03.08. The Inspiration of the Spirit

VIII THE INSPIRATION OF THE SPIRIT

"Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg, and listened to that wonderful organist, who with such enchantment draws the tears from the traveler’s eyes while he touches, one after another, his wonderful keys, and makes you hear by turns the march of armies upon the beach, or the chanted prayer upon the lake during the tempest, or the voices of praise after it is calm? Well, thus the Eternal God, embracing at a glance the key-board of sixty centuries, touches by turns, with the fingers of his Spirit, the keys which he had chosen for the unity of his celestial hymn. He lays his left hand upon Enoch, the seventh from Adam, and his right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of Patmos. From the one the strain is heard: ’Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints’; from the other: ’Behold he cometh with clouds.’ And between the notes of this hymn of three thousand years there is eternal harmony, and the angels stoop to listen, the elect of God are moved, and eternal life descends into men’s souls."--Gaussen’s Theopneustia.

Inspiration signifies inbreathing. Both the scribe and the Scripture, both the man of God and the word of God were divinely inbreathed. In that memorable meeting of the risen Lord and his disciples within the closed doors, we read that "He breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John 20:22, R. V.). Well may the question of the scribes concerning Jesus now arise in our hearts concerning his disciples: "Who can forgive sins but God only?" And the answer should be: "True; God alone can forgive sins. And it is only because the Spirit of God, who is God, is in the apostles, endowing them with his divine prerogatives, that they are able to exercise this high authority."

We are persuaded, however, that this commission was not given to all Christians, though all have the Spirit. In a note in Olshausen’s Commentary the matter seems to be correctly stated: "To the apostles was granted the power, absolute and unconditioned, of binding and loosing, just as to them was given the power of publishing truth unmixed with error. For both they possessed miraculous spiritual endowments." Only we should say "sovereign" rather than "miraculous" endowments. "The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice," said Jesus.[1] While miraculous gifts were not confined to the apostles, Christ may have committed to these, and to these alone, the sovereign prerogative of forgiving sins; gifts of healing, on the other hand, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, and tongues, being distributed throughout the church; "but all these worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will" (1 Corinthians 12:11, R. V.). In a word, the action of the Holy Ghost was supremely sovereign in the assignment of spiritual offices, and when Jesus breathed on his apostles the Holy Ghost, and gave them authority to remit sins, he separated them unto a prerogative of which others, indwelt by the same Spirit, might have known nothing. It is very generally held that the order of apostles ceased with the death of those who had seen the Lord and companied with him until the day that he was received up. But the reason for this cessation has been too little considered. May we not believe that the apostles and their companions were commissioned to speak for the Lord until the New Testament Scriptures, his authoritative voice, should be completed? If so, in the apostolate we have a provisional inspiration; in the gospel a stereotyped inspiration; the first being endowed with authority ad interim to remit sins, and the second having this authority in perpetuam. The New Testament, as the very mouthpiece of the Lord, pronounces forgiveness upon all in every generation who truly repent and believe on the Son of God; and preachers in every age, with the Bible in their hand, are authorized to do the same declaratively. But when it is urged, as by Catholic writers, that this infallibility for teaching and absolution, which was committed to the apostles, has descended through a succession of ministers called the clergy, the answer seems to be, that this authority has not been perpetuated in any body of men apart from the Scriptures, but was transferred to the New Testament and lodged there for all time. Historically, at least, it seems to have been the fact, that as the apostles and prophets of the new dispensation disappeared, the Gospels and Epistles took their place, and that henceforth the divine authoritative voice of the Spirit could be distinctly recognized only in the written word. As coal has been called "fossil sunlight," so the New Testament may be called fossil inspiration, the supernatural illumination which fell upon the apostles being herein stored up for the use of the church throughout the ages.[2]

