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1. Since we have shown that God has made a revelation of himself to man, we may reasonably presume that he will not trust this revelation wholly to human tradition and misrepresentation, but will also provide a record of it essentially trustworthy and sufficient; in other words, that the same Spirit who originally communicated the truth will preside over its publication, so far as is needed to accomplish its religious purpose.

Since all natural intelligence, as we have seen, presupposes God's indwelling, and since in Scripture the all-prevailing atmosphere, with its constant pressure and effort to enter every cranny and corner of the world, is used as an illustration of the impulse of God's omnipotent Spirit to vivify and energize every human soul (Gen. 2:7; Job 32:8), we may infer that, but for sin, all men would be morally and spiritually inspired (Num. 11:29—“Would that all Jehovah's people were prophets, that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon them!” Is. 59:2—“your iniquities have separated between you and your God”). We have also seen that God's method of communicating his truth in matters of religion is presumably analogous to his method of communicating secular truth, such as that of astronomy or history. There is an original delivery to a single nation, and to single persons in that nation, that it may through them be given to mankind. Sanday, Inspiration, 140—“There is a ‘purpose of God according to selection’ (Rom. 9:11); there is an ‘election’ or ‘selection of grace’; and the object of that selection was Israel and those who take their name from Israel's Messiah. If a tower is built in ascending tiers, those who stand upon the lower tiers are yet raised above the ground, and some may be raised higher than others, but the full and unimpeded view is reserved for those who mount upward to the top. And that is the place destined for us if we will take it.”

If we follow the analogy of God's working in other communications of knowledge, we shall reasonably presume that he will preserve the record of his revelations in written and accessible documents, handed down from those to whom these revelations were first communicated, and we may expect that these documents will be kept sufficiently correct and trustworthy to accomplish their religious purpose, namely, that of furnishing to the honest inquirer a guide to Christ and to salvation. The physician commits his prescriptions to writing; the Clerk of Congress records its proceedings; the State Department of our government instructs our foreign ambassadors, not orally, but by dispatches. There is yet greater need that revelation should be recorded, since it is to be transmitted to distant ages; it contains long discourses; it embraces mysterious doctrines. Jesus did not write himself; for he was the subject, not the mere channel, of revelation. His unconcern about the apostles' immediately committing to writing what they saw and heard is inexplicable, if he did not expect that inspiration would assist them.

We come to the discussion of Inspiration with a presumption quite unlike that of Kuenen and Wellhausen, who write in the interest of almost avowed naturalism. Kuenen, in the opening sentences of his Religion of Israel, does indeed assert the rule of God in the world. But Sanday, Inspiration, 117, says well that “Kuenen keeps this idea very much in the background. He expended a whole volume of 593 large octavo pages (Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, London, 1877) in proving that the prophets were not moved to speak by God, but that their utterances were all their own.” The following extract, says Sanday, indicates the position which Dr. Kuenen really held: “We do not allow ourselves to be deprived of God's presence in history. In the fortunes and development of nations, and not least clearly in those of Israel, we see Him, the holy and all-wise Instructor of his human children. But the old contrasts must be altogether set aside. So long as we derive a separate part of Israel's religious life directly from God, and allow the supernatural or immediate revelation to intervene in even one single point, so long also our view of the whole continues to be incorrect, and we see ourselves here and there necessitated to do violence to the well-authenticated contents of the historical documents. It is the supposition of a natural development alone which accounts for all the phenomena” (Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, 585).

2. Jesus, who has been proved to be not only a credible witness, but a messenger from God, vouches for the inspiration of the Old Testament, by quoting it with the formula: “It is written”; by declaring that “one jot or one tittle” of it “shall in no wise pass away,” and that “the Scripture cannot be broken.”

Jesus quotes from four out of the five books of Moses, and from the Psalms, Isaiah, Malachi, and Zechariah, with the formula, “it is written”; see Mat. 4:4, 6, 7; 11:10; Mark 14:27; Luke 4:4–12. This formula among the Jews indicated that the quotation was from a sacred book and was divinely inspired. Jesus certainly regarded the Old Testament with as much reverence as the Jews of his day. He declared that “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law” (Mat. 5:18). He said that “the scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35) = “the normative and judicial authority of the Scripture cannot be set aside; notice here [in the singular, ἡ γραφή] the idea of the unity of Scripture” (Meyer). And yet our Lord's use of O. T. Scripture was wholly free from the superstitious literalism which prevailed among the Jews of his day. The phrases “word of God” (John 10:35; Mark 7:13), “wisdom of God” (Luke 11:49) and “oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2) probably designate the original revelations of God and not the record of these in Scripture; cf. 1 Sam. 9:27; 1 Chron. 17:3; Is. 40:8; Mat. 13:19; Luke 3:2; Acts 8:25. Jesus refuses assent to the O. T. law respecting the Sabbath (Mark 2:27 sq.), external defilements (Mark 7:15), divorce (Mark 10:2 sq.). He “came not to destroy but to fulfil” (Mat. 5:17); yet he fulfilled the law by bringing out its inner spirit in his perfect life, rather than by formal and minute obedience to its precepts; see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:5–35.

