Inspiration - pt 1

I thought I'd write another post on inerrancy and inspiration following some of
the comments on this post.It'll probably end up turning into 3 or 4 posts, but
we'll see how it goes. Since a doctrine of inspiration is the prerequisite of a
doctrine of inerrancy, I'll begin by looking at the idea of inspiration in some
depth first.

Historically the church has always affirmed that the scriptures were inspired by
the Holy Spirit, althoughinspiration finds its most prominent and vocal defenders
in the evangelical stream of Christianity. Generallyspeaking, the evangelical
viewpoint regards inspiration as the basis for a doctrine of inerrancy, and thus
for the authority of scripture. Debates on inspiration can get bogged down in
that they rarely get beyondarguing that the Bible is inspired, full stop, without
giving a theological rationale for the doctrine or the phenomena of inspiration.

Perhaps a reason for this is the rise of critical methodologies in biblical studies
that have made ideas of inspiration and inerrancy inaccessible to more precise
and scientific exegetical methods such as historical, redaction, and textual
criticism. A quick glance at Mark 6:17 in a Greek New Testament will reveal
numerous variant readings of the text which stem from a correction of the
earlier manuscripts. This redaction probably arose out of the very awkward
fact that no matter how confidently Mark 6:17 states it, historically Herodias
was not the wife of Herod's brother Phillip. Textual and historical criticism
causes significant problems for many evangelical understandings of inerrancy
(even in the "original autographs") purely on the basis that it demonstrates
that the Bible is not free from error in everything it teaches, however many
declarations we publish saying that it is.

Which version of Mark 6:17 was inspired? The original, the final redaction,
or all readings of the text? If we affirm with 2 Tim 3:16 and church tradition
that all scripture is inspired and accept that Mark 6:17 (for example) is too,
what do we do with a doctrine of inerrancy when there are quite clearly
errors in the biblical texts as we now have them?

The aim of this post is to look at the theological and biblical rationale for
the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy rather than analysing specific
texts that might be not be error-free, so I'll move on and simply point out
that historical-critical methods call into question some traditional notions
of inerrancy.

Biblical Perspectives on Inspiration

Church tradition has always made 2 Tim 3:16-17 the hub of discussions
about inspiration and inerrancy:

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

The notorious problem with interpreting this text is precisely how
much theology one reads into the term "God breathed". It is a big
leap of logic to deduce from the term "all scripture is God-breathed"
that then all scripture is verbally inspired and free from error in
everything it teaches. Let us be clear that 2 Tim 3:16-17 does not
say that, and we should try to avoid using this as a proof-text to
support a doctrine that is infinitely more complex than the author
of this verse could ever have imagined, and almost certainly not what
he had in mind when he wrote it.

So what did he have in mind? The verse is certainly very difficult to
interpret (compare numerous different translations and
commentators!) but we can at least make a little headway.
The verse is located in a short pericope (2 Tim 3:10-17) that exhorts
Timothy to steadfastness and perseverance in his teaching, and reminds
him that the scriptures (hiera grammata) he has been taught from his
youth (3:15) are useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training
in righteousness. The phrase hiera grammata (better translated as
"sacred writings") occurs neither in the LXX or anywhere else in the
New Testament. Its only other occurences are in Hellenistic Jewish Literature
(Philo, Life of Moses 2:292, Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 10:210) where
it denotes the Old Testament, and there is no immediate reason to assume
that Paul (leaving out issues of authorship for now) considered the term to
mean anything different, and more likely builds on the fact that Timothy has
already been instructed in the OT scriptures from his youth, as was
customary for Jewish men of the time (Aboth 5:21).

Thus far there is nothing in this section of Timothy that is at odds with
any other Rabbinic thoughts on scripture, but Paul breaks with Rabbinic
norms by pointing out in 3:15 that the usefulness of scripture is because
it points to salvation in Jesus Christ. It is only through him that scriptures
cohere and make sense, and the scriptures reveal the salvation that is to
be found in him. Much of my disagreement with John has been over the
relationship between Christ as the Word of God and scripture as the Word
of God,and while this verse hardly puts the matter beyond doubt it does
force us to consider scripture in a Christocentric manner, but I digress.

We next arrive at the tricky statement in 3:16a: "All scripture is inspired
by God..." (pasa graphe theopneustos kai...). There are numerous
questions that this text raises. Given that 3:15 refers to the Old
Testament, and this is expanded upon in 3:16-17, what are we to
understand by "all scripture"? All the Bible as we now have it 2000 years
later? Almost certainly not. An even more difficult issue still is how to
translate theopneustos - is it to be read in an active or passive sense?
It is a predicate or an attribute of scripture? And so on.

