ABOUT THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE

You will in all probability have met with those who attack the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture. It is a sign of the times that many who teach in schools and colleges, and of course, in professedly Protestant church circles as well, deny the fundamental truths of the Christian Faith. They scoff at the doctrines of predestination and election, treat the history of creation as a myth and refuse absolutely to accept that man by nature is totally depraved. But beware of imbibing one drop of such poison! It is deadly in its effects, and if the Heavenly Physician does not mercifully apply a remedial balm to the soul, eternal death must rapidly follow.

We shall try to examine briefly the position occupied by these higher critics. But we say at once that it is not possible to prove the entire insporation and inerrancy of the Bible to any who look upon Jesus as a mere human teacher, whose example is to be emulated, inasmuch as he was provided by God to the end that man would have some standard to go by, but who refuse to recognize Him as God Incarnate. The sayings and promises of a man may be open to question, but such as dare to question the declarations of the Christ of God are fools indeed. Then, too, there are those who divide up the Bible into compartments, so to speak. One portion they accept entirely, another portion they accept with reservations, yet another they ignore and would erase from the pages of Scripture if they could. It is most difficult to conceive how they can justify such an erratic way of dealing, even to satisfy their own common intelligence, but nevertheless they love darkness rather than light.

Although it is impossible for a person to really set to his seal that the whole Bible is true, except through the gracious influence of God the Holy Spirit, yet as God’s reasonable creatures we are bound to obey and submit to His revealed will in all things. In so doing we may meet with many specious arguments in defense of the higher critical viewpoint. It is generally allowed by the higher critics that the Bible is religiously and morally superior to other writings and it is therefore, at any rate in part, inspired. But they will not at all allow entire verbal inspiration. They also contend that some writings in the Bible are of more importance than others and, therefore, that there are degrees of inspiration.

Christ, they say, possessed fullest inspiration, and it varied in others according to their contact and intimacy with Him. Many errors are attributed to Old Testament writings, and in fact much in the Old Testament is regarded as legendary. One higher critic, a Professor of Divinity wrote, “The plain truth, and we have no reason to hide it, is that we do not know the beginnings of man’s life, of his history, of his sin … we should be content to let them remain in the dark till science throws what light it can upon them.”

The position of the higher critics cannot but be perplexing to themselves and others. As a well known preacher once said, “If you admit that there is even one error in the Word of God, you have gotten rid of the infallible Author; if He can err on one point, if He is mistaken on some minor matter, depend upon it He is not to be trusted in the more important points.” He continues, “I think that our reverence for the Scripture ought to be supreme. I do not believe that it can be carried too far; and personally I would go the length in saying that I accept every word of it from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, as it was given by God in the original documents, I believe the Bible teaches the truth about natural history, or about any sort of history, or about philosophy or anything else…”

Professor Sayce, an authority on archaeology at the beginning of the century remarked in his book, Patriarchal Palestine, “Monumental research is making it clearer every day that the scepticism of the so-called “Higher Criticism” is not justified in fact … while criticism, so-called, has been busy in demolishing the records of the Pentateuch, archaeology, by the spade of the excavator and the patient skill of the decipherer, has been equally busy in restoring their credit; and the monuments of the past are a more solid argument than the guesses and bias of the modern theorist. The clay tablet and inscribed stone are better witnesses to the truth than literary tact or critical scepticism. That Moses and his contemporaries could neither read nor write may have been proved to demonstration by the critics; yet nevertheless we now know, thanks to archaeological discovery, that the critics were entirely wrong. The Pentateuch is after all what it professes to be, and the records it contains are history.”

We refer to the witness of the Saviour as to the authority and inspiration of the Old Testament. Never did He suggest the possibility of error, but rather by quoting freely from it, He demonstrated clearly that it was the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. The New Testament writers, too, continually affirmed their Divine authority for writing as they did, and their testimony was not questioned in the days of the early Christian Church.

Certainly there are difficulties in the Scriptures which we cannot as yet understand or fully explain, but on that account we are not to doubt their truthfulness. Even in the material world there are many mysteries which finite man cannot comprehend, but how much more must this be so of what pertains to an Eternal Kingdom. All that is necessary to secure our temporal and eternal well-being is taught clearly and simply, but Eternity will never exhaust the fulness of goodness and truth in the Heavenly Treasury. After all, man is but a frail, puny creature, and God is the great I am that I am of Eternity to whom every knee must yet bow.

“And Jesus … saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers.”

“And he said unto them, Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

“And straightway they left their nets and followed him.”

Matthew 4: 18-20

Here we see the fishermen launching their boats from the Fisherman’s Port in Acre (Acco or Ptolemais in the Bible). Acre is one of the most ancient cities of Israel. It is situated about twenty-five miles south of Tyre. In Old Testament days it was assigned to the tribe of Asher but was never occupied. It was the site of many fierce battles. The apostle Paul stopped there for a day with the brethren on his last journey to Jerusalem.

The collection of books which forms the Bible is referred to as the “Canon” of Scripture. The question then arises as to the books which form the Canon of Scripture and whether it is possible to identify them with certainty. This is a subject in itself, which could occupy volumes, and which has been ably dealt with by credible authors in the past, so that we may but mention the conclusions arrived at.

The Old Testament as we know it in the Authorized Version of the Bible can be traced to that which was accepted by the Jews, sanctioned by the Lord and by the inspired writers of the New Testament and received in the Christian Church from the beginning. (The books known as the Apocrypha though declared to be canonical by the Council of Trent and accepted as such by the Roman Catholic Church, are excluded from the canon of Scripture by virtue of the fact that they do not fulfill the conditions premised, and also by the character of their contents, which are incompatible with the idea that its various authors were divinely inspired. The Westminster Confession of Faith, states, “The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.” In like manner we have the canon of the New Testament — a number of books written in Greek and immediately inspired by God, and by the singular care and providence of God kept pure in all ages.

As the Westminster Confession of Faith points out: “We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverend esteem of Holy Scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God.”

(Another Article Will Appear in Next Month’s Issue)

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