The apostles quote the O. T. as the utterance of God (Eph. 4:8—διὸ λέγει, sc. θεός). Paul's insistence upon the form of even a single word, as in Gal. 3:16, and his use of the O. T. for purposes of allegory, as in Gal 4:21–31, show that in his view the O. T. text was sacred. Philo, Josephus and the Talmud, in their interpretations of the O. T., fall continually into a “narrow and unhappy literalism.” “The N. T. does not indeed escape Rabbinical methods, but even where these are most prominent they seem to affect the form far more than the substance. And through the temporary and local form the writer constantly penetrates to the very heart of the O. T. teaching;” see Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration, 87; Henderson, Inspiration, 254.

3. Jesus commissioned his apostles as teachers and gave them promises of a supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit in their teaching, like the promises made to the Old Testament prophets.

Mat. 28:19, 20—“Go ye … teaching … and lo, I am with you.” Compare promises to Moses (Ex. 3:12), Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5–8), Ezekiel (Ezek. 2 and 3). See also Is. 44:3 and Joel 2:28—“I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed”; Mat. 10:7—“as ye go, preach”; 19—“be not anxious how or what ye shall speak”; John 14:26—“the Holy Spirit … shall teach you all things”; 15:26, 27—“the Spirit of truth … shall bear witness of me: and ye also bear witness” = the Spirit shall witness in and through you; 16:13—“he shall guide you into all the truth” = (1) limitation—all the truth of Christ, i.e., not of philosophy or science, but of religion; (2) comprehension—all the truth within this limited range, i.e., sufficiency of Scripture as rule of faith and practice (Hovey); 17:8—“the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them”; Acts 1:4—“he charged them … to wait for the promise of the Father”; John 20:22—“he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.”Here was both promise and communication of the personal Holy Spirit. Compare Mat. 10:19, 20—“it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.” See Henderson, Inspiration, 247, 248.

Jesus' testimony here is the testimony of God. In Deut. 18:18, it is said that God will put his words into the mouth of the great Prophet. In John 12:49, 50, Jesus says: “I spake not from myself, but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life eternal; the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak.” John 17:7, 8—“all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from thee: for the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them.” John 8:40—“a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God.”

4. The apostles claim to have received this promised Spirit, and under his influence to speak with divine authority, putting their writings upon a level with the Old Testament Scriptures. We have not only direct statements that both the matter and the form of their teaching were supervised by the Holy Spirit, but we have indirect evidence that this was the case in the tone of authority which pervades their addresses and epistles.

Statements:—1 Cor. 2:10, 13—“unto us God revealed them through the Spirit. … Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth”; 11:23—“I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you”; 12:8, 28—the λόγος σοφίας was apparently a gift peculiar to the apostles; 14:37, 38—“the things which I write unto you … they are the commandment of the Lord”; Gal. 1:12—“neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ”; 1 Thess. 4:2, 8—“ye know what charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus. … Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy Spirit unto you.” The following passages put the teaching of the apostles on the same level with O. T. Scripture: 1 Pet. 1:11, 12—“Spirit of Christ which was in them” [O. T. prophets];—[N. T. preachers] “preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit”; 2 Pet. 1:21—O. T. prophets “spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; 3:2—“remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets” [O. T.], “and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles” [N. T.]; 16—“wrest [Paul's Epistles], as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” Cf. Ex. 4:14–16; 7:1.

Implications:—2 Tim. 3:16—“Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable”—a clear implication of inspiration, though not a direct statement of it = there is a divinely inspired Scripture. In 1 Cor. 5:3–5, Paul, commanding the Corinthian church with regard to the incestuous person, was arrogant if not inspired. There are more imperatives in the Epistles than in any other writings of the same extent. Notice the continual asseveration of authority, as in Gal. 1:1, 2, and the declaration that disbelief of the record is sin, as in 1 John 5:10, 11. Jude 3—“the faith which was once for all (ἅπαξ) delivered unto the saints.” See Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:122; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 34, 234; Conant, Genesis, Introd., xiii, note; Charteris, New Testament Scriptures: They claim truth, unity, authority.

The passages quoted above show that inspired men distinguished inspiration from their own unaided thinking. These inspired men claim that their inspiration is the same with that of the prophets. Rev. 22:6—“the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass” = inspiration gave them supernatural knowledge of the future. As inspiration in the O. T. was the work of the pre-incarnate Christ, so inspiration in the N. T. is the work of the ascended and glorified Christ by his Holy Spirit. On the Relative Authority of the Gospels, see Gerhardt, in Am. Journ. Theol., Apl. 1899:275–294, who shows that not the words of Jesus in the gospels are the final revelation, but rather the teaching of the risen and glorified Christ in the Acts and the Epistles. The Epistles are the posthumous works of Christ. Pattison, Making of the Sermon, 23—“The apostles, believing themselves to be inspired teachers, often preached without texts; and the fact that their successors did not follow their example shows that for themselves they made no such claim. Inspiration ceased, and henceforth authority was found in the use of the words of the now complete Scriptures.”

