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Revelation and Inspiration
of Scripture
Dennis Bratcher
This article also appears as
Revelation and Inspiration: The Biblical Foundation
in The Modern Inerrancy Debate
Just as there is some measure of truth in all theories of the
atonement - satisfaction, substitutionary, ransom, governmental,
moral influence - and yet no one of these by itself is adequate, so
no single view of inspiration conveys the total, and so true,
picture. - Ralph Earle, in "Revelation and
Inspiration: The Spoken Word of God," in Charles W. Carter, ed.,
A Contemporary Wesleyan Theology, Volume 1 (Grand Rapids:
Francis Asbury Press, 1983), p. 319.
There are two issues that must be considered in any discussion about the
authority of Scripture: revelation and inspiration. It is
important that these are not confused, since some of the issues that become
battlegrounds in talking about Scripture arise from interchanging the two.
The concept of revelation lies at the heart of the Christian Faith
(as well as Judaism). We believe that God has uniquely revealed Himself to
humanity in the arena of human history. Christians do not believe that we
seek God and then find Him (as, for example, in Buddhism). We believe that
God chose to reveal Himself to us. Both Judaism and Christianity are
responses to God’s self-disclosure in history.
It is important here to note that the content of revelation is not
information or data, but God Himself (or, in philosophical categories,
knowledge about God, although I would prefer to leave God as the subject
of revelation rather than its object, or to leave it in relational
categories rather than ontological ones). That is, it is a self-revelation,
or self-disclosure, not revelation about things or ideas. Much of the
early church following Augustine, who was himself influenced by neo-Platonic
idealistic philosophy that saw the world in terms of absolute ideas,
understood all knowledge to be revealed by God. This contrasted to
Aristotle who held that some knowledge can be apprehended by the senses, as
we do now in scientific research (interestingly enough, this was a view
shared by the Israelites in the OT Wisdom traditions, e.g. Proverbs).
The idea that all knowledge about everything comes by revelation from God
has made its way in various forms even into modern thinking. Usually
this has been through religious traditions that use the sovereignty of God
as a primary theological category. This has relevance in how we think about
Scripture, because some adopt this view in relation to the Bible and see
Scripture itself as direct revelation by God covering all
knowledge and all data. Scripture is seen in this view in
absolute categories, from which perspective the terms inerrant and
infallible are most often used to describe Scripture.
However, I do not view Scripture in those terms. I do not understand the
Bible itself to be direct revelation, and I do not consider it be
revelation about everything. Scripture is the witness that the community
of faith has borne to or about revelation. In other words, God
is the content of the revelation, and Scripture tells us about and points
toward that revelation, as, for example, when the Gospels writers bear
witness of the things they have seen and heard (Luke 1:1-4; cf. 7:22; John
21:24-25; cf. 3:32).
Scripture is revelatory only in the secondary or derivative sense that it
is a witness and response to God’s revelation. The Bible
contains not only reports about specific revelatory events such as the
exodus or the incarnation (the technical term here is kergyma,
"proclamation"), it also contains the communities’ response to those events,
how the Communities of Faith worked out the implications of their encounters
with God in doctrinal, social, ethical, and cultural ways (didache,
"teaching").
For example, by analogy, the Gospels can be seen as the witness, the
proclamation of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, while Paul’s writings
can be seen as teaching the implications of that revelation, and
guiding the community in proper response (for example, "live your life in a
manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ," Phil 2:27). The same analogy can be
used in seeing the connection in the Old Testament between the exodus
(proclamation) and the giving of the torah at Sinai (instruction). I
say "by analogy" here because they are both now Scripture for us, which
makes it more difficult for us to divide the categories up so neatly.
To say this in a slightly different way, God is revealed to us today
through interpreted events. God revealed Himself in history (events) and the
Community of Faith interpreted those events to us in what we now have as
Scripture. We have no direct access to the events themselves; we only have
mediated access through the witness of the community (Scripture, and to a
much less degree, tradition).
This does not eliminate any objective grounding to God’s revelation. In
fact, contrary to mythical systems of religion such as popular Hinduism, it
affirms the objective basis in history of God’s self-disclosure,
which is why we can use the term "event." But it also affirms that His
self-disclosure is mediated to us through testimony, and that testimony
itself is not "objective" in the same sense as was the event itself. This is
because part of that testimony is also the interpreted "significance" or
"meaning" of that event in relation to past events,
present experience, and future implications. That is,
it is theological in nature (talking about God) and, in the best modern (or
actually post-modern!) sense, history ("history" here understood as
connections or significance of events rather than data reporting or as
sequences of cause and effect).
