Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Verbal Inspiration Vindicated: A Paper Read at the Third Conference of the Pastors' College Evangelical Association, April 23rd, 1890
The possibility of verbal inspiration must be admitted by those who differ from us, for some parts of the Word are confessedly verbally inspired. The reasonableness of the doctrine we maintain in accord with our knowledge of the human mind - the intimate and inseparable connection between thought and language, while we hold that the certainty of it is asserted throughout the whole Bible. When we point to the various formula used in the Bible to describe inspiration, Thus saith the Lord, The word of the Lord came unto me, His word was upon my tongue, &c., as showing the fact of verbal inspiration, we are told that it is only by a fallacy of extension that we can apply that description to the Whole Bible. But we fail to see the fallacy. Christ speaks of the whole Old Testament as an unbroken and unbreakable unity, and regards all as equally inspired. His own words are of course inspired. The inspiration He promised His disciples guaranteed not only that their thoughts would be the fruit of the Spirit, but that their utterances would be guided and controlled by that Spirit. Peter, familiar with this idea of inspiration, describes the prophetic word, not as the product of the ages, but as the result of Divine in uence extending even to the language, for holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Paul has the same conception of his own inspiration; he speaks the things (thoughts) of God in words which the Holy Ghost teacheth. And when he speaks of all Scripture being Divinely inspired he must have in his mind the same idea of inspiration; and in spite of all the disputationsover that classical passage in Timothy, we feel it matters little which rendering of the words we adopt, for in any case the context fixes the reference to the Old Testament Canon in which Timothy had been instructed the sacred letters which he had learned to prize. But it would savour of impertinence were I to enter fully into the proofs for verbal inspiration which must be familiar to you all I desire rather to say a little by way of vindicating the doctrine, and I remark that Verbal inspiration is not mechanical dictation. It is often so represented, or rather misrepresented by its opponents, and so caricatured made a subject of ridicule. It may be admitted that in some portions of the Word we find dictation, but of the Word as a whole the believers in plenary inspiration generally do not predicate dictation. The moment you think of inspiration as dictation you conceive a theory of the bow, which we submit is beyond our grasp. Our theory is not mechanical, but has been well described as dynamical, the word suggesting that there was a power in the sacred writers so moving and guiding them that entire freedom from error marks their utterances.
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