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God [theopneustos--God-breathed], and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (3 Tim. 3: 16). As the Lord breathed the Spirit into certain men, and thereby committed to them his own prerogative of forgiving sin, so he breathed his Spirit into certain books and endowed them with his infallibility in teaching truth. God did not choose to inspire all good books, though he has chosen to inbreathe one book, thereby separating it and setting it apart from all other books.[3] The phrase, "the Bible is simply literature," which some are using to-day, as a suggestion against bibliolatry, is not true. Literature is the letter; Scripture is the letter inspired by the Spirit. What Jesus said in justification of his doctrine of the new birth is equally applicable to the doctrine of inspiration: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Educate, develop, and refine the natural man to the highest possible point, and yet he is not a spiritual man till, through the new birth, the Holy Ghost renews and indwells him. So of literature; however elevated its tone, however lofty its thought, it is not Scripture. Scripture is literature indwelt by the Spirit of God. The absence of the Holy Ghost from any writing constitutes the impassable gulf between it and Scripture. Our Lord, in speaking of his own doctrine, uses the same language, to show its separateness from common teaching which he employs above to mark the distinction of the new man. He says: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life" (John 6:63, R. V.). Words they were, and in that respect, literature; but words divinely inbreathed and therefore Scripture. In fine, the one fact which makes the word of God a unique book, standing apart in solitary separateness from all other writings, is that which also parts off the man of God from common men--the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Therefore we may say truly of the Bible, not merely that it was inspired, but it is inspired; that the Holy Ghost breathes within it, making it not only authoritative in its doctrine but life-giving in its substance, so that they who receive its promises by faith "have been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1:23, R. V.).

Thus far in this volume we have been dwelling upon the various works and offices of the Paraclete. Now we come to consider that the Holy Spirit not only acts but speaks. Let us listen to the repeated affirmations of this fact. Seven times our glorified Lord says, speaking in the Apocalypse: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches" (Revelation 2:7). The Paraclete on earth answers to the Paraclete above, so that to the voice from Heaven saying: "Write, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth," the response is heard: "Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors," etc. (Revelation 14:13). This accords with the general tenor of Scripture as to its own Author. In referring to the Old Testament, Peter says: "This Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus" (Acts 1:16). And again: "David himself said by the Holy Ghost" (Mark 12:36), our Lord thus plainly recognizing the voice of the Spirit in the voice of the psalmist. So again: "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me" (2 Samuel 23:2-3), and "Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye will hear his voice" (Hebrews 3:7). And what is it to speak? Is it not to express thought in language? The difference between thinking and saying is simply the difference of words. Therefore, if the Holy Ghost "saith," we are to find in the words of Scripture the exact substance of what he saith. Hence verbal inspiration seems absolutely essential for conveying to us the exact thought of God. And while many affect to ridicule the idea as mechanical and paltry, the conduct and method of scholars of every shade of belief show how generally it is accepted. For, why the minute study of the words of Scripture carried on by all expositors, their search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring of mood and tense and accent? The high scholars who speak lightly of the theory of literal inspiration of the Scriptures by their method of study and exegesis are they who put the strongest affirmation on the doctrine which they deny. Then we cannot forget what we imply when we say that language is the expression of thought. Words determine the size and shape of ideas. As exactly as the coin answers to the die in which it is struck, does the thought answer to the word by which it is uttered. Vary the language by the slightest modification, and you by so much vary the thought. As ultra spiritualism interprets Paul’s words "a spiritual body," to mean a ghost, when the accent is as strongly on the sõma as on the pneumatichon, his real thought evidently being that of a body spiritualized; so some, remembering that "the letter killeth," would etherealize Scripture by telling us that the divine idea is the chief thing, and the language quite secondary. But wisely and well has Martin Luther reminded us that "Christ did not say of his Spirit, but of his words, they are spirit and life." To deny that it is the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, is an intelligible position; but admitting that he speaks, we can only understand his thoughts by listening to his words. True, he may beget within us emotions too deep for expression, as when "The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Romans 8:26). But the idea which is really intelligible is the idea that is embodied in speech. For finite minds, at least, words are the measure of comprehensible thoughts. Evidently Jesus claims for his teaching not only inspiration, but verbal inspiration, when he says that his words are "spirit and life." And to this agrees the saying of Paul, in speaking of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost: "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God, which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual" (1 Corinthians 2:10-13). And what if one objects that this theory makes inspiration purely mechanical, and turns the writers of Scripture into stenographers, whose office is simply to transcribe the words of the Spirit as they are dictated? It must be confessed that there is much in Scripture to support this view of the case. Should we see a student who, having taken down the lecture of a profound philosopher, was now studying diligently to comprehend the sense of the discourse which he had written, we should understand simply that he was a pupil and not a master; that he had nothing to do with originating either the thoughts or the words of the lecture, but was rather a disciple whose province it was to understand what he had transcribed, and so be able to communicate it to others. And who can deny that this is the exact picture of what we have in the following passage from Scripture: "Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow; unto whom it was revealed," etc. (1 Peter 1:10-11). Here were inspired writers, studying the meaning of what they themselves had written. If they were prophets on the manward side, they were evidently pupils on the Godward side. With all possible allowance for the human peculiarities of the writers, they must have been reporters of what they heard, rather than the formulators of that which they had been made to understand. How nearly this also describes the attitude of Christ,--a hearer that he might be a teacher: "All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you" (John 15:15); a reporter that he might be a revealer: "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me" (John 17:8). In these days scholars are very jealous for the human element in inspiration; but the sovereign element is what most impresses the diligent student of this subject. "The Spirit breatheth where he wills." Concerning regeneration by the Holy Ghost, we are carefully told that it is "not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God"; and concerning inspiration by the Spirit, the teaching is equally explicit: "For no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:21, R. V.). The style of Scripture is, no doubt, according to the traits and idiosyncracies of the several writers, as the light within the cathedral takes on its various hues from passing through the stained windows; but to say that the thoughts of the Bible are from the Spirit, and the language from men, creates a dualism in revelation not easy to justify; so that we must quote with entire approval the words of an eminent writer upon this subject: "The opinion that the subject-matter alone of the Bible proceeded from the Holy Spirit, while its language was left to the unaided choice of the various writers, amounts to that fantastic notion which is the grand fallacy of many theories of inspiration; namely, that two spiritual agencies were in operation, one of which produced the phraseology in the outward form, while the other created within the soul the conceptions and thoughts of which such phraseology was the expression. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary, as the productive principle, embraces the entire activity of those whom he inspires, rendering their language the word of God."[4]