This sense of testimony to significance in these three historical
dimensions, past-present-future, can be traced biblically, for example in the instructions in
Deuteronomy and other places: "When your children ask in time to come
[future], 'What do these things mean?' [present] then you shall tell them: 'Once we were slaves in
Egypt . . . '" [past]. Especially in the Old Testament, because of the time span
during which the biblical testimony was preserved and passed down, all three
of these dimensions are often interwoven into a single biblical text as
different communities over a 1,200 year period told and retold the "story"
in light of new experiences, new revelations, new instructions, and
different ways in which the various communities responded to God over the
centuries. The Scriptures as we now have them reflect this dynamic of the
"story of God" as it was woven into the life of the community of Faith
through the centuries. And when we read, or preach, or interpret that story
we are adding yet other historical dimensions as we bring our own present
and future into interaction with the text, and apprehend significance and
meaning from the text in those dimensions.
This suggests that the "story of God" was told in ways that were
influenced by the people who were telling the story, and that it will also
be influenced by people who hear it. While we affirm that the testimony is
true, the vehicle of the testimony was conditioned by the culture, language,
knowledge (or lack of it), historical experience, personality, ethos, etc.,
of the people through the centuries who passed on the testimony, and who
grappled with the implications of it in being the people of God. So,
Scripture as we have it has a dual nature. It is the story of divine
revelation (God’s word) told in the vehicle of culturally conditioned
literature (in human words).
It also suggests that the story is likewise heard in the same culturally
conditioned ways by us. That is, we bring our own culture, language,
knowledge (or lack of it), historical experience, personality, ethos, etc.,
to the biblical text when we read it. And we grapple with its implications
in living out being the people of God. If we are going to take this dual
nature of Scripture seriously, we need ways of understanding Scripture and
theories of inspiration of Scripture that will likewise take these two
aspects seriously.
This still allows Scripture to be revelatory to us today, but in a
slightly different dimension than the absolute categories often associated
with this idea. It is not that the revelation of God in Scripture is
absolute and final, and therefore truth about everything. That is the
position of fundamentalism, literalism, and inerrancy, positions which are
not part of historic Christianity nor the belief of most modern churches
(see "Faith Statements Before and Beyond
Inerrancy" in The Modern Inerrancy Debate). And it is
not just that the revelation of God was only "back then," and so we can have
no direct experience of God now. That is the classical position of
deism. But Scripture is revelatory in the precise sense that God reveals
himself in history in the dynamic of the community as they bear witness to
"what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20). Scripture is living and
active, as God continues to confront people with himself in their own
history in the witness of the community of Faith to him from
their
history.
Now, this brings us to the question of exactly how the community
bore witness to God, how it understood God to be at work in these events,
and how we know that their testimony is true. And it also raises in a
secondary way how we can come to terms with Scripture if it is to be our
story as well. This brings us to the importance of affirming God’s role in
shaping Scripture. Here is where the concept of inspiration of Scripture
provides some help. However, how we talk about inspiration of Scripture is
greatly influenced by how we understand revelation as outlined above.
There are a variety of theories of inspiration (of Scripture), and
I won’t take the time to deal with them all. The basic issue in talking
about inspiration is the balance between the dual nature of Scripture, the
balance between God’s role and humans’ role. Usually inspiration has
to do with the work of God in the process. In Christian tradition, this is
usually connected with the work of the Holy Spirit as the agent of truth in
the world. Thus, inspiration can be conceived, in some way, as "in-Spirited"
(cf. 2 Tim 3:16-17, 2 Pet 1:20-21). But this does not in itself resolve the
question of balance.
On the one pole are dictation and verbal theories that
affirm nearly 100% God. Usually, these are heavily influenced both by an
absolute sovereignty of God model that allows little human input into
anything since humans are totally contaminated by sin and cannot be trusted
(with roots in Augustinian influenced Calvinism), as well as by the
philosophical model mentioned earlier that equates revelation with all
truth. In these views, Scripture is equated with the mind of God, and He is
seen as the primary author of Scripture. Here, the physical text itself is
seen as the locus of inspiration and, indeed, revelation of absolute truth.
On the other pole are elevation theories that affirm nearly 100%
human. Usually, these are heavily influenced either by rationalistic or
naturalistic models that do not see God active in the world, or by atheistic
or agnostic thinking that will not acknowledge anything other than humanity.
In this view, Scripture is just a good book reflecting the same kind of
elevated human insight that, for example, might be found in Shakespeare or
Star Wars. Here, the writers are the source, and most often the only
source, of the writing.
Between these poles are various blends of the two. Interestingly enough,
theories toward either pole claim plenary ("full") inspiration depending on
whether the physical text itself is seen as fully inspired or only
the writers are inspired. In any case, the mediating position is usually
termed dynamic inspiration, which tries to balance the role of God
and humans. In many of these perspectives (with various nuances) it is not
the text that is inspired but the writers themselves, or the message.
