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Defenders: Doctrine of Revelation (Part 6): How Can Inspiration Be Plenary, Verbal, and Confluent?
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Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today the Doctrine of Revelation, Part 6. For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org We've been talking about the doctrine of inspiration, and the question that we closed with last time was how inspiration can be plenary, verbal, and yet confluent. We saw that no one wants to defend a dictation theory of biblical inspiration. Muslims hold to something like that for the Qur'. An. But Christian theologians recognize that the Scriptures are the products of their human authors as well as the divine author. And so some sort of supervision theory of inspiration seems best. But the problem is enunciating such a theory, showing how we can make sense of God, superintending work so that the final product will be verbal, plenary, and confluent in its inspiration. Now for the lesson today, it will be helpful if you have the outline with the quotations and the premises of the arguments on it. So if you don't have an outline, raise your hands and Marion will get one to you right away. So how can inspiration be verbal, plenary, and yet confluent? Here, contemporary theologians have not had a whole lot to say. Let's look at the bewilderment that is expressed by some representative Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed theologians. Now, these are not contemporaries. These are classical thinkers that represent these traditions. First, from the Catholic perspective, John Henry Newman, the great British cardinal, in his lectures on the Scripture Proofs of the Doctrines of the church in 1838, has the following to say about this question and this quotation is found on your handout. In what way inspiration is compatible with that personal agency on the part of its instruments which the composition of the Bible evidences we know not. But if anything is certain, it is this. That though the Bible is inspired, and therefore in one sense written by God, yet very large portions of it, if not far greater, the greater part of it, are written in as free and unconstrained a manner, and apparently with as little consciousness of a supernatural dictation or restraint on the part of his earthly instruments, as if he had had no share in the work. As God rules the will, yet the will is free. As he rules the course of the world, yet men conduct it, so he has inspired the Bible, yet men have written it. Whatever else is true about it, this is true. That we may speak of the history or mode of its composition as truly as that of other books. We may speak of its writers having an object in view, being influenced by circumstances, being anxious, taking pains, purposely omitting or introducing things supplying what others had left, or leaving things incomplete. Though the Bible be inspired, it has all such characteristics as might attach to a book uninspired the characteristics of dialect and style, the distinct effects of times and places, youth and age, or moral and intellectual character. And I insist on this, lest in what I am going to say I seem to forget what I do not forget that in spite of its human form, it has in it the spirit and the mind of God. Here Newman expresses very eloquently that while God is the author of Scripture in some inexplicable way, it is also very much a human product which evinces all of the characteristics of its human authors. From a Lutheran perspective, listen to what Robert Preuss in his book the Theology of Post Reformation Lutheranism, published in 1970, has to say. Preuss writes, the Lutheran doctrine of inspiration presents a paradox. On the one hand, it was taught that God is the auctor primaris, the, that is to say, the primary author of Scripture, that he determined and provided the thoughts and actual words of Scripture, and that no human cooperation concurred efficienter, that is to say, as efficient causes in producing Scripture. On the other hand, it was maintained that the temperaments in genia, the research and feelings, and the differences in background of the inspired writers are all clearly reflected in the Scriptures. That there is nothing docetic about Scripture. Docetism was an early heresy that thought that while the spiritual is good, the material and physical is evil, and therefore Christ is could not truly become incarnate. He only appeared to be incarnate. The human nature and body of Jesus was in fact illusory, not real. And what Preuss is saying here is that there is nothing docetic about Scripture. It really is the product of these human authors as well as the divine author. We shouldn't think that these human authors are mere stenographers who take a dictation. They really have a role in it. So there's nothing docetic about Scripture that God's spokesmen wrote willingly, consciously, spontaneously, and from the deepest personal spiritual conviction and experience that psychologically and subjectively materialiter et subjectiva, they were totally involved in the writing of Scripture. These two salient features of the doctrine of inspiration must be held in tension. He goes on to say, now it may seem utterly inconsistent that the Spirit of God