If it be urged that the quotations which the New Testament makes from the Old are rarely ipsissima verba, the language being in many instances greatly changed, it should be noted in reply how significant even these changes often are. If the Holy Spirit directed in the writing of both books, he would have a sovereign right to alter the phraseology, if need be, from the one to the other. In the opinion of many scholars the change of "the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob," in Isaiah 59:20, to "There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer," in Romans 11:26, is an inspired and intentional change.[5] So of the citation from Amos 9:11, "In that day will I raise up the tabernacle that is fallen," as given in Acts 15:16, "After these things I will return, and I will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen"; the modification of the language seems designed, in order to make clear its significance in its present setting. Many other examples might be given of a reshaping of his own words by the divine Author of Scripture. On the other hand, the constant recurrence of the same words and phrases in books of the Bible most widely separated in the time and circumstances of their composition, strongly suggests identity of authorship amid the variety of penmanship. The individuality of the writers was no doubt preserved, only that their individuality was subordinated to the sovereign individuality of the Holy Spirit. It is with the written word as with the incarnate Word. Because Christ is divine, he is more truly human than any whom the world has ever seen; and because the Bible is supernatural, it is natural as no other book which was ever written; its divinity lifts it above those faults of style which are the fruits of self-consciousness and ambition. Whether we read the Old Testament story of Abraham’s servant seeking a bride for Isaac, or the New Testament narrative of the walk of the risen Christ with his disciples to Emmaus, the inimitable simplicity of the diction would make us think that we were listening to the dialect of the angels who never sinned in thought, and therefore cannot sin in style, did we not know rather that it is the phraseology of the Holy Spirit.[6] An eminent German theologian has written a sentence so profoundly significant that we here reproduce it in Italics: "We can in fact speak with good reason of a language of the Holy Ghost. For it lies in the Bible plainly before our eyes, how the Divine Spirit, who is the agent of revelation, has fashioned for himself a quite peculiar religious dialect out of the speech of that people which forms its theatre."[7] So true do we hold this saying to be, that it seems to us quite impossible that the exact meaning of many of the terms of the New Testament Greek should be found in a Lexicon of classic Greek. Though the verbal form is the same in both, the inbreathed spirit may have imparted such new significance to old words, that to employ a secular dictionary for translating the sacred oracles, were almost like calling an unregenerate man to interpret the mysteries of the regenerate life. Do we not know how modern progress and discovery have even put new meanings into many English words, so that one must be in "the spirit of the age" in order to comprehend them?[8] Thus likewise, even in the work of verbal criticism, it is essential that one possess the spirit of Christ in order to translate the words of Christ. As to the question of the "inerrancy of Scripture," as the modern phrase is, we may well pass by many minor arguments, and emphasize the one great reason for holding this view, viz.: If it is God the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, then the Bible is the word of God, and like God, infallible. A recent brilliant writer has challenged us to show where the Bible anywhere calls itself "The word of God."[9] The most elementary student of the subject can, with the aid of a concordance, easily point out the passages which so describe it. But we dwell on the fact that is not only called o logos tou theon, "the Word of God," but ta logia tou theou, "the oracles of God." This collective name of the Scriptures is most significant. We need not inquire of the heathen as to the meaning which they put upon the words as the authoritative utterances of their gods; let the usage of Scripture make its own impression: "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way; first of all, that they were intrusted with the oracles of God" (Romans 3:2, R. V.).