5. The apostolic writers of the New Testament, unlike professedly inspired heathen sages and poets, gave attestation by miracles or prophecy that they were inspired by God, and there is reason to believe that the productions of those who were not apostles, such as Mark, Luke, Hebrews, James, and Jude, were recommended to the churches as inspired, by apostolic sanction and authority.

The twelve wrought miracles (Mat. 10:1). Paul's “signs of an apostle” (2 Cor. 13:12) = miracles. Internal evidence confirms the tradition that Mark was the “interpreter of Peter,” and that Luke's gospel and the Acts had the sanction of Paul. Since the purpose of the Spirit's bestowment was to qualify those who were to be the teachers and founders of the new religion, it is only fair to assume that Christ's promise of the Spirit was valid not simply to the twelve but to all who stood in their places, and to these not simply as speakers, but, since in this respect they had a still greater need of divine guidance, to them as writers also.

The epistle to the Hebrews, with the letters of James and Jude, appeared in the lifetime of some of the twelve, and passed unchallenged; and the fact that they all, with the possible exception of 2 Peter, were very early accepted by the churches founded and watched over by the apostles, is sufficient evidence that the apostles regarded them as inspired productions. As evidences that the writers regarded their writings as of universal authority, see 1 Cor. 1:2—“unto the church of God which is at Corinth … with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place,” etc.; 7:17—“so ordain I in all the churches”; Col. 4:16—“And when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans”; 2 Pet. 3:15, 16—“our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote unto you.” See Bartlett, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1880:23–57; Bib. Sac., Jan. 1884:204, 205.

Johnson, Systematic Theology, 40—“Miraculous gifts were bestowed at Pentecost on many besides apostles. Prophecy was not an uncommon gift during the apostolic period.” There is no antecedent improbability that inspiration should extend to others than to the principal leaders of the church, and since we have express instances of such inspiration in oral utterances (Acts 11:28; 21:9, 10) it seems natural that there should have been instances of inspiration in written utterances also. In some cases this appears to have been only an inspiration of superintendence. Clement of Alexandria says only that Peter neither forbade nor encouraged Mark in his plan of writing the gospel. Irenæus tells us that Mark's gospel was written after the death of Peter. Papias says that Mark wrote down what he remembered to have heard from Peter. Luke does not seem to have been aware of any miraculous aid in his writing, and his methods appear to have been those of the ordinary historian.

6. The chief proof of inspiration, however, must always be found in the internal characteristics of the Scriptures themselves, as these are disclosed to the sincere inquirer by the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit combines with the teaching of the Bible to convince the earnest reader that this teaching is as a whole and in all essentials beyond the power of man to communicate, and that it must therefore have been put into permanent and written form by special inspiration of God.

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 105—“The testimony of the Spirit is an argument from identity of effects—the doctrines of experience and the doctrines of the Bible—to identity of cause. … God-wrought experience proves a God-wrought Bible. … This covers the Bible as a whole, if not the whole of the Bible. It is true so far as I can test it. It is to be believed still further if there is no other evidence.”Lyman Abbott, in his Theology of an Evolutionist, 105, calls the Bible “a record of man's laboratory work in the spiritual realm, a history of the dawning of the consciousness of God and of the divine life in the soul of man.” This seems to us unduly subjective. We prefer to say that the Bible is also God's witness to us of his presence and working in human hearts and in human history—a witness which proves its divine origin by awakening in us experiences similar to those which it describes, and which are beyond the power of man to originate.

G. P. Fisher, in Mag. of Christ. Lit., Dec. 1892:239—“Is the Bible infallible? Not in the sense that all its statements extending even to minutiæ in matters of history and science are strictly accurate. Not in the sense that every doctrinal and ethical statement in all these books is incapable of amendment. The whole must sit in judgment on the parts. Revelation is progressive. There is a human factor as well as a divine. The treasure is in earthen vessels. But the Bible is infallible in the sense that whoever surrenders himself in a docile spirit to its teaching will fall into no hurtful error in matters of faith and charity. Best of all, he will find in it the secret of a new, holy and blessed life, ‘hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3). The Scriptures are the witness to Christ. … Through the Scriptures he is truly and adequately made known to us.” Denney, Death of Christ, 314—“The unity of the Bible and its inspiration are correlative terms. If we can discern a real unity in it—and I believe we can when we see that it converges upon and culminates in a divine love bearing the sin of the world—then that unity and its inspiration are one and the same thing. And it is not only inspired as a whole, it is the only book that is inspired. It is the only book in the world to which God sets his seal in our hearts when we read in search of an answer to the question, How shall a sinful man be righteous with God? … The conclusion of our study of Inspiration should be the conviction that the Bible gives us a body of doctrine—a ‘faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints’ (Jude 3).”