν κτίσμα θεοῦ καλὸν), where καλόν is plainly a predicate adjective. Knight, 446.
95. See Thayer, s.v., πᾶς. Cf., Rom. 2:9; 14:11; 1 Cor. 4:17; 2 Cor. 4:2; Philip. 4:21; 2 Thess. 2:4.
96. Ibid. Cf., Matt. 2:3; Acts 2:36; Rom. 11:26.
97. While in most places the singular of γραφή is accompanied by the article, at two other places it is used anarthrously as a collective for the whole of Scripture (cf., 1 Pet. 2:6; 2 Pet. 1:20). At several places, even γραφή with the article may be understood as a collective (e.g., John 20:9; Gal. 3:22).
98. Knight, 445. Warfield concurs, “Whether Paul, looking back at the Sacred Scriptures he had just mentioned, makes the assertion he is about to add, of them distributively, of all their parts, or collectively, of their entire mass, is of no moment: to say that every part of these Sacred Scriptures is God-breathed and to say that the whole of these Sacred Scriptures is God-breathed, is, for the main matter, all one.” Warfield, “The Biblical Idea of Inspiration,” 134.
99. William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Pastoral Epistles, in New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1957), 301.
100. Knight, 445. On this point, Warfield disagrees. “Nor is the difference great between saying that they are in all their parts, or in their whole extent, God-breathed and therefore profitable, and saying that they are in all their parts, or in their whole extent, because God-breathed as well as profitable. In both cases these Sacred Scriptures are declared to owe their value to their Divine origin, and in both cases this their Divine origin is energetically asserted of their entire fabric. On the whole, the preferable construction would seem to be, ‘Every scripture, seeing that it is God-breathed, is as well profitable.’ In that case, what the apostle asserts is that the Sacred Scriptures, in their every several passage–for it is just ‘passage of Scripture’ which ‘Scripture’ in this distributive use of it signifies–is the product of the creative breath of God, and because of this its Divine origination, is of supreme value for all holy purposes.” Warfield, “The Biblical Idea of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 134.
101. This is but to express what the Bible elsewhere means when it speaks of Scripture as “the word of God.” See Mark 7:10,13; John 10:35.
102. Lenski, 841. “The product attests its source; the effect proves its cause.” Ibid., 846.
103. Although see its use at 2nd LCF 1.4, WC 1.3 and 1.4, and at WLC 3.
104. Thayer notes that μᾶλλον here is used by way of comparison, so that the words “than before must be mentally added.” S.v. μᾶλλον. If this is correct, there is something of a challenge in these words to excel in diligence above what has been true of us before.
105. The expression τῷ λόγῳ τῆς ἀληθείας τοῦ εὐαγγελίου τοῦ παρόντος (lit. which is present) εἰς ὑμᾶς at Col. 1:5-6 answers to τῇ παρούσῃ ἀληθείᾳ at 2 Pet. 1:12.
106. NKJV reads, “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed,” which seems aligned with the idea that Peter is saying that the Transfiguration confirmed the testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures. On this idea, see, e.g., C.K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and of Jude, in Black’s New Testament Commentaries (reprint ed., London: Adam & Charles Black, 1976), 320-21.
107. Alford rightly observes that βεβαιότερον is predicative after ἔχομεν. Henry Alford, Alford’s Greek Testament (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), 4:398. So also A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures (in BibleWorks). In this case, the grammatical construction is a form of the double accusative, in which the comparative adjective βεβαιότερον takes on the force of a substantive in apposition to τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον, so that we translate “a more sure thing, the prophetic word.” On the appositional nature of double accusatives, see A.T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934), 480.
108. Alford, 4:398.
109. Barrett, 321. In accord with this usage, Justin Martyr cites the Old Testament (specifically Genesis 21) as “the prophetic word (ὁ προφητικὸς λόγος).” Dialogue with Trypho, 61.6. 2 Clement 11:2 reads: “For the prophetic word also declares, Wretched are those of a double mind, and who doubt in their heart, who say, All these things have we heard even in the times of our fathers; but though we have waited day by day, we have seen none of them [accomplished]. Ye fools! compare yourselves to a tree; take, for instance, the vine. First of all it sheds its leaves, then the bud appears; after that the sour grape, and then the fully-ripened fruit. So, likewise, my people have borne disturbances and afflictions, but afterwards shall they receive their good things.” This seems to be a paraphrase and conflation of Js. 1:8 and 2 Pet. 3:3-4 and is cited also in 1 Clement 23 (which usage suggests, of course, as we’ve already seen in our consideration of 2 Tim. 3:16 above, that the idea of a canon of inspired Scripture came eventually to include the books of the New Testament). See also Philo, De Plantatione 117.
110. See 2 Pet. 2:9; 3:7,10,12.
111. Cf., Luke 1:78; Rev. 22:16.
112. The verb γίνομαι here means “arises, originates, comes into being.”
113. Thayer, s.v., προφητεία.
114. Thayer, s.v., ἐπιλύω.
115. See also Josephus, Antiq. 8.6.5, who uses the word of Solomon’s explaining of hidden, mysterious things to the Queen of Sheba.
116. Warfield, “The Biblical Idea of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 136.
117. Ibid.
118. Ibid., 137.
119. Ibid., 138.
120. Ibid., 138-39.
121. Ibid., 139-41.