Pasa graphe ("all scripture") can be translated in several ways, since
graphe can denote either the entirety of scripture, or simply a specific
book or passage of scripture. The absence of the article he before
graphe might suggest that pasa graphe is better rendered as "every
passage/all passages of scripture" rather than simply "all scripture".

The key term theopneustos ("God-breathed" - NIV) has no parallels
anywhere in either th NT or LXX. It originates in pre-Christian Greek
literature, and can be rendered in either a passive or active sense.
Understood in an active sense we would understand the verse to
mean that scripture is filled with the breath of God, and that scripture
is inspiring. However, the normative reading throughout the history
of the church has been to take theopneustos in a passive sense.
That is, that scripture is inspired by God.

The language of theopneustos originates not in the OT but in ancient
Greece, where it described the activity of an ancientprophet giving
utterances in an ecstatic frenzy, although the biblical understanding
of divine inspiration is somewhat different. The Jewish tradition
viewed the prophets as divinely inspired men (e.g. Josephus, Against
Apion 1:37; Philo, De specialibus legibus 1:65; 4:49) and Christianity
continued this Jewish doctrine, as we can see in 2 Peter 1:21 and
also in the early fathers (Justin, Apology 2:9; Athenagoras, Supplicatio 9;
Theophilus, Three Books Addressed to Autolycus, 2:9). All of this put
together leads me to think that a better reading of 3:16 is "every
passage of scripture is inspired".

Yet as English-speakers we face a difficult problem in rendering
the Greek. To make sense in English we need to insert the verb
"to be" somewhere in the sentence, but there is no such equivalent
in Greek. So where do we put it? Given that the inspiration of
scripture was a given for Timothy anyway (he had been studying them
his whole life of course) there could have been little need for Paul to
inform him that "every scripture is inspired", and so it is possible to
read the verse as "every inspired scripture is..." instead, although this
reading might imply that some scriptures are not inspired, which has
problems of its own. My own preference is for option one: "every
scripture is inspired", which may not be as redundant as it seems since
Paul uses this as a basis for the main thrust of his argument, that
scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in
righteousness.

The only other NT text that comes close to 2 Tim 3:15-17 in terms of
its theology is 2 Peter 1:20-21, and it is somewhat less difficult to
translate:

"Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

The context of this verse is as part of a passage that attempts
to shore up the hope of its readers. Beginning with the
transfiguration tradition, Peter (issues of authorship
notwithstanding once again) then begins to discuss ton prophetikon
logon - "the prophetic word" (v. 19). This term occurs in both
Philo and the Apostolic Fathers not simply to denote the prophets
(as distinct from the law) but the entire OT scriptures. Peter upholds
the authority of ton prophetikon logon because they have begun
to be realised and established in Jesus Christ, in contrast to the
false prophets who speak from their own imagination and distort
both the OT and Christian writings (2 Pet 3:3,16). Their "inspired"
teaching is not validated by the person of Christ, and comes only
from their own imagination. Having established that true scripture
is inspired by the Holy Spirit, it becomes clear to Peter's readers
that the reason one cannot just interpret the scriptures in any
way one wants is because the scriptures come from the Holy
Spirit and are validated and fulfilled by Christ.

The inspiration of prophets and prophetic writings was universally
accepted by both Jews (including Philo,Josephus, and Qumran - where
it was believed that God also supplied the correct interpretation) and
the Early Church (see Matt 22:29, Rom 1:2, Mark 12:26, Luke 1:70, and
so on). Both Jews and Christians alike affirmed the inspiration of
scripture, yet this is still miles away from modern constructs of
inspiration and inerrancy. Undoubtedly both Jews and Christians
saw the prophetic utterances as originating with God, and that the
OT was a written record and interpretation of these divinely-inspired
prophetic speeches, but that is not the same thing as affirming that
the texts we now have are divinely-uttered. The Bible contains
records of divinely-inspired speech, interpretation and commentary
upon it. God is not given as the source of all passages of scripture.
Luke claims that his sources are the result of eyewitnesses
and his own investigation (Luke 1:1-4), for example.

That's all I want to write on the subject for now, though I plan to
write one more post on the history of the doctrine of inspiration,
and another on the theology of inspiration over the next few days.