2. This union of the divine and human agencies in inspiration is not to be conceived of as one of external impartation and reception.
On the other hand, those whom God raised up and providentially qualified to do this work, spoke and wrote the words of God, when inspired, not as from without, but as from within, and that not passively, but in the most conscious possession and the most exalted exercise of their own powers of intellect, emotion, and will.
The Holy Spirit does not dwell in man as water in a vessel. We may rather illustrate the experience of the Scripture writers by the experience of the preacher who under the influence of God's Spirit is carried beyond himself, and is conscious of a clearer apprehension of truth and of a greater ability to utter it than belong to his unaided nature, yet knows himself to be no passive vehicle of a divine communication, but to be as never before in possession and exercise of his own powers. The inspiration of the Scripture writers, however, goes far beyond the illumination granted to the preacher, in that it qualifies them to put the truth, without error, into permanent and written form. This inspiration, moreover, is more than providential preparation. Like miracles, inspiration may use man's natural powers, but man's natural powers do not explain it. Moses, David, Paul, and John were providentially endowed and educated for their work of writing Scripture, but this endowment and education were not inspiration itself, but only the preparation for it.
Beyschlag: “With John, remembrance and exposition had become inseparable.” E. G. Robinson; “Novelists do not create characters—they reproduce with modifications material presented to their memories. So the apostles reproduced their impressions of Christ.” Hutton, Essays, 2:231—“The Psalmists vacillate between the first person and the third, when they deliver the purposes of God. As they warm with their spiritual inspiration, they lose themselves in the person of Him who inspires them, and then they are again recalled to themselves.” Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:380—“Revelation is not resolved into a mere human process because we are able to distinguish the natural agencies through which it was communicated”; 2:102—“You seem to me to transfer too much to these ancient prophets and writers and chiefs our modern notions of divine origin. … Our notion, or rather, the modern Puritanical notion of divine origin, is of a preternatural force or voice, putting aside secondary agencies, and separated from those agencies by an impassable gulf. The ancient, Oriental, Biblical notion was of a supreme Will acting through those agencies, or rather, being inseparable from them. Our notions of inspiration and divine communications insist on absolute perfection of fact, morals, doctrine. The Biblical notion was that inspiration was compatible with weakness, infirmity, contradiction.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 182—“In inspiration the thoughts, feelings, purposes are organized into another One than the self in which they were themselves born. That other One is in themselves. They enter into communication with Him. Yet this may be supernatural, even though natural psychological means are used. Inspiration which is external is not inspiration at all.” This last sentence, however, seems to us a needless exaggeration of the true principle. Though God originally inspires from within, he may also communicate truth from without.
3. Inspiration, therefore, did not remove, but rather pressed into its own service, all the personal peculiarities of the writers, together with their defects of culture and literary style.
Every imperfection not inconsistent with truth in a human composition may exist in inspired Scripture. The Bible is God's word, in the sense that it presents to us divine truth in human forms, and is a revelation not for a select class but for the common mind. Rightly understood, this very humanity of the Bible is a proof of its divinity.
Locke: “When God made the prophet, he did not unmake the man.” Prof. Day: “The bush in which God appeared to Moses remained a bush, while yet burning with the brightness of God and uttering forth the majesty of the mind of God.” The paragraphs of the Koran are called ayat, or “sign,” from their supposed supernatural elegance. But elegant literary productions do not touch the heart. The Bible is not merely the word of God; it is also the word made flesh. The Holy Spirit hides himself, that he may show forth Christ (John 3:8); he is known only by his effects—a pattern for preachers, who are ministers of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:6). See Conant on Genesis, 65.
The Moslem declares that every word of the Koran came by the agency of Gabriel from the seventh heaven, and that its very pronunciation is inspired. Better the doctrine of Martineau, Seat of Authority, 289—“Though the pattern be divine, the web that bears it must still be human.” Jackson, James Martineau, 255—“Paul's metaphor of the ‘treasure in earthen vessels’ (2 Cor. 4:7) you cannot allow to give you guidance; you want, not the treasure only, but the casket too, to come from above, and be of the crystal of the sky. You want the record to be divine, not only in its spirit, but also in its letter.” Charles Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:157—“When God ordains praise out of the mouths of babes, they must speak as babes, or the whole power and beauty of the tribute will be lost.”
Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 16, 25—“The πνεῦμα of a dead wind is never changed, as the Rabbis of old thought, into the πνεῦμα of a living spirit. The raven that fed Elijah was nothing more than a bird. Nor does man, when supernaturally influenced, cease to be a man. An inspired man is not God, nor a divinely manipulated automaton”; “In Scripture there may be as much imperfection as, in the parts of any organism, would be consistent with the perfect adaptation of that organism to its destined end. Scripture then, taken together, is a statement of moral and religious truth sufficient for men's salvation, or an infallible and sufficient rule of faith and practice.”J. S. Wrightnour: “Inspire means to breathe in, as a flute-player breathes into his instrument. As different flutes may have their own shapes, peculiarities, and what might seem like defects, so here; yet all are breathed into by one Spirit. The same Spirit who inspired them selected those instruments which were best for his purpose, as the Savior selected his apostles. In these writings therefore is given us, in the precise way that is best for us, the spiritual instruction and food that we need. Food for the body is not always given in the most concentrated form, but in the form that is best adapted for digestion. So God gives gold, not in coin ready stamped, but in the quartz of the mine whence it has to be dug and smelted.” Remains of Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown's Rab and his Friends, 274—“I see that the Bible fits in to every fold of the human heart. I am a man, and I believe it is God's book, because it is man's book.”
4. In inspiration God may use all right and normal methods of literary composition.
As we recognize in literature the proper function of history, poetry, and fiction; of prophecy, parable, and drama; of personification and proverb; of allegory and dogmatic instruction; and even of myth and legend; we cannot deny the possibility that God may use any one of these methods of communicating truth, leaving it to us to determine in any single case which of these methods he has adopted.
In inspiration, as in regeneration and sanctification, God works “in divers manners” (Heb. 1:1). The Scriptures, like the books of secular literature, must be interpreted in the light of their purpose. Poetry must not be treated as prose, and parable must not be made to “go on all fours,” when it was meant to walk erect and to tell one simple story. Drama is not history, nor is personification to be regarded as biography. There is a rhetorical overstatement which is intended only as a vivid emphasizing of important truth. Allegory is a popular mode of illustration. Even myth and legend may convey great lessons not otherwise apprehensible to infantile or untrained minds. A literary sense is needed in our judgments of Scripture, and much hostile criticism is lacking in this literary sense.
Denney, Studies in Theology, 218—“There is a stage in which the whole contents of the mind, as yet incapable of science or history, may be called mythological. And what criticism shows us, in its treatment of the early chapters of Genesis, is that God does not disdain to speak to the mind, nor through it, even when it is at this