Historical Revelation and the Divine Inspiration of the Bible. KP10-IAB-04/10
A. Biblical revelation is historical revelation. God established a covenant with Israel in the time of Moses, governed by a written document. This document which should be seen in the context of the suzerainty treaties of the ancient Near East…God’s relation to Israel is structured by a written text. The covenant words are a holy text from the God of the Covenant. Precedent for written prophecy. Prophets after the time of Moses and Joshua also produced written documents setting forth the words that God gave to them. It is evident that during the OT period itself, a body of writings developed that could be quoted as divinely authoritative.
B. The New Testament as God’s Written Words
There is no reason for thinking that the new covenant is any less verbal than was the old. Covenants by their very nature are verbal transactions… Jesus and the apostles revered the OT as God’s Word, as we have seen, and they also identified themselves as God’s prophets, bringing God’s words to the world…The words of Jesus and the apostles were also intended to be preserved for later generations…Only a written document can preserve these words as God’s personal words to us.
C. Biblical Definition of Inspiration
In revelation we have the vertical reception of God’s truth while in inspiration we have the horizontal communication of that revelation accurately to others.
D. Inspiration
Inspiration may be defined as “God’s superintendence of the human authors of Scripture so that using their own individual personalities, they composed and recorded without error His revelation to man in the words of the original autographs.”
Crucial elements in Inspiration (1) the divine element – God the Holy Spirit superintended the writers, ensuring the accuracy of the writing; (2) the human element – human authors wrote according to their individual styles and personalities; (3) the result of the divine-human authorship is the recording of God’s truth without error; (4) inspiration extends to the selection of words by the writers; (5) inspiration relates to the original manuscripts.
Biblical references: 2 Tim. 3:16 and 2 Pet. 2:20-21.
E. Concursus inspiration (c.f. B.B. Warfield). Every word is at once both Divine and human
The whole of Scripture is the product of divine activities, which enter it, however, not by superseding the activities of the human authors, but confluently with them; so that the Scriptures are the joint product of divine and human activities, both of which penetrate them at every point, working harmoniously together to the production of a writing which is not divine here and human there, but at once divine and human in every part, every word, and every particular
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Historical Revelation and the Divine Inspiration of the Bible. KP10-IAB-04/10