could in one and the same action provide the very words of Scripture and accommodate himself to the linguistic peculiarities and total personality of the individual writer, so that these men wrote freely and spontaneously. But this is precisely what took place according to the biblical evidence and data. And if Scripture does not inform us how both of these facts can be true, we must not do violence to either or try to probe the mystery of inspiration beyond what has been revealed. The Lutheran teachers are well aware that there is a lacuna or a gap in their theology at this point. They are content to retain this logical gap and accept the paradox. So on Preuss view, the doctrine of inspiration is inherently paradoxical, mysterious, and it's no good trying to probe this mystery to resolve it. Finally, from the Reformed perspective, we have this from the great Princeton theologian of the last century, or rather of the late 19th century, B.B. warfield. In his book Calvin and Calvinism, Warfield wrote, the classical doctrine of inspiration purposely declares nothing as to the mode of inspiration. The Reformed churches admit that this is inscrutable. They content themselves with defining carefully and holding fast the effects of the divine influence, leaving the mode of divine action by which it is brought about draped in mystery. So once more we see from Warfield's point of view, the doctrine of inspiration is simply mysterious and should just be left at that. Well, I think that while we may sometimes be forced to advert to mystery in doing theology, we should only do so as a last resort after attempts to make sense of Christian doctrine have failed. And I don't think that we've reached that point yet with the doctrine of inspiration. So let's try to probe this a little farther and see what sense we can make of a doctrine or theory of inspiration that would allow inspiration to be verbal, plenary and confluent. And as our springboard for discussing this, I want to look at an article published several years ago by a pair of Christian philosophers, Randy and David Basinger, entitled Inerrancy, Dictation and the Free Will Defense, which was published in the Evangelical Quarterly. Now what Basinger and Basinger argue is that if you hold to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, then you cannot use the free will defense to answer the problem of evil. Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with that, in response to the atheist's argument that there is suffering and evil in the world that a good and all powerful God would not and could not permit, the free will defender will say that evil in the world is possibly the result of the free actions of creatures, either human or demonic, and that therefore God cannot guarantee that a world of free creatures with as much good as this world has would not also have less evil. So that's the free will defense against the problem of evil. It appeals to creaturely freedom to explain how God can be all loving and all powerful and yet suffering and evil still exist. And what Basinger and Basinger want to say is that if you hold to the free will defense, you can't believe in biblical inerrancy. Well now why is that? Well, they give this following argument which they imagine in favor of biblical inerrancy. This is how the biblical inerrantist might argue they think, number one, the words of the Bible are the product of free human activity. That just is to say that the Scripture is confluent in its inspiration. It's not dictated by God. The words of the Bible are the product of free human activity. Number two, Human activities such as penning a book can be totally controlled by God without violating human freedom. This is the supervision view of inspiration that says the God can supervise the writing of Scripture without violating the freedom of the human authors. 3. God totally controlled what human authors did in fact write so that you get a verbal inspiration for. Therefore the words of the bible are God's utterances. 5. Whatever God utters is errorless. 6. Therefore the words of the Bible are errorless. So this is an argument for biblical inerrancy based upon the words of the Bible being the product of human activity and God's total control of those free human authors. And Basinger and Basinger say that in light of the endorsement of premise 2 by the defender of inspiration, namely that human activities can be totally controlled by God without violating human freedom, that person cannot utilize the free will defense in response to the problem of evil. He can't say that evil was somehow then outside of God's control. If human activities can be totally controlled by God without violating human freedom, then God should be able to totally control the world so that evil and sin never occurs. So given the reality of human evil and the fact that God cannot be the author of evil, they say premise two must be false. If you're going to hold to the reality of evil and yet God's superintendence over the world, you've got to say that human activities cannot be totally controlled by God without violating human freedom. That is to say two is false. But then you can present the following argument. Number one, the words of the Bible are the product of free human activity. Two prime human activities and their products cannot be totally controlled by God without violating human freedom. Now a new premise. 