[10] This comprehensive expression is very helpful to our faith. When critics are assailing the books of the Old Testament in detail, the Holy Spirit authenticates them for us in their entirety. As Abigail prayed for a soul "bound in the bundle of life" with the Lord, so here an apostle gives us the books of the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms bound together in one bundle of inspired authority. Stephen, in like manner, speaks of his nation as "those who received the lively oracles (of God) to give unto us" (Acts 7:38); and Peter says, "If any man speak let him speak as the oracles of God" (1 Peter 4:11). And not only this; the same apostles who submitted to the authority of the Old Testament as the oracles of God, themselves claimed to write as the oracles of God in the New Testament. "If any man," says Paul, "think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 14:37). "We are of God," writes John. "He that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us" (1 John 4:16). These claims are too great to be put forth concerning fallible writings. Admitting their premises, the Jews were right in charging Jesus with blasphemy, in that being a man he made himself God. If Christ is not God, he is not even a good man. And if the Scriptures are not inerrant, they are worse than errant; since, being literature, they make themselves the word of God. And what if it be said that there are irreconcilable contradictions in this book which calls itself the oracles of God? Two things may be said: First, it should be expected that under "the scientific method" such contradictions should appear and constantly multiply. The Bible is a sensitive plant, which shuts itself up at the touch of mere critical investigation. In the same paragraph in which it claims that its very words are the words of the Holy Spirit, it repudiates the scientific method as futile for the understanding of those words: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,"--and insists on the spiritual method as alone adequate,--"but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). Not only does the Bible not yield roses to the critic, it yields the thorns and briars of hopeless contradiction. "Intellige ut credos verbum meum," said Augustine to the rationalists of his day, "sed crede ut intelligas verbum Dei." "Understand my word, that you may believe it; believe God’s word, that you may understand it." Faith holds not only the keys of all the creeds, but of all the contradictions. He who starts out and proceeds under the conviction that the Bible is the infallible word of God, will find discrepancies constantly turning into unisons under his study. And this remark leads to the second observation: that the contradictions of man may really be the harmonies of God. An uncultivated listener, hearing an oratorio of one of the great masters, would detect discords again and again in the strains; and as a matter of fact, what are called "accidentals" in music are discords, but discords inserted to heighten the harmony. Thus, as one after another of the alleged discrepancies of Scripture having been noted and made to jar upon the ear have then been reconciled, with what an emphatic and heightened harmony have the words of the psalmist, speaking by the Holy Ghost, fallen on our ear: "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple"! There seems to the critic to be historic error in the statement of Stephen that Jacob was buried at Sychem (Acts 7:16) instead of in the field of Machpelah before Mamre, as recorded in Genesis 50:13, just as it was once thought that Luke had made a mistake, not to be explained away, in his reference to Cyrenius in chapter 2: 1, 2. But as the latter contradiction has disappeared, only confirming the veracity of Scripture by the investigation which it has called forth, so may the former. And so also with such alleged discrepancies as that between the record in one place that King Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses, and in another forty thousand; or that of the statement in one passage that King Josias began to reign at eight years of age, and in another, at eighteen. What if we freely admit that we cannot reconcile these statements? That does not prove that they are not reconcilable. The history of solved contradictions has certainly shown this, that as "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men," so the discords of God are more harmonious than men.

