1. “GOD-BREATHED,” then, is ample to convey the source, character and authority of scripture to a: believing soul. As to the manner in which the Divine will was communicated to the writers, the Church, as it could say nothing reliable, was still less authorized to speculate presumptuously. And what more inconsistent with reverence than to propound “a theory” on “its literary structure”? or the stages by which historically inspiration proceeded? But the same apostle long before his last Epistle had given light from God, which it is seasonable to recall. 1 Cor. 2 lets us into much of the deepest interest and importance, which the Higher Critics gloss over, in impressing on the lightminded Corinthians the fullness and variety of the Holy Spirit's operation in this respect and in others for the blessing of the faithful. Even what Isaiah confessed to be hidden from man's eye, ear, and heart, is now revealed to the Christian since Christ's redemption, and the Spirit's descent (vers. 9-12); “which things also we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, communicating (or expounding) spiritual things by spiritual” [words] For it is evident to any who inspect with care that the apostle is here treating of the further stage of communicating the revelation in ver. 13, before carrying it on to the reception of the inspired words in vers. 14, 15; where the reception by the Christian is declared to be by the same Holy Spirit in contrast with the inability of the natural man. “Comparing” therefore, though quite right in the different context of 2 Cor. 10:12, does not give the sense of συγκρίνοντες here as the intermediate act. Nor does “combining” which is here without any intelligible force, but “interpreting” as in the Revisers' margin, though the simpler “communicating” seems in so peculiar a connection the fittest of all.
This being the apostle's pronouncement, how can any professing Christian doubt “that an inspired writing must be absolutely consistent in all its parts, and free from all discrepancy or error”? The Bible both makes and satisfies these requirements. This is inspiration's account of inspiration.! The “words” are Spirit-taught no less than the ideas. But the gift of the Spirit is essential to receive them. The lack of the Spirit is the true reason for insubjection to the truth, and the invention of such terms as “Bibliolatry,” “verbal” inspiration or other such slurs. No intelligent believer denies but asserts individuality of style: what he abhors is that God's Spirit sanctions or allows error. There is nothing in the plea that it is “man's word,” with which the apostle contrasts it expressly in 1 Thess. 2:13: “when ye received from us God's word of message (or, report), ye accepted not men's word but even as it is truly God's word which also worketh in you that believe.” But these critics do not so believe God's revelation. They believe in themselves and their unbelieving leaders; and so continuing they “shall both fall into a pit.”
It is false therefore that “the inerrancy of Scripture... is a principle which is nowhere asserted or claimed in Scripture itself” (p. 31). “Theologians” on the contrary, as the rule, are habitually weak from the beginning, like Origen, the most learned of the Greeks, who read allegory, and not history in the fall of Adam and the primitive state.
It is no question of a priori any more than a posteriori, but of faith. Before Scripture and doctrine claimed to be in Spirit-taught words, no one put such honor on it as the Lord of all when He set it as authoritative testimony (John v. 47) above His own oral words, though they were of life eternal, spirit and life as He Himself asserted. And what means His declaration in John 10:35 that “the Scripture cannot be broken”? Does this imply that man's infirmity could enter to vitiate it? or does it not mean that the Holy Spirit wrought to make it absolutely true? Nor is it so, as the Prof. says that “it is the facts which force upon us the necessity of a revision of current theories of inspiration”; for as to “current theories of it, a Christian is entitled to disregard them all. The age is full of unbelief, and therefore abounds in fables on this head and almost every other. But the very passage in 2 Tim. 3 which these men seek to weaken is the great safeguard in the grievous times of the last days, against those who deceive and are deceived; and therefore the effort to annul its weight and meaning! The neo-critical principle is not only arbitrary, unbelieving, and excessively artificial, but at direct issue with the Lord and His apostles, and scripture itself, which all join to prove that the foundations of faith are undermined by the blasphemy that God's word contains error in its Spirit-taught words.