7. The doctrine of the verbal plenary inspiration of the Bible entails God's total control of the words of the Bible. 8. Therefore the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture is false. That is to say, a confluent view of verbal and plenary inspiration is false. So if one persists in affirming the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration, then since 7 is true virtually by definition, that the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration entails God's total control of the words of the Bible, you've got then to deny one. That is to say, you've got to deny that verbal plenary inspiration implies a dictation theory of inspiration. And they think that that denies confluence if you hold to that. So that is to say, you must hold that verbal plenary inspiration does require dictation, that this is the only way in which the words of the Bible could be totally controlled by God. You wind up with dictation. So is there any question about the argument that Basinger and Basinger give against the possibility of plenary, verbal and confluent inspiration? Okay, down here, Steve. I don't understand why it's not confluent. If God uses this sovereignty to ensure circumstances that they with their own free will will choose the same word, then they chose of their own free will that word, even though God orchestrated it at a superset of sovereignty. All right, well, I think Steve is beginning to see the weakness of the argument. So hang on to that and we'll pull on that thread and see if that will cause this to unravel. But is there any other comprehension type question about the argument that they're giving? Yes, Cindy, maybe similar to Steve, I was just thinking of the, you know, the third option which comes to mind. You know, that you can have God set circumstances in place that would fulfill his will, and therefore you still have the freedom, but you will not, you will execute according to his plan. If folks are too well taught. You know, I can't get anything past I've been here for years. I need to have picked up something on this. Yeah, okay. Yeah, right. Yeah, you're making the same point as Steve and we'll say something to that effect. All right, so. Well, any other question? I'm sure there's some folks who say I don't understand the argument and need some clarification. All right, I don't see any hand to that effect. So let's now look at a response to Basinger and Basinger that was written by Norman Geisler. He wrote an article in the Evangelical Quarterly entitled Inerrancy and Free Will. A reply to the brothers Basinger. And he says there's a hidden assumption behind Basinger and Basinger's reasoning, namely number nine on your handout. They assume that if God can infallibly guarantee what some men will do, then he can do the same for all. If God can infallibly guarantee what some men will do, then he can do the same for all. And Geisler writes to the contrary. It may have been because only some men freely chose to cooperate with the Spirit so that he could guide them in an errorless way. Or it may have been that the Holy Spirit simply chose to use the those men and occasions which he infallibly knew would not produce error. Let's read that statement again so we can think about it. It may have been because only some men freely chose to cooperate with the Spirit so that he could guide them in an errorless way. Or it may have been that the Holy Spirit simply chose to use those men and occasions which he infallibly knew would not produce error. So what Geisler is suggesting is saying that there are certain men that God could pick to use to write Scripture. Knowing that they would write exactly what he wants to doesn't mean that he can infallibly control everybody in every circumstance so that evil would never result. It may well be the case that God cannot so totally control everything that evil would never freely be committed, even though he did have the ability to pick certain people like Paul and Luke and Matthew, so that in these certain occasions they would write infallibly exactly what he wanted them to say. Now, notice the second sentence of Geisler's suggestion. It may have been that the Holy Spirit simply chose to use those men and occasions which he infallibly knew would not produce error. What kind of knowledge is Geisler attributing to God in saying that? Middle knowledge that's exactly right. He's saying that God knew what these authors would freely write in certain sets of circumstances. And so by placing the authors in those circumstances and leaving them free, he knew that they would freely write exactly what God wanted them to write. And this suggests, I think, a middle knowledge solution to to the problem of biblical inspiration. Namely, you can get an inspiration which is truly confluent, but also verbal and plenary by attributing to God middle knowledge of what these human authors would write if they were placed in certain circumstances. And it's interesting to me that B.B. warfield, in his article the Biblical Idea of Inspiration, which I'm going to quote now in a moment, offers a view which is almost exactly this. It's a beautiful description of what a middle knowledge perspective on Biblical