01.06 - Divine and Human Factors in Scripture

(6) Divine and Human factors in Scripture From what has been said it will be seen that we recognise the presence of divine and human factors in the Scriptures. To acknowledge their existence, and correctly to determine their relation, would be to solve the problem of inspiration. The phenomena of the Scriptures imply the recognition of both factors as fundamental. Hitherto the practice has been largely to recognise but one factor to the exclusion of the other, whereas both are essential to Divine revelation and its record, and must act conjointly in the production of the Scriptures. In the past the 1 Moulton’s “ Literary Study of the Bible,” pp. 90-103. tendency has been to emphasise the divine factor, and rightly so, seeing that factor was primal and essential to the acceptance of Scripture as a Divine revelation, and as being distinctively and emphatically “ the Word of God.” But as Prof. Sanday, in his “ Bampton Lectures,” indicates, the time has come when this “traditional conception shall give place to one more strictly accurate and scientific.” When from regarding the Bible as “ the Word of God,”

“ one word,” we shall recognise that the Bible contains a “number of words of God with the attributes proper to them.” “ This aggregation of words and the one word,” says Sanday, “ is not quite the same thing, because in the interstices between the words there was a considerable human element binding them together.” 1 In emphasising this one word and the divine attributes proper to it, “the human element was apt to be, and was, lost sight of.” To attempt a discrimination of the divine and human features in the Scriptures in the earliest ages of the Church, and to have emphasised them as now, would have endangered the recognition of the Scriptures as “ the Word of God,” would have weakened their divine authority, and lessened that “ respect and reverence for those great truths and great commands which were really Divine Words.” If the authority of the Bible had been broken down on so cardinal a point as that of “the Word of God,” it would soon have broken down altogether. We see, then, a Divine Providence working in historical criticism, by which one age is fitted and prepared to discover and accept what another age could not hear. Of this truth the

1 P. 424 present-day declaration of the divine and human factors in the Scriptures is a striking illustration. It may be that the discovery and declaration, like most fresh discoveries and new truths, has been unduly magnified, and in some quarters the human element has been enlarged and exalted until the divine has appeared at vanishing point. Criticism, however, is regaining its equilibrium, and we arc approaching a proper recognition of both factors and their adjustment in revelation and its record.

Two analogies are used by way of setting forth this relation; and though they explain nothing they help to illustrate the problem: (1) The union of matter and mind in the constitution and action of man; (2) The union of the two natures divine and human in the Person of Christ. In the former matter and mind, with their distinctive phenomena, are co-existent, united, and operative in the human personality; without them man would not be man, and. their union and co-operation are essential to the conduct of human life and action. The analogy of the two natures in the Person of Christ the Incarnate Word also illustrates the mystery of the written word. The written word the outward human symbol answers to the “ Word made flesh “ in the Divine Incarnation. Jesus Christ being divine and human; perfect God and perfect Man; the Son of God and the Son of Man; born of woman, yet “the effulgence of the Father’s glory, and the impress of His substance.” So the Scriptures are said to be divine and human, “ the Word of God “ in human form, containing the treasures of divine wisdom and knowledge set forth in human speech and language. And just as mind and body make one man, and the divine and human in Christ constitute one person, and are in separable in person and action, and blend and cooperate in all their movements, so with the Scriptures the divine and human are blended so as to make a unity, a divine harmony, one complete whole. The presence of the one factor does not displace or destroy the other; both factors are present, and both are active, and both retain the attributes and functions proper to them. This is what is meant by the expression “the blending of the human and the divine,” the action of the Spirit of God and of the mind of man, and of the letter and spirit, the form and truth, in the Scriptures.

Because of this union and blending of the two factors in the production of the Scriptures, and the harmony and unity that characterise the Scriptures as a whole, they have been styled after the manner of the Person of Christ “the divine-human.” Dr. Pope speaks of them as “ a divine-human collection.” And while in respect of divine revelation in the truth and its expression, and in respect of the divine activity in inspiration it may be difficult to say where the divine ends and the human begins, yet the attributes and features proper to both are in many respects broadly marked.

There are divine commands, divine encouragements, rewards, and promises; divine warnings and threatenings; divine instructions and foretellings; divine powers and influences clearly manifest. We have equally manifest the unfolding of the gracious purposes of God in redemption; the revelation of the divine name and character; the divine testimony against sin, and the proclamation of divine peace, pardon, and purity; there is the enlightening, renewing, regenerating power, the power of God that dwells in them, and works with them. But there is also manifest the human clement, which declares the divine revelation is human in form, and intended for human eye and heart and understanding. There is the record of human experience?, the stamp of the mind, life, and culture of the individual author; while the writings are marked by the defects, mistakes, discrepancies, and errors that belong to all human work manship, and in form, structure, and composition follow the order of human writings general \y. And because the Old Testament Scriptures record the revelation of God as reflected in the life, history, and experience of the Jewish people, we have reflected the evils, follies, and sins, together with all the manifold imperfections, which characterised that nation and people. Not only so, but the writings reflect the conceptions scientific, historical, and chronological peculiar to the age and nationality of the writers. Prof. Rogers says: “Every species of error that could flow from inadvertence or negligence of transcribers, from ignorance or presumption in editors, from lapse of memory or illusion of eyesight, and which so largely deform profane literature substitution of one letter or one word for another, slight omissions, lacuna, mistakes in numbers, names, and so on may be equally expected here.” 1 1 “Superhuman Origin of the Bible,” p. 414.