2. To say that “the vital truths declared in the Bible appear... wholly unaffected by critical inquiries or critical conclusions” may seem natural to their zealous propagandist, but it is egregious to a believer. If the words are God's, as they so often claim to be in the O. T., if the greatest apostle in the N.T. declares that they and not the thoughts only are Spirit-taught, do they not compose “the external form.... in which these truths appear”? It is not sense to say that “the truths themselves lie beyond its range.” The apostle as we have seen asserts that the Spirit of God is the true author of both. How can the truth be untouched if you touch the form? And what presumption for any man to meddle with the Spirit-taught words! Dr. D. is obliged to admit that some of the leading spirits are plainly unbelievers (avowed Unitarians, &c.), but covers such infidelity as “some anterior philosophical principles.” No wonder that “evil communications (or, company) corrupt good manners.” Ought not others if they fear God to awake up righteously? If they believe with heart, why join arms in divine things with such as have no knowledge of God? As to “different degrees” of inspiration (p. 33) it is unknown to scripture, which does state difference in form.
But “every scripture” is asserted or assumed to be God-breathed. The revelation of God in His word differs essentially from the testimony of nature fallen as it is. As we own in Christ a “human element” as well as the “Divine”; but as he who abuses this union to lower the perfection of Christ's person is fundamentally heterodox, so is he, if only in a less degree, who thus degrades God's written word (p. 34). It is a Psalm of David (19) which declares that the law (the O.T. word) of Jehovah is perfect, converting or restoring the soul as nothing else can do; His testimony trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple (what else does?); His precepts upright, rejoicing the heart; His commandment pure, giving light [spiritually] to the eyes. Yet the law, as Heb. 7 says, perfected nothing. This was from no defect in God's word, but because the Lord had not yet come to give life eternal and to accomplish everlasting redemption for such as believe; who thereon are anointed of God and receive the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts. Even Dr. D. is obliged to own “some special charisma of supernatural insight into the ways of God” granted to the O.T. religious teachers (p. 36). Scripture claims immeasurably more.
3. On the practical suggestions of pp. 37-43 I would say little, as one cannot doubt that his first is sound: that a first-hand knowledge of the Bible itself is the basis for a Biblical scholar. But that the young should be impregnated with the critical notions against the text of scripture is an advice which comes only from one who knows not the scriptures as taught of God, but as perverted by incredulity. What he calls “a natural consequence of the condition under which the authors [of the O.T.] wrote” (p. 43) flows from his unbelief in the power of the Holy Spirit, the true author of all scripture. This is the first and last requisite.
But his error, the ordinary false assumption as to Luke, calls for a more particular notice. “No historical writer ever claims to derive the materials for his narrative from a supernatural source (cf. St. Luke 1:1-4); and so far as we are aware, it has not pleased God in this respect to correct, where they existed, the imperfections attaching to the natural position of the writer” (p. 44). This passage was long the refuge of open infidels in Germany, England, &c., to make believe that a so-called inspired Evangelist disclaims anything supernatural in writing his Gospel, and that he founded it like any other literary man from eye-witnesses in all care and diligence for its accuracy. The Oxford Reg. Prof. of Hebrew uses it for the self-same purpose, as others much less carried away, like the late Dean Alford and many more.
This however is not to read Scripture aright, but slovenly misinterpretation through evil influence. Let us heed what is written. Of the Four, the third is the one inspired to present the Son of God as man in the walk of every day, surrounded by all sorts and conditions of men, the perfect manifestation of grace, finding utter weakness and alienation, with enmity from those who trusting in themselves despised others and hated the Holy One of God. He gives all that exercises the conscience, purges the heart by faith, and strengthens disciples in a walk of love, patience and holiness without anxiety, blessed in being found watching for Christ's coming, and also working for Him as His faithful bondmen. Accordingly Luke alone tells from the outset John the Baptist's birth, and Christ's earliest and youthful days in this aspect; alone tells of the Lord's genealogy up to Adam, of the initiatory scene in the synagogue at Nazareth, of Simon searched yet drawn by faith at the lake, of the widow's only son raised again at Nain, of the sinful woman forgiven and sent away in peace, of the seventy and their final message, of the good Samaritan, of Martha and Mary discriminated, and, to cut short the list, of the prodigal and his father's love, and of the robber following the Lord from the cross to Paradise the same day. He is the great moralist but in a divine way, as beseemed such a life of Jesus; man's heart detected, God's heart revealed in grace. He alone with the same divine design writes a preface with his motives to a fellow-saint. And this furnishes the occasion for free-thinking malice to deny his inspiration, of which divine power the book itself is the best witness, like the other three, though not one presents it, as Luke does.