inspiration entails. Here's Warfield, and I quote so soon, however, as we seriously endeavor to form for ourselves a clear conception of the precise nature of the divine action in this breathing out. Remember, that's what inspiration means. God breathed of this breathing out of the Scriptures, this bearing of the writers of the Scriptures. Remember, in Second Peter it says that the authors of Scripture were borne along by the Holy Spirit to write what they did. This bearing of the writers of the Scriptures to their appointed goal of the production of a book of divine trustworthiness and and indefectible authority. We become acutely aware of a more deeply lying and much wider problem, apart from which this one of inspiration, technically so called, cannot be profitably considered. So Warfield says this problem of biblical inspiration is just an example of a much wider problem. What is it? Well, he says, this is the general problem of the origin of the Scriptures and the part of God in all that complex of processes by the interaction of which these books, which we call the sacred Scriptures, with all their peculiarities and all their qualities, of whatever sort, have been brought into being. For of course, these books were not produced suddenly by some miraculous act handed down complete out of heaven, as the phrase goes. But like all other products of time, are the ultimate effect of many processes cooperating through long periods. There is to be considered, for instance, the preparation of the material which forms the subject matter of these books in a sacred history, say, for example, to be narrated, or in a religious experience, which may serve as a norm for record, or in a logical elaboration of the contents of revelation, which may be placed at the service of God's people, or in the progressive revelation of the divine truth itself, supplying their culminating contents. And there is the preparation of the men to write these books to be considered a preparation, physical, intellectual, spiritual, which must have attended them throughout their whole lives, and indeed must have had its beginning in their remote ancestors, and the effect of which was to bring the right men to the right places at the right times, with the right endowments, impulses, acquirements, to write just the books which were designed for them. When inspiration, technically so called, is superinduced on lines of preparation like these, it takes on quite a different aspect from that which it bears. When it is thought of as an isolated action of the divine Spirit operating out of all relation to historical processes. Representations are sometimes made as if when God wished to produce sacred books which would incorporate his will, a series of letters like those of Paul, for example, he was reduced to the necessity of going down to earth and painfully scrutinizing the men he found there, seeking anxiously for one who on the whole promised best to his purpose, and then violently forcing the material he wished expressed through him against his natural bent and with as little loss from his recalcitrant characteristics as possible. Of course, nothing of the sort took place. If God wished to give his people a series of letters like Paul's, he prepared a Paul to write them. And the Paul he brought to the task was a Paul who spontaneously would write just such letters. End quote. This is a perfect description of, of middle knowledge in its superintending the writing of Scripture. God knew what Paul would freely write if he were in such and such a circumstance and presented with certain needs to address and be corrected. He knew that Paul would write, for example, the letter to the Romans. And thus by putting Paul in those circumstances, and which of course required, as Warfield says, a whole series of ancestors and events leading up to that point, God can guarantee that Paul would write exactly what God wanted expressed to us. Now you notice that that accords very well with the notion that inspiration is primarily a property of the text. It's primarily a property of the end product. It is not, as Warfield says, some sort of an influence that comes upon the author and leads the author to write something. Now perhaps the Holy Spirit did in some way come upon these men and bear them along. But the writing of the Scriptures is much more of a historical process than that imagines. It involves the preparation of the author, the preparation of the circumstances. And it may well be that given God's middle knowledge, there didn't need to be any sort of influence of the Holy Spirit added onto this. And yet the end product is God breathed, it is inspired. Now this helps to explain, for example, the so called levicula or, or the trivialities or light things in scriptures like Paul saying I left my coat at Troas, or please bring the books that I left, or the greetings that he gives. It's not to say that God wouldn't have been pleased if Paul had greeted somebody else or if Paul had given some other instructions. God allows him freedom to spontaneously greet whom he wishes to. And this is all right with God. God is quite happy. So this would allow for freedom in Paul's choice of vocabulary. It may be that what God wanted him to express could have been just as well expressed by other words. It could have