However, what the writers understand is not solely a product of their own
thinking but is enabled by the activity of God, which distances this from
the elevation pole.
Any adequate theory of inspiration must take into
consideration three crucial factors.
-
It must not only allow but take seriously the
faith confession that God is active in the world, that He reveals
Himself to humanity, and that there is a dimension to God that cannot be
accessed by human reason or experience.
-
It must be able to deal honestly without
rationalization with the phenomena of Scripture itself, the evidence and
features contained within the text of the Bible as we have it now
(which prevents appealing to any no longer extant versions of the
biblical text).
-
It must be consistent with, or at the very least
compatible with, the larger Wesleyan theological understanding of human
beings that arises from Scripture,
especially in the important perspective of prevenient grace ("going
before" grace that God grants to humanity to enable their response to
God, which impacts discussion of human moral freedom).
The best way of understanding inspiration that takes into consideration
these factors is a dynamic theory of inspiration that tries evenly to
balance human and divine involvement in Scripture. For me, the method or
mode of inspiration is not nearly as crucial as the fact or process of
inspiration. And I see the locus of inspiration neither in the physical text
itself nor in single writers, but in the message of Scripture, what
it tells us about God, about ourselves, and about how we relate to God.
Now, without delving too deeply into various possible modes of
inspiration within a dynamic understanding, let me explain how I think the
process works in the production of Scripture. As mentioned above, it all
begins with God revealing himself, either to the entire community in
historical events such as the exodus or the incarnation, or to individuals
in specific ways, such as Moses at the burning bush or Paul on the road to
Damascus. However, with any revelation of God there must be a response from
the community or the person. That is, they must be able not only to
understand the meaning and significance of the event, but must also be able
to communicate to others who have not directly experienced the revelatory
act of God its meaning and significance, and to translate that revelation
into practical everyday living. Here is where inspiration comes into play.
Not only does God reveal Himself, he helps the people understand that
revelation through inspiration.
Inspiration begins at the point of God enabling people to understand
God’s revelatory actions. However, exactly how they respond to that
revelation, how they talk about, tell it, theologize about it, pass it on in
tradition, incorporate it into ethical and doctrinal systems, etc., is all
influenced by the culture in which they live. They do not pass on eternal,
absolute truths. They tell the story of God, which God has revealed to them
and helped them understand, but they tell it in their own way. They
translate God’s revelation into the language, metaphors, symbols, liturgy,
and literature through which they can bear witness to God’s truth, and in
which other people can hear and understand the testimony.
However, Scripture does not yet arise at this point. And inspiration is
not the one time action of God that is only related to the original
revelatory event. Inspiration is the ongoing work of God (Christians would
say the Holy Spirit) whereby He continues to help people understand the
message, the testimony. So, inspiration is not static but dynamic. It
is at work as the witnesses tell the story, as well as enabling people who
hear the story to understand and respond. In this sense, as mentioned above,
there is some connection between the idea of inspiration and the idea of
prevenient grace.
The work of God in enabling people to understand through the testimony
extends to the entire community of Faith. God is at work in the community as
a whole as he helps them to understand, not only the testimony, but also how
to respond to that testimony. So as the community does its own lawmaking, or
development of ethical standards, as well as constructing theology and
doctrine, it is God at work in the entire community throughout the centuries
helping them understand the things of God.
This does not at all override the freedom of people or the community,
which explains how some people or some communities can distort or pervert
the testimony and develop ideas or doctrines that stray from the original
revelation. And it also explains the warnings in both Testaments concerning
the need for faithful transmission of the story and sound doctrine. But we
affirm that God has so enabled the process that even with all the problems
of the communities of faith in history, with all the difficulties of
transmission of the story, even with all the problems and discrepancies in
Scripture that we now have, we still have a reliable witness to the truth of
God.
So, inspiration, the work of God in enabling people to understand
the message, is an ongoing, dynamic process. It was at work, for example, in
Moses seeing the burning bush and understanding that this was God, telling
Zipporah when he got home that night, telling the Israelites what God had
revealed to him, and later telling Pharaoh. But it extends far beyond that.
God was still at work helping people understand as this story was told
centuries later to Israelites as they celebrated Passover in David’s
kingdom, as children heard the story about God’s deliverance and recalled
God’s great acts of the past.
Inspiration was at work as scribes perhaps centuries after that
incorporated that faith confession into a compilation of writings
telling the marvelous story of God’s deliverance and creation of a
people. To that story were added priestly, liturgical instructions for
proper observance of Passover, and the importance of proper response to
the God who heard the cries of oppressed slaves. Still later, God was
still helping the community understand as they further incorporated an
analysis of their own failure as God’s people. Exilic and post exilic
prophets and scribes told the story again, but in the context of the
catastrophic failure that climaxed in the exile. And yet the story took
on new significance a century after that as exiles returned home, and
they interpreted the return from exile as a second exodus as they
learned new depths of God’s grace and forgiveness (See
JEDP: "Sources" in the Pentateuch).
