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).”
III. Theories of Inspiration.
1. The Intuition-theory.
This holds that inspiration is but a higher development of that natural insight into truth which all men possess to some degree; a mode of intelligence in matters of morals and religion which gives rise to sacred books, as a corresponding mode of intelligence in matters of secular truth gives rise to great works of philosophy or art. This mode of intelligence is regarded as the product of man's own powers, either without special divine influence or with only the inworking of an impersonal God.
This theory naturally connects itself with Pelagian and rationalistic views of man's independence of God, or with pantheistic conceptions of man as being himself the highest manifestation of an all-pervading but unconscious intelligence. Morell and F. W. Newman in England, and Theodore Parker in America, are representatives of this theory. See Morell, Philos. of Religion, 127–179—“Inspiration is only a higher potency of what every man possesses in some degree.” See also Francis W. Newman (brother of John Henry Newman), Phases of Faith (= phases of unbelief); Theodore Parker, Discourses of Religion, and Experiences as a Minister: “God is infinite; therefore he is immanent in nature, yet transcending it; immanent in spirit, yet transcending that. He must fill each point of spirit, as of space; matter must unconsciously obey; man, conscious and free, has power to a certain extent to disobey, but obeying, the immanent God acts in man as much as in nature”—quoted in Chadwick, Theodore Parker, 271. Hence Parker's view of Inspiration: If the conditions are fulfilled, inspiration comes in proportion to man's gifts and to his use of those gifts. Chadwick himself, in his Old and New Unitarianism, 68, says