been that God wouldn't have minded if he had greeted other people or greeted them with other terms. But nevertheless, God knew what Paul would write in those circumstances and he was satisfied with what Paul would write, that this would be God's word to us. This would also make sense of passages where the emotions of the author expressed. I mentioned the imprecatory psalms, which are difficult to understand if you think of those as dictations directly from God. On a middle knowledge view, God knew that this author, if he were in these anguished circumstances, would rail against his enemies. He would cry out for their destruction and curse them. But that doesn't mean that that's necessarily something that God wants us to do. It may be that the purpose God has in allowing the author to express these emotions is to say to us, you can bring your doubts and your anger and your emotions to me. Go ahead and express yourself in prayer to me with all of the feelings that are pent up within you, and I will listen to you and I will attend to those prayers. So it puts a very different perspective on those elements of Scripture that are so much the product of human emotion and anger and so forth. Now you might say, well, wait a minute, Bill, isn't this overkill? Because given God's middle knowledge and providence, isn't everything that a human author writes in that sense ultimately under God's control? He knew what you would write when you were in such and such circumstances. Does that make your philosophical article inspired by God? Well, no, obviously not. And I think the difference would be in the intention of God with respect to what is written. Certainly God knew what I would write freely in such and such circumstances. But it is not God's intention that that would become his word to us. And that's what serves to differentiate the books of Scripture and set them aside as inspired in a special way, namely, God intends that in having this author write these words, this would become God's own word to us. So it is both the product of the human author, but then it is also God's word to us. And that's what sets it aside as inspired and therefore authoritative and all the rest. All right, we have a time for a couple of questions or comments. Brad, I think that last part leads, I think, are there two parts? One is writing the text. Is it perfect? And the second part is of the texts that are written, which ones are protected and which ones are selected by God as Scripture? I think there's lots of texts that were written that aren't scripture. Right, right. And I'm sure, sure there were even letters by Paul that we don't have. Yes, that's true too. But there's a whole lot of it looks to me like The Bible was protected. The text was protected and selected by God, and that is why it became Scripture. All right, now that's raising the question of the canon of Scripture that we addressed or postponed addressing the other day, namely, which books are these that God has specially set aside to be his word to us? And we'll take up that question later in this class. What we're simply trying to do here is to formulate a theory of inspiration that will allow books to be written by human authors, but so superintended by God that what they write is God's own word to us. Another question. I was wondering, it seems like what's the difference between this and like an open theism point of view? Like, it seems very similar in the way that it. Oh, no, no, no. Either you're misunderstanding open theism or you're misunderstanding middle knowledge because these are antithetical to each other. The open theist view is that God does not know the future, and he doesn't know conditional statements either about what people might do in the future. So on the open theist view, God doesn't know what the Apostle Paul would write if he were in such and such circumstances. He doesn't know what Paul would say to the Roman Church or even if he would write a letter to the Roman Church if he were in certain circumstances. So the open theist has a very difficult problem explaining God's providence and sovereignty over history because he doesn't know what human agents would freely do in various circumstances. The middle knowledge perspective says God knew exactly what this person would freely do if he were in this set of circumstances. And therefore by creating that person, putting him in these circumstances, he knew that, for example, the letter of First Corinthians would result and that what he would say would become God's word to us. So these are very different perspectives. Now let me say this. When we get to the section of the course on the doctrine of God, we will have a lengthy section on the attributes of God, including God's omniscience, that is, say, God's being all knowing. And there we will go into much more depth about theories of divine knowledge like open theism, middle knowledge, simple foreknowledge, and so forth. So if you're interested in that, Hang on. We are going to get to it when we get to the doctrine of God. All right, well, that brings us to a close in the class today. And what we'll look at the next time will be the authority which Scripture has in virtue of being inspired by God, the copyright for the preceding program is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.org.