Hence at the start our Evangelist shows his heart drawn out to one begotten of God that needed the truth fully, a Gentile of rank if not actually a governor, with “his excellency” dropt in Acts 1:1, as no doubt he would prefer when more matured. This marked personal dealing would appeal all the more to other hearts, Jews as well as Gentiles. “Whereas many undertook to draw up a narrative concerning the matters fully assured among us, even as they that from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having closely followed up from the outset all things accurately, to write to thee in regular order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest fully know the certainty concerning accounts (words, or things), wherein thou wast instructed.” These words distinguish the statements of many, though founded on what eye-witnesses and ministers of the word delivered to us. For instead of referring Theophilus to what they had drawn up, he tells us that it seemed good to him also, as having followed closely all things from the very first (ἄνωθεν) and thus having thorough acquaintance of all, to write accurately to him in regular order, that he might fully know the certainty concerning accounts in which he was instructed. He does not, like a literary man, explain his sources or authorities. Far from saying that he compiled his Gospel from eyewitnesses as others had done, he simply avers his own careful perfect acquaintance with all from the outset, and his writing accurately and in order that the one addressed might fully know the certainty respecting the accounts wherein he was instructed. The narratives he refers to might be correct and interesting. But they could not give God's mind and specially as his who was inspired. Only instead of asserting inspiration, he like the other three leaves this to prove itself by its character. But unlike them he adds the loving desire of his heart to help his brother young in the truth in accordance with the spirit of his Gospel pre-eminently.
Many who had taken it in hand did not satisfy him; and therefore he wrote to supply the lack. But he goes into no details of his own work, unless to affirm its thoroughness and accuracy more than any did. Hypothesis is vain here. Far from apologizing for “imperfection,” all he says is to inspire perfect confidence, for which nothing can account to a believer but “a supernatural source.”
It is admitted that God did employ eye-witnesses, as for instance two such in Matthew and John as to their Gospels. But He employed two who were not, Mark and Luke; and who can deny that they are minute and graphic? Yet even in the case of the apostles themselves we find Him rising above eye-sight by divine power, according to the design He impressed on the particular writer or the book written, which quite overthrows the unbelieving theory. Take John 18 as the proof. John alone recounts the Lord's answer to the armed band that came to arrest Him, “I am [he];” which caused them to go backward and fall to the ground. Yet Matthew who beheld it says about so striking an event no more than Mark or Luke. It did not come within God's design for their Gospels, but distinctly for John, who accordingly attests it. On the other hand, John is totally silent on the same occasion as to the agony in Gethsemane, on which the other three dwell, though he alone was of the favored three whom the Lord took apart from the rest to be comparatively near in that hour of deep sorrow and bloody sweat. Yet it was given to Matthew, and even to Mark and Luke to record it, as dwelling not on His deity but His human sufferings in accordance with the design in each of their Gospels. But God is not really in the thoughts of these critics, but man; which incapacitates them from seeing the truth, as the Christian is entitled to do.
Then is repeated the wholly fanciful notion of “two writers” in the opening chapters of Genesis, and the absurd assumption that “the Hebrews” thus pictured the beginning of the world and the early history of man: a task immeasurably above the Higher Critics or any that ever lived without God's inspiration most absolutely; and the shameless invention that, even as to this, “borrowing their materials in some cases from popular tradition or belief, in others, directly or indirectly, from the distant East, they had breathed into them a new spirit, and constructed with their aid narratives replete with noble and deep truths respecting God and man;” etc., etc. How any with the fear of God could thus speak is past comprehension if one did not bear in mind the blinding, defiling, and deadly influence of skepticism. No doubt the history of Israel is rife with their readiness to depart from Jehovah and to adopt the loathsome idolatries of the nations, which the true prophets resisted till there was no remedy. But that the Bible denounces any such importations as the worst sin against the One True God is as plain as words can speak from Genesis to Malachi. In pp. 44-46 is nothing but human fancy and indifference to God's majesty and truth in the O.T. Nor can one conceive less moral feeling than to impute to the inspired word His breathing a new spirit of holiness and truth on narratives drawn from the lying productions from wicked and rebellious heathens and the unclean spirits which misled them. Compare Deut. 4; 7; 8; 12; 13; 15; 17; 29
“These things hast thou done, and I kept silence: thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes” (Ps. 1. 23).
(Continued from p. 15.)