As they collected all these stories together, God was still at work
helping them understand their history. They used certain writings within the
community of Faith because God has helped them understand that this way of
seeing their history was a faithful interpretation of how He had worked with
them over the centuries.
We could track this process even further into the development of the
canon, but I won’t take the time here. But even today, as we sit in a 21st century AD living room and read the story again, there is once again
the work of God the Holy Spirit helping us understand the message, to hear
again the testimony to the revelation of God. And when a preacher or a bible
scholar studies the passage, or proclaims it on Sunday morning, inspiration
is still at work helping the people who hear it understand God, and respond!
That is why any reading or study of Scripture should begin with the
prayer, "Lord, help me understand." It is an acknowledgment of that dynamic
quality of inspiration, and a confession that finally, after we have done
all we can do to understand the human dimension of Scripture, it is God who
brings the testimony alive, and makes it a living and active word!
And yet, the form, the vehicle of that message is dependent upon the
people themselves. So, there are cultural oddities. There are personal
idiosyncrasies. There are errors of fact, of science, of grammar, of
spelling, of data. There are different perspectives from different people
from different cultures on different continents over a span of 1,800 years.
There are inconsistencies in historical data, in the use of symbols, in
views about future events. Sometimes prophets were wrong in how they
translated their understanding about God into their interpretation of
historical events. Sometimes they even had to change their prophecies.
(See Ezekiel and the Oracles Against Tyre)
Sometimes leaders had to go far beyond the old law codes, and sometimes
had to invent new responses to ethical challenges (Nehemiah; "Applied
Torah" in Torah as Holiness). Sometimes new
understandings challenged old orthodoxies (Job, Jonah). Sometimes in one
historical situation one view was valid, and in another historical situation
the opposite perspective was valid (Deuteronomy, Jeremiah). Sometimes they
emphasized one aspect and sometimes another, and sometimes those are not
directly reconcilable (Proverbs, Leviticus). After all, the story is in
human words.
But it is God’s story! Or perhaps better, it is a story of God!
For me, affirming a dynamic view of inspiration allows the truth about
Himself that God has revealed to us to be faithfully and accurately
preserved by the community of Faith. This takes seriously the faith
confession that God is active in the world, that He reveals Himself to
humanity, and that there is a dimension to God that cannot be accessed by
human reason or experience. In this sense, the Bible is God’s
word.
However, a dynamic model that sees inspiration of Scripture as a process
operating within the community of faith rather than a one time revelation of
absolute truth also allows us to examine all the evidence within Scripture
honestly without need for apology or rationalization. So, I can conclude
based on that evidence that Moses did not write the Pentateuch as we now
have it (JEDP: Sources in the Pentateuch), or that Ezekiel was dead wrong in his prediction about the
destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar (Ezekiel
and the Oracles against Tyre), or that Isaiah did not have Jesus in
mind in Isaiah 7 or 9 (Immanuel in Isaiah and
Matthew), without in any way taking anything away from the
message of Scripture, from its witness to God’s revelation of Himself,
and the resulting call for us to respond to that revelation.
A dynamic view of inspiration is also very close to the Wesleyan
perspective of the balance between God’s grace and human freedom. Contrary
to some other traditions in the Christian faith, Wesleyans affirm that God’s
grace actually transforms people, and makes them capable of freely
responding to Him. Wesleyans simply do not accept the idea that human beings
are so perverted and corrupted by sin that they can never be righteous or
understand the things of God. We really do believe that God can work with
people, and even can, by the power of His grace, enable them to be righteous
rather than simply being counted
as being righteous.
If we really do believe that, then surely we should believe that God can
entrust them with the testimony to His grace as he continually works with
them individually and communally. If he could entrust the Savior of the
world to a young Jewish girl from Galilee, surely He can trust the testimony
to that event to His disciples, and to the resulting community of Faith that
He has called into being.
So, just as our lives reflect the working together of God’s grace and our
response, I think Scripture as the testimony of God’s people also
demonstrates that same working together. In some sense there is an
incarnational dimension to Scripture. That is, it is truth about God
incarnated into the words of human beings. And just as we were called to
recognize and respond to the Incarnated Word of God in Jesus, I think we are
called to recognize and respond to the incarnated word of God in Scripture.
It is only then, in the recognition and response, that Scripture becomes the
living and active word of God (Heb 4:12).
-Dennis Bratcher, Copyright ©
2010, Dennis Bratcher - All Rights Reserved
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