Theology for Doxology

I feel a bit like a Triablogger about now, except they’re smart and I’m not. But I have been wordy. I promise to wrap it up now, even if I don’t finish, this is the last post in this series.
Before I finish up, I wanted to let you know why I have stayed up late at night working on these posts. There are basically three reasons.

1. I believe Michael Spencer is a Christian, confused, but a Christian. I am under obligation by the Law of Christ to watch out for him. (James 5:19-20, Galatians 6:1-2, Jude 22-23, 2 Corinthians 13:11)
2. I am obligated to watch over other Christians who may read Spencer’s essay.
3. I know Christians who have read Spencer’s essay.

Now, back to the bidness at hand…

Though I really didn’t have the time or space to really flesh it out, I think it is abundantly clear that the N. T. authors and the Early Church Fathers believed in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. In other words, they believed that God actually spoke His words by the Holy Spirit through the writers of Scripture. And this included not only the O. T., but, as we have seen in Peter’s example of Paul, (2 Peter 3:15,16) the N. T. writings as well.
B. B. Warfield put this point rather nicely in his essay titled The Inspiration Of The Bible,

This church-doctrine of inspiration differs from the theories that would fain supplant it, in that it is not the invention nor the property of an individual, but the settled faith of the universal church of God; in that it is not the growth of yesterday, but the assured persuasion of the people of God from the first planting of the church until today; in that it is not a protean shape, varying its affirmations to fit every new change in the ever-shifting thought of men, but from the beginning has been the church’s constant and abiding conviction as to the divinity of the Scriptures committed to her keeping. It is certainly a most impressive fact, – this well-defined, aboriginal, stable doctrine of the church as to the nature and trustworthiness of the Scriptures of God, which confronts with its gentle but steady persistence of affirmation all the theories of inspiration which the restless energy of unbelieving and half-believing speculation has been able to invent in this agitated nineteenth century of ours. Surely the seeker after the truth in the matter of the inspiration of the Bible may well take this church-doctrine as his starting-point.

After quoting various Fathers of the Church he continues,

Of course the church has not failed to bring this, her vital faith in the divine trustworthiness of the Scripture word, to formal expression in her solemn creeds. The simple faith of the Christian people is also the confessional doctrine of the Christian churches. The assumption of the divine authority of the scriptural teaching underlies all the credal statements of the church; all of which are formally based upon the Scriptures. And from the beginning, it finds more or less full expression in them. Already, in some of the formulas of faith which underlie the Apostles’ Creed itself, we meet with the phrase “according to the Scriptures” as validating the items of belief; while in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, amid the meagre clauses outlining only what is essential to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, place is given to the declaration that He is to be found speaking in the prophets – “who spake by the prophets.” It was in conscious dependence upon the immemorial teaching of the church that the Council of Trent defined it as of faith in the Church of Rome, that God is the author of Scripture, – a declaration which has been repeated in our own day by the Vatican Council, with such full explanations as are included in these rich words: “The church holds” the books of the Old and New Testaments, “to be sacred and canonical, not because, having been carefully composed by mere human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor merely because they contain revelation with no admixture of error; but because, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author.”

The whole essay is well worth reading and rather hard to quote from, as it is all very quotable.

Suffice it to say then, that the testimony of the Church, from Jesus to Warfield, has consistently been to affirm the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. To stray from this dogmatic assertion of the Church is to stray from Jesus Christ who believed and taught it.

So what does all this have to do with infallibility and inerrancy? I know I’m compromising here, but I think the Catholics actually got this one right. (Exept for the part about oral tradition being inspired as well.) While asserting that the Scriptures were indeed written by man, and being approved by man, they also affirm that the Scriptures are without ‘admixture of error’. The fact of inerrancy for Vatican I lies in the fact that the Scriptures were written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, which in turn means, ‘they have God for their author’. The Scriptures are not the Word of God because man approved them, nor are they the Word of God because they are inerrant. Instead, man approved the Scriptures and the Scriptures are inerrant because they are the Word of God.

If inspiration does in fact mean ‘God-breathed’, as we found Paul to believe in 2 Timothy 3, then it must necessarily follow that these words that ‘God breathed’ are without error. It cannot be any other way. God cannot lie. Either he did inspire the whole Bible, as Paul asserts that he did, “All Scripture is breathed out by God…”, he says, therefore we must recognize it as such, regarding it to be “…profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17) It doesn’t get any clearer than that, folks.

Now, the obvious objection to this is, “Yes, but couldn’t those verses also mean that some of the O. T. was actually inspired, and that only those Scriptures that were breathed out by God are inerrant, and therefore, profitable for teaching, etc.?” This verse taken alone could certainly be translated to say something similar to that. But if we take it in the context of Paul’s staements to Timothy, then the obvious response is, “No.” Those verses cannot possibly mean that, and here is why.
What does Paul mean when he says, “…sacred writings…” (hiera grammata), in verse 15? Is he referring to only parts of the O. T., or to the O. T. as a whole? Actually, neither. The emphasis in verse 15 is on the letters (not correspondence, but the actual characters) of the text. Paul shows this emphasis in Galatians when he bases his interpretation of God’s promise to Abraham on a single letter. (Galatians 3:16) Paul is reminding Timothy of the fact that he actually leaned the Scriptures letter by letter.
If this is the case, that Paul is referring to the actual letters of Scripture in verse fifteen, then in verse 16, the obvious emphasis is the ‘God-breathing’ of the O. T. as a whole, “All scripture…” (pāsa graphē).
Paul affirms a literal, verbal inspiration of the Scriptures in 2 Timothy 3:15. In verse 16 he affirms a plenary inspiration. Paul is teaching Timothy that every letter of the whole O. T. is ‘God-breathed’.

Now if Paul believes that every word is ‘God-breathed’, is it any mystery whether he would believe that it is therefore inerrant? Obviously he does believe that Scripture is inerrant. (Titus 1:1-2) So the question that we must answer then is this…Do we believe Paul? If Paul was wrong about the verbal, plenary, inspiration of Scripture, then was he wrong about justification? or the person of Christ? or the resurrection? (1 Corinthians 15:12-19)

I’m sticking with Jesus, the Apostles, the Fathers, the Creeds, and the Bible’s own testimony of itself on this one.

So, how do we sum up this series?
Well, for Michael Spencer and others like him, we must issue a call for them to turn from their faulty view of Scripture to the true, holy, Apostolic, and Universal (See? I didn’t say Catholic!) faith in the Scriptures as the Inerrant, Infallible Word of God.
For those of you wondering, “How do I interpret Scripture then?” Let me give you the first step. Interpret Scripture as though it is God speaking…because that is exactly what Scripture is. God speaking to fallen humanity. And the second step is, obey what you understand. God will not reveal any other truths in Scripture if you are not faithful in the truths you know. The first truth we learn is the Gospel. God created you for his glory, you sinned, God sent his Son in to the world who lived a perfect life, and was crucified for your sin. God raised him from the dead giving us the assurance that he is the coming judge of the world, and so he demands that you turn from your sinful acts and take him as your only hope for life. Learn and obey that, and then there will be more truth for you to learn and obey. But don’t expect to learn truth if you are not willing to obey.
Finally, for the rest of you, remember that God has spoken, and you need to hear what he is saying.