We may say, in closing this chapter, that almost the highest proof of the infallibility of Scripture is the practical one, that we have proved it so; that as the coin of the State has always been found able to buy the amount represented on its face, so the prophecies and the promises of Holy Scripture have yielded their face value to those who have taken pains to prove them. If they have not always done so, it is probable that they have not yet matured. Certainly there are multitudes of Christians who have so far proved the veracity of Scripture that they are ready to trust it without reserve in all that it pledges for the world yet unseen and the life yet unrealized. "Believe that thou mayest know," then, is the admonition which Scripture and history combine to enforce. In the farewell of that rare saint, Adolph Monod, these golden words occur: "When I shall enter the invisible world, I do not expect to find things different from what the word of God represented them to me here. The voice I shall then hear will be the same I now hear upon the earth, and I shall say, ’This is indeed what God said to me; and how thankful I am that I did not wait till I had seen in order to believe.’"

[1] John 3:8. "The wind bloweth where it listeth." Without pronouncing dogmatically, it must be said that the translation of Bengel and some others--"The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice"--has reasons in its favor which are well-nigh irresistible; e.g., If to pneuma here is the wind, it has one meaning in the first part of the sentence and another meaning in the second; and that meaning too, one which it bears in no other instance of the more than two hundred and seventy uses of the word in the New Testament. It is not the word used in Acts 2:2, as might be expected if it signified wind. Then it seems unnatural to ascribe volition to the wind, thelei. On the contrary, if the words apply to the Spirit, the saying is in entire harmony with other Scriptures, which affirm the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost in regeneration (John 1:13) and in the control and direction of those who are the subjects of the new birth (2 Corinthians 12:4-11).

[2] The proof that the inspiration of the apostles and scribes of the New Testament was not transmitted to successors is thus stated by Neander: "A phenomenon singular in its kind is the striking difference between the writings of the apostles and those of the apostolic fathers, so nearly their contemporaries. In other instances transitions are wont to be gradual, but in this instance we observe a sudden change. There is no gentle gradation here, but all at once an abrupt transition from one style of language to another--a phenomenon which should lead us to acknowledge the fact of a special agency of the Divine Spirit in the souls of the apostles and of a new creative element in the first period."--Church History, II., 405.

[3] There are the strongest reasons for rejecting the rendering of this passage as given in the Revised Version: "Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable", etc. The reader will find the objections to this rendering powerfully and conclusively set forth in Tregelles on Daniel. Note, p. 267.

[4] Lee on the "Inspiration of the Holy Scripture," pp. 32, 33.

[5] See Lange’s "Commentary" in loco.

[6] I am satisfied only with the style of Scripture. My own style and the style of all other men cannot satisfy me. If I read only three or four verses I am sure of their divinity on account of their inimitableness. It is the style of the heavenly court.--Oetinger.

[7] Rothe, "Dogmatics," p. 238.

[8] For example, Shakespeare, and Milton, and Dryden, employ the words "car" and "engine" and "train" in their writings; but living before the age of steam and railways they knew nothing of the meaning which these terms convey to us. And it is possible that Homer and Plato knew as little of the meaning of such words as aiôn and paraklêtos, as found in the revelation of Jesus Christ, by whom "the ages were framed" and the Comforter sent down.

[9] Dr. R. F. Horton, in "Verbum Dei."

[10] The apostle in calling the Old Testament Scriptures the "oracles of God," clearly recognizes them as divinely inspired books. The Jewish church was the trustee and guardian of these oracles till the coming of Christ. Now the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are committed to the guardianship of the Christian Church.--Dr. Philip Schaff.